Jesus - The Perfect Parent for all Parents

Preached on Mother's Day, May 13, 2018

Scripture readings: Psalm 3:1-8; John 10:11-18

It is said that there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who wake up in the morning and say, “Good morning, Lord!” Then there are those who wake up and say, “Good Lord, it’s morning!”

Walking near Crab Creek, north of Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
March, 2018

Psalm Three was written by one of those who could go to bed at night thinking, “O Lord, how many are my foes!” and wake up saying, “I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.” (Psalm 3:5) That, by the way, is surely Bible-Talk for saying: “Good morning, Lord!”

It doesn’t seem possible. It doesn’t even seem normal. According to this Psalm, it is the gift of God to wake up well-rested and well-prepared in the morning, when life in this world seems to have you surrounded, and out-numbered, and out-gunned.

We are listening to God speak to us through this Psalm on Mother’s Day and, in a way, we shouldn’t. This Psalm is a warrior Psalm and we don’t usually think of mother’s as warriors, but they are: and so are fathers.

Mothers are mama-bears or she-tigers. Their children and their husbands know this. This Psalm applies to mothers and to all the rest of any family. The Psalm applies to any warrior, and all the people of God are warriors.

And this makes me want to go off on a tangent, because, in some strange way we were created to be warriors. I wonder why, because, if we were created for perfection in a perfect world, as we were at the beginning, why would God have made us warriors?

When God set Adam the Human in the Garden of Eden, God’s mission for humans was to “dress and keep it”. The plan was that we would start with that garden and spread our mission to the whole planet. The word translated as “dress” is “abad”, and it means to serve, and then in the odd way Hebrew has, it also means to be served. Which has a cool farmer’s way of seeing the land: if you serve the land, it will serve you. “Keeping” (or “shamar”) is the real warrior word here because it means to guard and protect the earth, even at the level of fighting for it if necessary.

This tells me that, even when everything is perfect and everything is right, love is ready to serve, and love is vigilant and ready to jump, and save, and fight. True love has to carry a tiger in its pocket. Good marriages, good families, good churches, good communities and nations should all be like this. And there would be a joy, and a proper pride, and discipline in this; because true love is not soft.

I know we’re born for this. A little boy walked up to his mother and said: “I don’t want to be your little lamb anymore. I want to be your little tiger.” We are all created to be warriors under authority and discipline of God.

Jesus was a warrior, and so he shows us what God’s love is like. The tender love of God hides a tiger. Jesus could be really scary; invading the Temple in Jerusalem with his disciples, making whips out of cords, attacking the merchants, whose businesses were based in the Temple to supply animals for sacrifice and the proper currency and coinage for purchases and offerings, turning over their tables and counters, and driving them out. (John 2:13-16; Mark 11:15-17)

By doing this Jesus stopped the sacrifices that most people wanted to make in the Temple that day. He didn’t want them to worship the usual way, because he was there to be the warrior-love who defeated the sins of the world. Jesus made himself scary to do this.

When Jesus and his disciples did this, you must know that they were hopelessly outnumbered by the Temple security. Jesus succeeded scared away the Temples armed police force, because his love was a tiger in his heart. He was scary because he knew he was doing the right thing for everyone he loved: for the whole world that he loved. Jesus showed a warrior-passion for this.

He was claiming the people of Israel, and all those who came from other lands to worship God as his children. He shouted, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of robbers’.  (Mark 11:17)

Jesus shows us that even men can be mama-bears and she-tigers. Jesus was completely committed to his children. He was passionately committed to us; his children to be.

Jesus held nothing back. And yet he was someone whom little children and their parents would never fear. (Mark 9:36-37; 10:13-16)

Like every Jewish child who went to synagogue every Sabbath and to Synagogue school during the week, Jesus grew up singing this warrior Psalm until he knew it by heart. It shaped him, as all the Psalms did. It shaped Jesus’ own awareness of who he was, and what his mission was, and how he would accomplish it.

It was a song of the warrior King David. It sang about his fight to bring order to his kingdom when it was tearing itself apart. There was corruption, and deception, and hypocrisy, and bitterness tearing the kingdom of Israel, and David’s own family was at the heart of that destruction. David knew this, and he hated it, and it devastated him, because he was at the heart of what was wrong.

David had actually played along with what he hated. He had made his own contribution to it. You can read about this in Second Samuel, chapters fourteen through nineteen.

It was David’s failure as a father that caused the crisis, and this failure surrounded him with enemies lead by his own children. But although David had failed, he still trusted God to help him to do his best and to set things right. David had to lay his own life on the line to heal the land.

Part of the song said “Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him.’” David himself was aware that he had made too many mistakes and failed too many times to be “delivered” by God.

