Lest I Make My Brother Stumble

1 Corinthians 8: 1-13

 

          In 1 Corinthians 8, the apostle Paul gives his young church members a long lesson on food. He is talking about food that has been offered to idols and then later consumed by men. For a long time, the eating of such meat had been considered sinful. Paul says this is no longer true. He points out that such food is still edible because there are no Gods but one. So idols have no real existence. So, says Paul, it’s okay to eat the meat. But Paul is worried about something much more important than food. Paul is worried about others who came to visit and what they might think.

          Paul reminded his church friends that they had been taught that there was only one God, through whom all things come, including us. They were possessed of this special knowledge. In a world where the worship of many Gods was commonplace, they knew that no other gods existed or held any power over them. But then, Paul pointed out to them that not all possess this knowledge. Now Paul was teaching on a higher level. He wasn’t talking about the food anymore. He was talking about leadership and example and witness.

          We read passages such as this and sometimes scratch our heads. What’s the big deal? Those are the times we need to dig a little deeper to unearth what is there to be mined. We are two thousand years removed from the eating of idol meat. At first blush, we see little relevance to our own situation. But in the days of Paul, it was a big deal. Such practice was not done except by pagans. The meat was thought to be contaminated spiritually. Paul set the record straight by saying that since idols were false, so was the threat of contamination.

          Okay, that’s simple enough, but what does Paul mean in the last few verses of this passage? He says that we have to worry about less knowledgeable brothers with weak consciences who might be influenced by our actions. They might eat the idol meat because they see us do so and get confused because they are not yet strong in the faith. Then, according to Paul, our actions have become responsible for ruining their consciences, and they fall away. In Paul’s words, we have caused our brother to stumble.

          It is customary in many circles for a new father to offer cigars to his male friends upon the birth of his baby. Is smoking healthy or good for us? Of course not. Can cigar smoking be harmful to us? Yes, it can. Do you find it offensive to be offered a cigar by a new father? I don’t. It’s just a custom, a way to acknowledge and celebrate. But what if you offer a cigar to a young man whom you know is trying to quit smoking?

          A couple moms agree to chaperone their daughters and several other teens for a trip to the beach. The moms are accustomed to having a glass of wine at dinner when they are away on vacation. Should they allow themselves this small pleasure while chaperoning their teens?

          Similarly, several men get together once a year for a fishing trip for several days. They are good Christian men, but on their outing, they usually allow themselves the pleasure of sharing a few beers together. Is this wrong? The Bible certainly does not tell us so. It only condemns excessive use of things, But this year, the men have decided to invite their sons, aged from 14-18, to go along. Does that change their custom? Should it?

          Paul says in verse 10: “For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols?” Put in more 21^st century language, it might go something like this: If someone more tender in knowledge or faith sees you, a person he or she looks up to, smoking or drinking or participating in some other activity not sinful, but questionable, won’t he or she feel that it’s okay? And it might be okay for you, but what about that person watching you? What about them? What is your testimony to them?

          There is nothing wrong with the activities observed above. There is no sin being committed.  And yet, your conscience tells you to hesitate. Maybe you can’t articulate it very well, but something tells you that this is not the time or place to do this thing. Maybe it’s because you instinctively understand what Paul is getting at in this passage. You don’t want to send the wrong message. You don’t want to cause your brother or sister to stumble.

          There are many times in our walk through this life that we are witnessing. In fact, we are witnessing more than we aren’t. Whenever we are around people, we are witnessing. We are being observed, and particularly if we hold ourselves out to be people of faith, we are being watched. Those who are not believers watch us in hopes that they will see us fail. Those who are young in the faith or seeking to find their faith are watching us to learn from us. What are we teaching? We may be unwilling role models, but role models we are, whether we seek it or not.

          Paul tells us in Romans 14 to never put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. This means a multitude of things. We should not only not set the wrong example or set the right example; we should also not do something confusing or ambiguous. Our actions when witnessing should convey only one thing—that we are “walking in love,” as Paul says. In other words, we are just as concerned at how a certain behavior or activity might be interpreted as we are about how it actually is. Where the uneducated eye is concerned, appearances do count, and perception is just as important as fact. If our brother thinks it is unclean, then we should treat it as though it is unclean until we are sure that he or she can understand and discern as well as we can.

