Waiting for the Fruit
James 5: 7-11

 

 

          If you are a farmer in Israel today, the planting cycle has changed little for you from the time of Jesus. You sow just before the autumn rains of October and November. If you sow after those rains, the seeds won’t germinate. Then you wait. You wait for the spring rains. They usually come in April and May as the grain matures. You do not harvest until those rains have fallen. Never mind that three fourths of the rains in Palestine fall from December to February. It’s not the same. You must wait. You must be patient.

          James talks about patience and perseverance in the fifth chapter of the New Testament book bearing his name. He starts his letter with an appeal for perseverance and ends it with another appeal for patience.  The book is thought by most who think about such things as having been written by James the half-brother of Jesus, who became quite influential in the early church. He was often called the Bishop of Jerusalem.  Martin Luther didn’t like him, calling his book an “epistle of straw.” Luther thought that James’ pronouncement in chapter 2 that faith without works is dead flew in the face of Paul’s teaching that by grace are we saved through faith. Later theologians have come to realize that James and Paul had much more in common than their differences.  At any rate, James is concerned here with the parousia, the second coming of Christ. Parousia is a Greek term having to do with the coming of a king. Jesus promised return as a king, hence the parousia.

          James calls his audience here “brothers,” indicating that he is no longer talking to the rich, but now speaks again to the Jewish Christians reading the letter.  His use of the word “therefore,” or “then” indicates that he is referring back to the previous passage, which is about the rich who take unfair advantage. He cautions the lesser advantaged to exercise self-restraint.  He then compares the second coming of Christ to the more common analogy of a farmer having to wait for the precious fruit of the field. But this is not a passive activity. This is not the kind of waiting that is accomplished in a rocking chair on the front porch.   It is an active, pursuing, conscious waiting that engages in life and prays for that fruit to ripen. Waiting for Christ is done with an eye toward preparation, toward participation. Waiting for Christ is not a spectator sport.

          James warns his audience to “establish your hearts.” It is another way of saying “stand firm.” He encourages them to use long-suffering patience even in the midst of unfairness. James sees the second coming as imminent. Then James uses another example. He talks about the prophets and the patience they had to exercise. Jeremiah comes to mind. He was put in stocks, thrown in prison, lowered into a wet dungeon, yet he kept pursuing his ministry without bitterness. Jeremiah had patience. But Jeremiah had that active kind of patience which kept him moving toward righteousness. It taught him how to wait for God’s hand to guide him.  Writer Richard Hendrix tells us that “waiting may be the greatest teacher and trainer in Godliness, maturity, and genuine spirituality most of us ever encounter.”

          James gives us a third example. It is a lot like patience, but it is not the same. James uses Job to remind us of our need for perseverance. We often hear of Job’s great patience, but that really is not very accurate. While Job had a fair measure of patience, he had a lot more perseverance. He never quit believing in God, even in the face of one unexplainable disaster after another. Some translations call it steadfastness instead of perseverance. Either way,  the words convey similar meanings. Job stuck it out. And God rewarded him.

          Perseverance is not just a character trait.  It’s a way of life. Former Congressman Newt Gingrich once said that perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. Ivan Downing tells a story about perseverance I can relate to. A fellow who had been at it a long time decided to retire from the ministry. One Sunday he explained his decision to the congregation: “I wear two hearing aids and trifocal glasses; I have a partial plate, and sometimes I walk with a cane. It seems to me,” he concluded, “that the Lord is telling me it’s time to retire.” After the service, a white-haired lady told him, “Reverend, you have misinterpreted what the Lord has been saying to you. He’s not telling you it’s time to retire; he’s telling you that if you keep going, he’ll keep you patched up.”

          It is the season of optimism. It is the third Sunday of Advent, a Sunday in which we light a candle signifying joy. Can anything really be bad? Baby Jesus is about to be born. A magnificent choir of angels in heaven is about to sing its chorus. The star in the East glows brighter with each passing day. Jesus is coming. He can cancel our debts and cure our troubles.

          We know that the rejoicing of Christmas and the candles of Advent, the descent of the Christ child to Bethlehem, will all too soon be replaced with the ascent of our Savior to an unadorned hill where a Cross awaits. But that is for another day. It will come soon enough. And even in its tragedy lie the seeds of that long waited for fruit, the fruit of salvation. Today there is Joy. Let us be patient as the farmer and the prophet. Let us be persevering as God’s servant Job. For James reminds us that even now, the Judge is standing at the door.

          Are you ready? James instructed those early Christians to “Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord.” It is good advice even today. James didn’t know when Jesus would come again. Our Lord Jesus said that even he did not know. We do know this. He is coming. Praise God that he has waited these twenty centuries to continue the ingathering of his people. God is patient too, as more and more people are brought to a saving knowledge of his salvation from sin and death.  Be patient and persevere. He is coming.

A Signal for the Peoples

Isaiah 11: 1-10

 

 

          Here we are at the second Sunday of Advent. The Second Advent candle was lit today honoring the theme of Joy. The children’s choir sang Joy to the World, a familiar Christmas hymn, to remind us of the news that was shared so long ago…news that we herald in this season in both remembrance and reminder. We remember the birth of the Christ child and we are reminded of the reason for his birth. The birth of Jesus was a watershed event. It was the beginning of a change that would affect the entire world for the rest of its history.

          What is a watershed event? It’s something momentous that happens. It usually marks a major change of course or it is something on which other important events depend. For instance, today we remember the seventy third anniversary of the sneak attack upon our Naval Base at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941. 2388 sailors, soldiers, marines and civilians died in that attack. That was a watershed event. We declared war on the Japanese later that day. The next five years, the entire country entered into a war effort that would see millions of our country’s men and women go off to the Pacific and Europe to engage in a conflict for our freedom and our very way of life. Over sixty million people died in World War II. It changed the world.

          We have watershed events in our own lives. They may not change the world but they are of singular importance to us when we have those experiences. Watershed events might be a death in the family, a graduation, a marriage, the birth of a child, a divorce. They might be our conversion to Christianity…our acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. Watershed events change the course of our lives.