David knew that he should be beyond help and beyond redemption. The amazing miracle, the contradiction that seems too good to believe, was the truth that, “From the Lord comes deliverance.” (Psalm 3:8) This is what God stands for, for everyone who has no ground to stand on.

When Jesus learned this song, as a boy, he knew where it came from. He knew that horrible and tragic story behind David’s family and their battles against each other. And he had himself called the Son of David.

Jesus knew that David’s own life had laid him low and left him prostrate, belly and face in the dust, unable to stand in his guilt and his blame, in the presence of the greatest king who is God himself.

“From the Lord comes deliverance.” God was David’s shield when David had no defenses left. God was David’s glory when David had nothing to show but his shame. When David felt too weak and unworthy to do more than lie down in the dirt, God lifted up his head. Jesus came to be the kind of king who does this.

You need to know that this lifting up of the head business was part of a king’s mission. This was something that a king did, when he was faced with a subject, or a servant, or a surrendered enemy, who came to him and groveled before him, face down, in the dust. A king (if he decided to do so), in mercy and grace, would put his fingers under the chin of the person sprawled on the ground, and lift up his head. It was the king’s permission for that person to rise, to get up, to stand, and to know he was accepted, and free, and that he or she would receive an answer from the king that was better than anything they could ask for.

David found this grace from God. It gave him hope and, in spite of all his troubles and all his enemies, he could rest and wake up, prepared to meet the day. I had a pastor who recommended praying this prayer as soon as your eyes open in the morning: “Good morning Lord! What are you up to today? Let me be part of it.”

Jesus learned this warrior song as a child, and he grew up to claim the song for himself, as no one else could. Jesus saw that he had come into this world to have more enemies than anyone could count and, still, lift up their heads.

Every sin, and evil, and injustice in this world is Jesus’ enemy. Every action of ours, and every motive of our heart that works at cross purposes to Jesus, is his enemy. We are his enemies, and Jesus faces us without fear.

But what he wants to do most is to be the lifter of our heads. Jesus does all his fighting for this kind of victory.

In this desperate battle, Jesus was ready and willing to lay down his life for the kingdom. Jesus was willing to have no defenses and no shield against us. He was willing to have no glory that we could see. He was willing to have no pride or weapon, except for the nails in his hands and feet, and the thorns on his head. He was willing to have no shield or glory except for his death on the cross for our sin, and for the sin of the world.

Jesus knew that, giving up himself to all of this, he would be able to lift up his own head, and stand up for us as our king. That makes him the one to lift up our head in his presence.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again.” (John 10:11, 17)

Jesus knew that, after carrying our sins on the cross, he could lie down in death and wake up again. He could go into the world of death that seems to swallow up everything that is dear to us, and finally to swallow us up as well. He could sleep that sleep, and wake up and rise again, because the Father sustained him. (Psalm 3:5) Then he could offer us grace, and abundant life, and everlasting life.

This was how Jesus claimed that warrior song as his own. David had written a song that was far better than he had realized. It was a song that only Jesus could fully claim. Jesus claimed this song for himself so that he could give it to us; to shape our faith in him.

When I was child there were times when I would get the chance to see puppies. There is a stage where puppies, just like babies, don’t have any teeth. You can put your finger in their mouth and they will chew your finger. They will chew, and chew, and chew; but they can’t bite you. They can’t hurt you. My dad would say, “Watch out, that puppy will gum you to death!”

Psalm Three tells us of God breaking the teeth of the enemy, as if our enemies could bite us and tear us apart. Our enemies are our life’s hurts and injustices. Our enemies are our own sins, and failures, and foolishness.

These have terrible teeth. The teeth do the worst damage, but God can break the teeth of our enemies. We are hurt, but we are not torn. We are crushed, but we can mend. We have consequences to pay, but this does not kill us. They bring us down, prone in the dust, but we can rise, and stand, and fight again, because the Lord lifts up our heads.

In Jesus, God lifts us up. God breaks the teeth of our enemies because the humility and suffering of Jesus give us mercy, and strength, and healing.

Mothers and fathers have many enemies because they have children. They fear for their children. They pray for their children. They know their children will make mistakes. The parents are aware of their own mistakes, too. Parents pray that God will break the teeth of their own failures and regrets, for their children’s sakes.

Mothers and fathers pray that the world will only gum their children and leave them unhurt. But the world is old, and it has long teeth. So, parents pray that the world’s teeth will be broken and that their children will rise again, and again; and that they will be strong, and brave; and that they will be able to rest and wake up prepared for the next day with Jesus, because Jesus will lift up their heads.

The power of Jesus who lay down in death and rose from the dead is our power to rise. Parents receive that power from Jesus in the fellowship of the cross. Parents may often feel crucified for their children. And the parents who know Jesus pray for their children to have that same power of Jesus in themselves.

