Lord, Who Am I in You? – Equipped and Under Orders

Preached on Sunday, May 5, 2019

Scripture readings: Genesis 1:26-31; Matthew 28:16-20

There’s a friend of mine who has told me that he became a Christian when he held his first baby child in his arms. He knew, in his heart that he, as he was, was not the man to raise this child. He needed to become a new man. So, my friend gave his life to Christ, so that he could be a wise, loving, faithful father.

Walking near Crab Creek, north of Desert Aire-Mattawa, WA
Late April, 2019

The truth is that my friend was raised in a Christian home and seemed to belong to Christ already. But, his baby daughter became the witness commissioned by Jesus to go to the nation of Washtucna and make a disciple out of her new father, teaching him to observe all the Jesus had commanded her.

Paul writes: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17 RSV) My friend became a new man for a new world: the new world of fatherhood. By the way, my friend’s wife was always a saint. She must have seen his future when she said, “I do.”

My friend saw his old world passing away. In the bigger sense our whole world is passing away, ever since Jesus died and rose from the dead. (1 John 2:17) A new world has begun because of Jesus.

To us, this world still looks like a dying world. We will only see that new world of Jesus when he comes again. We live in a new creation and we, who are in Christ, are a new creation, even though we don’t look anything like new.

We are called by the Lord to live as his new images in this new creation. We know there must be different rules and a different calling than we had in the old creation, when we were trying to make ourselves in our own image, in those bad, old days in that bad, old world that was turned away from God.

God gave my friend a new calling, with his new heart, in the new world called fatherhood. This new calling was what we might call a covenant; a fancy Bible word for a holy promise bringing and holding God and human beings together.

The last few lines of the Gospel of Matthew are such a covenant, such a holy promise, that brings us and holds us together. Through this promise, we have a relationship of grace and empowerment with the Lord Jesus.

Jesus begins his new promise like this: “Behold, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” And Jesus completes his new promise like this: “And, lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

Jesus places himself at the beginning and at the completion of the promise to show that he is the one who holds it all together, for us, from the beginning to the end. The grace and the empowerment promised to us by Jesus is very clear, here.

What Christians commonly call “The Great Commission” is our calling and mission in the world that has been claimed by the authority of Jesus. Jesus came into our old, broken, rebel world from the throne that he shared with his Father in heaven. He dispensed with his heavenly authority for a while: while he was growing up, and working, and journeying toward the cross and the tomb. Jesus became truly human for us, in order to claim us from the inside out.

The classic way for an explorer to claim a new land for your own nation is never by gazing at its shoreline through binoculars and saying some magic, claiming spell. You have to set your own foot inside the new land and raise your nation’s banner.

Jesus set his feet inside the broken world of the human race, in flesh and blood, as though he was making himself a citizen of the place. Then Jesus raised the banner of the cross and claimed us for his kingdom.

Jesus built the only kind of human life in which we can follow in his footsteps. He built this new shape of human life for us when he was baptized for our repentance, and received the Holy Spirit, just as we all must baptized for repentance and receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus opened the door into what we must all receive, in order that we may be washed clean in our hearts, and be moved, and enabled, and directed by the Holy Spirit in our own lives. So, Jesus moved in first, into the new world of repentance, and baptism, and receiving the Holy Spirit. Jesus claimed authority over our transition from our old life into our new life.

He did this before us, and he did it for us, so that we don’t take those alone. Our repentance, our baptism, and our life in the Holy Spirit are just as good as his, because he walks with us through it.

Jesus pushed his authority further when he made his way to the center of our hearts and took our sin and rebellion upon himself, on the cross, and made our lives stronger than sin and stronger than death in the resurrection.

Jesus reclaimed human dominion in this world when he reclaimed us in birth, in life, in death, and in resurrection; and defeated the powers of Hell and the Devil. In Jesus, there is no longer any place for us to go where he hasn’t been already. He is with us always, in so many ways, until all the ages and all the places of creation are brought together for the new heaven and earth.

