May 24, 2009
Sunday School at Newberg Friends Church
The Perfection of Humans
Remember God who gives you all pleasant things; fear God, serve God, put nothing ahead of God, do what God has said to do, what is right and good, what God tells you to do every day
When suffering comes, remember God, worship God, submit to God, serve God, put nothing ahead of God, do what God says to do
Learn from suffering to be obedient, complete the work God has given you to do
This is human perfection.
So what about sin?
Job’s perfection was not sinlessness, but was instead that he feared God and turned aside from evil, left evil undone (eschewed, KJV) and he went out of his way to do good, to do God’s will.
Job 7:21 Job asks God why God does not pardon Job’s transgressions and take away his iniquity
Job 13:23 Job asks God to show him his iniquities, sins, transgressions; he asks why God hides from him and holds him as an enemy
Job 31:33 Job said that he did not cover his transgressions, as Adam did
“transgression” also includes rebellion, trespass, sin, fault
“iniquity” also includes a depraved action, crime, sin, fault, guilt, perversity
“sin” also includes misstep, slip up
Jesus’s perfection was complete obedience to God and complete dependence on God; as a result, he was sinless, despite being tempted to take matters into his own hands
Now an interesting case study: David—First installment, after his anointing and before becoming king
Here's the case for placing David in the category of "perfect"
1 Kings 9:4 God says to Solomon, “if you will walk before me with integrity (perfection) of heart like your father David, and in uprightness do what I have commanded you, keeping my statutes and judgments, I will establish your throne. But if you quit following me, quit obeying me, and turn aside to worship other gods, Israel will be destroyed”
1 Kings 11:4 In his old age, Solomon turned away his heart after other gods (the text blames his wives), and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God as was the heart of David his father
1 Kings 15:3 Abijam walked in the sins of his father Rehoboam (idolatry), and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God as was the heart of David his father
1 Kings 15:14 Asa’s heart was perfect with the Lord all his days (he removed much of the idol worship, though not all); however, Asa bought a military alliance with Syria with gold and treasures from God’s house; this reliance on human help rather than on God was reprimanded by the prophet Hanani, whom he threw in jail (2 Chronicles 16); the writer of Chronicles also follows up by saying Asa went to doctors rather than the Lord for his diseased feet
2 Chronicles 25:2 Amaziah did what was right in the sight of the Lord but not with a perfect heart—he followed some of God’s laws, but he adopted the idols of Edom as his gods, despite the fact that the God of Israel gave him a military victory over Edom, and he did not repent when a prophet confronted him
The framing of David as perfect centers around his unswerving devotion to God; his heart was wholly given to God; complete, undivided attention to doing what God asked of him
How does this show up in his life after he is anointed as heir to the throne but is not yet king?
1 Samuel 16:13 Samuel anointed David in the presence of his brothers, and the Spirit of the Lord came on David from that day forward
David played his lyre for Saul to relieve his suffering from being tormented by evil spirit after the spirit of the Lord left Saul; apparently David did this somewhat anonymously
After David went out and killed Goliath, Saul discovers who his father is
Saul puts David over part of the army, and David is wildly successful at killing Philistines; the people celebrate, saying “Saul has slain his thousands, David his ten thousands” and Saul becomes angry and quits trusting David
Saul tries twice to spear David while David plays the lyre
Saul gives him a command of 1000; he is again successful, becoming beloved by the people and feared by Saul
Saul hopes David will die in battle against the Philistines; he gives David his daughter Michal in marriage, hoping this will make David a target for Philistine hostility; plus the bride price is 100 foreskins ☹; when David brings them back, Saul fears him more
Then after a battle with Philistines which David won, Saul tries again to spear him and David’s wife Michal warns him to flee for his life, which turns out to be a needed thing
Saul's son Jonathan warns David that Saul is planning to kill him again
David flees to the wilderness with about 400 (his family, everyone who was discontented, in distress, in debt, sort of like Robin Hood); he sends his parents to Moab to be safe
Saul slaughters all but one of the priests who gave David bread and the sword of Goliath; the one who escapes joins David. He has an ephod, whatever that is, and they consult it for what to do next
1 Samuel 23: David inquired of the Lord, so David and his men went and did what God said; this sort of thing happens repeatedly; the point is that David does what he is told by God to do
1 Samuel 24: This is a funny story in some ways. Saul is pursuing David in the desert, and he steps into a cave to relieve himself. In this very cave are hiding David and his merry men, who urge David to kill Saul. Instead David spares Saul’s life, only cutting off a bit of his robe to show Saul that he could have killed him. He says, "I will not touch the Lord’s anointed." This shows David's submission to God’s will and God’s timing. Unlike MacBeth, he does not let his anointing go to his head, so to speak.
David says to Saul, "May the Lord judge between us; may the Lord avenge me on you, but I will not do it for myself"; this shows David's willingness to trust God to make things right
Saul admits: you have repaid me good for evil
1 Samuel 26 David spares Saul’s life again, saying, “The Lord gave you into my hand, but I would not touch the Lord’s anointed.”
Sometime later, Saul and Jonathan die. David becomes king.
David’s prayer "Who am I? "in 2 Samuel 7 reveals him to be humble, reverent, grateful, praying according to what God has revealed.
Main thoughts about what made the anointed-but-not-yet-king David perfect in his heart: His undivided will to do what God tells him; his refusal to avenge himself when he has the opportunity to do so; his respect for God that involves not taking things into his own hands but trusting in God's sovereignty and timing
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Perfection in Humans: What Is It?
Sunday School from May 17, 2009
Perfection in Humans: What is it?
Other meanings of the words translated “perfect” from Strong’s concordance: complete, safe, peaceful, perfect, whole, full, at peace, complete, lacking nothing in strength, beauty, sound, wholesome, ordinary, quiet, complete, morally innocent, having integrity, brought to end, finished, complete, having integrity and virtue, mature, completed, mended, equipped, put in order, made ethical, Make complete, make perfect, achieve goal
2 Chronicles 16:9 For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him. (NRSV)
For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. (KJV)
1 Kings 8:61 Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God 430, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day. (KJV)
Therefore devote yourselves completely to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments, as at this day (NRSV)
Matthew 5:48 Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect; be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect
Luke 6:36 Be merciful as your father in heaven is merciful
Matthew 19:21 If you wish to be perfect (rich young ruler)
Luke 6:40 (blind leading blind, mote in eye)
A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. (fully qualified->perfect)
Hebrews 2:10 Jesus made perfect through suffering
“It is finished”—it is completed, it is perfect
What does perfection mean with reference to Job?
Complete, lacking nothing in strength, beauty, sound, wholesome, ordinary, quiet, complete, morally innocent, having integrity
Job 1:1, 1:8, 2:3
Job blameless and upright, feared God, turned away from evil
First response to losing everything: Job 1:20-21: Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground, and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Second response to personal illness: Job 2:10 “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”
Job humbly takes both good and bad as from God’s hand and worships God in his sorrow.
Job describes his life of integrity (sounds a lot like Sermon on the Mount, James, parable of the sheep and goats):
Chapter 29:12ff, 30:24ff, 31:1ff
Righteous
governed his eyes with regard to women, not adulterous
told truth, not deceitful
did not abuse the earth
did not conceal his transgressions
Just
made unrighteous people behave themselves
did not exercise his power to the harm of the powerless
responsive to complaints of slaves
did not rejoice when enemies failed
did not curse his enemies
Actively compassionate, generous
delivered the poor and the orphan who had no helper
gave to poor, shared with orphans, upheld the widow
eyes to blind, feet to lame
father to needy, championed cause of stranger (immigrant)
did not turn against the needy
wept for those whose days were hard
grieved for the poor
gave clothing to the needy, opened doors to the traveler
Nothing above God
did not trust in gold
did not worship sun or moon
God refers to him in 42 as “my servant Job” who has “spoken of me what is right” and says that he will have mercy on Job’s friends when Job prays for them, despite the fact that they said wrong things about God
Jesus—also referred to as perfect in the NT (see Hebrews reference above): what does perfect mean with reference to Jesus?
Obedience, God comes first
John 4:34 My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete (perfect) his work
John 5:36 the works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me
John 17:4 I glorified you on earth by finishing (perfecting) the work you gave me to do
John 17:23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one (made perfect)
John 19:28—fulfilled (perfected) the scripture; John 19:30 “It is finished” “It is perfect, it is perfected” “Perfect” “Teleo”
Hebrews 5:9
Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him
The temptation of Jesus reveals where he was perfect:
He responds to the temptations with quotations from Deuteronomy. In context, these reveal important aspects of his perfection.
Humility, dependence on God, obedience to God, focused attention on what God wants
Deuteronomy 8:2-3 Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
God comes first, no attempt to coerce or manipulate God, obedience to God
Deuteronomy 6:14, 16-18
Do not follow other gods because God who is present with you is a jealous God
Do not put the Lord your God to the test
You must diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees
Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that it may go well with you
God comes first, God isthe source of all
Deuteronomy 6:12-14
God gives good things you did not earn, take care you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of slavery; The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear
The Perfection of Humans
Remember God who gives you all pleasant things; fear God, serve God, put nothing ahead of God, do what God has said to do, what is right and good, what God tells you to do every day
When suffering comes, remember God, worship God, submit to God, serve God, put nothing ahead of God, do what God says to do
Learn from suffering to be obedient, complete the work God has given you to do
This is human perfection
Perfection in Humans: What is it?
