Kingdom of the Caregivers (Part Three - Our Relation with God Restored

Preached on Sunday, January 27, 2019

Scripture readings: Romans 5:1-11; Matthew 16:13-28

Wandering around Malakoff Diggins
Near Bridgeport Bridge and North Bloomfield
California, May 5, 2015

The summer when I was eight years old, I went to YMCA Camp (Camp Osceola, near Big Bear, in the mountains of Southern California). YMCA is, or was supposed to be, a Christian organization, and one morning, toward the end of my week at Camp Osceola, a bunch of the younger campers were gathered at the campfire circle and we were given a talk about knowing God, and the greatness and beauty of God and his love. I’ve forgotten most of the talk.

Then we were all blindfolded, and guided by a bunch of the older boys through the forest. This is in a part of those mountains where there are ten-thousand-foot peaks.

Suddenly, bright light shone through our blinders. We knew that we had come out of the forest. The older boys sat us down on the ground, and the talk went on, something more or less like this.

“Every one of your lives is like a walk on a trail through the forest. You might walk on your path as though you were blind and didn’t see any of the beauty or greatness of God’s creation, but you can meet God through his creation. You can know for yourself how great, beyond your understanding, God is: how high, and beautiful, and deep, and lasting his love for you is. If you could know God, you would love him and never forget him. You would never forget how great he is.”

Then we were told to take off our blindfolds. We saw each other sitting on a wide, rocky shelf, on the top of a high cliff and, across the canyon, was one of those mountains that soared far higher than its tree-line, in rocky peaks and crags.

I felt as though my heart skipped a beat and then started racing. I got goose-bumps all over.

We’re not supposed to make images of God to tell us what he is like. Any image we try to make will fall short and confuse us, and distort our way of life more than it could possible help. But I have images of God in my head.

I sometimes think of God as being like a mountain so high that it will take my whole life to get to the top and see the world on the other side. I love mountains.

I don’t think I would ever want to climb one with ropes, and picks, and my own hands. I would rather love the mountains by walking on them. I’ve walked to the top a few mountains between eight and eleven thousand feet in elevation.

One of those was Mount Rose, between Lake Tahoe and Reno. It’s elevation is over ten thousand feet. I lived close enough to take multiple walks up to its summit, and once I took my youth group to the top. Below a certain height there were multiple trails, and you could use these to see more of the beauties of the mountain. You could wander through meadows and different groves of forest on the mountain-side.

If I had lived there long enough, I would have known Mount Rose from its many sides, and angles, and gentle, and sharp, and wide places, and ridges, and ravines, all over its slopes. I loved that mountain.

That’s part of how I think of God. God is a mountain so big, so high, that you can walk all over the Lord and get to know so much about him to love and cherish. I got to know God this way, because, somehow, I met God in a new way one summer morning when I was eight years old.

Sometimes I climb the mountain of God when I contemplate deep things in the Bible. Sometimes I climb when I’m exhausted by worry, or by puzzlement over what to do next. I might climb the mountain of God when I have a voice to sing with. I do it when I walk through this beautiful desert country.

Lately I’ve been using an image of God that my Baci (Babcia, my Polish grandmother), gave me, when she heard that I was planning to go into the ministry. It’s a small white statue of Jesus holding a lamb in his arms. She thought it was going to glow in the dark. She was disappointed when I told her that it didn’t, but that I loved it anyway.

I loved her. Now this Jesus who doesn’t glow in the dark represents a long, long love that I have lived with, or tried to live with, in good times and bad times, in the church, as a caregiver to the spiritual needs of others.

So lately I’ve been holding my Baci’s Jesus and talking to him as I hold him in my hands. For me, these days, it’s a good way to climb the mountain of God. It’s part of how I know “God, through our Lord Jesus Christ”. (Romans 5:1)

In our reading from Romans chapter five, Paul tells us how he knew “God, through our Lord Jesus Christ”. We know who God is because God, in Christ, gave us a free pass into his presence, at great cost to himself.

Paul’s picture of knowing God looked like one of the wonders of the ancient world called The Temple of the Lord, overlooking the city of Jerusalem: The Temple of the Living God.

Paul’s picture of knowing God in the Temple finds the Temple changed. In Jerusalem, only the High Priest had access to the innermost room, the Holy of Holies. God had promised to make his name to live in that room.

In that culture, the word “name” means authority, and the mysterious substance of what you are and what your life means. When the Lord made his name dwell in that innermost place, it meant that you could get to be with him there, if it was allowed.

In the real Temple, the High Priest could only enter that place of the presence once a year, and only if he brought with him the blood of a sacrifice that cleansed him and his people from their sins.

Paul says that his way, and the way that he taught others about knowing God, was like a Temple where anyone could come into the presence of the Lord, any time at all, if they and their sins had been cleansed by the sacrifice and the blood of Jesus. Yes, this is how me meet and know God: “when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son,” (Romans 5:10)

Paul also says: “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (5:5) We don’t know God by taking off our own blindfolds, but by the Father giving us the Holy Spirit to take off our blindfolds.

In Matthew, Peter didn’t know who Jesus was until the Father showed him, and I’m sure there was the silent power of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, to show the true identity of Jesus to his disciple.

This happens to us, as well.

We see Jesus on the cross, crucified to bring us peacefully back home to his home, and to be at home truly in the presence of God. It’s the Holy Spirit who has the power to open our eyes to see the Lord Jesus on that cross, and to know that we are welcomed back to a relationship with God. Faith, peace, grace, glory, perseverance, a maturing character, hope, love, joy and celebration come into our lives through our relationship with God our Father, the Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit.