          St. Augustine is quoted on the subject of idolatry in this way: “Idolatry is worshipping anything that ought to be used, and using anything that is meant to be worshipped.”  Play that back. If it ought to be used, we should not worship it. If it ought to be worshipped, we should not use it but give it the reverence it deserves. The same is true for how we treat our witness. Are we being attentive to how someone might take what we do? In that moment, we represent God. Once we become Christians, we never again have the luxury of being totally accountable only to ourselves.

          Paul said to the Corinthian church and to us: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.” We might add that even though something is legal, it may not be ethical. For those of us who are supposed to be more mature in our Christian walk, we cannot be content with what is okay or legal. We must reach for that which says of us to those who are watching: God is my Master and I walk in love. I will not be satisfied with what is legal. I want what is righteous and helps my brother find the peace that I have.

          The Corinthian church was not much different from the church of today. Oh, it had much different customs and the society in which it existed was quite different culturally from the society  within which we live today. And yet, look how much we are alike. We still struggle with our desire for independence. We still worship idols. They’re not little icons that sit on some shelf for us to worship, but they are there all the same, from wealth to security to power to so many more personal vanities that we cling to. We still make our brother stumble in our selfishness and greed and inattention. Some things never change.

          Just like the Corinthians, we must rely on our trust in God or we will not only make our brother stumble; we will stumble ourselves. God can sustain that which we can never achieve on our own. We need to realize that we are being watched. We each have a witness. The question is not just whether we use our influence to make our brother stumble or to pick him up. The question goes to our witness. If doing without some sort of practice or pleasure helps clear the path for someone else, how glorious is that witness!

          Let us always frame our knowledge in terms of how it may be useful. Does it come from the love of ourselves—or the love of our brother? “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”

 

Building a Self

2 Corinthians 3: 18, Ephesians 1: 3-6, Colossians 4: 14,15

 

 

          In her 1922 novel, The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams tells the story of a stuffed rabbit named Snub. Snub finds himself literally snubbed for a time by the boy he belongs to, as the boy plays with other, newer presents. Skin Horse, the oldest and wisest toy in the nursery, tells Snub a story. As the story goes, it seems that if a child really loves you, a toy, enough, you can become REAL. The rabbit is really awed by the possibility. One night after the boy has lost a toy, he is given the rabbit to sleep with. Before long, the rabbit is the boy’s favorite toy. He takes him everywhere. The boy thinks of him as real. He loves on that rabbit so much that over time, the rabbit becomes shabbier and shabbier, until he has almost no fur.

          The boy becomes sick with scarlet fever and the doctor orders that his room is to be disinfected and his toys burned. The rabbit is gathered up with the other toys and left in the garden overnight, where he sheds a real tear. From it appears a flower, and from the flower appears a fairy. The fairy takes the toy rabbit to the forest and turns him into a real live rabbit. The love of the boy has produced a REAL rabbit.

          Compare the story to that of Pinocchio, a story made famous by the cartoon magic of Disney Studios. Pinocchio’s carved wooden limbs later turn into the body of a real live boy, made possible through the love of an old woodcarver named Geppetto. One cannot help but notice the striking similarities of the story of Pinocchio with the Parable of the Prodigal Son told in the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s gospel.

          These stories have long been popular with children for a reason. They are stories of love, stories of hope, stories with happy endings. No wonder they are so popular. But these stories are more than just happy endings. They are also object lessons on the rewards of patience and hope, the importance of truth and the cost of love.

          Paul writes to a troubled young church in Corinth and tells them that when we turn to the Lord, we will behold the glory of the unhidden face of the Lord, and that we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  It’s pretty nice if you’re just a puppet to be treated with such respect and tenderness by your creator. That’s what Geppetto did for his little boy puppet. And yet, it was nothing to that wooden headed puppet. He had much to learn. It was only after he had been mistreated and mishandled, fooled and lied to, that he began to understand the great love his creator bore him. It was only then that he began to understand the cost of becoming real. It was only then that he could begin to take on the image of his creator.