Other meanings of the words translated “perfect” from Strong’s concordance: complete, safe, peaceful, perfect, whole, full, at peace, complete, lacking nothing in strength, beauty, sound, wholesome, ordinary, quiet, complete, morally innocent, having integrity, brought to end, finished, complete, having integrity and virtue, mature, completed, mended, equipped, put in order, made ethical, Make complete, make perfect, achieve goal
2 Chronicles 16:9 For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him. (NRSV)
For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. (KJV)
1 Kings 8:61 Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God 430, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day. (KJV)
Therefore devote yourselves completely to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments, as at this day (NRSV)
Matthew 5:48 Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect; be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect
Luke 6:36 Be merciful as your father in heaven is merciful
Matthew 19:21 If you wish to be perfect (rich young ruler)
Luke 6:40 (blind leading blind, mote in eye)
A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. (fully qualified->perfect)
Hebrews 2:10 Jesus made perfect through suffering
“It is finished”—it is completed, it is perfect
What does perfection mean with reference to Job?
Complete, lacking nothing in strength, beauty, sound, wholesome, ordinary, quiet, complete, morally innocent, having integrity
Job 1:1, 1:8, 2:3
Job blameless and upright, feared God, turned away from evil
First response to losing everything: Job 1:20-21: Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground, and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Second response to personal illness: Job 2:10 “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”
Job humbly takes both good and bad as from God’s hand and worships God in his sorrow.
Job describes his life of integrity (sounds a lot like Sermon on the Mount, James, parable of the sheep and goats):
Chapter 29:12ff, 30:24ff, 31:1ff
Righteous
governed his eyes with regard to women, not adulterous
told truth, not deceitful
did not abuse the earth
did not conceal his transgressions
Just
made unrighteous people behave themselves
did not exercise his power to the harm of the powerless
responsive to complaints of slaves
did not rejoice when enemies failed
did not curse his enemies
Actively compassionate, generous
delivered the poor and the orphan who had no helper
gave to poor, shared with orphans, upheld the widow
eyes to blind, feet to lame
father to needy, championed cause of stranger (immigrant)
did not turn against the needy
wept for those whose days were hard
grieved for the poor
gave clothing to the needy, opened doors to the traveler
Nothing above God
did not trust in gold
did not worship sun or moon
God refers to him in 42 as “my servant Job” who has “spoken of me what is right” and says that he will have mercy on Job’s friends when Job prays for them, despite the fact that they said wrong things about God
Jesus—also referred to as perfect in the NT (see Hebrews reference above): what does perfect mean with reference to Jesus?
Obedience, God comes first
John 4:34 My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete (perfect) his work
John 5:36 the works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me
John 17:4 I glorified you on earth by finishing (perfecting) the work you gave me to do
John 17:23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one (made perfect)
John 19:28—fulfilled (perfected) the scripture; John 19:30 “It is finished” “It is perfect, it is perfected” “Perfect” “Teleo”
Hebrews 5:9
Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him
The temptation of Jesus reveals where he was perfect:
He responds to the temptations with quotations from Deuteronomy. In context, these reveal important aspects of his perfection.
Humility, dependence on God, obedience to God, focused attention on what God wants
Deuteronomy 8:2-3 Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
God comes first, no attempt to coerce or manipulate God, obedience to God
Deuteronomy 6:14, 16-18
Do not follow other gods because God who is present with you is a jealous God
Do not put the Lord your God to the test
You must diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees
Do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that it may go well with you
God comes first, God isthe source of all
Deuteronomy 6:12-14
God gives good things you did not earn, take care you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of slavery; The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear
The Perfection of Humans
Remember God who gives you all pleasant things; fear God, serve God, put nothing ahead of God, do what God has said to do, what is right and good, what God tells you to do every day
When suffering comes, remember God, worship God, submit to God, serve God, put nothing ahead of God, do what God says to do
Learn from suffering to be obedient, complete the work God has given you to do
This is human perfection
Thursday, May 14, 2009
God is Perfect: what does that mean
Sunday School on Perfection and Sin, May 10-June 7 2009
Week 1—What does it mean when we say that God is perfect?
What emerges is that Perfection is Mystery
These came out of class discussion and the scriptures: Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 103, Job
Aspects of God humans view as (potentially) positive:
Loving
Forgiving
Not devious
No mistakes
Complete
Beautiful
Faithful—keeps faith
Nurturing
Guiding
Guarding
Just
Healing
Redeeming
Merciful
Satisfying
Gracious
Responsive
Majestic
Redeeming
Wise
Mighty
Aspects of God humans view as (potentially) negative:
Jealous
Wants to win
Inescapable—no deliverance is possible from God
Responsible for everything
Dreadful
Irresistible
God cannot be accused by a human, is not accountable to humans
God does not immediately or necessarily set oppression right
Not deceivable
Aspects of God humans cannot really understand:
Not separated, not divided from God’s self or not self divided against self
Whole
Different from creation, different from creatures
Infinite and unending
With and in creation and creatures
Not bound by time
God creates, sustains, destroys, renews
God kills, makes alive, wounds, heals wounds
God holds in God’s hand the life of every living thing
God makes God’s self known to humans
God creates wonders, causes natural disasters
God is on the side of the oppressed
My notes from the scriptures:
Moses’s poem about God Deuteronomy 32
His work is perfect, his ways are just, a faithful God without deceit, just and upright
He is father, creator, maker, establisher
He divided the nations, fixed their boundaries
For Israel, sustained, guarded, shielded, cared for, guided (eagle and young), set up, fed, nursed,
God’s response to Israel’s idolatry: jealous, hidden from them, provoked, angry, punishing; however, God will not blot Israel out for God’s own sake because onlookers will think their gods have conquered. God will be avenged, and God’s people will be vindicated.
“There is no god beside me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; no one can deliver from my hand.”
David’s poem about God Psalm 103
Forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, satisfies, works vindication and justice for oppressed, makes God’s self known, has mercy, is gracious, is slow to anger, abounds in steadfast love, does not accuse forever, will not be angry forever, does not deal with us as our sins deserve, removes our transgressions, has fatherly compassion on us, remembers we are dust
(Psalm 104—Creator, provider, destroyer, renewer)
The Book of Job—one main theme is perfection
Job 42:7—God says, “What Job has said about me is right.” So we do well to see what Job says about God.
Job 7:17—God makes much of human beings, watches humanity
Job 9:4—God is wise in heart, mighty in strength, cannot be successfully resisted
Removes mountains, shakes the earth, prevents the sunrise, seals up the stars, stretched out heaven, trampled the sea, made the constellations, does great things beyond understanding; snatches away, who can stop him
Will not turn back his anger—he crushes me without cause; he destroys both the wicked and the blameless; he will not hold Job innocent, he is not a mortal, no one can be delivered from his hand
Job 10 God is responsible for Job’s condition
Job 12;10 In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being
Wisdom, strength, counsel, understanding, sovereign, strong and wise, brings prosperity and takes it away
Job 13 Majestic, dreadful
Job 19 God will be on my side eventually, God will redeem me
Job 24 Oppression of the poor occurs, and God does not set things right
Job 28 Only God is wise; 28:23-28
In Job 38. God shows up to talk with Job. God does not answer Job’s specific questions about why Job is suffering.
Instead, what we see is that God takes pride in the creation—look at what I have made and keep making
Look at the monsters I have created—aren’t they cool
Job’s response 42: 2
God can do all things, God’s purpose cannot be thwarted
Matthew 5:48 be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect—immediate context: makes sun rise on evil and good, sends rain on righteous and unrighteous, loves those who love him, loves those who hate him
Hebrews 11:3 worlds were framed (were perfected) by the word of God
Perfection with regard to God:
God is completely God
God is complete in God’s self
God is complete in knowledge
God’s perfection includes creator, provider, destroyer, renewer
God’s perfection includes creation of monsters, free will, natural upheavals
God’s perfection includes care for humans, interest in them, and care for all creation, including prey and predator
God is above, God is within; God loves the wicked; God loves the good; God takes it badly when humans revere anything above God; God is sovereign
This is the perfection of God
Next week: the perfect human(s)
Job and Jesus
Week 1—What does it mean when we say that God is perfect?
What emerges is that Perfection is Mystery
These came out of class discussion and the scriptures: Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 103, Job
Aspects of God humans view as (potentially) positive:
Loving
Forgiving
Not devious
No mistakes
Complete
Beautiful
Faithful—keeps faith
Nurturing
Guiding
Guarding
Just
Healing
Redeeming
Merciful
Satisfying
Gracious
Responsive
Majestic
Redeeming
Wise
Mighty
Aspects of God humans view as (potentially) negative:
Jealous
Wants to win
Inescapable—no deliverance is possible from God
Responsible for everything
Dreadful
Irresistible
God cannot be accused by a human, is not accountable to humans
God does not immediately or necessarily set oppression right
Not deceivable
Aspects of God humans cannot really understand:
Not separated, not divided from God’s self or not self divided against self
Whole
Different from creation, different from creatures
Infinite and unending
With and in creation and creatures
Not bound by time
God creates, sustains, destroys, renews
God kills, makes alive, wounds, heals wounds
God holds in God’s hand the life of every living thing
God makes God’s self known to humans
God creates wonders, causes natural disasters
God is on the side of the oppressed
My notes from the scriptures:
Moses’s poem about God Deuteronomy 32
His work is perfect, his ways are just, a faithful God without deceit, just and upright
He is father, creator, maker, establisher
He divided the nations, fixed their boundaries
For Israel, sustained, guarded, shielded, cared for, guided (eagle and young), set up, fed, nursed,
God’s response to Israel’s idolatry: jealous, hidden from them, provoked, angry, punishing; however, God will not blot Israel out for God’s own sake because onlookers will think their gods have conquered. God will be avenged, and God’s people will be vindicated.