You don’t find these things anywhere else, although it is amazing how willing the Lord is to give all of this to his enemies. This gift is for his enemies: including us!

Maybe that’s part of the reason Jesus told us to love our enemies. Who knows just how far this grace will spread, in the end?

We were all created for a relationship with God; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It’s our true purpose. It’s what we are designed for: what everyone in the world is designed for. Think what pictures come to you, what smells, what sounds, what flavors, what words help you to know God?

There may be a word, or a sentence, or a story in the Bible that helps you to know God. There had to be some experience that exposed your need for something more, in order to know God: a newborn baby, falling in love and proposing, losing a job, being in debt, making a big mistake, walking in the rain. You found that you had a need, and that need turned out to be God.

Everyone needs this, and God is big enough to meet the needs of every one of his creatures. You understand your own needs well enough to want to give help and care for the needs that others have for God.

In our reading, in Romans, there are the treasures of faith, hope, and love: the greatest gifts of the Holy Spirit. Not everyone will admit their need for these. Not everyone understands or even knows their need for these.

People might have reasons to fear us Christians and the church; or at least dislike what we stand for, to them; although most people are charitable enough that they try to overlook these faults in us.

There will come some time when those we know, or work with, or play with will need a foundation to strengthen them, you don’t even need to call it faith until you get to a certain point, and then you can surprise them by what faith means to you.

There will come a time when the people around you will lose hope. They may feel this as weariness, or grief, or fear. You may have been given some understanding of these things, through your own life, and you know how a relationship with God will teach them hope, as it taught you. You can lead them through this change into hope.

A time will come when someone around you has their need for love exposed. I think it might be easier to talk about love, but not about the painful mistakes of love. People hide from love. They avoid the changes that love will make in their life. On Facebook, my persimmon friend David posted a joke that said: “I told my wife that she should embrace her mistakes . . . Then she smiled and hugged me.”

You have been given some gift for knowing how to care for those in need of love.

Paul’s letter is the letter of a helper, a caregiver, dealing with the spiritual needs of others. Paul was what we need to become. He is someone who has died and risen with Jesus. What we have to share, in the school of Paul and Jesus, is to know a glory that dies to bring us in. We become such people. In our turn, we die in order to rise with the Son of the Living God, and lead others where we have gone with Jesus. Just don’t forget your own need for meeting with Jesus. There’s more you need to know.

Kingdom of the Caregivers (Part Two) - Reading the Heart of Need

Preached on Sunday, January 20, 2019

Scripture readings: 2 Kings 5:1-19; Matthew 9:1-13

Usually, when people ask me how I’m doing, I just say: “Fine! How are you?” Sometimes they’re already gone by then, because “how are you” can be just like saying “Howdy, catch you later!”.

Looking around near Bridgeport Bridge
Near Malakoff Diggins and North Bloomfield
California, May 2015

This winter, this past month, when people ask how I’m doing I tell them how long I’ve had my cold; and I explain how this is not because I’m getting old. It’s because I’ve always had disgustingly long colds. I go on to tell them how my roommates in college would complain about how long my cold had been going on, and how annoying I was, and why didn’t I go to the doctor?

Maybe that’s why it might be more polite, sometimes to just say “fine”?

No, when I ask you how you are, I really want to know. I Want to know how you are!

I wanted to be an astronomer, off and on, when I was a kid. I still have a small telescope that my parents bought for me when I was about ten years old. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve taken it out but I have used it, now and then. I’ve used it since I’ve lived here.

In the summer, I like to put a cot out in my back yard, with a sleeping bag, and just lie there looking up. I like looking at the stars and the planets and guessing which ones they are.

All of you are just like that!

To me, at least.

I mean, I really could just stare, and stare at you and wonder what you are and where you really are, way up there in the heavens above me.

Last Sunday I started a short series of messages in which I want to think and share what it might mean to care for the spiritual needs of others. How can we do that when we are like distant but wonderful stars and planets moving in the circles of the heavens? We’re all so mysterious.

That could be a good way of playing it safe with each other. One of the scary things my mom said to me when I was a child and I had done something wrong was this: “I can read you like a book.” That sure scared me. And school teachers claimed to have eyes in the back of their heads. Grown-ups were strange creatures who could know everything about you without your even saying a word. They know exactly what you will do next, and you can never know what they have in mind about you.

Now that I’ve more or less grown up, I don’t quite buy into that scary part anymore. I know that I can’t read you like a book. Although, I have been held responsible, before, for things that I should have known without having been told.

That’s just not in my grasp. If you tell me something important and expect me to read between the lines in order to “get it”, that will never, never happen. I am incapable of reading between the lines.

It can be a lonely thing, being a star out in the Milky Way, so far from the other stars. How can we help others in their need if we can’t read them? How can we ever hope to have our own inner needs understood and cared for if we are such mysterious creatures to each other?

We could share more. We could talk more, and be more personal.

That would help.

But that can be hard, too. And, then, what if our own hearts seem as far away from us as the stars and the planets of everyone else? What if you are too separated from your own star to know what’s really going on way out there, or way in there?

Today’s readings from the scriptures tell us about how the spiritual needs of people, including our own, can be hidden and disguised, or else How these needs can become visible, and clear, and accessible to our care, and the caring of others. Naaman the Syrian General with his leprousy; the paralyzed guy who was carried by his friends to Jesus; and the tax officer named Matthew, who because the source of our first gospel, all showed their spiritual needs that differed greatly from their apparent needs, or lack of needs.