Jesus came to make that warrior song come true for all of us, as people who take care of others. Jesus came to lift up our heads, to make us warriors who can rise again.

Faith's Underbelly - Anger Gone Wrong

Preached on Sunday, September 10, 2017

Scripture readings: Numbers 20:1-13; James 1:19-25

You’ve heard of Murphy’s Law, which goes like this: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” The law comes from Edward Murphy, who was an Air Force major and an aerospace engineer. I’ve found out that his saying was what he called a rule for “defensive design”. He devised his law to encourage planning for the worst-case scenario. Apparently, he hated the way his law got turned into comedy.

The Hills of Southern California
June 2017

My dad liked to consider himself to be Irish, which was a big over-simplification of the truth, because he was really only one eighth Irish. My dad thought that Murphy’s Law was an old Irish saying. So, he had one plaque hanging in the garage with Murphy’s Law on it, and he had another plaque with the words: “Murphy was an optimist.” This worked for my dad. It says a lot about him.

I wonder if Murphy may actually have been Jewish, because anything that could go wrong really did go wrong in the exodus of God’s people through the desert. Finally, Murphy’s Law happened to Moses. For me, that’s what we read about in the scriptures for this message.

Moses was done in by his own anger. This might seem strange to you. After all, the Book of Numbers also describes Moses this way: “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men who were on the face of the earth.” (12:3)

But meekness describes a different kind of mildness or softness than you might imagine. In the Bible, a meek person is the kind of softy who is soft to God. It’s the quality of being a servant. It means responding to every signal from God, giving to God exactly what God wants.

A perfectly trained war horse was expected to be bold and fearless, and also to be perfectly meek to every signal from its rider: to charge, to halt, to retreat, to turn on a dime. That was the meekness of Moses toward God: except for this time. This time, his temper, that always went right, finally went wrong.

Paul says, “Be angry but do not sin: do not let the sun go done on your wrath.” (Ephesians 4:16)

I think anger can be the right response, the meekest response, under the right circumstances. There is such a thing as “righteous indignation.” So many people in the Old Testament seem to be angry all the time. In the New Testament, Paul gets mad. Jesus gets mad. And, as such, Jesus is the perfect image of God, because God seems to get mad a lot, and that seems to be the very result of God’s holiness and righteousness.

I have a different problem. I don’t seem to be able to get mad without getting sinful about it. One way I go wrong is by holding onto it. Paul’s teaching applies to that. It’s OK to get mad, just don’t hold onto it. And then there is this: don’t let your anger make you do something that breaks God’s law of love. That’s hard.

Then James tells us something that I believe applies to where Moses went wrong in his anger. James says” “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, for man’s anger doesn’t bring about the righteousness that God desires.” (James 1:19-20) This applies so many ways.

Here’s another word study: righteousness. Righteousness, in Hebrew and in Greek, is about rightness. It’s about being right and doing right. But being right is not about being correct. Being right is about doing and being what you are supposed to be, whatever the circumstances, and making things good, and making things better. I

t’s like the song “Things go better with Coca Cola.” That means that Coca Cola is righteous, within certain limits.

God’s righteousness, in this light, is very clear. God’s righteousness is his faithful love that is devoted to getting his people to freedom and the Promised Land, no matter what.

When God got angry it was part of the process of providing for his people, teaching them, shaping them, building their faith and trust and love for him, and for each other. Even God’s discipline (or his punishment), in anger, is basically devoted to providing for his people and giving them a grace and an abundance of gifts for which they are clearly not ready, and for which they show no desire whatsoever. In all that God does for them, they show no sign of change.

But God is faithful. That is God’s righteousness: just a small part.

God has ways of showing his people that he is always with them. The pillar of cloud and fire was just a small part of that. That was his righteousness too.

God was going to give them water again, even though they forgot that he always made sure they had water when they truly needed it, and even though they could see that God was with them all the time. They acted as though God wasn’t there at all. They acted as though Moses was the one who was leading them through the desert all along.

In spite of this, God was going to give them the water he knew that they needed, anyway. And his reason for doing this was because he is holy and righteous.

God’s plan in having Moses serve as the spokesman for God to the rock was a plan to show his people that God was a God who would always care for them. God would always stick to them, even when he was angry.

God’s people would get their water, even when they didn’t deserve it; even when they turned spiritually ugly in their unfaithfulness to God and to Moses. This would help them understand his holiness and righteousness. It was God’s plan to faithfully teach and shape his people.

Over and over again, we see that, when God gets angry, and when Moses gets angry, Moses consistently prays (in his anger) for the undeserved grace of God to forgive and help his people. I wonder how Moses did this over and over again. It would be so easy for Moses to get his anger wrong. It could have gone wrong so many times. But it didn’t go wrong, until it did. Murphy’s Law proved true.