          In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul gives thanks to God for the blessing of Jesus Christ. He says that God chose us even before the foundation of the world was laid, that long before the world was born, we were chosen by God to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ. He did it to the praise of his own glorious grace. And he has bestowed that grace upon us through Jesus.

          This passage is revealing to us, for it tells us who God intends us to be. First, Paul tells us that God chose us before the world began. The word we translate as chose comes from a compound word in Greek that literally means “spoke forth.” It reminds us of the Genesis account of creation, when God literally speaks creation into being. And here Paul tells us that even then, we were “spoken forth” by God. Theologian Robert Mulholland tells us that Paul is saying that there are no surprises in heaven when any of us are conceived. It may be a surprise to our parents, but not to God. God is the past master of family planning, for indeed he is creating his family—not just ours. He destined us for adoption, for membership in his family. Through the grace of Jesus Christ he blessed us and through the blood of Jesus we are redeemed, bought back, saved.

          The thing is, although we are spoken for, we still get it wrong. When times are happy and the going is easy, we often forget to thank God for the smoothness of our journey. We begin to pat ourselves on the back for the fine job of planning or providing we are doing. A friend of mine ministers to a large congregation of affluent, upwardly mobile folks. He told me their biggest prayer request is to keep the money coming to pay the mortgage and to keep their kids out of jail. My minister friend spends his time plotting how to raise the consciousness of those untested Christians for what real testing might look like—for how to become real Christians.

          How does God succeed in getting us wooden headed Christians to seek to conform to the image of Christ? Sometimes he has to grow our noses longer or to throw us out into the cold, even after we have been loved ‘til our fur comes off. It is in the places of our lives where we have been most alienated that we are more likely to meet God. It is there that God waits for us, offering us that unmerited grace which is so hard to see from our easy chairs. On those days when things are rolling along oh so smoothly, those days when we actually think that we are in charge, it’s just hard to clearly see the presence of God.

          But then, there are those other days, the days when our plans go astray or get taken out with the trash or just get ignored by our spouses and our children and our bosses. Perhaps that is because we need to learn to approach our days with a very keen awareness of Who is Boss! If you are really looking for God, look for him not on the days when things are good. Look instead when they start to turn sour. Chances are that he has a lesson just for you.

          Of course, you know that this message is not about stuffed animals or wooden puppets. They are just metaphors for the main event. The main event is Jesus. Jesus is the real deal. God got our attention by sending us his son. God became a real live boy, and then a real live man, and then…a real live Savior. God knows all about having the fur rubbed off him. He invented the idea.

          So if you want to be real, then you need to take on his image. You need to take up the cross. Just don’t expect it to be what you thought it was. It’s not in the difficulties and unfriendliness of life that we find the cross, although that too can be a fertile training ground. Rather, it is that point for each of us when we look the most unlike Christ. Our cross is that point where we are so diverged that we must make a choice.

          Will it be our way? Will we seek happiness in our own pursuits? Or will it be the way of the Cross? Will we die to self in order to find ourselves? Will we take on our own image or will we accept God’s grace and walk into the light to find ourselves finally REAL…real and free and living our lives in the image of Christ?

         If you want to build a Self, don’t run from the pain or the confrontation. It’s there for a reason. Each time we release ourselves to God, each time we confront ourselves at those points of unlikeness to Christ, we become a little more consecrated. Each time, we become one step closer to the real humanity that God has promised us. Paul tells the Colossian church that above all things, we are to put on love, which binds everything together to which indeed we were called. It’s what we do if we are to be real Christians made in the image of God.

          Let me close with a quote you all know from The Velveteen Rabbit, though Paul himself couldn’t have said it better:

               It takes a long time. That’s why it does not often

               happen to people who break easily, or have sharp

               edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally,

               by the time you are real, most of your hair has been

               loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose

              in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t

              matter at all, because…

                                    ..Once you are real..