“There is no god beside me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; no one can deliver from my hand.”
David’s poem about God Psalm 103
Forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, satisfies, works vindication and justice for oppressed, makes God’s self known, has mercy, is gracious, is slow to anger, abounds in steadfast love, does not accuse forever, will not be angry forever, does not deal with us as our sins deserve, removes our transgressions, has fatherly compassion on us, remembers we are dust
(Psalm 104—Creator, provider, destroyer, renewer)
The Book of Job—one main theme is perfection
Job 42:7—God says, “What Job has said about me is right.” So we do well to see what Job says about God.
Job 7:17—God makes much of human beings, watches humanity
Job 9:4—God is wise in heart, mighty in strength, cannot be successfully resisted
Removes mountains, shakes the earth, prevents the sunrise, seals up the stars, stretched out heaven, trampled the sea, made the constellations, does great things beyond understanding; snatches away, who can stop him
Will not turn back his anger—he crushes me without cause; he destroys both the wicked and the blameless; he will not hold Job innocent, he is not a mortal, no one can be delivered from his hand
Job 10 God is responsible for Job’s condition
Job 12;10 In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being
Wisdom, strength, counsel, understanding, sovereign, strong and wise, brings prosperity and takes it away
Job 13 Majestic, dreadful
Job 19 God will be on my side eventually, God will redeem me
Job 24 Oppression of the poor occurs, and God does not set things right
Job 28 Only God is wise; 28:23-28
In Job 38. God shows up to talk with Job. God does not answer Job’s specific questions about why Job is suffering.
Instead, what we see is that God takes pride in the creation—look at what I have made and keep making
Look at the monsters I have created—aren’t they cool
Job’s response 42: 2
God can do all things, God’s purpose cannot be thwarted
Matthew 5:48 be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect—immediate context: makes sun rise on evil and good, sends rain on righteous and unrighteous, loves those who love him, loves those who hate him
Hebrews 11:3 worlds were framed (were perfected) by the word of God
Perfection with regard to God:
God is completely God
God is complete in God’s self
God is complete in knowledge
God’s perfection includes creator, provider, destroyer, renewer
God’s perfection includes creation of monsters, free will, natural upheavals
God’s perfection includes care for humans, interest in them, and care for all creation, including prey and predator
God is above, God is within; God loves the wicked; God loves the good; God takes it badly when humans revere anything above God; God is sovereign
This is the perfection of God
Next week: the perfect human(s)
Job and Jesus
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Wind Blows Where It Wishes
Preached at Newberg Friends Church
March 8, 2009
Rebecca Ankeny
I’m here to tell you that God is sovereign. To God, nothing comes as a surprise. To us, however, many things are surprising, and some of those surprises are not welcome, are in fact disruptive and disconcerting. Our scripture today talks about how the Spirit of God can surprise us, and how it is self-destructive for us to attribute those surprises to the devil.
I grew up (and old) loving Bob Dylan’s song, Blowing in the Wind. How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man; how many seas must the white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand; how many times must the cannonballs fly before they’re forever banned; how many times must a man look up before he can see the sky; how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry; how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people—particularly children—have died; how many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea; how many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free; how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see. Where is that answer? It’s blowing in the wind.
At first, that might seem like a hopeless answer—we don’t trust the wind, it isn’t predictable, and it isn’t visible. However, the wind is used throughout scripture to illustrate the sovereignty and the intervention of God in human history and human lives.
We’ll frame this using John 3:8—The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. In other words: Everyone born of the spirit goes where the Spirit goes and speaks what the Spirit says to speak, but outsiders cannot understand, predict, or control these things. This is not mysterious. Jesus said repeatedly, I do only what my Father tells me to do, therefore, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father in action. And it is not “unsafe” since Jesus also said that we know people by their fruits, and Paul spelled out numerous fruits of the Spirit, against which there is no law, and Jesus described some of the ways the Spirit moves people in the Beatitudes.
In Genesis 1, the Spirit moved over the waters. The Hebrew word for spirit is the same as the word for breath or wind. God’s breath moved over the waters—God breathed over the waters—and the result was creation, variety, beauty, companionship, surprise, and it was all good.
Throughout the OT, the wind is seen as under God’s control—the east wind brings destruction and the west wind brings restoration.
We can see this in the plague of locusts visited on Egypt, Exodus 10: The Lord brought an east wind upon the land for a day and a night, and the east wind brought the locusts, who ate Egyptian vegetation down to the ground. Pharaoh admitted his sin, “Do forgive my sin just this once, and pray to the Lord your God that at the least he remove this deadly thing from me.” So Moses prayed, and the Lord changed the wind into a west wind that blew the locusts into the Red Sea. And Pharaoh went back to his oppressive ways.
Today in our disbelieving modern way, we talk about air pressure differences and temperature differences as if they explained the wind’s behavior, and we are skeptical about whether God controls the weather.
I will direct your attention to the several storms on the Sea of Galilee and I will ask you, who made them stop? And what was the response of the onlookers? And what did Jesus say, “Oh, you folks with such small faith—such tiny understanding of the character of God and such tiny confidence in God’s good will toward you.”
Not only is the physical wind under God’s control, but so is the Spirit. This is sort of silly to say, but God’s Holy Spirit does only what God the Father and God the Son do, did, will do.
In Ezekiel 37, the famous valley of dry bones, what brings those bones to life? Ezekiel speaks God’s word to them, they rattle together, stand up, gain organs, muscle, and skin, and God says to the prophet: “Prophesy to the wind, the breath, the spirit, O mortal, and say: Thus says the Lord God—come from the four winds, O spirit, wind, breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” And as he prophesies, the breath, wind, spirit, comes into them and they live, and the word of the Lord is: “Thus says the Lord God, I am going to open your graves, o my people, and return you to your home, and I will put my spirit within you and you shall live, and you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and will act.”
In the book of Jonah, what makes sure that Jonah obeys the will of God? The Lord hurls a great wind upon the sea, the Bible says. Jonah fesses up, he is tossed overboard, the wind dies down, a fish swallows him and he spends 3 nights meditating on the folly of a prophet running from God’s Spirit, he makes promises to God, and then the fish spits him out and he goes off to Nineveh to preach God’s message there. And what happens? Repentance and redemption, much to the dismay of God’s prophet, for these were Israel’s enemies.
I will also remind you that at Pentecost a mighty wind filled the house, and the Spirit of God swept over and into people, and they did things they would not have thought possible. The fact that the first sign was speaking in languages they didn’t know helped teach them about God’s power and sovereignty. God used that miracle of languages several other times when they were challenged to accept certain people, namely Gentiles, as equal with them before God. See, God said, I’m in this also—do you recognize me?
Recognizing God at work is the key to understanding this passage on what God does not excuse—frequently referred to as the unpardonable sin. When the scribes said about Jesus, he does these wonders by the devil’s power, what were they talking about?
He set a man free from an unclean spirit on the Sabbath, 1:25
He healed Simon’s mother-in-law of fever on the Sabbath, 1:30
After sundown, after Sabbath, he healed many who were sick and cast out demons from many 1:34
He preached the good news of God’s kingdom come through Galilee
He healed a leper
He forgave the sins of a paralyzed man, which the scribes called blasphemy
He healed that paralyzed man
He got a tax collector to follow him and went to a party at his house
He refused to fast when the Pharisees and John’s disciples did
He protected his disciples when they harvested grain on the Sabbath, and he asserted that the Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath—in other words, God makes laws to help humans; he doesn’t make humans in order to have someone to obey laws
He healed a man’s useless hand on the Sabbath
He preached to mixed crowds of Jews and Gentiles
He healed many and cast out the evil from them
These are the things which his critics attributed to the power of the devil, of Beelzebub
And, Jesus says quite honestly, if when you see these things you do not recognize God at work, there is no hope for you.
We cannot grow towards Christlikeness if we insist that God work with us only in the ways we prescribe and in the forms we are comfortable with. God’s spirit may sweep over our lives from the east and eat everything we depend on down to the ground, so that we will recognize God’s sovereignty and bow our hearts in obedience. If we attribute that work to the devil, we will learn nothing about what God wants from us.
Suppose my besetting sin is pride? The wind of the Spirit sweeps over my life and blows away what I take pride in. Suppose I say—This is the work of the devil. So I work really hard—defend myself and what’s mine, do whatever it takes to stay in a place that I can be proud of, including back-stabbing and kissing up to powerful people. Because I’ve defined the disaster as the work of the devil, all the wrong I do to combat it can be justified.
But what if I say, where is God’s voice in this—I take some time to embrace the loss—I say faithfully, God has something for me in this that will make me more like Jesus. I remember that Jesus is in my boat. I will embrace God’s efforts to help me to be humble, so that, like Jesus, I can honestly say, it isn’t me—I just do what God tells me to do.