I mean they all showed their innermost, genuine needs to Jesus. The people in the crowd hardly had a clue.

In the gospel, Jesus gave the young paralytic exactly what he came for, which was healing, but healing was not the first this he needed. The first Jesus gave him something completely different from physical healing. Jesus gave him forgiveness first.

Jesus gave Matthew something that no one else of his own people would ever dream of giving him. Most of his own people wouldn’t have given Matthew the time of day, if he asked for it. (Of course, no one had watches back then, to tell the time by.) Matthew’s real need was for forgiveness, like the paralyzed guy. Or, was it acceptance? Was it a purpose that mattered?

The young paralyzed man and his friends came to Jesus because he clearly needed more help than any human being could possibly give him. No human being could take away his paralysis. His best friends gave him the only thing they had to give by bringing him to Jesus; whatever Jesus might be.

All five young men were people of faith. They had no theologically and Biblically correct idea of who in the world Jesus was. But I think they could have said something like: “This Jesus comes from God. He comes right here to our town and he can take care of absolutely any need that anyone brings to him. Maybe he’s the king Daniel writes about, who goes to heaven on the clouds to sit on the throne with God. Who can know?”

It would be nice if the five of them knew this. But they may not have been that clear. It was only clear that Jesus was wonderful, and that he helped everyone who came to him.

Matthew had no faith. Maybe he once had a faith he had said “no” to. In any case, he had left his faith behind to work for the Roman dogs who had invaded and occupied the land that God had promised to Israel.

There’s no sign that Matthew was aware of any spiritual need at all. He as doing quite well, thank you. Matthew didn’t come to Jesus at all, let alone ask Jesus for anything.

Jesus came to him. Only Jesus saw Matthew’s real need.

Jesus came as a care giver for those in spiritual need. The healings, the miracles, the turning around of people lives, and calling them away from their old way of life (whether fisherman or taxman) was only part of the caregiving purpose of Jesus.

In the twentieth chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us that he has a caregiving job to restore the world to God. The job of caregiver, no matter how big and great, is still always the job of a servant. “Whoever is great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28)

Jesus came to save an enslaved world. We are born with a need to be ransomed from the slavery of the sin of the world.

The Old and New Testaments, from that point of view, both give us servants (except for Elisha’s servant) who know how to help, and (more importantly) servants who know the root of the need.

The servant girl knew where the general could be healed. The general’s servants knew that their “father” (as they call him) needed to stop playing the hero and the great man, if he wanted to be healed. The general, after his tantrum, thoughtfully listened to the wisdom of his daily caregivers.

Because their identity as servants taught them their master’s greatest need, he became a changed man. He became a servant of the God of Israel.

The prophet Elisha had, from the very first, given the general a little task for his deeper healing. Elisha knew how to do this because he was, at heart, a servant. Elisha knowingly gave, for the general’s physical healing, a silly, repetitive, boring task, that could easily humiliate him, and enrage him.

The prophet was a caregiver, too, and was wise, like any servant of Jesus, to read between the lines and see the real need, not the obvious need. Serious caregivers learn how to look deeper, and go deeper, than others can see or do.

Jesus, from the first, gave the young, paralyzed man the forgiveness of his sins.

Two things make us forget that there is a simple purpose in forgiveness and so (if that is true) then Jesus intended to give forgiveness, plain and simple. The Pharisees turn forgiveness into a distraction and a complication.

In his effort to reach out to them, Jesus asks them to use this forgiveness to learn from him more willingly. Jesus tells them that now they know what his authority is, but that’s not why he started with forgiveness in the first place.

First, I want to explain something about authority in the Bible. There are a couple words for authority and power in the New Testament language. This one is “exousia” which cannot be passed on to anyone, although it may be shared. Exousia, in this way means “substance”. It has to be part of what you’re made of. There is a substance to being a spouse or a parent that really can’t be given to you. It must be ingrained in you, in these cases, over time, and they are never finished forming.

Ok, when it’s not part of who you are by birth, it must be learned, and you never stop needing to learn learning.

The authority of forgiveness in Jesus is a very part of him. In the animal kingdom, some animals (like wolves and dogs, maybe with the exception of poodles) are essentially, substantially predators. It’s their inborn authority to be predators.

Jesus is a forgiver. It’s as essential to the nature of Jesus as the authority of love. Because God is love. Jesus shares the nature and authority of God.

It may sound as though Jesus gives us the authority to go out into the world, but it is actually, always his authority, and not our own. Jesus’ authority is not a matter like saying that “the buck stops here”. It means that when we do what we are authorized to do, we are not doing it on our own.

Jesus is doing our task with us, and through us. Every act of our authority is a partnership, and a communion with Jesus. Jesus is being the caregiver through us.

The wisdom of the Caregiving God is working through us, helping us to see what others don’t see. The wisdom of the Caregiving God, in Jesus, is helping us to go and to do what others don’t know how to go and do.

The young, paralyzed guy needed forgiveness more than anything else. This much is the same with all of us. We all need forgiveness more than anything else.

But there was something that only Jesus could see. It wasn’t that sin or shame caused the paralysis. Forgiveness was simply the greatest need in this one person’s life. In some way his life was marked by failure that made him ashamed. It overshadowed him in a way that may not be common to most of us.

Without the wisdom of the Caregiving God, in Jesus, we might miss the need in others for simple, unconditional grace and forgiveness. We are called to be servants who serve with caregiving wisdom to forgive others with the love and grace of God.