          The Bible is full of watershed events, from the creation story to the flood to the stories of the Patriarchs, beginning with Adam. But without question, the signal watershed event of the Old Testament and of the nation of Israel, is the Exodus, the story of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from the slavery of Egypt. I have heard it said that there are periods in history when the world is in great need, and with uncanny accuracy, unusually great leaders rise up to lead in those times. Such is the case with the nation of Israel in captivity. In their time of great need, God sent them Moses as their leader. Of course, we know that Moses was guided by God. It was Moses’ obedience to God, his willingness to be guided by God, that made his leadership so great.

          And so, after plagues and famine and partings of waters, the people of Israel moved forward as one body toward the Promised Land. Their job, which by the way they continually failed to do, was to act as what Michael Goheen calls a contrast people. They were to stand in contrast to the nations all around them. They were to worship the one true God. They were to live in example, example of what God wants and expects from his chosen.

          Many generations passed. The Promised Land was lost. First, the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, broke down, exiled and re-assimilated the nation of Israel until it was without political power and had lost much of its identity. During the Exile, the prophet Isaiah, along with the prophet Micah, spoke for God over a thirty year period. Isaiah was a prophet in Judah, the Southern Kingdom, which was still ruled by King Hezekiah. He spoke of a theme of restoration and salvation. But Isaiah prophesied beyond the reign of the kings of Judah. He foresaw a time when a final heir to the throne of David would appear. He looked toward a time of salvation and that salvation extended beyond any national borders. His prophecies were remarkably accurate.

          Did Isaiah know how his prophecies would play out? There is no way for us to know that. Some speculate that he foresaw all that would come to pass. Others conjecture that Isaiah was pointing forward only to a day when Judah would be saved and Israel would be restored to political prominence. Regardless of how one interprets it, the fact of the matter is that Isaiah’s Messianic prophecies were ripe with details of what came to pass in the first century. Today’s passage is exemplary of that.

          Isaiah prophesies that a “shoot from the stump of Jesse” will come forth. Jesse, of course, is the father of King David, and a shoot from that stump would seem to imply that the Davidic line of kingship will die out, but that the Messiah will come from that bloodline, which indeed Jesus does. Upon this person shall rest the Spirit of the Lord,  a Spirit of wisdom, of understanding, of counsel and light, of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. This new leader will come to judge and he will judge not with his eyes and ears, not with the traditional evidence that people employ, but rather with righteousness and faithfulness.

          Isaiah goes on to prophesy of a world which we have never known. In fact, it is a world which no one since Adam and Eve has known. While we may live in the middle of God’s creation, we nevertheless live in it as a flawed, corroded version of the real thing. Mankind has corrupted that which was flawless. God’s creation was and is so marvelous that even centuries of brutalizing it still find it breathtaking in many ways. But the world that Isaiah describes is entirely different. There is no strife. Relief and trust have returned to the creation…so much so that the animal kingdom plays and resides not only side by side, but even so that a little child can frolic in the midst of lions and leopards and venomous snakes without fear. There is total trust between man and animal, man and man. It is the creation restored. And Isaiah says that in that day, none of creation’s creatures will hurt or destroy. Isaiah can see a day when the natural working order of the world is restored and all of creation lives in harmony. He talks of it taking place on God’s holy mountain, which some take to mean Mt Sinai, but others would expand to all of God’s creation. God is too big to be confined to one mountain and indeed, with God residing in it, all of creation becomes God’s holy mountain.

          How can that day come? How can harmony be restored? Isaiah prophesies: First, Isaiah tells us that “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.” Imagine a world in which everyone and everything is full in the knowledge of God and who he is and of his sovereignty. Isaiah says the earth will know, not just the people but the whole earth. All of creation will once again be bathed in the knowledge of God. Second, Isaiah says that “In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.”  In that day, the coming of Messiah, the coming of  the Son of God--in that day—Jesus, the root of Jesse, the promised Savior, will stand as a signal for the peoples. It is a beautiful image painted by the prophet, and it includes not only the remnant of the nation of Israel, but “the peoples”—all the nations of the earth.

         “ In that day,” says Isaiah. Does he refer to the birth of the Christ child? Does he refer to the Passion? I think first of all that Isaiah speaks from his own knowledge, but I think he also speaks from that which he has been guided to say by the Lord. He may not even know the full ramifications of his prophecy. I think that probably without knowing it, Isaiah has pointed to the Day of the Lord, the day when Christ returns at the end of the age, when all creation is restored for all time and everyone is judged. But in that day could also mean the coming of Jesus in Bethlehem, for either way you look at it, a watershed event is about to happen.

          Jesus is coming. He is coming as a babe wrapped in a manger. He is coming as the Lamb of God. He is coming as the Suffering Servant. He is coming as Messiah, the anointed one, that  “shoot” from the stump of Jesse, but he is coming. And he will come again one more time as John calls for in the close of the Biblical canon, saying “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”  No matter how you choose to look at it, Jesus is coming, and six hundred years before his birth, Isaiah heralded his arrival.

          This season, we celebrate not only the coming of Christ, but the fact that his coming was a watershed event in the history of the world. While long ago, God caused Moses to move his people in one body from one point to another, the coming of Jesus is not a going forth, but a coming together under the leadership of the Lord himself. We celebrate that he does indeed stand as a signal for the peoples. His is the voice of hope, of joy, of peace, of love. He is coming among us!

          Joy to the World! He is coming!

Giving Thanks

Ephesians 1: 15-23

 

 

           Next week, people all over the country will celebrate Thanksgiving. We will cook turkeys and make stuffing and bake pies and gather in homes and churches and restaurants as families and friends. We will break bread together and give thanks for another year of plenty, another year of success.  We will feed veterans and the homeless. We will share our wealth for a meal in a great showing of generosity.

          That will happen on Thursday. We will get done just in time, for the very next day is Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year and the kickoff to the Christmas season. It is the day when supposedly, retailers go in the black to stay for the rest of the year, thanks to the seemingly endless consumerism of Americans. If you’re a Walmart customer, you can get Black Friday prices on top deals a whole week before Black Friday even arrives.