             You can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

Islands in a Common Sea

Acts 2: 37-47

 

 

          I was at a meeting of churches this week. I watched as ministers and elders struggled with the issue of a sister church which wanted to leave the denomination. It looked as if the leadership of that church had pretty much made up its mind, but it was struggling with the rules called, ironically, the “rules of gracious dismissal.” The church conference leaders and the church in question were gracious as the rules for voting on the rules were carefully set out. The body was gracious as it took up each issue presented. It continued to be gracious as it voted down each request from the church. All in all, it was a very gracious time as church and denomination sparred over turf and ownership and rights. No matter how they all tried, the issue was about following the rules rather than about following God. I suspect the next round will not be so gracious. A church no longer feels in harmony with the policies and interpretations of the parent church. It seeks to disassociate itself from the whole.  The bigger body feels threatened and seeks to make severance difficult in the hope that such difficulty will discourage individual churches from leaving the denomination.  In this emotionally charged environment, church professionals and leaders attempt to find some level playing field upon which issues might be discussed. One side begs for tolerance while another pleads for independence. Is the whole more important than its parts? Is the part entitled to determine its own destiny? How do we split the child so that each parent can have custody?

          In the second chapter of the book of Acts, Luke the evangelist and historian gives us a glimpse of the early church. Luke tells us that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” He reports that “many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.” And what were those early church people doing? Luke says that all of them were filled with awe, that “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” They were sharing all their possessions with those in need, even to the point of selling them. Daily they attended temple. Daily they gathered in each other’s homes. Daily they ate and drank together. And daily, they did so with glad and generous hearts, praising God, having favor with all the people. This is Luke’s description of the early church. Its markers are gladness, generosity, sharing, awe and devotion.

          In her best seller, Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh talks about a balance she sought to find in her life.  She characterized it as a “swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion,” being neither in total acceptance of the world, nor in total rejection of it. She does not claim to have an answer—only clues. Her clues are symbolized in the shells she picks up from the shore, shells that are fragments of what they had been and what they had borne.

          The Church is such a splendid organism. It is an organism, you know. To call it an institution does it such an injustice. The Church is you and me. The Church is the Fellowship of the Believers. The Church is the body of Christ. I think that of all the images we might employ to describe the Church, the body of Christ is my favorite.  I am a piece of that body and so are you.

          In Romans 12: 5, Paul tells us that though we the Church are many, we are one body in Christ. This language is pervasive with Paul. He talks often about being in Christ. Thinking of the Church as the body of Christ helps us see that. We are part of one great body. We are in Christ. We do that collectively as the Church. But we also do it as individuals because, as Paul tells us in that same verse, we are “members of one another.” Our different gifts point out our individuality, and our membership in the Church unites us as part of a living organism that functions as the body of Christ.

          In Acts 2, the believers devoted themselves to teaching, to fellowship, to togetherness through common meals and to prayer.  No wonder souls were saved. The previous passage tells us that Peter preached and three thousand souls were added. Can you imagine what would happen to this community of believers if we devoted ourselves to these elements of teaching, common meals and prayer?

          Luke tells us that in the church of Acts 2, “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” Men, women and children came together, bound by the unity of their faith and had all things in common. This doesn’t mean they were all the same. There were still cooks and carpenters and farmers. But in all that counted, in all that bound them in their humanity, in all that measured them for the clothing of Christianity, they had all things in common. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh put it in her book, they were “islands in a common sea.”

          What I saw at that gathering of churches was a poor facsimile of the Church of Acts 2. We have eight pages of fine print of how to leave gracefully. They had awe and all things in common. We have a Book of Order. They sold their possessions to help others in need. We have a General Assembly. They broke bread together in their homes. We gather once a week. They gathered every day. No wonder that we differ. We have little resemblance to the Church that Luke described in Acts.

          What if? What if there were no more fences? What if there were no more walls? What if there were no Presbyterians or Baptists? What if there were just Christians? After all, aren’t we, at the end of the day, islands in a common sea? What is common in us all is that which God gave to us. We are all saved by grace.  We strive to live in Christ.  To the extent that we begin to achieve that, we begin to manifest the risen Christ. We are the body of Christ. We are the mission of Christ upon the earth until he returns.
          The Church is not about one, but about one another. We love one another. We pray for one another. We look after one another. We are not about barriers. We are about bridges. In the same way that we come together as a community of believers in this location, the Church itself needs to come together in community. Whether we are Lutherans or Roman Catholics is hardly the issue. We are Christians. In this world where the presence of Satan and evil is present and powerful, the Church is not isolated. It is, rather, a group of many islands in a common sea.