Matthew’s greatest need was to be a servant of the Kingdom of God and not of the Empire of Caesar. Matthew needed to be the traitor and thief among the first disciples called by the grace of the Lord.

Matthew needed this, because we all need a traitor and thief to be loved, and close, and a chosen servant of Jesus. It’s by Jesus caring for the need that he saw in Matthew that we know that Jesus can call us away from being thieves and traitors; and not be like Judas.

Not everyone can come, and love, and serve Jesus as an honest man or woman. We, in order to be true servants of Jesus, need to know this. We, ourselves, need a life changing call. There are people around us who need a life changing call and purpose in life. There are people whose greatest needs may be acceptance and purpose.

We might only see those who don’t deserve such a call or invitation, but the wisdom of the Caregiver God, in Jesus, will tell us otherwise. Our own hearts will be changed by that wisdom to change the lives of the spiritually failed and loveless into the inspired and beloved of Jesus.

Naaman must have had a real spiritual need lodged underneath his outstanding competence and his ability to be recognized for always coming to save the day. The caregiver Elisha healed Naaman not only by having him wash in Israel’s river, but made him, from that time on, an undercover Israelite behind enemy lines. When Naaman led the king of Syria into the royal temples, he was really worshiping the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus Christ, to come.

There are people who have the spiritual need to live with family and friends as if he or she is an undercover agent behind enemy lines. They may live in a world empty of the people of Jesus to love and understand them. We see their real need. We are ready to be there for them, to help them.

What benefits came to those whose deeper needs were met? Did they go on to live happy, fulfilled, successful lives?

Naaman had to live the rest of his life knowing that so much of what he did was fulfilling his duty to the wrong side. He had his troops, his treasures won in war, his palace and his servants who called him “father”, but he lived the rest of his life knowing that the world should not be the way it is. He lived knowing that he was of very little use where he was, and he would watch everything go on to the breaking of his heart. Naaman went on to become sad, but wise.

The forgiven and healed young man may have gone on to live the rest of his life as a normal, ordinary, independent human being. What a great gift that would be, don’t you think?

Malakoff Diggins, old hydraulic mine
Looking across that big hole in the round

If he and his family went on in living faithful to Jesus after the Cross, and the Resurrection, and Pentecost, he would have been a perfectly normal human being who would have to keep his priorities clear and hold onto Jesus, no matter how the persecuting world was moving around him, and maybe against him. He would be persecuted, but useful to his brothers and sisters in Christ, and possibly happy in spite of the fear, or persecution.

In the rest of his life, following Jesus, Matthew traveled with the good news of Jesus to a whole lot of places (Persia/Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and especially south of Egypt) South of Egypt is said to be where he was a very successful witness for Jesus. He was so successful that he was killed there (burned alive) for his success. We just don’t know much about Matthew and how he ended.

There are other spiritual needs hidden in the stars of the souls around us. Caregiver Jesus, calls us to be caregivers with him to these and many, many others.

We can’t merely say, “How are you,” and know what to do. We don’t know where our caregiving will take those we help or where the help we receive will take us, in life. But we can learn what servants learn when we start serving the Servant-Lord Jesus.

Things Invisible - Don't Go to Hell

Preached on Sunday, April 29, 2018

Scripture readings: Isaiah 57:14-21; Revelation 20:11-15; Matthew 25:31-46

Walking near the Columbia River, Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
March 2018

What is God like?

Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) So, what is God like?

Sometimes we read that God is like a hand.”

David said this to God, “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.” (Psalm 63:8)

Hebrews says this about God, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31)

What does it mean that God is like a hand?

Sometimes we read that God is like fire.

When the prophet Isaiah received his calling to become a prophet, he had a vision of God enthroned in glory surrounded by flaming angelic creatures called Seraphim.

The name seraph means burning one. They are all fire, and wings, and eyes.

Isaiah was in agony with the fear of his own sinfulness, so God sent a burning seraph to do something important with fire. “One of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth, and said, ‘See, thIs has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. “(Isaiah 6:6-7)

After the resurrection of Jesus and his departure to heaven, the disciples were waiting for Jesus to send the Holy Spirit, and this is how it happened: “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit….” (Acts 2:2-4)

So, the Holy Spirit of God and Jesus is like fire. The Holy Spirit enables us to follow, and serve, and be the witnesses of Jesus. The Holy Spirit enables us, as the followers of Jesus, to demonstrate the love shown by Jesus on the cross to take our sins away. So, this is like fire. Those who follow Jesus are filled with something like fire.

In Hebrews, again, the author wants us to be hopeful and excited in our faith, and so he says: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28) Security in the love of God and his kingdom is like fire.

So, what do we think that God is like, when we are told that God is like fire?

What do we think that God is like when Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) What do we think when the apostle John writes that: “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

We can see the connection between Jesus and love. Then we hear Jesus say: “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41)

If God is like Jesus, what is God like? If God is like fire, and if God is like Jesus, and if punishment is like fire, then what is God like, and what is Jesus like?

I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. I believe that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Bible always says exactly what God wants it to say, exactly the way God wants it said. And the same Holy Spirit inspires the hearts and minds of those who read the Bible to receive exactly what God wants to tell them, so long as they are ready to hear whatever God wants to tell them, exactly the way God wants to tell them.

I don’t believe there are any contradictions in the Bible. I do believe that it is perfectly possible to understand the Bible and to make sense of it. I don’t believe that anything about the history of the words of the Bible and how it may have been written and passed down to us take anything away from its divine authority.