          I’m not much of a consumer. I have clothes older than many people’s cars and a car too old to recall.  If retailers need my business to get in the black, our country is in for a long recession. It’s confusing to keep up with all the messages. Religious seasons and national holidays are used as promotional events rather than times of honor and remembrance. It’s a long way from the original intent of Thanksgiving, a day set apart for the praise of God’s blessing through another harvest.

          Ephesians is in many ways a letter of thanksgiving… thanksgiving for unity in Christ and for the Church’s place in God’s plan to bring about that unity.  It is one of the four so-called prison letters written by the apostle Paul. It was probably written to be circulated among the churches in the region surrounding Ephesus. It does not deal with particular problems in any particular church. The theology is high and the phrasing, while very long, is beautiful. It has been called the “Queen of the Epistles” because of its devotional treatment of Christ.

          In the opening verses of Ephesians, Paul invokes a blessing for God and Christ. In one sentence, he praises God’s election, adoption, God’s will, forgiveness, grace, God’s divine purpose, God’s plan, unity of heaven and earth, and Christ. Paul can get a lot of mileage between periods. He then tells his audience that they were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we receive it.

          Then, in todays’ passage, Paul offers a thanksgiving. He offers the kind of thanksgiving that teaches us about our Savior, our faith, our church and ourselves. The man writes from a prison cell with time on his hands, and one can just imagine him laboring over each phrase, milking each sentence to its theological summit.

          Paul writes to the church at large and says he never ceased to give thanks, that he remembers us in his prayers. He prays for God to give the church a spirit, but not just any spirit. Paul prays for the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him.  To Paul, nothing is more important than the proclamation of the Gospel. The gospel is the good news, and the good news is Jesus Christ. Christ has lived the sinless life, offered himself as the perfect sacrifice, died for our sins, risen from that death and ascended to heaven. That is the Gospel. To believe that is to be in Christ, and to be in Christ is to be in the family of God. He is both the head of the Church and the head of all things. So our wisdom, our revelation, is the knowledge of these things.

          Paul goes on. To have such wisdom and revelation is the key to having the eyes of our hearts enlightened. How do you see? Some things you see with your eyes. You come to a crosswalk and you look both ways. If you see a car coming, you stand still and out of harm’s way. Some things you see with your mind. You balance your checkbook and understand that you are down to fifty dollars, so you budget your expenses to make them last to the next paycheck. Some things you see with your nose. You walk in the house from work and you smell your favorite foods cooking, and you see a wonderful supper in your mind’s eye. And then there are those times when we see with our hearts. Babies are born; children are baptized. The eyes of our hearts are tearing with happiness. Sometimes it is even more special. Sometimes the eyes of our hearts are enlightened.

          Paul is giving thanks for the believers of the early church, whose eyes have been opened, not by the way of the world, but rather by the majesty of God. The eyes of our hearts are enlightened by hope, by inheritance, and by God’s power toward those who believe.  We gain our hope from the work of Christ, whom God has exalted above all others, all things and all time. Then, says Paul, God made Jesus Christ the head of the church. He made the church the body of Christ on earth. It is not an institution. It is an organism, as alive as Christ himself.

          In an explosion of high theology, Paul gives thanks to God for what God has given us, the church. When we use the word church, we are not referring to those who fill up seats in sanctuaries on Sundays, but rather those who fill up themselves with the Holy Spirit…the real believers in Christ. Why can Paul give such thanks? Because his audience is composed of those who show faith and love toward Christ and their own brothers and sisters.  These are the true marks of the church. For them, from Paul’s time until this very day, we give thanks to God as Paul did for the early church.

          We can thank the apostle Paul for this great thanksgiving, for showing us that the unity of the church is dependent upon the body following the direction of the head. Jesus is the head and from generation to generation, we the church must find our fullness in him. So while we can thank Paul for articulating our thanksgiving, we should also try to use the ears of our hearts to hear the mandate that lies implicitly behind that thanksgiving, for it is both compliment and command. If the church is to continue to act as the body of Christ in the world, it has a job to do.

          In his commentary on Ephesians, William Barclay tells of an old legend about how Jesus went back to heaven after his time on earth. Even there in heaven, one could still see clearly the marks of the Cross upon his body. The angels gathered around him and Gabriel commented: “Master, you must have suffered terribly for men down there.” “I did.” said Jesus. Then Gabriel asked “did they know all about how you loved them and what you did for them?” “Oh no,” said Jesus, “not yet. Just now only a few people in Palestine know.” Then Gabriel asked Jesus, “What have you done to let everyone know about it?” Jesus said: “I have asked Peter and James and John and a few others to make it the business of their lives to tell others about me, and the others still others, until the farthest man on the widest circle knows what I have done.” Gabriel hung his head, for he knew full well what poor stuff men were made of. “But what if Peter and James and John grow tired,” he asked. “What if the people who come after them forget? What if away down in the twentieth first century people just don’t tell others about you? Haven’t you made any other plans?”

          And Jesus answered: “I haven’t made any other plans. I’m counting on them.”

          Brothers and sisters in Christ, look around. We are them. He’s counting on us. Praise be to God.

Children of Light

1 Thessalonians 5: 1-11

 

 

            Have you ever needed reassurance about something? Your marriage?  Your job?  Some other important relationship? Do you wonder about what happens after your life here? You believe in God, but you wonder. It’s scary even thinking about the unknown, especially if that unknown contemplates pain and suffering and separation from those whom we love or leaving a life to which we have come to know.

          This community has seen its share of loss this last year. Two of our own number have gone on to the Lord and one clings to life right now. Others we know, both young and old are no longer here. Life can be taken from us in the blink of an eye, the clogging of an artery.  For many families in this community, death or the threat of it has become the uninvited companion at the supper table.

          We are hardly alone. In West Africa, an outbreak of Ebola virus has claimed over five thousand lives in five countries since April, the deadliest outbreak of this virus in forty years. War and pestilence plague our world and the Ebola epidemic is just one more example. But these extreme situations give us pause to celebrate our own good health or circumstances. We know only too well that those conditions may change and sometimes quickly. How do we walk in a world where death is our ultimate destination and not have fear?