          Lindbergh walked along the coast line and bent over often to collect shells yielded from the tide. Every shell had a story. Some were pristine, still perfectly formed and even containing the creatures that live in them. Others were broken or encrusted with other animal shells. She wondered about the lives they represented, the places they had been. Seashells are like people. Their surface yields clues, but not final answers. Their commonality, among other things, is that no matter where they have been, no matter what they have endured, they find themselves yielded up in the end to the same destination. So it is with God’s people.

          After Pentecost, Peter said to those gathered in Jerusalem,  “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”  It was the birth of the Church.  We stand on the shoulders of Peter and those other saints who live in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is still here. God grant that each of us stay present in the body of Christ. God grant that we understand what he has done for us. Help us to reach out today and every day in generosity and gladness just like the early Church. We are Christians. Help us to celebrate our differences over fellowship and search for our common bonds in a world where our job is not division but multiplication, where we must still march against the power of evil. We are, after all, islands in a common sea. In the end, our destination as Christians is the same. Whether bent or broken and straight, we all end up washed upon the same shore for the same harvest. May we share that journey with all who would join us. “And all who believed were together and had all things in common.”

Feelin’ Groovy

Romans 8: 31-38  Luke 1: 37

 

 

          In the fall of 1966, Simon & Garfunkel released an album entitled Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. It was only their third album, but it was destined to reach triple platinum status. One of the songs on that album was called the 59^th Street Bridge Song. It’s probably known better by its most famous line: “Feelin’ groovy.” Written by a young twenty five year old man named Paul Simon, it was one of a number of famous songs on that album.

            In the fall of 1966, I was a freshman in college. I was trying to find my way in the world. I was away from home, a college freshman, a cafeteria worker, a football manager, a Navy midshipman, a student. I was a busy young man, hurrying everywhere to be on time, turn in my assignments, get to the football field, get to work, get to drill, get to class. I was moving fast, going somewhere but not at all sure where it was that I was going.

          Paul Simon had spent the previous year in England. He came back with a number of songs, songs that expressed not only where he was, but where the country was. The album that included “Feelin’ Groovy” also featured “Homeward Bound” and “7 O’clock News/Silent Night.” Those of us familiar with those ballads may recall a time when our country seemed poised to implode. The Vietnam War was ripping and dividing us and nothing was sure anymore. And then this album came out, and at least for many young adults, it perfectly described their anguish. There was the agony of the 7 O’clock News, and then there was the absolute joy of youth reflected in this song about the Queensboro Bridge over the East River in New York City. Simon’s lyrics start like this:

                            Slow down, you move too fast

                           You got to make the morning last

                           Just kicking down the cobble stones

                           Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy

 

 It was an appeal to a lighter mood, a mood of carefree existence where there is time to stop and watch the flowers grow, time to feel the sun on the back of your neck and know that things are under control.

          The Apostle Paul might have had very much in common with Paul Simon. In the eighth chapter of Romans, he tells his audience “If God is with us, who can be against us?” Don’t be fooled by the question mark, for what Paul is saying is not a question. Paul is making a statement. If God is with us, who can be against us? There is no government, no social unit, no army, no rule of law, no person, no organization that can do permanent damage to us if God is with us! We may be hurt, we may be imprisoned, we may be cast aside, we may even be isolated from all that we know, but we cannot lose the true battle of life, for God is with us.

          Have you ever noticed that Paul didn’t seem to be in a hurry? He went to lots of places, visited lots of people, spoke wherever he went. He made three missionary journeys. But his comments in Scripture are generally framed in longing to be somewhere while he continues to be wherever he is. He doesn’t talk about having to leave to be somewhere else. He always seems to be in the moment wherever he is.

          Jesus was like that. Remember his admonition to his disciples in Matthew 6 and Luke 12? He talked about ravens and the lilies of the field. He reminded them that they were not to worry, that all the nations of the world seek after food and drink and other necessities, and that God knows that we need such things. Jesus said quit worrying, those things will be provided. Jesus said “Instead, seek the kingdom, and these things will be added to you.”

          But we have so much to do. We have promises to keep. We have responsibilities. We have people who count on us. Yes, we do. That is our mantra. That is what we say to ourselves as we put off our daily devotions or morning prayers. We have promises to keep. We are serious about our obligations. And the song says:

                          Hello lamp post, what cha knowin’?