Suppose my besetting sin is lust? The wind of the Spirit sweeps over my life and I get caught in sexual sin. We’ve seen this drama several times with highly visible Christians. Do I say—this terrible thing happened to me (getting caught), the devil wants to destroy my ministry, people are out to get me. So I hide the full extent of my sin, deny the importance or even the fact of what I did, and force those who love me most to cover up for me.
But what if I say, where is God’s voice in this? I embrace the public shame— I say, full of faith in God, God has something in this that will make me more like Jesus. I embrace God’s efforts to help me to be self-controlled. I let God show me the holes in my heart I am trying to fill, and I say to God, “These empty spaces are driving me and I absolutely need your help to let them stay empty if you want, or fill them up with something good if you want.”
Suppose my besetting sin is a sour spirit? God’s spirit sweeps through my life and I am left wallowing alone in my sourness. Do I say, “God has abandoned me; I was right not to trust God?” And I become more and more a bitter person, trusting no one and hating myself. I become an emotional cripple sitting beside a pool where healing happens, but where it hasn’t happened for me, and I say to God almighty working through the Son, no one helps me?
But what if I say, where is God’s voice in this? What if I say to the Son of God, “Yes, I want what you want. Bring it on.” And I hear God say, “Pick up your bed and walk.”
I could go on with the other deadly sins, but you get the point. The Old Testament clearly teaches that God is sovereign over the natural and spiritual worlds, and that God’s spirit comes over those worlds to bring disruption, recreation, creativity, and restoration. The New Testament clearly teaches that Jesus, as the Son of God who did only what he saw his Father doing, only what his Father told him to do, is sovereign over the natural and spiritual worlds, and that his work was to bring disruption, recreation, creativity, and restoration. The Holy Spirit blows across our lives like wind, clearing away the dead limbs and loosening our shingles, threatening to fill our boats with water in order to get our attention so that we will listen to God, and like Jesus, do what we see God doing, do what we hear God saying to do.
How can we end war? How can we look on others’ sorrow and confess that we have caused it? How can we care for the earth? How can we set people free? The answer is blowing in the wind of the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of God.
If you recognize yourself in anything I’ve said—if you see the ways you have been avoiding the work of the Holy Spirit to blow your life into the Kingdom, take this moment to lay down your defenses and let God loose.
March 8, 2009
Rebecca Ankeny
I’m here to tell you that God is sovereign. To God, nothing comes as a surprise. To us, however, many things are surprising, and some of those surprises are not welcome, are in fact disruptive and disconcerting. Our scripture today talks about how the Spirit of God can surprise us, and how it is self-destructive for us to attribute those surprises to the devil.
I grew up (and old) loving Bob Dylan’s song, Blowing in the Wind. How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man; how many seas must the white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand; how many times must the cannonballs fly before they’re forever banned; how many times must a man look up before he can see the sky; how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry; how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people—particularly children—have died; how many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea; how many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free; how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see. Where is that answer? It’s blowing in the wind.
At first, that might seem like a hopeless answer—we don’t trust the wind, it isn’t predictable, and it isn’t visible. However, the wind is used throughout scripture to illustrate the sovereignty and the intervention of God in human history and human lives.
We’ll frame this using John 3:8—The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. In other words: Everyone born of the spirit goes where the Spirit goes and speaks what the Spirit says to speak, but outsiders cannot understand, predict, or control these things. This is not mysterious. Jesus said repeatedly, I do only what my Father tells me to do, therefore, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father in action. And it is not “unsafe” since Jesus also said that we know people by their fruits, and Paul spelled out numerous fruits of the Spirit, against which there is no law, and Jesus described some of the ways the Spirit moves people in the Beatitudes.
In Genesis 1, the Spirit moved over the waters. The Hebrew word for spirit is the same as the word for breath or wind. God’s breath moved over the waters—God breathed over the waters—and the result was creation, variety, beauty, companionship, surprise, and it was all good.
Throughout the OT, the wind is seen as under God’s control—the east wind brings destruction and the west wind brings restoration.
We can see this in the plague of locusts visited on Egypt, Exodus 10: The Lord brought an east wind upon the land for a day and a night, and the east wind brought the locusts, who ate Egyptian vegetation down to the ground. Pharaoh admitted his sin, “Do forgive my sin just this once, and pray to the Lord your God that at the least he remove this deadly thing from me.” So Moses prayed, and the Lord changed the wind into a west wind that blew the locusts into the Red Sea. And Pharaoh went back to his oppressive ways.
Today in our disbelieving modern way, we talk about air pressure differences and temperature differences as if they explained the wind’s behavior, and we are skeptical about whether God controls the weather.
I will direct your attention to the several storms on the Sea of Galilee and I will ask you, who made them stop? And what was the response of the onlookers? And what did Jesus say, “Oh, you folks with such small faith—such tiny understanding of the character of God and such tiny confidence in God’s good will toward you.”
Not only is the physical wind under God’s control, but so is the Spirit. This is sort of silly to say, but God’s Holy Spirit does only what God the Father and God the Son do, did, will do.
In Ezekiel 37, the famous valley of dry bones, what brings those bones to life? Ezekiel speaks God’s word to them, they rattle together, stand up, gain organs, muscle, and skin, and God says to the prophet: “Prophesy to the wind, the breath, the spirit, O mortal, and say: Thus says the Lord God—come from the four winds, O spirit, wind, breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” And as he prophesies, the breath, wind, spirit, comes into them and they live, and the word of the Lord is: “Thus says the Lord God, I am going to open your graves, o my people, and return you to your home, and I will put my spirit within you and you shall live, and you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and will act.”
In the book of Jonah, what makes sure that Jonah obeys the will of God? The Lord hurls a great wind upon the sea, the Bible says. Jonah fesses up, he is tossed overboard, the wind dies down, a fish swallows him and he spends 3 nights meditating on the folly of a prophet running from God’s Spirit, he makes promises to God, and then the fish spits him out and he goes off to Nineveh to preach God’s message there. And what happens? Repentance and redemption, much to the dismay of God’s prophet, for these were Israel’s enemies.
I will also remind you that at Pentecost a mighty wind filled the house, and the Spirit of God swept over and into people, and they did things they would not have thought possible. The fact that the first sign was speaking in languages they didn’t know helped teach them about God’s power and sovereignty. God used that miracle of languages several other times when they were challenged to accept certain people, namely Gentiles, as equal with them before God. See, God said, I’m in this also—do you recognize me?
Recognizing God at work is the key to understanding this passage on what God does not excuse—frequently referred to as the unpardonable sin. When the scribes said about Jesus, he does these wonders by the devil’s power, what were they talking about?
He set a man free from an unclean spirit on the Sabbath, 1:25
He healed Simon’s mother-in-law of fever on the Sabbath, 1:30
After sundown, after Sabbath, he healed many who were sick and cast out demons from many 1:34
He preached the good news of God’s kingdom come through Galilee
He healed a leper
He forgave the sins of a paralyzed man, which the scribes called blasphemy
He healed that paralyzed man
He got a tax collector to follow him and went to a party at his house
He refused to fast when the Pharisees and John’s disciples did
He protected his disciples when they harvested grain on the Sabbath, and he asserted that the Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath—in other words, God makes laws to help humans; he doesn’t make humans in order to have someone to obey laws
He healed a man’s useless hand on the Sabbath
He preached to mixed crowds of Jews and Gentiles
He healed many and cast out the evil from them
These are the things which his critics attributed to the power of the devil, of Beelzebub
And, Jesus says quite honestly, if when you see these things you do not recognize God at work, there is no hope for you.
We cannot grow towards Christlikeness if we insist that God work with us only in the ways we prescribe and in the forms we are comfortable with. God’s spirit may sweep over our lives from the east and eat everything we depend on down to the ground, so that we will recognize God’s sovereignty and bow our hearts in obedience. If we attribute that work to the devil, we will learn nothing about what God wants from us.
Suppose my besetting sin is pride? The wind of the Spirit sweeps over my life and blows away what I take pride in. Suppose I say—This is the work of the devil. So I work really hard—defend myself and what’s mine, do whatever it takes to stay in a place that I can be proud of, including back-stabbing and kissing up to powerful people. Because I’ve defined the disaster as the work of the devil, all the wrong I do to combat it can be justified.
But what if I say, where is God’s voice in this—I take some time to embrace the loss—I say faithfully, God has something for me in this that will make me more like Jesus. I remember that Jesus is in my boat. I will embrace God’s efforts to help me to be humble, so that, like Jesus, I can honestly say, it isn’t me—I just do what God tells me to do.
Suppose my besetting sin is lust? The wind of the Spirit sweeps over my life and I get caught in sexual sin. We’ve seen this drama several times with highly visible Christians. Do I say—this terrible thing happened to me (getting caught), the devil wants to destroy my ministry, people are out to get me. So I hide the full extent of my sin, deny the importance or even the fact of what I did, and force those who love me most to cover up for me.
But what if I say, where is God’s voice in this? I embrace the public shame— I say, full of faith in God, God has something in this that will make me more like Jesus. I embrace God’s efforts to help me to be self-controlled. I let God show me the holes in my heart I am trying to fill, and I say to God, “These empty spaces are driving me and I absolutely need your help to let them stay empty if you want, or fill them up with something good if you want.”
Suppose my besetting sin is a sour spirit? God’s spirit sweeps through my life and I am left wallowing alone in my sourness. Do I say, “God has abandoned me; I was right not to trust God?” And I become more and more a bitter person, trusting no one and hating myself. I become an emotional cripple sitting beside a pool where healing happens, but where it hasn’t happened for me, and I say to God almighty working through the Son, no one helps me?