          The early church had the same question. Paul had planted a church in Thessalonica and it had experienced success.  As he labored in Corinth, he sent Timothy to check on the state of the church in Thessalonica. Timothy brought back a good, but mixed report. Some church members had died and this was giving some other church members cause for worry, for those who had died had missed the Day of the Lord. Jesus had not yet returned. They wanted to know what would happen to those who had already died. Would they be left out? Others were not pulling their load, thinking that they would just wait it out until Jesus did return. Paul wrote to address these questions and assumptions.

          In the previous passage in chapter 4, Paul reassures his friends in Christ that those who have already died will rise first to meet the Lord in the air. They are not left behind. Then in today’s passage, Paul warns about the Day of the Lord. It will be unannounced, without warning. There will be sudden destruction for all who are not ready. Paul uses the metaphors of light and darkness to help his followers understand the difference between them and the rest of the world. For those who do not believe, Paul calls them children of the night. They find their false security in drinking and darkness. They have much to fear from death.  

          It is a different world for the Christian. Christians are children of light, children of the day. We find our way illuminated by faith and hope and love. We face not God’s wrath, but his salvation.  Here for the first time in Paul’s writings, he tells us the source of our salvation. It is Jesus, our Lord, who died for us. Jesus is our hope, our guarantee. This is how we walk without fear, for we understand and believe that death is no longer a destination, but rather a crossing.  And since we are children of the light, we will not be surprised when we meet Jesus, whether it is with the rest of the world in the Day of the Lord or in our own time. For the Christian, the rising of the body is a reunion with the flesh of a soul already living in the presence of our Lord.

          So Paul exhorted the Christians at Thessalonica to “encourage each other and to build one another up.” What timely advice for us today as we celebrate a double blessing. After this service, we will gather to break bread together in that great American tradition we call Thanksgiving, a harvest festival with roots all the way back to the book of Leviticus. It is a time for reminding ourselves of the bounty with which we as Americans have been so richly blessed and of the source for all that blessing.

          And during this service, we have taken up and dedicated an offering on behalf of Operation Christmas Child. Shoeboxes full of small gifts and the Word of God have been lovingly assembled for delivery to children all over the world. There are prayers printed in today’s church bulletin. They ask for joy to boys and girls in places we have never seen, where poverty and disease and famine and war are part of their lives. More prayers ask for these children to have the opportunity to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We ask here and now that these children, wherever they are, may experience what we have, that they may know that death is not an ending to be feared, but rather a bridge to be crossed. We know this because we, like the Thessalonican Church, are children of light. May it be so as well for the children who receive these shoeboxes.

          Help us now to hear the words of Paul in a new and vibrant way. We are asked to put on the breastplate of faith and love, the helmet of salvation. I know that sounds outdated. Who wears breastplates and helmets today? Well, actually, law enforcement does, as well as soldiers. But Paul wasn’t talking about actual armor even in his day. He used such symbols to make his point. Christians do have weapons. We Christians are soldiers in a very real way. We serve in God’s army and we fight real enemies. We fight the presence of evil, the erosion of values, the degradation of basic human rights. There is still darkness all around us. We need Paul’s exhortation just as much today as his followers did in their lives.

          So, Father, we ask again today, that in the words of your servant Paul, you will help us to “encourage one another, to build one another up.” For those who have been given much, much is expected. Help us to walk in the light as your children.

Stay Ready

Matthew 25: 1-13

 

 

          He was 41 years old. His batting average was 100 points below his 250 pound overweight body. He wasn’t a Yankee anymore. He wasn’t much of anything anymore. He was a wanna-be manager playing for the Boston Braves of the National League, a league he wasn’t used to playing until the World Series. It was May 25, 1935. The Braves were in Pittsburgh to play the Pirates at Forbes Field.

          Paul Warhola and Sam Sciullo didn’t much care about all that. They were 12 and 13 years old, they loved baseball and their hero was in town. No matter that he was washed up. He was there and they went to see him. They were awfully glad they did. It was an afternoon game. There were no night games in 1935.         

          In the Parable of the Ten Virgins, Jesus tells of a group invited to a wedding. It was common in first century Palestine for the groom to proceed to the home of his bride, where they would be married. Usually it was a night ceremony. It was also common for the wedding party to return to the groom’s house for a banquet and celebration.

          His first time at bat, he hit a home run into the lower deck. Some folks got up and left. They figured they had gotten what they came for. Paul and Sam stuck around. It wasn’t long before their patience was rewarded. His second time up, he hit another homer into the upper deck. That was pretty high cotton for any hitter to hit two home runs in one game. More folks left. It couldn’t get any better than that.

         It was nighttime and the ten virgins brought their oil lamps to see. Half of them came prepared with enough extra oil to trim the lamps as the night wore on. The other half came with only the oil in their lamps, sort of like the fans who left Forbes Field early that day in 1935.

          His third time at bat, he hit safely for a single. 3 for 3. Pretty slick for a washed up old ballplayer. It was the middle of the game and no one was paying much attention.  Paul and Sam had seats down near home plate. Normally they would have been in the right field bleachers…the cheap seats. But that day, right field seats had gone fast. The old man was a lefty and a dead pull hitter.

          The ten virgins had settled down in the street near the groom’s house. The wedding had run long and they became drowsy waiting. They finally fell asleep as they waited. Their lamps began to go out from lack of oil. Jesus tells us that at midnight there was a cry, “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” The virgins rose and trimmed their lamps, but some had no oil with which to trim them.

          It was the 7^th inning. He came to the plate for one more at bat. The people that were left cheered his performance of the day. Sam remembers that he pointed to a group of old guys in the right field bleachers and said he’d hit the ball over the roof. He was always sort of a grandstander. It was cute. Many didn’t see that gesture, for it was late, the game was not in doubt, and they were headed for the gate.

          So the five unprepared virgins had to leave. They went to the dealers of oil to get more. While they were gone, the bridegroom and his company arrived. Those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast. They shut the door for the night.

          They talked about it for years. Baseball fans still talk about it. Sam and Paul remember it like it was yesterday. He did what he said he would do. He lifted that pitch over the 86 foot roof of Forbes Field and cleared the stadium, the first time it had ever been done. The washed up, 41 year old overweight man hit his third home run of the game.  His name was Babe Ruth. As the roar went up, all the fans whom had left prematurely were confused. They knew they had missed something truly important, but they were not given a second chance. It was the last game he ever played. Five days later he retired.