Now that he has created and claimed the new earth and our new life, Jesus has sent us on a mission a bit like the mission of Adam and Eve in the old creation. They were commissioned to “dress and keep the earth”; or to “work it and take care of it”. (Genesis 2:15 KJV and NIV) This was the dominion of Adam and Eve. It was their rulership over the earth: to work on the earth and take care of it, to be servants and guardians of it.

The Great Commission of Jesus for us doesn’t take the First Commission away. Instead, Jesus adds the mission of partnering with him to care for and protect the new human world by bringing our living witness to Jesus wherever we go, into all the nations, or just into our own nation.

We are to go to all nations. If we don’t go to all the nations, then we go to all the people around us.

We take part in the Lord’s work of recreating everyone who will listen, and be moved, and follow. Everyone is beloved by the Lord, and the Lord’s greatest joy is for them to become new creations where the old has passed away.

This is where being in the image of God comes in. The image of God is not having a face, and hands, and feet, and internal organs. The image of God is not some spirit, soul, mind, and body thing. God’s image isn’t even a matter of being a person of self-awareness and purpose, although that comes a lot closer. God’s image is intimate relationship. God’s image is intimate, faithful love.

The idea of a mirror comes into this, in the Bible: “seeing in a mirror dimly, and then face to face (2 Cor. 3:18)” or looking into “the law as into a mirror (James 1:23.” Human sin interrupted the faith that comes from looking into the Lord. Human sin interrupted our ability to look at any time and see all that God is; and caring for all that God cares about. In Jesus, God has stopped and untangled this interruption.

Because of this, you can pay good attention (quality attention) to everything that matters most to God in your life and, yet, center your attention on God at the same time. You can play with your kids. You can pay your bills. You can work at your job, and your art, and your garden. You can work on your check book or online banking site. And you can look into the presence of God at the same time.

You can write a book or read a book. You can watch television and hear the news. And you can look into the presence of God at the same time.

That’s what being the image of God is about. Then, whatever you are thinking, whatever you are saying, whatever you are doing is what God would do if God were you. Then people will look at you and see God: see Jesus, see God in Jesus Christ, in you. They may not know it. But they may crucify you for it just as easily as they may praise you for it.

That will be one of the ways you can measure your competence, your abilities, your success. For better or for worse you will play and fit the role of Jesus. You will spread the new creation for the new world; the new heaven and earth that are coming.

Making disciples means bringing people into the image-changing and image-making that comes from this intimate relationship. You learn from Jesus by listening and watching. You learn from Jesus by following, which means going where he wants to go: not to the righteous but to sinners. You will be the good physician. You will be the good nurse to those around you.

To baptize them means to give them a good, Christ centered death and resurrection in Jesus. They will die to themselves and live in Christ.

Teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded you means bringing them all back to your own calling. Wherever Christ has found them, that is the starting line of their part of the race in the image-of-God relay.

They will love taking care of and protecting the least of the people around them. They will love bringing others into the life that makes us the image of God by intimacy: looking and listening and following the presence and purpose of God. You teach others to observe all that the Lord has commanded you by sharing your life’s work and your life’s discoveries and your greatest loves with them.

Then the whole business spins around, and around, and around. It goes from generation to generation, family to family, country to country. It’s like a country folk dance, or a square dance, passing under the over-arching arms of the ones who are smiling at you through the lands and the ages of the kingdom of God.

There was a man whose name I can’t remember, and whom I have never met, but Christians in my home town used to talk about him. He came to my home town, from South Korea to America, because God called him to be a missionary to us.

The Americans had brought their faith to his country. Now the Lord called him to bring his faith to ours.

He was smart but, most of all he was humble and childlike. He was in a new world, for him, and other Christians helped him as they could. By helping him, they learned to grow in their own faith through him. Non-believing Americans understood the good news of Jesus better for having known him.

I don’t remember what became of him. It’s only one example of how The Great Commission works. It’s how the sacrifice and the resurrection of God in Christ creates the new creation around us, as we live face to face with the presence of Jesus.

Jesus holds us together, through the strength of his promises, for as long as the ages and worlds gather together in his kingdom. Jesus is with us always, as we go with him into this bold new resurrection world.