Jesus, the Living Word, is truly human and truly God, and so he is able to give us everything we need as human children of God. In the same way, the Written Word of God, in the Bible, is truly human and truly divine, and, (because of this) it is able to give us exactly what we need.

There have been many people who have spoken and written about the geography of Hell, and the temperature of Hell. There seem to be many Christians who are perfectly happy to believe that there is a Hell and that some people are going there. There are Christians who have a very clear idea of exactly who is going to Hell, and they can hardly wait for that to happen.

I want to say something about the mentality of Hell and, at the same time, I also want to tell you: “Don’t go there!”

It’s clear that Hell has something to do with punishment. But I don’t know if we even understand punishment that well.

I don’t. But perhaps you understand it on the basis of your experience as a parent, or as a spouse, in family and marriage.

In my experience as a kid, I think kids talk with each other and make plenty of comparisons about how they are being raised. The 1950’s were the years of the final flowering of the spanking. My friends and I were amazed when one of us shared that when he did something wrong, his dad would get out a heavy leather belt, and pull down his kid’s pants and underwear, and whip him on his bare bottom.

We knew that some of our own parents had been raised like that. We were genuinely glad that this was a thing of the past.

Let me tell you about the punishment my dad gave me. My dad, when I did something that I knew I shouldn’t do, would get mad. But my dad wouldn’t scream, or yell, or raise his voice. He didn’t use bad words. My dad spanked me. He spanked me so that it stung, and I would cry.

But by the time I was about eight years old, I realized that although his spanking stung a little, it didn’t really hurt at all. I suddenly realized this right in the middle of getting a spanking.

I realized that it didn’t hurt. This almost made me laugh, right in the middle of that spanking. I tried not to laugh, but I think I snorted and gave myself away. That scared me for a second, because I wondered, in that second, if it would make him madder.

I remember, at that very moment, how my dad immediately stopped the spanking. He never spanked me again. After that, when I did something that I knew I shouldn’t do, my dad wouldn’t scream. He wouldn’t yell. He wouldn’t raise his voice. He wouldn’t use bad words. My dad would simply look me in the eyes with anger and with a terrible, terrible disappointment.

His eyes, that were normally brown, would turn green for a minute. And I couldn’t stand that.

I mean, I wished that he would spank me. In those days I would have rather been spanked so that it hurt, at least a little. I would rather have had a spanking, than see that look in those eyes. I think my behavior improved a lot when the only punishment I got was that look in those eyes like an angry, sad, green fire.

With human beings, I don’t think that plain and simple punishment does any good. OK, punishment may stop bad behavior. But punishment will also open up a whole new world of trying to get away with things without getting caught.

With my dad, that look in those eyes left me helpless and I had no motivation to try to get away with things without getting caught. There were more things in that green fire than anger, there was disappointment, there was expectation, and there was love.

Punishment alone, plain and simple, never touches the heart, and never makes you better. Good parents know that punishment, plain and simple, is never their job.

Their job is to give their children everything in their heart. Their job is to bring children to life, and give their children more and more life, and give their children the capacity to receive more life from God, and from the love and faithfulness of others.

The parents’ job is to teach their children to use the lessons of the love they’ve received to become givers of life and love to others, in their own right. Parents want their children to be givers of life, especially to those who need it most: to give that life and love most of all to those who need spanking, because they may have children of their own.

The Lord says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” But this is not about punishment, plain and simple. God is not about punishment and reward.

God is about creating life. God is about giving to his created children the capacity to thrive in a life that is learned from God and gifted by God. God is about creating and raising children of his own.

In the Bible, fire has strong associations with the holiness of God. Fire often appears when holiness is broken and when punishment becomes the order of the day.

We think of holiness as a standard of perfection, and we think of perfection as never making mistakes, and never breaking rules or laws. Holiness is actually an ability to be devoted to a purpose, to have a goal in view and never letting go of it. Holiness means the capacity to focus on your goal and not deviate from it, ever.

God’s goal is not law keeping. God’s goal is life and love. God’s goal is thriving, and joy, and appreciation, and thankfulness, and praise. God’s goal is to say to every one of us, as creatures who have spread the beauty of goodness: “Well done good and faithful servant.”

Holiness is only one characteristic of God that we call an “attribute”. What we might call God’s moral attributes include holiness, justice, and love, and a number of other very fine qualities.

If we say that punishment is part of God’s attribute of holiness, we are right. But God is never just one thing at a time. God’s holiness never exists in the absence of God’s justice and love.

Imagine that you have, in spades, the attribute of intelligence. You would never want that attribute of intelligence to function without the attribute of wisdom, or else you would end up being too smart for your own good.

It’s no good to go around being less than you are. You want to be ready to be everything that you are all the time.

And if you have the attribute of being right all the time, or at least being right more often that other people, do you realize how much harm you can do, and how hard you will make life for others and for yourself. Never let your attribute of being right elbow your attribute of love out of the way. Some people do that. But, you never want to be less than all that you are.

Back to parenthood, and marriage too: you never want to reduce yourself in what you have to give. You never give enough unless you are ready to give everything.

So, when your child goes wrong, becoming The Avenger won’t do any lasting good unless your child can see your hopes, and dreams, and love in your eyes. Even if your husband or wife messes up, never get mad unless your partner can see your hopes, and dreams, and love in your eyes and in your voice.

Justice is an attribute that goes beyond rewarding and punishing. Justice creates a system where goodness is enjoyed, and flourishes, and where badness fails, and breaks the heart of even the guilty.