        The unprepared virgins came back to find a locked door. They called the groom “Lord.” They called out to him and he did answer. His answer was this: “Truly I say to you, I do not know you.”

          As they were being interviewed about attending that now famous game, Sam and Paul expressed gratitude that they had been able to partake in a piece of baseball history in the making. It was a huge moment in their lives. They had been able to attend, and they were not about to pass up the chance to see their hero, washed up or not. They were ready, and they saw Babe Ruth in one of his greatest performances.

          I’m guessing that if Sam and Paul had been invitees to that wedding, they would have come with their lamps trimmed and with extra oil for the evening. They would have been ready. Well, it’s only a wedding, one might say. But what if the groom is our Lord and what if the invitation is to the kingdom of heaven?

          Second chances don’t always come along. Are you ready? Last week, we heard Joshua warn the people of Israel to prepare, for they were about to see the Lord do wonders among them. This week, it is our Savior warning us to be ready. He tells us to watch, to be ready, to remain prepared, for we will know neither the day nor the hour when he chooses to return.

         On that May afternoon back in 1935, Babe Ruth hit three homers in one game and as he crossed home plate after the last one, he kept right on going into the dugout to the showers. He was done. It’s an exit not unlike the entry our Lord will make one day. We won’t know he’s coming until he arrives, any more than those fans know that they were seeing their hero for the last time. And Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is like this.  Are you ready?

Crossing the Jordan

Joshua 3: 5-17

 

 

          If it seems like I’ve been talking a lot about leadership lately, it’s probably because I’ve been talking a lot about leadership lately. I can’t seem to get away from it. Today’s Scripture is no exception. One of the first lines starts with God talking to Joshua and he says “Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they (the people of Israel) may know that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.” It’s curious that although the word leadership is never used in the Bible, it is nevertheless a subject which receives quite a bit of treatment. 

          The occasion is the crossing of the Jordan River into the Promised Land. It is about 1406…B.C. After forty years of wandering, forty years of purging the old and preparing a new generation for God, the time has finally come. The land flowing with milk and honey awaits, but it is not without its hardships. Ahead lies the land of Canaan and it is already populated with many tribes. This land may be promised, but the promise must be claimed.

          It had been a long time in the making. Moses had died. The greatest leader of the nation of Israel was gone. A whole generation of disobedient grumblers had gone the way of all flesh. Joshua and Caleb, always faithful, were almost eighty years old. A new generation had sprung up. Children born into the Exodus were forty.  Imagine their anticipation to stand at the gates to the Promised Land, the land promised so many years ago. The book of Numbers tells us in Chapter 26 that a census was taken of those men twenty years of age and older in order to know who was able to go to war. They numbered 601, 730. Add to that younger males, women and children and it is estimated that between 2.5 and 3.5 million people stood at the banks of the Jordan River. A mighty event was about to happen.

            The first time I stood in front of a congregation to deliver the message, I remember saying out loud, “What am I doing here?” It was too awesome, too incredible, to think that I could be God’s messenger, to think that he had a message for me to deliver.  How must Joshua have felt! He had the word of God himself that he would be exalted, that the people would be able to see that he was God’s messenger. But in spite of even the reassurance of God, Joshua had to lead. He had to stand in front of God’s people, deliver the message and then live it. Thank God for us, that’s exactly what Joshua did.

           Joshua gathered the people and the first thing he said was “Consecrate yourselves.”  Consecrate: to set apart, to prepare. The first thing Joshua said to the people of Israel as this great and miraculous event was about to unfold was “Get ready. You each have a personal responsibility here. You have your own cleansing to do in order to be ready for what God has in store for you.” Then, Joshua said to the people: “for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” Listen to that. “For tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” Joshua was telling his people to expect a miracle…not just to hope for it.

          The Ark of the Covenant was to go before the people. This was the equivalent of the person, the promise, even the presence of God. The crossing of the Jordan was nothing less than a religious procession. The priests carried the Ark on a mission led by God. The people were not asked to go first. God would do that for them. The people were asked to follow.  

          God, through Joshua, asked the people of Israel to do a great thing. Not only were they about to cross a river which was overflowing its banks, but they were to be prepared to follow God against nation after nation as they entered the Promised Land. The people of Israel were not warriors. They were barely removed from four hundred years of slavery.  And yet, God did not ask Joshua to lead alone, nor did God ask the people to go alone. He only asked that they follow him. He asked them to go where he would lead them. So Joshua says to the people: “Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you…” Don’t miss it. God wants us to know who he is. He is the living God.

          You know the rest of the story. The priests touched the water and it stopped flowing. They walked out to the middle of the riverbed and stood on dry land. About a half mile upstream, the people of Israel, millions in number, stepped into the river and began their participation on yet another of those mighty acts that tell us something about our Creator. In order to participate in that miracle, they had to believe. They had to have faith. They had to trust God that not only would the waters of the Jordan cease to flow, but that those waters would continue to be held until all had safely forded the river.

          It must have taken a long time for so many to cross, but cross they did. They crossed not only to get away from the desert where they had wandered for so long, but also to go forward in faith to an unknown future. They were in the hands of God. It was God’s presence that sustained God’s people. Whatever life brings our way, we can focus on God’s presence and rest in him. He will sustain us just as he did the people of Israel at the Jordan River.

          Joshua, chosen by God to lead his people, would have his moments. He was far from perfect, as events in the near future would prove, but he followed God. Such was the essence of his leadership. He followed God. When it comes to Christianity, our leadership emanates from our example. We evangelize as much with our hands and feet as we do with our words. Joshua followed God and his people followed him. It is God who does the exalting, not us.

          The great apostle Paul writing to his beloved church in Corinth, had this to say about ministry. “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all…Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but the Spirit.”