                         I’ve come to watch your flowers growin’

                        Ain’t cha got no rhymes for me?

                        Doot-in doo-doo  feelin’ groovy

 

          Paul goes on in his advice to the Roman Christians. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Certainly not the weapons of the world. Paul worries not about sword or danger or persecution or a host of other maladies. To these things he says that we are more than conquerors. But it is of the greatest importance to finish Paul’s thought. Yes, we are more than conquerors…”through him who loves us.” We conquer not through our own deeds. We find the rest we seek not through our own acts. We accomplish that which God has elected for us through him who loves us.

          One of the reasons this old song caught my interest again is that is seems to prick my desire to be more in the moment, to feel groovy, as it were. Does the Bible allow for such attitudes? I think it does. I think that today’s passage from Romans and Jesus’ comments about the worries of the day are there in part to prompt us to live in the moment, to find the time to spend with God. Cindy and I read a devotion book entitled Jesus Calling, written by Sarah Young. I commend it to you. I have found it very compelling. In that little book this week is this thought: “Much, much stress results from your wanting to make things happen before their times have come…ask Me [Jesus] to show you the path forward moment by moment. Instead of dashing headlong toward the goal, let Me set the pace. Slow down and enjoy the journey in My presence.”

          The last verse of the song goes like this:

                     I’ve got no deeds to do, no promises to keep

                    I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep

                   Let the morning time drop all its petals on me

                   Life, I love you, all is groovy.

 

          Life, I love you, all is groovy. It could come right out of Paul’s letter to the Romans, for this is part and parcel of Paul’s message. “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?...for I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

          Slow down. You move too fast. Why don’t you slow down and make the moment last? We are creatures of God. We are created in his image and our chief end is to glorify him. In our essence, we are not Smiths or Jones. We are not Jewish or gentile or black or white. We are not Americans, We are not Presbyterians. We are ecclesia, the gathering. We are ecclesia, those called out. We are the people of God, the Israel of faith. We are not about destination. Our destination is already defined, marked off and waiting for us. We are all about journey.

          In the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, a naïve, innocent teenager engaged to be married is visited by an angel. She asks how she can become pregnant with the Son of God. The angel answers her. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…For nothing will be impossible with God.”

It’s the same with us as it was with Mary. Nothing is impossible with God and nothing can separate us from his love. You just have to dismount from this world long enough to notice what the real journey looks like.

        Slow down. You move too fast. Enjoy the journey.  Make the moment last.

Stepping Out into the Void

2 Corinthians 5: 6, 7

Hebrews 11: 1, 2

 

 

           The message starts with a 2 minute film clip from the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The clip is entitled Step of Faith and can be accessed on Youtube.

 

 

          In the movie The Last Crusade, Indiana Jones’ father is dying from a bullet wound. A few hundred feet away lie a chalice and holy water that can heal him. In between lie three challenges, one of which is a chasm far too wide for any man to leap. He looks down and is gripped with fear, for he cannot even see the bottom. Yet he is faced with the certain death of his father if he does not act.

            He reads hurriedly from the old notebook that guides them on their journey. The instructions say this: “Only in the leap from the lion’s head will he prove his worth.” He looks up and sees the image of a lion’s head in the stone wall.  He stands at the edge of the cliff. “It’s impossible,” he says. “Nobody can jump this.”  His friends call out for him to hurry. He looks out across the chasm and sighs. “It’s a leap of faith,” he says.  Several hundred feet away, his father mutters in a voice too soft for the ear to hear, but perhaps just right for the heart to register: “You’ve got to believe, boy. You’ve got to believe.”

          Indiana Jones, the great archeologist and adventurer, takes a deep breath, shivers all over…and steps out into the void. He can see nothing to step on, and yet he steps anyway. In doing so, he must not only believe; he must also accept the fact that he may be taking a step that will cost him his life. Yet he steps out.  Jones steps onto a stone bridge invisible from his angle of perception. It is there, but he cannot see it. You know the rest of the story.  His faith is rewarded.