And love,” Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8) And God is love.

And God is a consuming fire. And Hell is an eternal fire. In the Bible, fire is, first and foremost, an image and expression of God. Fire is the expression of who God is and what God is like.

I always loved fire. When I was a kid I loved to build fires. It became my family job. We had a fireplace, and I built the fires. When we camped, I built the fire. When we barbequed, I built the fire. When there was trash to burn I loved to build the fire.

I grew up with incinerators in the back yard and burn piles on the farms. Fires were never about punishment. Except that it feels like you’re being punished, when you’re the one who has to build and manage that fire in the summertime, in the Sacramento Valley, when the temperature is 100 degrees. Fire is light, and warmth, and food, and heating water for washing. It’s for cleaning up the yard or the field. If fire were punishment, it would only be the saddest use of a beautiful thing.

Even Jesus says, in his parable of the sheep and the goats, that the fire of Hell wasn’t made for us. It was made for the Devil and his angels; not for human beings. (Matthew 25:41) It was made for cleaning up the creation of God.

God hates us trying to turn him into something less than everything he is. That’s why the Ten Commandments forbid us from making any image of God. No image can show all that God is. So, when the first and foremost expression of who God is, and what God is like, makes God look like Hell, we can trust that this can never be true.

Something else is true. All of the attributes of God are always present. Everything that is true of God is always at work, all the time. Where we see the fire of punishment in the Bible, there is much more at work than punishment. There is holiness that holds to the devotion of its purpose to make us the thriving children of God. There is justice, that creates a system where what is good grows stronger, and more and more joyful and thankful. There is love, which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and never, never ends.

There was a time, many years ago, when I was betrayed. People who knew more than I did told me later that they should have warned me. It damaged me for a long time. But, soon after that betrayal closed in on me, I preached a sermon about absolute forgiveness. At the end of that service, I was told by one of the ambushers, that my sermon about absolute forgiveness was the most negative messages they had ever heard. That same morning, I went to shake the hand of another one of them and, as I reached out my hand, their face got dark and grim and they pulled their hands behind them and backed away from me. I was not being what they wanted me to be at the time.

Forgiveness and grace can be an enormous punishment and pain for those who refuse it. Love can become darkness and fire for those who want to make themselves less, in their attributes, than God created them to be, when they don’t want to combine the fires of holiness, justice, and love.

In the story of the sheep and the goats, neither the sheep nor the goats were aware of doing anything for Jesus. They had only seen the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger (which means alien, like the Samaritan who was an outsider and an enemy of God’s people), the naked, the sick, and the prisoner. These were among the types of people that the God who looks like Jesus tells us to care for. He cares.

The sheep were people who went where Jesus would go in order to love those whom Jesus would love with all the attributes of God. The sheep were the people who shared the attributes of Jesus. They would refuse to be anything less. In a real sense, they had no idea what they were doing, but they did it anyway.

The goats never went near the people with whom Jesus identified. They were content and they led perfectly happy lives being less than what God created them to be. They were never anywhere near where Jesus would be, and so they never really did anything for Jesus.

The sheep must have often found themselves in places where they were very uncomfortable, and yet they were on the road to heaven. The goats led their comfortable lives and never even started up that road. The life of the goats turned out to be all about themselves. Their souls shrank as their holiness, justice and love shrank. In the end, they were held forever in the arms of what they had refused to be. The unwanted fire of love will never end.

If a child is pouting or having a tantrum, the thing they hate most is to see you moving in toward them to love them, smile into their faces, and tickle them. This is the way to make them really howl. Love can be Hell. If you love someone who wants to be less than they were created to be, or love someone who is happy to be less than they were created to be, and if you try to love them into being something more: know that you will make them miserable.

But don’t stop. You want to be careful about this. Never let anything or anyone make you consent to be less than you were created to be. Never dream of being any less than Jesus. To choose to be les is the mentality of hell. Don’t go there!

In the beginning of the Book of Revelation, when John first sees Jesus, among the many details he notices is something about those eyes. The eyes of Jesus look like fire. For those who know Jesus, a different form of fire tells us who God is. This world, and the best institutions and laws, and all the people in it, punished Jesus for being all that he is. The punishing fire took the form of a cross, and nails, and a crown of thorns, and the wounds of a whip, and a spear in his heart.

There was much more hanging on the hell of that cross than punishment. The fire of God burned there. The fire of holiness, and justice, and love burned there and took the punishment and the curse of our sins. As our hearts give way to that flame, we die and rise with Jesus. The light in Jesus’ eyes becomes his power and fire in us to break our hearts for change and a new life. Let’s live in that fire forever.

Passionate Jesus - A Life of Seeds and Storms

Preached on Sunday, March 4, 2018; Third Sunday in Lent

Scripture readings: Psalm 65; Mark 4:26-41

Various Photos from Desert Aire, WA and Washtucna, WA

In an old story about gardens, there’s a little girl who begged, and begged, and begged her parents to let her plant a garden all her own. She jumped for joy when they finally said, yes.

So, she borrowed some of their seeds. She also borrowed their tools and one of their bedsheets. She did her seeding, and she built an awning with the sheet draped over sticks to protect her seeds from the sun.

After that, she did as much as she could to get those seeds to sprout. She didn’t want them to dry out, so she poured water on them when she got up in the morning and before she went to bed.

She waited, and waited, and waited. Her parents garden was sprouting and growing, while not a single shoot appeared in her own garden.