          What can we take from this crossing? There is more to this story than a miracle from God, as wonderful and awesome as that is. We should first notice that leadership comes not from inner power nor from outer strength. Leadership comes from washing feet and following the living God. Leaders serve. Servants lead. That’s the way of God. As minister and religious writer Hampton Keathley once said, the authority of leaders among God’s people needs to be Scripture rather than their personality, charisma, or whatever happens to be appealing to people at the time. Secondly, we should keep in mind that each of us must come prepared. We must consecrate ourselves to the Lord or our witness will not work. Next, we must step out on faith, but we will never be in front, for God always goes before us and prepares the way. It is only when we are willing to take that step of faith that we will be able to see that God has opened that door for us.

          It took a lot of courage to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. It was also the Unknown Land. It also took a lot of faith. Perhaps it was that faith which endowed God’s people with the courage they needed. But God was there then and he is here now. Christians today have their own Jordans to cross. For us to do God’s will, sometimes we will have to enter into spiritual warfare much as the nation of Israel had to take on the Canaanites. It will not be our human effort that sustains us, but rather our faith in and our obedience to the living God. We must step out in faith. We must follow the living God. We must be ministers of that new covenant to which Paul referred…the new covenant of grace…the grace of Jesus Christ and the life given us in the Spirit.

          The only leadership that really matters is that which directs us to God. If that is our beacon, then the Lord will do wonders among us, too!

Entrusted With the Gospel

1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8

 

 

          I have a friend who is about to retire from many years as a Superior Court judge. Before that, he had a distinguished career as a trial lawyer. Even before that, he served in the Navy, where he was a Naval Courier. We have talked about it more than once, because he likes to talk about it. He is probably as proud of that job as he is of the career he has carved out as a lawyer and judge. I think I understand the reason. He had a job that involved the ultimate in discretion and trust. He was, in a sense, just a carrier of a message, and not the message itself. But in that job, he was entrusted to get the message from the source to its destination…to see to it that its intended audience received not only a message, but the true message. My friend is proud to this day of having been selected for that job, for he was trusted with the most important news of the day. It was his job to get it delivered.

          When the Apostle Paul and his friend Silas arrived in Thessalonica, a bustling Macedonian city of 100,000 people with a natural harbor on not only the busy east-west Egnatian Way, but also located on the north-south trade routes, he was in a good place to spread the gospel. But he was not in such good shape to spread it. He had come from Philippi, where he and Silas had been beaten and severely flogged.  They had rescued a Christian slave girl in the name of Jesus Christ. Their reward was to be unjustly arrested, stripped of their clothing and treated like dangerous fugitives. They were put in prison with their feet in stocks, those wooden contraptions with holes in them to hold one in captivity. All of these actions were in violation of Paul’s Roman citizenship, but that didn’t stop the locals at Philippi from mistreating him and Silas.

          So Paul and Silas turned eastward, following the Egnatian Way along the coast of the Aegean Sea for 160 kilometers, or about 100 miles, to Thessalonica. Today, that is estimated as a thirty two hour walk, or about four days and three nights. I expect it took longer in first century Macedonia. Think about it. You have just walked 100 miles while you are beat up and hurting. You have been thrown out of a city and now you find yourself in another city down the road. Wouldn’t you be likely to remember what got you thrown out of that first city? Wouldn’t you be likely you keep your mouth shut and just talk quietly about your mission? If you did, you would not last long with Paul. Paul was carrying the message and he intended to deliver it.  Deliver it they did, but it wasn’t long before they were thrown out of Thessalonica as well. They left behind both men and women converts and from that visit grew a church.

         Paul probably wrote 1 Thessalonians on his second missionary journey. He wanted to get there in person again, but he never made it. Silas and Timothy were with him when he sent the letter to the church as an encouragement and a warning. In the second chapter, Paul talked about the purity of the gospel and the difficulty with knowing whom its real messengers were.

          One of the reasons of Paul’s letter, apparently, was that there were those who were disparaging not only Paul but the message he brought. Most likely, at least some of them were Jews who were not satisfied with just throwing him out of town. We really don’t know their identity for sure, but Paul talks about conflict and error and even deception in his letter.  When he addresses the church there, he writes as a friend, gently and concerned. He addresses his audience as brothers and tells them that they are very dear to him. Then Paul does something that my friend the judge probably used to do as a courier. He authenticates himself. He aligns himself with his mission. He says this to the Thessalonians: “…Our appeal does not spring from impurity…just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God, who tests our hearts.”  Paul had a message for the church at Thessalonica. It was undiluted. It was pure. It was straight from the source. The message was approved by God and Paul had been entrusted with it. He was the courier, the mailman with the news that all the world needed to hear.

          Paul and Silas had suffered to get that news out. Paul says they were shamefully treated at Philippi, but they “had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.”

          In our denomination and in our nation and in our world, we are in a time of conflict. While those words would ring true in any time or place in history, they are nevertheless the truth today. What may be a bolder and higher truth is that the way in which we as a church, we as a denomination, we as individuals, choose to deal with and act upon that truth…will be the standard by which we are judged and, more importantly, that position which our posterity will inherit. There is much at stake.

          As in the time of Paul, nations, states and peoples stand looking for the truth. Our secular world, in an attempt to go along and get along, looks, as it should, to conflict resolution, to compromise. In the case of the Christian church and particularly in the Western nations, culture and traditional religious views have clashed in epic proportion the last several decades. Culture has succeeded, and rightly so, in reforming our view of some Biblical positions. Our time on this planet has yielded good fruit in many areas of Christian thought. For all this progress, the Bible never changed, nor did its message. What changed was our ability and discernment to see its message in a different and more Biblical light.

          But, as is the message of the Berenstein Bears of kids’ book fame, we can have “Too Much Birthday.” Too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing. Sometimes too much interpretation is no interpretation at all, but rather imposition of the new upon the old. In some of life, this might be called progress. In the case of the Bible, it is error or deceit or just plain trampling upon the truth.

          The Christian church has been entrusted with the gospel. What will we do with that trust? We must first know what it is…and what it isn’t.  For that, we may look to God’s written Word. If the Bible clearly proscribes it, bans it, then we should not dilute that message with so-called interpretation. If the Bible seems vague, then we should look elsewhere in Scripture for Scripture to illumine itself. As Paul worried about his flock and the messages it received, he strove to present that with which he had been entrusted. The message came from God and Paul was the messenger.