But what if I say, where is God’s voice in this? What if I say to the Son of God, “Yes, I want what you want. Bring it on.” And I hear God say, “Pick up your bed and walk.”
I could go on with the other deadly sins, but you get the point. The Old Testament clearly teaches that God is sovereign over the natural and spiritual worlds, and that God’s spirit comes over those worlds to bring disruption, recreation, creativity, and restoration. The New Testament clearly teaches that Jesus, as the Son of God who did only what he saw his Father doing, only what his Father told him to do, is sovereign over the natural and spiritual worlds, and that his work was to bring disruption, recreation, creativity, and restoration. The Holy Spirit blows across our lives like wind, clearing away the dead limbs and loosening our shingles, threatening to fill our boats with water in order to get our attention so that we will listen to God, and like Jesus, do what we see God doing, do what we hear God saying to do.
How can we end war? How can we look on others’ sorrow and confess that we have caused it? How can we care for the earth? How can we set people free? The answer is blowing in the wind of the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of God.
If you recognize yourself in anything I’ve said—if you see the ways you have been avoiding the work of the Holy Spirit to blow your life into the Kingdom, take this moment to lay down your defenses and let God loose.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Working for the Future When It Might Be End Times
Preached in Spring 2008 at Eugene Friends and Fall 2008 at Vancouver First Friends
Matthew 23, 24 and 25
When I was a university administrator, I was on the Crisis incident response team—talking about how to deal with avian flu pandemic, potential violence on campus—how to respond to these things. The flu predictions are pretty dire, and our security person at the time, a sweet guy who spent his time off working with youth in trouble, said, “When this sort of disaster occurs, there will be looting.” We looked at him in disbelief; he said, “People will come to get the food in the kitchens; they’ll raid the offices; we may need to secure the perimeter and we may need to be armed.” This is a funny story, really.
It is no slam on security—when your whole life is given to protecting a population and a property, you just think differently. You’ll be glad to know that we decided we would give the food away, we would open the dorms to the Red Cross, and we would not arm our security personnel. For one thing, if the halls are filled with flu sufferers, it keeps the looters away.
Driving home from work shortly after we began dropping bombs on Baghdad, I felt deeply the fragility of the earth and the human life on it and I prayed, Please God, don’t let us destroy what you have made so beautifully.
I grew up under the shadow of the cold war in America and civil war in Burundi, Africa. No one could predict in either case who would die and who would survive and what would be destroyed if things went very wrong.
And here we are in the middle of a global financial crisis greater than anything most of us have ever seen. We know people who are losing jobs, losing homes, losing health insurance, asking for help, angry at government, angry at their neighbors, turning political rallies into mob scenes, hiding their money under the mattress.
Someone called me a pessimist the other day, and that may be a correct assessment. I think I come by that honestly, both from genetics and experience. So it was no wonder that as a young adult I took seriously the evangelical prophets’ prediction that the world would end a generation after the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. At first that was 1968, then you may remember 1988, and now here it is 2008, and we’re still here and wondering what it meant.
I don’t have that answer to the question of when will we face the end of time and what will the experience be like. The question that interests me is the “so what” question. How does Jesus expect me to live when the world can end today or in millennia?
It’s useful to place Jesus’s comments on the “end of the age” into their context. Matthew 24, the apocalyptic chapter, comes after Matthew 23, where Jesus told people to do away with the hierarchies that identified some as rabbi, father, teacher; to serve all if they wanted to be great; to stop shutting the door against those who were entering the kingdom of Heaven; to stop venerating religious traditions above God; to stop trying to buy their way out of being just, merciful, and faithful. Then in the next chapter, the disciples come to Jesus and ask, “what will be the signal for your coming and the end of the age?”
This phrase, “the end of the age” is translated variously, but it does indeed carry with it the idea of apocalypse. Jesus says some mysterious things about the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, and Matthew advises the reader to be sure they understand this. To the listeners, this likely referred to some form of idol worship in the place that was holy, namely the temple. They lived to see the temple destroyed, just as Jesus predicted, and the holy place desecrated. And yet, the messianic return of Jesus to set up his throne among us did not happen as they thought it would.
Thayer’s lexicon talks about the period of instability, weakness, impiety, wickedness, calamity, and misery that precedes the appointed return of Christ. Isn’t that a great list? And which age from Jesus to now hasn’t seen this as characteristic of some part of our world? Where is that golden age in the past? Frequently, we think from our own lives particularly—I remember when I felt safe, comforted, strong, good, godly and happy—and we think a change to our surroundings means that the world is about to end. So it is possible for someone in the US to talk about tribulation as if it were a future event and someone in Zimbabwe or Myanmar to think it is already here.
Or for someone watching the stock market fall to think this is the end and someone in the 14th century watching half of Europe die from the Black Plague to think that the end was surely near. The Black Plague may have begun in Asia and spread to Europe during the 1340s. The total number of deaths worldwide is estimated at 75-100 million people, 25-50 million of them in Europe—between 30-60% of Europe’s population.
Jesus says that even he did not know when the end would be, even though he knew hard times were coming for Jerusalem and the Jews. What he did know is that it would be in the midst of things. The lesson is Matthew 24:44, “Be ready because I will show up when you are not expecting me.”
And here’s the so what: What does it mean to be ready?
1) parable of the misbehaving servant: a delay is not an excuse to do whatever you want; do what you know is right in your job and relationships (45-51)
2) parable of the 10 virgins: be prepared for the return, be prepared for a long wait.
3) parable of the talents: invest what God has given you so that there is a return on it; don’t hoard it or try to protect it in hard times.
4) parable of the sheep and the goats: make your neighbor’s life easier not harder; give food and drink to the hungry and thirsty; a home and clothing to the homeless and naked; comfort and presence to the sick and imprisoned.
Whatever you do for another, you do for Jesus, he says. That’s how close he is to us.
So, when we hear of wars and rumors of war, earthquakes, famines, global financial meltdown, how are we to respond?
Do NOT buy duct tape and plastic and lay in a supply of water.
Do NOT buy more guns and set up survival caves.
Do NOT hoard.
Do NOT take advantage of those in need.
Do NOT panic.
What Jesus teaches us to do in response to misery, war, famine, crisis—global, local, or personal:
Say YES to generosity
Say YES to responsibility
Say YES to hospitality
Say YES to loving the world around us
Say YES to loving our neighbor
Say YES to confidence in God’s love and goodness
Stay alive while we live—give it our best effort—work to make the world better—Jesus is always near, Jesus is also coming.
Matthew 23, 24 and 25
When I was a university administrator, I was on the Crisis incident response team—talking about how to deal with avian flu pandemic, potential violence on campus—how to respond to these things. The flu predictions are pretty dire, and our security person at the time, a sweet guy who spent his time off working with youth in trouble, said, “When this sort of disaster occurs, there will be looting.” We looked at him in disbelief; he said, “People will come to get the food in the kitchens; they’ll raid the offices; we may need to secure the perimeter and we may need to be armed.” This is a funny story, really.
It is no slam on security—when your whole life is given to protecting a population and a property, you just think differently. You’ll be glad to know that we decided we would give the food away, we would open the dorms to the Red Cross, and we would not arm our security personnel. For one thing, if the halls are filled with flu sufferers, it keeps the looters away.
Driving home from work shortly after we began dropping bombs on Baghdad, I felt deeply the fragility of the earth and the human life on it and I prayed, Please God, don’t let us destroy what you have made so beautifully.
I grew up under the shadow of the cold war in America and civil war in Burundi, Africa. No one could predict in either case who would die and who would survive and what would be destroyed if things went very wrong.
And here we are in the middle of a global financial crisis greater than anything most of us have ever seen. We know people who are losing jobs, losing homes, losing health insurance, asking for help, angry at government, angry at their neighbors, turning political rallies into mob scenes, hiding their money under the mattress.
Someone called me a pessimist the other day, and that may be a correct assessment. I think I come by that honestly, both from genetics and experience. So it was no wonder that as a young adult I took seriously the evangelical prophets’ prediction that the world would end a generation after the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. At first that was 1968, then you may remember 1988, and now here it is 2008, and we’re still here and wondering what it meant.
I don’t have that answer to the question of when will we face the end of time and what will the experience be like. The question that interests me is the “so what” question. How does Jesus expect me to live when the world can end today or in millennia?
It’s useful to place Jesus’s comments on the “end of the age” into their context. Matthew 24, the apocalyptic chapter, comes after Matthew 23, where Jesus told people to do away with the hierarchies that identified some as rabbi, father, teacher; to serve all if they wanted to be great; to stop shutting the door against those who were entering the kingdom of Heaven; to stop venerating religious traditions above God; to stop trying to buy their way out of being just, merciful, and faithful. Then in the next chapter, the disciples come to Jesus and ask, “what will be the signal for your coming and the end of the age?”
This phrase, “the end of the age” is translated variously, but it does indeed carry with it the idea of apocalypse. Jesus says some mysterious things about the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, and Matthew advises the reader to be sure they understand this. To the listeners, this likely referred to some form of idol worship in the place that was holy, namely the temple. They lived to see the temple destroyed, just as Jesus predicted, and the holy place desecrated. And yet, the messianic return of Jesus to set up his throne among us did not happen as they thought it would.