Passionate Jesus - Till the End of Time

Preached on Sunday, April 8, 2018

Scripture readings: 1 Peter 4:7-19; Mark 13:14-37

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

There was a little boy who constantly begged his parents to let him have a dog. Their answer was always the same: he was too young.

Finally, they told him that he was responsible enough to get his dog. So, they all went to the pet store, and his parents turned him loose to choose his own puppy.

It was hard for him to make up his mind. There were Labrador puppies, Dalmatian puppies, beagle puppies, and dachshund puppies. Finally, the boy chose one little mutt-puppy who was wagging and wagging his tail like crazy.

When his parents asked him why he wanted that mutt-puppy, he explained that he liked the way the puppy wagged his tail, “I want the dog with the happy ending.”

The story Jesus tells in chapter 13 of Mark is a story with a happy ending. It just happens that it is a scary story with a happy ending. The scary part takes up most of the story, and the happy part almost doesn’t get told before Jesus closes the book. But we will look at that later.

Jesus told the story in answer to a question his disciples had. They had all been wandering together around the buildings and courtyards of the great Temple in Jerusalem.

It was a wonder of the ancient world. Enormous wealth had been committed to rebuilding the ancient place and making it as overwhelming and inspiring as possible. The complex was huge: forests of columns, the whitest marble, gold leaf and gold plate. The first century historian Flavius Josephus reported that some of the stones were a large as 37 feet long, 12 feet high, and 18 feet wide.

Naturally, the disciples were in awe. “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” And Jesus said, “Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

Later, Peter, James, John, and Andrew came to him, on the Mount of Olives, and they asked, “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?”

Jesus never really answers this question. They ask Jesus: “When?” Jesus doesn’t answer that question. He confesses that he doesn’t know when. He says: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” 

Our problem with this is that we are human beings and we really want to know the answer to questions like this. We want to know the future. And we want to know the future because we want to be in control.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the “Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,” because they wanted to be in control. They wanted to be their own little gods.

Even Christians are tempted to try to be our own little gods, and so Christians for the past 2,000 years have tried to figure out the answer to the question Jesus said that even he didn’t know the answer to. In other words, Christians have spent the past 2,000 years trying to be smarter than Jesus.

That’s just part of our problem. Can anything good ever come of that?

I’ll share my theory of why Jesus didn’t know when the last days would come, and why it may be better for us not to know. My theory (and I don’t know where my theory comes from) is based on 1 John 4:8: “God is love.” We believe that God is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I believe it is the nature of the Father to plan and provide. Love requires that as an ingredient. I believe it is the nature of the Son to trust and serve. I believe that this is also a necessary ingredient of love. And I believe it is the nature of the Spirit to honor and connect, because this is also part of love.

This is the pattern I see in how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit relate to each other.

But the Son is about trust and servanthood. When Peter first heard Jesus predicting his death on the cross (8:31-33) he rebuked Jesus, and Jesus said, “Get behind me Satan. You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of man.” Peter did a devilish thing by attacking the trust the Son in the Father.

Later (10:43-45) Jesus said: “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant; and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus didn’t know the time of his return because it is his special nature, as the Son, to trust and serve. His Father knows the time, and that is enough. The Son may know the time now. But I don’t believe we know that for sure.

It’s especially in trusting and serving that Jesus gave us our salvation. It must be in trusting and serving, as the Son, that enables him, even now, to give us life in God.

Since Jesus, the trusting and serving Son, is the one who makes us sons and daughters of God, the pattern of his relationship goes on through us. So, our own trusting and serving, without our knowing the Father’s schedule, is the way we now have life in Jesus the Son.

We can’t have life in Jesus and contradict him at the same time. Jesus didn’t need to know the time of his own returning. Neither do we.

The purpose of God for our lives is for us to be like Jesus. It is good to know things, but it is not always necessary.

What is necessary is for us to trust and serve. And that is what Jesus’ story is about. Jesus answers the question, not of “When will these things happen,” but of “What will it mean to trust and serve till these things happen?”

Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” (8:34) Part of the work of Jesus on the cross, beyond the forgiveness of our sins, was to carry on his own shoulders the world’s troubles and sorrows: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” (Isaiah 53:4)

Jesus never leaves us, not even in our worst times. Now we are his hands and feet in the world, and Jesus will not have his hands and feet be absent from this world even in its worst times, even when those times are called the Great Tribulation.

In Jesus’ telling of the story of the beginning of a new world, at his return, it is not until the human beings on earth actually see “the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory;” not until then is it that Christians will be gathered from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens to come down with Jesus.

We are like Christ, the Son of the Father, in this world. And, just like him, God’s people will never be absent from what goes on in the world he loves. Jesus promised to be with us always, even to the end of the world. Surely he meant that he and we would be present together, in this world, to the very end.

The average Christian, today, does not live in North America, or Europe. The average Christian lives in China, or Laos, or Indonesia, or Pakistan, or India, or Iraq, or Sudan, or Syria, or Zimbabwe, or Nigeria, or Venezuela, or Cuba.

The average Christian today lives in harm’s way. The average Christian today lives in a present or an anticipated Tribulation. This was the normal Christian life in the first century and this has not changed.

Even in the safety of America we face the very same troubles and fears that any of our uncommitted neighbors face. Only we face those troubles in fellowship with Jesus. We may be blessed, but we are not immune to anything in this world; not now, not never. This is what Jesus is saying.

The disciples wanted to know when to be ready. Jesus’ answer was “always.” Always be ready.

When they asked about signs, the disciples wanted to know what the things were that they would have to be ready to face. Jesus’ answer was that the signs were everything. Trust (live faithfully) and serve (be a servant), and do this in the face of everything: in the face of conflict; in the face of sickness; in the face of disaster. Trust (live faithfully) and serve (be a servant); even when governments and churches turn against you. Trust (live faithfully) and serve (be a servant) when everyone turns against you, even those you love.

Jesus says that there will come a time when all human powers will work together and try to put an end to the faith of God’s people; or put an end to their very lives. When that happens, Jesus says you can run, but try to run in the right direction. And even at that, don’t be afraid.

What if the disciples had asked: “What should we be afraid of?”

Jesus’ answer would be, “Don’t be afraid of anything. Whatever comes, you and your brothers and sisters will be able to outlast it, because the Lord rules. The Lord controls the clock. The Lord is stronger than anything that can come against you.”

Jesus said, “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) “So, don’t be afraid of anything.”

But wait! There is one thing that Jesus warns us to be afraid of. Maybe Jesus should have said this more clearly: “Fear only one thing. Fear sleep. Fear taking things for granted. Watch! Be alert!”

Jesus says that we are like servants who have been given assigned tasks in our master’s house. Our assigned task is to follow Jesus by being the same kind of servant that he always is. Trust and serve, and don’t stop.

Do Jesus’ work. Speak his words. Be his hands and feet. Be his mouth. Every day we have choices that challenge our alertness to Jesus.

We are asleep if we don’t see the meaning of our choices. Our choices are all either for or against Jesus, whether we are on trial before an emperor, or on trial before our friends and neighbors. We decide from day to day what we shall be in eternity.

This would be scary, except for one thing.

The truth is that we are waiting for Jesus. The Son of Man, coming in clouds with great power and glory, is Jesus who died for our sins, and for the sins of the world on the cross. Jesus loves us. He is planning a reunion of all God’s people in earth and heaven, including us. The Lord is planning a celebration with us.

Jesus compares the end of the story to the end of spring, and how you feel when you see the trees in bud. This time of year, we know how good that makes us feel.

The good news is that, as serious as Jesus is about our choices, he is also serious about giving us the right things to be serious about. Jesus is giving us a special kind of freedom. Those who follow Jesus don’t hide from what’s going on in the world. The people of Jesus can live in the real world without fear, without anger, without self-righteousness, and without any false sense of security.

What Jesus gives us is the call to trust and serve. This is the way to love with an open heart. This is the way to be loved till the end of time.