          Today, we are constantly presented with mixed messages, even from those entrusted with church leadership. We must always look for the truth, for the true message. It is not embedded in some mysterious code. It is clean and clear and unambiguous. It is the gospel that Paul brought to the Thessalonians and Corinthians and Galatians. It is the gospel of Mathew and Mark and Luke and Peter. It is the written Word of God and we the church, the people of God, have been entrusted with it.

          The torch has been passed. You are the church. The church is Ekklesia, the “gathering” of God’s people. Will you be a messenger? Will you bring the truth of God and not some watered down politically correct version? Can you be entrusted with the true gospel? Just as he did for Paul, God will give you the boldness to declare it, even in the midst of conflict.  Be ready to share the gospel…and yourself.

So That You May Know

2 Kings 19: 14-19

 

 

          People like to look up to someone. That’s our culture. We start out looking up to our parents or to that person or persons who act in their place.. As our world gets bigger, we are exposed to school teachers and Sunday school teachers and aunts and uncles and siblings. As we grow, we begin to notice others, like nurses or firemen or sports figures. We look for heroes. They represent something that we want to be. We want to be like them. Usually, along the way, we temporarily discard our parents as our role models. Usually, further along the way, we re-establish our parents or someone in that role as our top role models. We do that so often because, for most of us, we discover that they give us unconditional love. They don’t abandon us. They usually don’t coddle us either. If we have done something wrong, there will be a price to pay. Most parents will make sure we face the music. But they don’t leave. They are always there. We know that they will be our parents through thick and thin. That’s why for most who are asked, a parent is their favorite role model. We know who they are.

          The Old Testament is a whole series of books…thirty nine books…designed in part to tell us one simple thing. It tells us who God is. Now I know that sounds sort of silly. After all, we know who God is! We have the Bible. We have the church. We have Jesus. We know who God is.

          Well, that may be true. But even if it is, think about this: In the days of Noah and Abraham and Jacob and Joseph and Moses, who was God? Was he the same God we know now? Was he different? Who is God? There was no Bible. The church was an outgrowth of Jesus and he wasn’t due for another 1600 years or so. So how did the slaves of Egypt, the descendants of Abraham, the nation of Israel, come to know God? You might say one step, or one miracle, at a time.

            In Exodus 6, God tells an eighty year old Moses to liberate the people enslaved in Egypt. He makes a promise to deliver the people from the bondage of slavery and he tells Moses to tell the nation of Israel. His reason? To tell Israel this: “And you shall know that I am the Lord.” This same language is used at least seven more times in the book of Exodus. Each time, it is used during one of the plagues. It is used for both punishment and protection. God turns the waters of the Nile to blood to send Pharaoh a message that he is the Lord. God delivers Egypt from the plague of frogs, saying “so you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God.” God sends a plague of flies, but not to the land of Goshen where the nation of Israel lives, saying “so you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth.” He sends thunder, fire and hail, destroying crops and trees, but again not in Goshen and he says “so that you may know that there is none like you in all the earth.”  Then he delivers Egypt from the hail, saying “so that you may know that the earth is the Lord’s.”  When the people grumble for food to Moses, God delivers them from their hunger, sending manna from heaven saying “Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” As the people of Israel commission the tabernacle they have built for God, he promises to live in it among the people, saying “And they shall know that I am the Lord their God.”

          Eight times in the book of Exodus alone, the Bible reports that God is saying something to the effect that they shall know who God is, how powerful he is, where he is.  There are at least fifteen additional passages spread throughout the Old Testament in the books of Leviticus, Joshua, 1 and 2 Kings, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Joel. Not only did the nation of Israel and the nations of the known world not know who God was, apparently even if they did, they didn’t give God the respect he was due. And God makes it abundantly clear over the history of the Old Testament that it a mistake not to know who God is. God really wants us to know who he is.

          In ancient Egypt, where the nation of Israel was in captivity for 430 years according to Scripture, there were about forty different gods. There was Isis, the goddess of magic, marriage, motherhood and healing. There was Ra, the son god, who was king of the Egyptian gods, until Osiris, god of the underworld and the afterlife, took over. Pharaoh himself was thought of as divine. Pharaoh was unimpressed with this God that Moses carried on about. He was unimpressed even after a series of plagues beset the country. After all, wouldn’t one plague lead to another? But then, there were those plagues that didn’t come to the land of Goshen. And there was the plague of death to the firstborn. Whoever this God of Israel was, he was powerful….more powerful than the gods of Egypt.

          And yet, God’s people were slow to be convinced of the real identity of God. He was still the God with no name who claimed his people and delivered them from bondage. Was he just for the nation of Israel? Hardly! The book of Joshua records three more instances of the same phrase. God promises to exalt Joshua, the new leader, saying that he will be with him. In another instance, he calls himself the living God. When Jericho falls, a memorial of stones is erected and Joshua says it is so that “all the peoples of the world may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty.”

          The phrase is used twice more in the books of 1^st and 2^nd Kings. Although Ahab may have been the worst king in the history of Israel, he was handed a victory over the Syrian army. The deliverance comes from God, who says “I will give all the great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” Later, King Hezekiah, one of the few good kings of Israel, is besieged by the great Assyrian armies. Like all the cultures of those ancient times, the Assyrians practiced polytheism. They had about thirty gods, including Ishum, the god of fire and Ashur, the god of war. Hezekiah  prays to God for deliverance. His famous prayer is later quoted by the prophet Isaiah. Hezekiah prays “save us…that all the kingdoms of the world may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.” Hezekiah understands that the gods of Assyria are constructs. They are not real. There is only one God.

          All through the Old Testament, God goes to a lot of trouble to tell us who he is. He uses men and women and disaster and war and nations and kings and prophets to tell us that he is Lord. Throughout history, God judges. Throughout history, God forgives and restores. When Israel is judged, so are the nations. When Israel is restored, so are the nations. These sequences of judgment and restoration are intertwined with one another. As God reveals himself to his children through both judgment and restoration, the aim for all is the outworking of God’s covenants with us. The aim is redemption. God is not a Sunday morning God. He is a 24/7 God who walks with us, cares for us. God wants us to know who he is…and who we are to him. As David prayed so long ago, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

          If we can manage to be still in this environment of living on a schedule, we might improve on the record of the nation of Israel.  When God came knocking as a man, he was mostly ignored. The story of the life of Jesus is the story of yet one more rejection. Do you know who God is? He certainly has been patient with you. Be still. Listen. He’s still revealing himself…every single day.