            Today’s message is a collection of challenges for the New Year. Normally, I like to use one passage from which to build a platform for the message, but today, I am deviating from that method. Please bear in mind that each passage quoted forms part of a larger theme and that I am taking these lines out of their context to form another theme. You may find it instructive on other grounds to go back and examine the passages from which these lines originate.

          In the film clip we saw, Jones reads from an old notebook to get clues for his next steps. He might have been reading about the apostle Paul talking to the Corinthian church. Paul exhorts his friends in the faith. He says that we…believers, are always of good courage. .. “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”  In the context of the passage, Paul is telling the church that the fact that Jesus is not present in body does not make him absent. Rather, the presence of Jesus is changed and present in us through the Holy Spirit. We are still able, and should be willing, to walk in faith. It is not a faith that encourages blindness, but it is a faith that is bigger than just what we see. It is a faith that finds us responding with not only our eyes, but our hearts. We cannot hope to see and hear God if we confine ourselves to revelation which takes place only with the naked eye.

          There are many proofs in this world of the presence of God, but we must sometimes initiate our correspondence with these proofs with our hearts. We walk by faith, not by sight, says Paul. It is not sight that prompted Peter to step out into a raging sea to walk toward Jesus. Sight would have only kept Peter clinging to the boat. Peter stepped out of that boat because he had faith. His eyes were focused on his Lord rather than looking down at his fears.

          In the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the writer selects some of the greats in the history of God’s people and uses their stories to tell how they were motivated by faith, how they pressed on despite the circumstances or odds. The chapter begins with these famous words: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” [KJV]. The writer is telling us that faith is not just a virtue; it is a living thing, a way of life.  

          Faith is the substance. It is no less material because it is not tangible. If you owe money, you are in debt. Is a debt material? No. Is it real? You better believe it. If you invent something and have it patented, you are patenting a thing or a process. Is a patent material? No. There is a piece of paper that evidences its existence, but it is not a material thing. Is it real? Sure, it is. Even if you don’t quite know exactly how to explain it, you still know it’s real. The law calls things such as these intangible property. In the same sense, faith is a substance, not material, but just as real as anything else.

          The writer of Hebrews goes on to say that faith is the evidence of things not seen. At first, that sounds so heavy, so intellectual. But think about it. Can we see air? Can we see wind? We see only the evidence of these things, but that makes their existence no less real. If we can breathe unseen air and see the evidence of the wind as it cools us and knocks the caps from our heads, can we not accept the fact that faith can indeed be the evidence of things not seen? When someone is diagnosed with an incurable disease and a church body goes to its spiritual knees for that person, what shall we call it when that person is healed through no apparent help from medicine? Shall we not call it the evidence of faith?

          Faith steps out into the void where no one else will go, no one else can explain. Faith moves that which cannot move, softens that which cannot be softened, bridges that which cannot be bridged. In the movie clip we saw, Indiana Jones stepped out into the void. He stepped out on faith and found that a bridge existed the whole time. He just had to trust. Once he took that incredible first step, his faith was rewarded. I’m reminded of something St. Augustine once said, that “Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.”

          We are embarking on a new year. 2015. When I was young, I assumed that by this time, everyone would go to work in his own personal spaceship. Many wonderful things have happened in the last century, the last year. And yet, most of the world is still asking the same questions it always has. What am I here for? What is the meaning of it all?

          There is a reason for you to be here. There is a meaning to it all. It’s not a secret. It’s all written down in a book not dissimilar from that guidebook that Indiana Jones was using in the movie. We call it the Bible and it truly is our map. It can show us the evidence of faith. It can tell us about the substance of things hoped for and how they were and will be delivered.  D. L. Moody put it this way: “I prayed for faith, and thought that someday faith would come deliver me and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, ‘Now faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.’ I had closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since.”

      In his book Waiting, Ben Patterson tells a story about faith and sums it up with this thought: “To save us, God often tells us to do things that are the opposite of our natural inclination. Is God loving and faithful? Can we trust him? He is. We can.” The thing is, that chasm we face is not really a void at all. It never was. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t make it any less real. This year, like never before in your life, why not open that Bible and study? Why not grow some more faith? Why not just step out into the void? You won’t be sorry. The bridge is there even though you can’t see it yet.

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!