Thayer’s lexicon talks about the period of instability, weakness, impiety, wickedness, calamity, and misery that precedes the appointed return of Christ. Isn’t that a great list? And which age from Jesus to now hasn’t seen this as characteristic of some part of our world? Where is that golden age in the past? Frequently, we think from our own lives particularly—I remember when I felt safe, comforted, strong, good, godly and happy—and we think a change to our surroundings means that the world is about to end. So it is possible for someone in the US to talk about tribulation as if it were a future event and someone in Zimbabwe or Myanmar to think it is already here.
Or for someone watching the stock market fall to think this is the end and someone in the 14th century watching half of Europe die from the Black Plague to think that the end was surely near. The Black Plague may have begun in Asia and spread to Europe during the 1340s. The total number of deaths worldwide is estimated at 75-100 million people, 25-50 million of them in Europe—between 30-60% of Europe’s population.
Jesus says that even he did not know when the end would be, even though he knew hard times were coming for Jerusalem and the Jews. What he did know is that it would be in the midst of things. The lesson is Matthew 24:44, “Be ready because I will show up when you are not expecting me.”
And here’s the so what: What does it mean to be ready?
1) parable of the misbehaving servant: a delay is not an excuse to do whatever you want; do what you know is right in your job and relationships (45-51)
2) parable of the 10 virgins: be prepared for the return, be prepared for a long wait.
3) parable of the talents: invest what God has given you so that there is a return on it; don’t hoard it or try to protect it in hard times.
4) parable of the sheep and the goats: make your neighbor’s life easier not harder; give food and drink to the hungry and thirsty; a home and clothing to the homeless and naked; comfort and presence to the sick and imprisoned.
Whatever you do for another, you do for Jesus, he says. That’s how close he is to us.
So, when we hear of wars and rumors of war, earthquakes, famines, global financial meltdown, how are we to respond?
Do NOT buy duct tape and plastic and lay in a supply of water.
Do NOT buy more guns and set up survival caves.
Do NOT hoard.
Do NOT take advantage of those in need.
Do NOT panic.
What Jesus teaches us to do in response to misery, war, famine, crisis—global, local, or personal:
Say YES to generosity
Say YES to responsibility
Say YES to hospitality
Say YES to loving the world around us
Say YES to loving our neighbor
Say YES to confidence in God’s love and goodness
Stay alive while we live—give it our best effort—work to make the world better—Jesus is always near, Jesus is also coming.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Fear of the Overwhelming Enemy
Fear of the Overwhelming Enemy
Preached 2/1/09 at Vancouver First Friends
One hot and windy August night, my husband Mark and I were awakened at 11:30 p.m. Our neighbor drove up our driveway, honked his horn, and, shouted, “There’s a car on fire across the road.” Then he left. We went into the living room and looked across the road by our mailbox. There was indeed a fire. The summer had been dry in the Northwest, marked by forest and brush fires. Our new puppy had chewed up every hose we owned but one. Mark went outside. I stayed inside with our sleeping children and called 9-1-1.
While I watched, I saw the fire suddenly flare up. The pine tree at the end of our driveway seemed in imminent danger. All the vegetation was dry. The wind was blowing sparks onto the road, where Mark and neighbors were directing the little water that came through our 5/8-inch hose. In the interval before the fire trucks arrived, I felt panic rise in my throat. I knelt and prayed for the safety of our children, for the preservation of our property, and for protection for Mark.
It was a reasonable fear. It took hours to completely extinguish the fire, but no one was hurt and, except for our mailbox and the car, no property was lost. I do not believe that God was grieved over the fact that I was afraid in an emergency.
But that moment of panic was nearly immobilizing for me. And I think that my more chronic fears are similarly immobilizing. One spring when I was afraid at a fairly low but constant level, I suffered from a burning esophagus and hid out in my house.
Because our fears inhibit our ability to live the abundant life Jesus promised, we do well to examine them in the light of Scripture, which is filled with God’s instruction to us: “fear not.” This command runs throughout the Old and New Testaments, showing the recurring need of God’s people to be reminded not to be afraid. The Psalms show the various psalmists’ need to remind themselves that they will not fear. Psalm 46: 1, 2 “God is our refuge and strength, a well proved help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change …”
The word fear includes the meaning of “reverence”; what we chronically fear, we bow down to. In fact, what we fear becomes a rival to God in our lives. We let our fear take from us our gifts, our callings, our health, our children, and our principles. At the same time, the Bible is full of reassurances that we need not feel panic, paralysis, or self-hatred in response to God: “Do not be afraid, little flock,” Jesus tells us, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Central to our understanding of our relationship to God should be this principle out of Zechariah’s hymn of praise on the birth of his son John: “that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Luke 1, 74-75).
The Bible shows us one way to deal with fear in the story of King Jehoshaphat of Judah, 2 Chron. 20:
Jehoshaphat is one of the good kings. He has destroyed idols, instituted a system of justice, and set his heart to seek God.
One day messengers come and tell him that a large army is coming against Judah from Edom. Jehoshaphat is afraid. He prepares himself to seek the Lord and proclaims a fast throughout his country of Judah. Israelites come to Jerusalem from all over to seek the Lord. Jehoshaphat leads them in this prayer:
“O Lord, God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand are power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you. Did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham? They have lived in it, and in it have built you a sanctuary for your name, saying, ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house, and before you, for your name is in this house, and cry to you in our distress, and you will hear and save.’ See now, the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy--they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession that you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
The Lord responds through one of the people there: “Thus says the Lord to you: ‘Do not fear or be dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours but God’s . . . This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”
The next morning, Jehoshaphat encourages his people to believe God, and he leads them in the chorus, “Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.” (Perhaps this is the tile of Psalm 136, which begins that way.)
When they arrive at the battlefield, all the army coming against them lies dead already. Two groups had attacked and destroyed the third, and then they turned on each other. It takes Jehoshaphat and his people more than three days to salvage the usable items these armies left behind them.
The fear of God comes on all the kingdoms of the countries when they hear that the Lord has fought against the enemies of Israel. And the realm of Jehoshaphat is quiet, for God gives him rest all around.
What we can learn:
1. Jehoshaphat’s fear is reasonable--the army coming is overwhelming.
2. Jehoshaphat reminds himself and God of God’s previous intervention on behalf of Israel; he does not go into a lot of detail about how big the army is or how well-armed. It is not helpful to repeat to ourselves the horrible, gruesome, painful details about the person or event we fear. In other words, he concentrates on God, not on the enemy.
3. His response is to believe the word of God. He seeks God’s will, fasts and prays, admits his own powerlessness, and goes into danger singing about God’s love.
I think in these times about the economic downturn and how it is too big for us to fix as individuals, how it will change our lives. What do we do? Apparently, we can profitably learn from Jehoshaphat’s example:
We choose to believe the word of God.
We rehearse how God has helped us before.
We seek God’s will.
We fast and pray.
We admit our own powerlessness.
We go on our way singing about God’s love.
Fasting here can be a symbol to us of choosing to depend on God to sustain us, rather than working to sustain ourselves. I don’t like giving up meals, but it’s much harder for me to give up trying to control outcomes. That is a true fast for me.
Let’s link this to a New Testament story from Mark 4.
After spectacular miracles and several parables, Jesus says to the disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
1. It is reasonable to fear the overwhelming power of natural forces, just as it is reasonable to fear an overwhelming army.
2. This is a picture of our lives: we are a boat crossing the sea; when a storm, a crisis, a potential disaster arises, we are afraid. Though our fear is reasonable, it shows the limits of our faith. After all, Jesus is in us, in our boat, and we cannot be destroyed.
3. Like the disciples, we need to fear (revere) the one who can calm the storm, instead of fearing the storm.
When we are called to let God fight for us, we may discover that God solves our problems so spectacularly that we live in peace because no one wants to mess with our God. Or we may find that, like Jesus, we are crucified with criminals on the way to resurrection.
Being called to let God do the fighting is not the same as setting ourselves up to be victims. In fact, it is fear that turns us into victims: inside we bow down before the overwhelming enemy. When God calls us to let God fight for us, and we are obedient, we are able to go into danger singing. We understand why Jesus told us to turn the other cheek. When someone hits me on one side of my face, I can choose to respond fearlessly--I neither run nor fight. I can stand up before my enemy and turn to that enemy the other side of my face. This is a sign of courage, not of compliance. When I don’t respond to danger with fear, I get to keep my dignity.
“Happy are those who fear the Lord” (Psalm 112:1). “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). “We are being rescued from the hands of our enemies, so that we might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all our days” (Luke 1, 74-75). God wants to preoccupy us to a greater extent than anything else in the world. “Happy are those who fear the Lord” (Psalm 112:1).
Preached 2/1/09 at Vancouver First Friends
One hot and windy August night, my husband Mark and I were awakened at 11:30 p.m. Our neighbor drove up our driveway, honked his horn, and, shouted, “There’s a car on fire across the road.” Then he left. We went into the living room and looked across the road by our mailbox. There was indeed a fire. The summer had been dry in the Northwest, marked by forest and brush fires. Our new puppy had chewed up every hose we owned but one. Mark went outside. I stayed inside with our sleeping children and called 9-1-1.
While I watched, I saw the fire suddenly flare up. The pine tree at the end of our driveway seemed in imminent danger. All the vegetation was dry. The wind was blowing sparks onto the road, where Mark and neighbors were directing the little water that came through our 5/8-inch hose. In the interval before the fire trucks arrived, I felt panic rise in my throat. I knelt and prayed for the safety of our children, for the preservation of our property, and for protection for Mark.