Common Grace

Genesis 8: 20-22 et al

 

 

          I spent two years getting up every morning at 5AM to report to my ship’s captain that all the ship’s guns were ready and able to fire. He believed in being ready. The great by-product of those daily reports was that since I was already up, I would go outside to the forecastle (pronounced foc’sle). The forecastle is the bow or front of the ship. Particularly at sea, it was my time with God to start the day. It never failed to register with me that the ocean was so much bigger and more powerful than even that big ship. I could feel God’s presence in all that vastness. This week, Cindy and I took a few days to go to the beach. The night we got there, we went out on the pier and enjoyed the full moon coming up. As we stood at the end of the pier, I remarked to her that it reminded me of all those days at sea, looking out at a world of ocean.

          Do you ever wonder what stops that ocean from coming all the way to your front door? What stops the volcanoes of the world from blowing sky high? What stops cyclones and tornadoes and tsunamis and windstorms? What stops epidemics and plagues? What stops war?

          God does.

          Think of the tides. Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun and the rotation of the Earth. Isaac Newton discovered this about 300 years ago. Newton said that every object exerts a pull on every other object. The moon pulls on Earth, causing water to move toward it. The effect is a high tide. Since the moon rotates around the earth and turns on its own axis, tides have more and less gravitational pull. Newton knew a lot about this stuff, for he also provided us with his theory of gravity, a fairly significant scientific concept.

          This might be a good time to be reminded of all the science we now have at our disposal. We should take notice that when we give credit to these various scientists throughout history, we are paying homage to the men and women who discovered something about the universe we live in. Newton discovered gravity. Franklin discovered electricity. Marie Curie discovered radioactivity, Jonathan Salk a vaccine for polio, Christopher Columbus, or Leif Erikson to be more accurate, the new world. All of them were discoverers.  They discovered something already in existence. Nothing on this planet has ever been made from nothing by man. Only God can do that.

          When God decided to create, the year was…oh that’s right…there was no year. There was no earth. There was only chaos. God formed it all from the nothing.  The earth had no form. It was not. God made it from scratch.

          The creation story is what it sounds like. It is a story of God creating. For five God days, he created and found it good. On Day 6, God created mankind. God created man and woman and gave them dominion over all the earth. He created mankind in his image (literally “our” image--as in Trinity). This passage and those in Genesis 5:1 and 9:6 refer to that fact. This has been called the Imago Dei, the image of God.  The Bible says Day 6 was very good.

         As you know, we no longer live in Eden. Actually, we were evicted in the time of Adam. Adam and Eve were evicted from the garden. God cursed the serpent who tempted them and the ground from which they drew their crops. And yet, we are still here.

          Not too long afterward, Adam and Eve were blessed with children. The first two were Cain, a man of the field, and Abel, a herdsman. You will remember that Cain, in a fit of temper and rage, murdered his brother Abel. He was banished. He carried a mark that protected him from the violence or punishment of others. He was allowed to live out his life. He murdered his brother. And yet, we are still here.

          As the story of mankind goes forward in Genesis, the worst is yet to come. Genesis 6 finds God declaring that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, so great that God decided to blot out man from the earth. Only Noah was righteous and only Noah and his family were saved in an ark carrying all the earth’s animals for re-population. The earth was destroyed by flood. And yet, we are still here. How can all that evil and disobedience take place and find mankind still alive?

          There are those who would argue that grace is the province of Jesus, that we were only introduced to God’s grace when Jesus died on the cross. Is that grace? Of course, it is. It is by grace alone that we are saved through faith, a faith revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. Of that there is no doubt. But no grace in the Old Testament? Without the common grace extended to mankind by God in the days before the coming of Christ, there would have been no world for Christ to enter.

          Common Grace is the term coined to indicate the God-given grace to all mankind. It is not just for believers. It is not just for the elect. It is for all. It is God’s adorning of Adam and Eve with the skins of animals when they found themselves in sin and disobedience and apart from God. It is the rehabilitation of Cain in allowing him to live, to raise a family, to build a city. It is the saving of a remnant family and animals with which to re-populate the earth. It is Common Grace, grace common to all.

          While preparing for this message, I came across an author who will remain unnamed, who espoused that there is no grace in the Old Testament, that the God of the Old Testament is a God of justice and judgment, that he hates sin and punishes it, that there is no grace until Jesus. I’ll give the fellow this much. He could be right, but only in this sense. Jesus was there is the beginning. Jesus was never not, any more than God. Even Genesis 1 says that we shall make man in our image.

          How do the mountains not come crashing down on us, or the oceans drown us in our own homes? God cares. He cares even if we don’t. Isaiah 45: 4 tells us that “For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by name. I name you though you do not know me.” Why do the seasons continue to come and go, planting and harvest abound? Why does the world continue to work with all the evil that seems to be present? Because God gives us all Common Grace. In the 8^th chapter of Genesis, God covenants with Noah that “while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

          Grace is a big term. The Bible doesn’t talk about common grace or special grace. Those are man-made terms. The Bible just talks about grace. Don’t worry about remembering what the terms are. but never forget that God has not left the building. He loves his creation. He allows us great leeway in the evils we bring on ourselves, but he never leaves us. Elihu’s speech in Chapter 34 of the book of Job reminds us of what could be: “If he should set his heart to it (says Elihu of God) and gather to himself his spirt and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.” But God has not so set his heart. Instead, he sends Common Grace to mankind every day.

          It’s Homecoming for this church. Someday it will be homecoming for Jesus. Until that day, we have kind and unswerving protection of God throughout the ages. He has promised he will not leave. For us as Christians, we also have the Special Grace of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.  “And God so loved the world…”  You know the rest. That message is for another day. But today, let’s thank God for Common Grace.