The girl got so excited that she couldn’t help herself anymore. She used her own fingers to gently dig the soil in the lines she had marked, where she had planted those seeds, to see if they were beginning to sprout. And they were! Except that they stopped growing after she dug them up.

The story of the child reminds me of Jesus’ story of the farmer who goes out to inspect his fields night and day, waiting for the seed to sprout and grow.

You’ve got to understand that Jesus’ parables, or stories, often have crazy people in them and there’s no other way to understand them. Sometimes we can’t understand ourselves unless we compare ourselves to crazy people. Sometimes we can’t understand what God wants unless we compare what God wants with a lot of things that we would never do because they sound crazy to us.

The farmer is as crazy as a little kid, most farmers grow out of this, somewhat, although you really may have to be a bit crazy to be a farmer. I don’t think it would be much fun any other way. Hunters and fishermen and maybe golfers are just the same.

But farmers, and golfers, and little kids need to learn how to be patient. If you plant an orchard you have to wait for years (well, just a few years) before you see enough fruit to go out and bring it in. If you go for winter wheat, you seed as soon as you can after harvest, which happens in Eastern Washington around late July and into August.

If there’s enough moisture in the soil, you plant winter wheat in September or October. Then you wait eight or nine months (or more) until your next harvest is ready.

During those months, anything can happen. I wonder if the nervous farmer gets up in the middle of the night to look around because he’s wondering how that seed is going to grow with all the stuff that can possibly go wrong? That’s what I would do.

I know farmers who can look at the bare ground of their field and guess pretty well what’s going on underground. They can look up at the sky and read the wind, and any sign of clouds, and know if it means something good, or trouble.

The child and the farmer were crazy with impatience; but, if they acquired just enough patience to be only slightly crazy, then you would be able to see what their impatience was hiding.

The little bit of craziness that remained would show up as eagerness. You wouldn’t get up at all hours any more, but you would feel the eagerness that comes from love and from faith. As a farmer, you love your connection to the earth. A sane farmer has enough faith to trust that, whatever may go wrong, it will all work out.

The seed in chapter four of Mark is not a simple thing. The seed is too much even for Jesus, in the sense that it’s too exciting. Jesus knows that his seed can do so much. It can make such a difference. It’s so exciting that Jesus is not afraid to plant his seed over the world from the elevation of the cross.

In the first big seeding and harvesting parable (one that we didn’t read) the seed means the word of God or the message of the gospel (the good news of God). Then Jesus changed his mind, and the seed became the people who lived on the farm road, and the people in the rocks and the weeds.

With the mustard plants, Jesus changed his mind again, and called the seed the Kingdom of God, which means God’s positive power turning the world around until it moves with the will and love of God. The kingdom of God means that the love of God will be in charge, in order to change the whole world, and all the people in it, into a life full of love, and joy, and glory. Jesus has the crazy eagerness of a little child, a happy golfer, and a grateful farmer.

If our farmer is obsessed with worry and anxiety, it’s because he hasn’t learned to trust his good seed. He hasn’t learned to trust the soil beneath his feet, or to trust the sky above him.

If we don’t live our lives and plant our good seeds in faith, then we will live like the crazy, worried farmer. We need to trust God’s seed, whether it’s the word and message of God’s plan, or whether it’s the good news of Jesus carrying out that plan. We need to trust God’s good seed even if that seed may be everyone we know, and everyone we meet, wherever they are; in the good soil, in the rocks, in the weeds, or on the farm road.

The farmer in the big parable that we haven’t read is God. We are God’s field, God’s farm, and we are the workers in it at the same time. By this you can tell that the parables of Jesus are very wild, and moving all over the map.

Yes, even Farmer God is a little crazy. He’s too extravagant. He’s actually careless and wasteful in his love and grace. He’s crazy because he wastes his seed. To any good farmer this looks just about a crazy as a farmer can get. A good farmer never wastes seed.

If he lets his kids play in the wheat in the back of the wheat truck at harvest, the good farmer reminds them to empty their shoes, and empty their pockets and their pants cuffs back into the truck bed before they climb out of it, because there will always be some wheat caught in their shoes and all that, and wheat is real gold for the farmer. You’ll never have a harvest unless you scatter your seed on the soil, but you never, never, never waste your seed. Farmer kids learn that early.

But Farmer God is crazy graceful in a wasteful way. He pours out the good seed on everyone, wherever they happen to have fallen, on the road, on the rocks, or on the weeds. So, God’s people need to do the same. They need to prove that they share God’s heart, the way God does when he scatters the good seed on everyone, everywhere.

That’s why Jesus has to live in our hearts. Without a heart that’s crazy graceful to others, we won’t really look like him at all. The resemblance will only be a good makeover that’s less than skin deep: thin enough to see through.

You spread God’s seed by what you say and do. You spread God’s seed by living the message of the good news of Jesus. Your life embodies the kingdom of God that governs you with so much harmony: all this means trusting the precious seed of God as you plant it.

Trust means treasuring that good seed so much that you never hoard it. Faith means to spend that seed; to invest that precious seed for an even more precious harvest.

I have driven a wheat truck at harvest time, and parked with all the combines and trucks together in the last piece of the last field, when all the farm has been cut, and all the wheat has been gathered into the bins and elevators.

It feels so good to stand there with the rest of the harvest crew. It’s like heaven. I’m sure it’s a foretaste of heaven. It’s precious. It’s golden. We’ve won.