It was a reasonable fear. It took hours to completely extinguish the fire, but no one was hurt and, except for our mailbox and the car, no property was lost. I do not believe that God was grieved over the fact that I was afraid in an emergency.
But that moment of panic was nearly immobilizing for me. And I think that my more chronic fears are similarly immobilizing. One spring when I was afraid at a fairly low but constant level, I suffered from a burning esophagus and hid out in my house.
Because our fears inhibit our ability to live the abundant life Jesus promised, we do well to examine them in the light of Scripture, which is filled with God’s instruction to us: “fear not.” This command runs throughout the Old and New Testaments, showing the recurring need of God’s people to be reminded not to be afraid. The Psalms show the various psalmists’ need to remind themselves that they will not fear. Psalm 46: 1, 2 “God is our refuge and strength, a well proved help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change …”
The word fear includes the meaning of “reverence”; what we chronically fear, we bow down to. In fact, what we fear becomes a rival to God in our lives. We let our fear take from us our gifts, our callings, our health, our children, and our principles. At the same time, the Bible is full of reassurances that we need not feel panic, paralysis, or self-hatred in response to God: “Do not be afraid, little flock,” Jesus tells us, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Central to our understanding of our relationship to God should be this principle out of Zechariah’s hymn of praise on the birth of his son John: “that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Luke 1, 74-75).
The Bible shows us one way to deal with fear in the story of King Jehoshaphat of Judah, 2 Chron. 20:
Jehoshaphat is one of the good kings. He has destroyed idols, instituted a system of justice, and set his heart to seek God.
One day messengers come and tell him that a large army is coming against Judah from Edom. Jehoshaphat is afraid. He prepares himself to seek the Lord and proclaims a fast throughout his country of Judah. Israelites come to Jerusalem from all over to seek the Lord. Jehoshaphat leads them in this prayer:
“O Lord, God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand are power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you. Did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham? They have lived in it, and in it have built you a sanctuary for your name, saying, ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house, and before you, for your name is in this house, and cry to you in our distress, and you will hear and save.’ See now, the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy--they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession that you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
The Lord responds through one of the people there: “Thus says the Lord to you: ‘Do not fear or be dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours but God’s . . . This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”
The next morning, Jehoshaphat encourages his people to believe God, and he leads them in the chorus, “Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.” (Perhaps this is the tile of Psalm 136, which begins that way.)
When they arrive at the battlefield, all the army coming against them lies dead already. Two groups had attacked and destroyed the third, and then they turned on each other. It takes Jehoshaphat and his people more than three days to salvage the usable items these armies left behind them.
The fear of God comes on all the kingdoms of the countries when they hear that the Lord has fought against the enemies of Israel. And the realm of Jehoshaphat is quiet, for God gives him rest all around.
What we can learn:
1. Jehoshaphat’s fear is reasonable--the army coming is overwhelming.
2. Jehoshaphat reminds himself and God of God’s previous intervention on behalf of Israel; he does not go into a lot of detail about how big the army is or how well-armed. It is not helpful to repeat to ourselves the horrible, gruesome, painful details about the person or event we fear. In other words, he concentrates on God, not on the enemy.
3. His response is to believe the word of God. He seeks God’s will, fasts and prays, admits his own powerlessness, and goes into danger singing about God’s love.
I think in these times about the economic downturn and how it is too big for us to fix as individuals, how it will change our lives. What do we do? Apparently, we can profitably learn from Jehoshaphat’s example:
We choose to believe the word of God.
We rehearse how God has helped us before.
We seek God’s will.
We fast and pray.
We admit our own powerlessness.
We go on our way singing about God’s love.
Fasting here can be a symbol to us of choosing to depend on God to sustain us, rather than working to sustain ourselves. I don’t like giving up meals, but it’s much harder for me to give up trying to control outcomes. That is a true fast for me.
Let’s link this to a New Testament story from Mark 4.
After spectacular miracles and several parables, Jesus says to the disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
1. It is reasonable to fear the overwhelming power of natural forces, just as it is reasonable to fear an overwhelming army.
2. This is a picture of our lives: we are a boat crossing the sea; when a storm, a crisis, a potential disaster arises, we are afraid. Though our fear is reasonable, it shows the limits of our faith. After all, Jesus is in us, in our boat, and we cannot be destroyed.
3. Like the disciples, we need to fear (revere) the one who can calm the storm, instead of fearing the storm.
When we are called to let God fight for us, we may discover that God solves our problems so spectacularly that we live in peace because no one wants to mess with our God. Or we may find that, like Jesus, we are crucified with criminals on the way to resurrection.
Being called to let God do the fighting is not the same as setting ourselves up to be victims. In fact, it is fear that turns us into victims: inside we bow down before the overwhelming enemy. When God calls us to let God fight for us, and we are obedient, we are able to go into danger singing. We understand why Jesus told us to turn the other cheek. When someone hits me on one side of my face, I can choose to respond fearlessly--I neither run nor fight. I can stand up before my enemy and turn to that enemy the other side of my face. This is a sign of courage, not of compliance. When I don’t respond to danger with fear, I get to keep my dignity.
“Happy are those who fear the Lord” (Psalm 112:1). “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). “We are being rescued from the hands of our enemies, so that we might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all our days” (Luke 1, 74-75). God wants to preoccupy us to a greater extent than anything else in the world. “Happy are those who fear the Lord” (Psalm 112:1).
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Judgment Day, Part 2
Freedom in the Son
Framing Scriptures
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 5:18 Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.
Christmas represents our chance to reflect on the astonishing gift Jesus is to us—fully God and fully human, Jesus brought us the truth about God—Jesus is what God is and God is what Jesus is. Jesus is also what we are so that we can be what Jesus is—people who pay attention to our father in heaven and do what we see our father doing. Jesus completely understands what it means to be human—the Bible says he was tempted in all ways as we are—in all ways—yet was never enslaved by sin. He loved the earth and the people in it, and he loved them so much that their refusal to see God in him frustrated him, particularly because they hid behind religious law in order to avoid real relationship with God. That real relationship is where human beings are really free—paradoxically, we are God’s slaves in order to be completely free.
Suppose you are living in a dark jail cell awaiting your trial. Your worst fear is of the day when someone will show up at your cell and haul you before the judge. Deep in your heart you know there are countless offenses that have given the judge the right to have you imprisoned for life or even executed. Yet you complain about the cell and your cellmates and insist you did nothing to merit this imprisonment.
Then one day, a guard shows up and calls your name. Trembling, you follow the guard down the long hall. Your hands are manacled, and you are wearing prison orange. You enter the courtroom. The judge is all you feared—imposing, high above you; you cannot meet his eyes. Your guilt is written all over you. The judge says to the prosecutor: “What are the charges?”
The prosecutor begins a long list of all the things you thought were secret, all the things you did to get ahead of other people, every time you lied, every time you acted out of malice, every time you hoarded your stuff rather than sharing, the ways you dismissed and disrespected others. And it goes on and on. Before the list can end, you drop to your knees and cry out, “Have mercy on me. I’ll do better, I promise. I’m a different person now. I’ll be good.”
Unbelievably, you hear the judge say, “It’s obvious this person will never be able to pay for these wrongs. Let’s try this: freedom.”
You cannot believe it, and you still don’t dare look up from the ground. You leave the courtroom; you are given civilian clothes. You step out onto the street, your own voice ringing in your ears. “I’ll be good.” You get in line at the burger bar to buy a meal, and someone pushes ahead of you. Without a thought, you throw that person to the ground and start kicking. No one is going to take what’s yours, including your place in line.
The girl behind the counter dials 911, and when the police show up, you have your hands around the neck of the person who cut in front of you, and you are closing your fingers as tightly together as you can. The police yank your hands off and behind you, handcuff you, and take you back to the courtroom you just left.
The judge says, “Didn’t I just set you free? Why are you enforcing all the rules I let you out of? You don’t understand freedom, so you will remain in prison.” As you walk down the hallway, you are weeping and grinding your teeth together. Even as messed up as you made it, you loved being out of jail. But you had never really been free.
This is my version of the parable Jesus told in Matthew 18. I want to be sure that this point comes across: The freed prisoner didn’t get thrown back into jail because she wasn’t good enough. She ended up in jail because she didn’t listen. The judge had set her free. Nothing she had done was held against her. But she didn’t live as if she were free of those crimes and laws and rules. She was still insisting that she would pay for her crimes by being good
When Jesus came, Jesus brought freedom for us poor sinners. Jesus said to so many people: you are free. Be alive in that freedom. Let’s pay attention to scriptures that describe what Jesus means to us:
God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son; whoever has confidence in Jesus will not perish but have life that never ends. I am come that you might have life, and not just a pinched little life, but one filled with abundance, where you understand finally the overwhelming generosity of God. I saw Satan fall from heaven—but this isn’t why you rejoice; instead, rejoice that your names are written in the book of life. I do not condemn you—go and live freed from sin. Adam brought death into the world, and now all die; Jesus brought life in order to make everyone completely alive. You have not received a spirit of fear and slavery and imprisonment, but a spirit of adoption into God’s own family as God’s children; you are free to think of God as your own “papa” or “daddy” no matter what your earthly father was like. You have the freedom of a son or daughter. When you realize you have been set free, don’t be entangled again in a net of rules and don’t let sin tell you what to do. Don’t use freedom as license to do wrong, but live free. If Jesus, God’s Son, has set you free, you are in fact free. Who is your judge? The same one who gave himself to set you free. Confess everything you are ashamed of to him, and he will erase your record and you will be innocent. Walk in love toward others, love that is embodied in action, and you do not need to fear a guilty conscience.