On a human level, Murphy’s Law is never out of sight. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, in the beginning. We were created for the joy of seeing our love blend with God’s love, and to see our love doing good, and making good, and being good. We were made for this joy, as well as for this love.

Soon after the beginning, in the garden of Eden, the Garden of joy and love, we decided to limit our love’s dependence on God’s love. We decided to make ourselves into our own little gods, with our own independent instinct for good and evil, on our own terms. And, so, Murphy’s Law was born.

God had a defensive design from the start, and so he told Adam and Eve about that design as soon as he got them out of hiding. There would be, sometime in the future, a son of Eve who would grow up to be wounded in the heel by evil, and the serpent Satan. But this child of Eve would crush evil, and the serpent, with his heel. In the ages to come Jesus would be the son of Mary, the long-drawn-out descendant daughter of Eve. (Genesis 3:14-15)

On the cross, Jesus would be bitten with evil’s poison, the poison of the serpent, and sin, and Murphy’s Law. Then Jesus would crush those enemies with his wounds. The wounds of Jesus, the wounds of his death on the cross, were the fatal bite of the serpent that killed Jesus. The wounds of Jesus were also the weapons of his victory over the serpent’s bite.

Jesus was able to stomp that serpent of evil. Jesus rose from the dead as conqueror of the serpent, and as the conqueror of the sin and death that came from the serpent’s rule. Jesus’ prayer, “Father, forgive them,” was like the prayer that Moses was always saying for God’s forgiveness and grace for his guilty people.

Jesus’ prayer got everyone who would become one of his people back on the track to the Promised Land. The cross of Jesus is the very heart of his prayer that changes those who trust him into receivers of God’s holiness and righteousness.

God’s anger at Moses seems ungracious, at first sight. Moses’ unrighteous anger didn’t break one of the Ten Commandments, but it did break Jesus’ law, in the Sermon on the Mount.

In the case of Moses, we see something surprising about the heart of God. We see God get angry about anger. God got angry at the anger of Moses. And there, God, in his heart, looks suddenly, on that point, like Jesus. Jesus got angry, but he also got angry at anger.

Jesus said: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’” (Note: that judgment, here, means death by stoning) “But I tell you that anyone who is angry at his brother will be subject to judgment. Anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca (or worthless empty head!)’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” (Matthew 5:21-22)

It wasn’t only because Moses didn’t mention God when he struck the rock, or that he struck the rock instead of talking to the rock. In essence, Moses, in his anger, forgot the heart of God that he normally knew so well. He and his brother Aaron had just been in the direct and full presence of the Glory of God. They had heard the voice of God. (Numbers 20:6)

In seeing and hearing this, Moses saw the holiness and righteousness of God, which expressed God’s faithfulness and grace for the unworthy. He saw what he always remembered to pray for; until now.

Then he came back and looked at the people who hated him, and who had no faith in the God who had forgiven them countless times before. (Numbers 14:18-19) When Moses came back and looked at these people, his anger returned, and he forgot God’s absolute love.

Moses called God’s people “rebels” which was perfectly true, but God’s intention of showing his forgiveness to his people was a greater truth. Moses failed to give God’s message to God’s people. Moses might just as well have called them “fools”, as Jesus warns us against.

In praying for God’s forgiveness of his people, so many times, Moses had prayed according to what he had seen of the heart of God. In praying according to the heart of God, Moses had been praying according to Jesus.

Jesus is the heart of God’s holiness, and righteousness, and faithfulness. Moses, praying as he did, was, in his own heart, giving his people Jesus. Moses praying for his people’s sins, and for their forgiveness, was praying an equivalent to, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  By forgetting to hold such a prayer in his heart, Moses was withholding Jesus from the people.

Anger can do this. Anger can withhold the love and grace of God, in Jesus, from those who don’t deserve it, and yet they need it. And we are in the same boat. We don’t deserve grace, but we need it. It’s the faithfulness and holiness of God.

There are many times when anger is the right thing, but it will always go wrong if we don’t hold onto the heart of God, in Jesus, when we are angry. We will repeat Murphy’s Law.

Other people are just as much the image of God as we are, and we condemn ourselves when we forget to work for the righteousness and holiness of God in those people’s lives. Anger goes wrong when it stops showing the absolute love of God.

Moses was punished because he let his anger make him forget to pray for his people, even though they played the part of being his enemies. Moses forgot to love them anyway.

Jesus is the voice of God telling us to never forget to love others, even when we are angry. Moses shows us, and Jesus tells us and shows us on the cross, to remember to pray for others and to speak and work so that God’s grace becomes known to them. Let’s not go wrong with this.