The parables of Jesus invite us to live our lives with him in a world like that. We trust the seed of God’s message and love. We even call that seed our own. We trust God’s crazy grace. We pour God’s seed out on everyone, because Farmer God does it.

We can trust the kingdom which is God’s good skills, and God’s good methods, and the power of love to rule us all, and to rule us well. The farm itself is the kingdom of God. In the old days, the farmhands were like family and they found a good life for themselves in the kingdom of the farm.

The parables are Jesus’ way of telling us this. They are also a lesson that we can never learn what it means until we take the time to sit close to Jesus and let him explain it to us, over and over again.

Seeing and hearing are not enough. We come to Jesus to perceive, to understand, to turn around, and find ourselves forgiven. Forgiveness is how the harvest grows.

The parables of Jesus tell us that understanding doesn’t come easily. And that even a farmer might know less about his own business than he realizes.

The worried farmer is right, in his own way. The story of the storm teaches us why the message of the gospel, and the crazy graciousness of our sharing, and the Kingdom of God, itself, need to be learned.

The worried farmer was right that anything could go wrong. There could be drought, or rain, or hail at harvest, just as a beautiful lake can sink a boat.

Except for the fishermen, the people of Israel, usually avoided being on the water. In their mind, bad things happened on the water. The worst of it was that, unlike being on the land, if something went wrong on the water, there was no place for you to turn and run.

They had legends of sea monsters. One kind of monster was called Leviathan, and it loved to play, but its play was evil. Leviathans at play raised the winds and the waves.

No one could control it or tame it but God himself. In fact, the stories of God taming Leviathan became the picture of God’s power to beat and defeat evil: the picture of God taming the waters and the oceans where the monsters lived. God possessed the power to do this because God, alone, is the creator, the Lord of heaven, earth, and sea, and storm.

Moses and Joshua made a path through the Red Sea and the Jordan River, but it wasn’t really them. It was God. Elijah was another one who stopped the Jordan but it wasn’t him either. It was God. Only God could command and subdue the seas and the rivers. No other human could ever hope to do it.

Then Jesus, who was not afraid to sleep in a sinking boat, calmed the wind and the waves of Galilee. Jesus did the job without using a tool like a holy staff or a mantel. Jesus did the job with his word; just as God the Father created the heavens and the earth, and tamed the monsters of the sea, with his word.

Jesus does what God does with a word. Jesus tames the storms of the sea, and the monsters within, with a word. Jesus tames our own storms, and the monsters within us. Paul wrote this: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Corinthians 5:19) Jesus and his Father do the same thing. They share the same work. They work the same way.

Sitting and listening to Jesus tell parables or stories, and explain them, was so nice, so easy. They could go on like that forever.

Following Jesus showed his disciples (his friends) that living with Jesus included stories and storms, seeds and storms. Galilee wore a monster’s face in that storm; like old stories coming true.

The truth is that, wherever Jesus went, and wherever they went with him, they seemed to meet up with enemies, and danger, and evil. Jesus would go into a town, and the demons would drag their victims up to Jesus and make it look like Jesus was really being praised by the devil, as if he was serving the devil’s side of things.

The rabbis accused Jesus of this at least once. The devils were putting on a show in order to put Jesus in danger of being killed as a wizard. The disciples could be judged guilty by association.

After the resurrection, and after Jesus returned to heaven, the joyful disciples soon found that their lives still consisted of seeds and storms.

There is a battle: a spiritual battle. Churches and Christians, especially if they are faithful, will meet with storms: and sometimes those storms will be evil in disguise.

This comes not only from the outside. It comes from the inside too: inside a church, or a fellowship, or inside each one of us. It happened to the disciples with Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples.

This is hard. It’s not enough to go by what you see and hear alone. You have to go deeper. You have to want to perceive and to understand, to turn and bring God’s power of forgiveness, which is the power of the cross. That is still how the kingdom grows. Even that might take some understanding.

If we have faith in God’s seeds, we must have faith that these seeds also work in the storms. We speak God’s word to our storms, the situations and the people.

We speak God’s word by living the life of Jesus in this world. We continue to live with crazy, extravagant grace and not withdraw. We let God the King give us our marching orders, because we are nothing if we are not a colony of his kingdom. We let God rule us more and more. That is another way to trust the good seed.

One thing about seed is that it looks nothing like the harvest. One thing that seed does have is that the harvest is present, hidden inside the seed. Every healthy seed has a tiny plant inside it, waiting to grow and bear fruit.

What we say and do for Christ may not look very much like Jesus himself, but we are the seed with Jesus in us waiting to sprout, and grow, and bear more seed. And God is the plant inside of Jesus, the seed inside of us, waiting to sprout, and grow and bear more seed. The harvest is really more of God, in Christ, in us. Someday everyone will know this.

Jesus is the seed: a baby in a manger, a carpenter turned teacher, a convict dying on a cross, a dead man rising with more life than he ever showed before his death: this is the seed. Even this doesn’t look like a new heaven and a new earth. This cross and empty grave don’t look like a multitude, from all nations and races and languages, that no one can count. The cross and the grave don’t look like a whole world of people who are also risen and new inside and out. The seed of the cross and the empty grave don’t look like all of this, but it has all of this in it, waiting to sprout and grow.

We have all of this in us: in ourselves, because we have Jesus in us. The life of seeds and storms is the life of Jesus, and we can trust this. We can be eager as kids, and golfers, and farmers. We can live crazy, gracious lives. We can live peaceful lives of seed-time and storm-time. We are made for both. We are save for both. And, someday, the harvest and the end of all storms will be ours.