Be abundant.
Abide in Jesus, let fruit happen, accept the pruning of God which increases the amount and quality of fruit, the fruit that grows naturally from being connected to Jesus and allowing the Holy Spirit access to your whole self. Obeying God’s Holy Spirit results in a life filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. No one makes laws against these things. You can tell if you’re slipping if you start becoming conceited, competing with other people, or envying someone else. Get out of that jail as soon as you can by confessing and having confidence in God’s love for you.
Bear with one another. Bear each other’s burdens. If you see someone slipping out of God’s freedom, gently approach that person with the truth, always remembering you too are likely to slip on occasion. Anyone who says he or she doesn’t slip into conceit, competition, or envy is likely to be self-deceiving, so be merciful to each other, just as God has been merciful to you. Don’t judge, so you won’t be judged. Don’t be like the folks who missed the freedom Jesus brought in his life on earth, who said to him, “You should be more careful to observe Sabbath, you should fast, you should pay temple tax, you should accept our authority”; he said about them that they tied burdens on other people they were too good to help carry.
Jesus is not too good to help us carry our burdens. He says, “I will be yoked with you—come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden; be my partner, my yoke-fellow, and learn from me, for I am tenderhearted; you will find that your souls have rest.”
Suppose a different end to the parable: Suppose that you looked into the judge’s face and saw his eyes. After that encounter with love, you walk out of the courtroom a free soul, and you notice a new holy light on everyone and everything you see. You sense that love is at the heart of things. You are standing in line at the burger bar, and someone pushes in front of you, and you are filled with light and love, and you say to that person, “I see you are hungrier than I am—do you have enough money for what you want to eat? I have a little extra because the judge was so generous when he let me go this morning.”
You live free, you live abundantly, you share yourself and your God-given abilities with everyone, never once worrying about whether you are getting it right, meeting expectations, following the rules adequately. When you get even a hint of measuring yourself against others, you say, “O God, I am so prone to do this. I confess that for a moment I lost sight of your eyes and your love, and I was wrong. I will never be able to keep from this unless you help me, and I want that help.” Then you go on your way rejoicing.
And when you die, and you come before the last judgment, you look up, and whose face do you see? You see the face of Jesus, God’s Son and your own brother. When he speaks, you hear the same voice you have been listening for and obeying for your whole lifetime.
It is just possible that people reading this have not yet understood or lived into the love of God. If you want to, you can start today. What is God saying to you?
Framing Scriptures
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 5:18 Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.
Christmas represents our chance to reflect on the astonishing gift Jesus is to us—fully God and fully human, Jesus brought us the truth about God—Jesus is what God is and God is what Jesus is. Jesus is also what we are so that we can be what Jesus is—people who pay attention to our father in heaven and do what we see our father doing. Jesus completely understands what it means to be human—the Bible says he was tempted in all ways as we are—in all ways—yet was never enslaved by sin. He loved the earth and the people in it, and he loved them so much that their refusal to see God in him frustrated him, particularly because they hid behind religious law in order to avoid real relationship with God. That real relationship is where human beings are really free—paradoxically, we are God’s slaves in order to be completely free.
Suppose you are living in a dark jail cell awaiting your trial. Your worst fear is of the day when someone will show up at your cell and haul you before the judge. Deep in your heart you know there are countless offenses that have given the judge the right to have you imprisoned for life or even executed. Yet you complain about the cell and your cellmates and insist you did nothing to merit this imprisonment.
Then one day, a guard shows up and calls your name. Trembling, you follow the guard down the long hall. Your hands are manacled, and you are wearing prison orange. You enter the courtroom. The judge is all you feared—imposing, high above you; you cannot meet his eyes. Your guilt is written all over you. The judge says to the prosecutor: “What are the charges?”
The prosecutor begins a long list of all the things you thought were secret, all the things you did to get ahead of other people, every time you lied, every time you acted out of malice, every time you hoarded your stuff rather than sharing, the ways you dismissed and disrespected others. And it goes on and on. Before the list can end, you drop to your knees and cry out, “Have mercy on me. I’ll do better, I promise. I’m a different person now. I’ll be good.”
Unbelievably, you hear the judge say, “It’s obvious this person will never be able to pay for these wrongs. Let’s try this: freedom.”
You cannot believe it, and you still don’t dare look up from the ground. You leave the courtroom; you are given civilian clothes. You step out onto the street, your own voice ringing in your ears. “I’ll be good.” You get in line at the burger bar to buy a meal, and someone pushes ahead of you. Without a thought, you throw that person to the ground and start kicking. No one is going to take what’s yours, including your place in line.
The girl behind the counter dials 911, and when the police show up, you have your hands around the neck of the person who cut in front of you, and you are closing your fingers as tightly together as you can. The police yank your hands off and behind you, handcuff you, and take you back to the courtroom you just left.
The judge says, “Didn’t I just set you free? Why are you enforcing all the rules I let you out of? You don’t understand freedom, so you will remain in prison.” As you walk down the hallway, you are weeping and grinding your teeth together. Even as messed up as you made it, you loved being out of jail. But you had never really been free.
This is my version of the parable Jesus told in Matthew 18. I want to be sure that this point comes across: The freed prisoner didn’t get thrown back into jail because she wasn’t good enough. She ended up in jail because she didn’t listen. The judge had set her free. Nothing she had done was held against her. But she didn’t live as if she were free of those crimes and laws and rules. She was still insisting that she would pay for her crimes by being good
When Jesus came, Jesus brought freedom for us poor sinners. Jesus said to so many people: you are free. Be alive in that freedom. Let’s pay attention to scriptures that describe what Jesus means to us:
God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son; whoever has confidence in Jesus will not perish but have life that never ends. I am come that you might have life, and not just a pinched little life, but one filled with abundance, where you understand finally the overwhelming generosity of God. I saw Satan fall from heaven—but this isn’t why you rejoice; instead, rejoice that your names are written in the book of life. I do not condemn you—go and live freed from sin. Adam brought death into the world, and now all die; Jesus brought life in order to make everyone completely alive. You have not received a spirit of fear and slavery and imprisonment, but a spirit of adoption into God’s own family as God’s children; you are free to think of God as your own “papa” or “daddy” no matter what your earthly father was like. You have the freedom of a son or daughter. When you realize you have been set free, don’t be entangled again in a net of rules and don’t let sin tell you what to do. Don’t use freedom as license to do wrong, but live free. If Jesus, God’s Son, has set you free, you are in fact free. Who is your judge? The same one who gave himself to set you free. Confess everything you are ashamed of to him, and he will erase your record and you will be innocent. Walk in love toward others, love that is embodied in action, and you do not need to fear a guilty conscience.
Be abundant.
Abide in Jesus, let fruit happen, accept the pruning of God which increases the amount and quality of fruit, the fruit that grows naturally from being connected to Jesus and allowing the Holy Spirit access to your whole self. Obeying God’s Holy Spirit results in a life filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. No one makes laws against these things. You can tell if you’re slipping if you start becoming conceited, competing with other people, or envying someone else. Get out of that jail as soon as you can by confessing and having confidence in God’s love for you.
Bear with one another. Bear each other’s burdens. If you see someone slipping out of God’s freedom, gently approach that person with the truth, always remembering you too are likely to slip on occasion. Anyone who says he or she doesn’t slip into conceit, competition, or envy is likely to be self-deceiving, so be merciful to each other, just as God has been merciful to you. Don’t judge, so you won’t be judged. Don’t be like the folks who missed the freedom Jesus brought in his life on earth, who said to him, “You should be more careful to observe Sabbath, you should fast, you should pay temple tax, you should accept our authority”; he said about them that they tied burdens on other people they were too good to help carry.
Jesus is not too good to help us carry our burdens. He says, “I will be yoked with you—come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden; be my partner, my yoke-fellow, and learn from me, for I am tenderhearted; you will find that your souls have rest.”
Suppose a different end to the parable: Suppose that you looked into the judge’s face and saw his eyes. After that encounter with love, you walk out of the courtroom a free soul, and you notice a new holy light on everyone and everything you see. You sense that love is at the heart of things. You are standing in line at the burger bar, and someone pushes in front of you, and you are filled with light and love, and you say to that person, “I see you are hungrier than I am—do you have enough money for what you want to eat? I have a little extra because the judge was so generous when he let me go this morning.”
You live free, you live abundantly, you share yourself and your God-given abilities with everyone, never once worrying about whether you are getting it right, meeting expectations, following the rules adequately. When you get even a hint of measuring yourself against others, you say, “O God, I am so prone to do this. I confess that for a moment I lost sight of your eyes and your love, and I was wrong. I will never be able to keep from this unless you help me, and I want that help.” Then you go on your way rejoicing.
And when you die, and you come before the last judgment, you look up, and whose face do you see? You see the face of Jesus, God’s Son and your own brother. When he speaks, you hear the same voice you have been listening for and obeying for your whole lifetime.
It is just possible that people reading this have not yet understood or lived into the love of God. If you want to, you can start today. What is God saying to you?
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