The Primeval Battle - A Confrontation

Preached on Sunday, September 9, 2018 (a second edition of a sermon preached 6-9-13)

Scripture readings: Acts 13:4-12; Ephesians 6:10-20

Paul and Barnabas were honored to be invited into the presence of the Roman governor of Cyprus to tell him the message about Jesus. They found that he was, in so many ways, the perfect audience for the good news.

He was intelligent; which didn’t mean that he was merely very smart. Being merely smart can cause so much trouble. Intelligence meant that he could understand, and sort things out, and see what was really there, and come to the right conclusion. And this intelligent audience had a wizard, a sorcerer, right by his side.

Walking Near Crab Creek, North of Mattawa/Desert Aire
August 2018

We can’t be sure that Barnabas and Paul knew from the very start that the man standing beside the governor’s chair was a sorcerer. They seem to have argued with Elymas as though he was merely an influential man, like others they had met. There was some shifting in what they understood was going on in front of them. There was some shifting in what they realized they had to do about it.

There was a kind of inspiration involved on Paul’s part. We read that he was, “filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas (the wizard)” and spoke judgment upon him. (Acts 13:9)

While Barnabas and Paul were trying to share their faith and lead the governor to faith in Jesus, the sorcerer “opposed them and tried to turn the governor from the faith.” There was this growing conflict, until the Holy Spirit opened the eyes of Paul to who this man named Elymas was, and what he stood for. The conflict was an outbreak of what has been called “spiritual warfare.”

I know, from my own experience that such warfare is real and that it is going on all the time. There is the Kingdom of God and there is the Shadow Kingdom of this present darkness. There are armies of these kingdoms fighting some kind of war that we can’t see, but that war involves us and has an effect on us.

At the same time, I want to avoid obsession. C. S. Lewis said, "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them." (C.S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters”)

I think our human race can fall into the same pair of opposite errors related to angels: either to disbelieve in them or to have an unhealthy interest in them. Angels almost never make their presence known unless they have a special mission that requires them to communicate with us.

Elymas the wizard probably would never have called his familiar spirits devils. They were just spirits, and maybe even gods to him. Or he thought they were angels at his service. As Paul says, “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Paul, in his thoughts on our struggle against “the spiritual forces of evil”, doesn’t tell us much about either devils or angels. The angels may well be working or fighting all around us but, for Paul, the main point is all about living inside of the spiritual realities that come to us through Jesus: truth, righteousness, the good news of peace, faith, the Spirit and word of God, and prayer. He calls this our armor, or our defense. He calls it our means of standing through it all; standing up in resistance and going forward. (Ephesians 6:11)

I have seen angels, myself, a few times. One summer night, when I was sixteen, I struggled with an invisible devil until I was able to say, “Go away, in Jesus’ name, and don’t come back.” And that came as quite a surprise to me because, at that time, I really didn’t believe in the devil or in demons. But I know what the Bible told me to do about it.

That is one way of being aware of a spiritual warfare but there is no need whatsoever for any kind of experience like that. In fact, if you tried looking for experiences like this it might get you in a lot of trouble. I know this from personal experience. I would solemnly warn you that there are much more important and necessary ways to be aware of such a warfare.

Paul said for us to be aware of it in the form of things like truth, and peace, and faith, and prayer. Our hold on the truth, and the peace that comes from the good news, and a faith and loyalty toward God in our heart, and all kinds of prayer make us part of the warfare.

Seeing these in others is also a way in which we take part. We see the armies of the kingdom of God when people live out the truth, and bring peace to others, and patiently cope by faith and prayer; trusting and communicating with God.

At such times, you see and feel the unseen. You see and feel the power of God living in others and living in you. You see it in the love and integrity of families. You see it in the baptism of babies, and children, and adults. You see it in weddings. You see it in holy funerals.

You see the glory of the armies of the kingdom of light. You see people living out what God is putting into them, but you also see it as a sign of the march of a whole kingdom (a whole new world) on the move; holding out and advancing against the darkness.

On the other side of the war, it is easy to see the sadness and the badness lurking in human nature; but sometimes you see something much worse. You see self-fulfilling fears. You see self-destructive behavior. You see the irresistible and irrational descent into misunderstanding and misinterpretation between people who should be working together; people who should be friends, or who should love each other.

You see something beyond human weakness. Sometimes you hear the cackling laughter of the spiritual forces of darkness. You may not hear it with your ears but you feel it in a shudder down your spine.

Paul was aware of something strange in his meeting with the governor. There was this other man. His name was Bar-Jesus (bar-Joshua, son of Joshua, a common name) Elymas (a Jewish and a Greek combination). In this way he was just like Saul who was also Paul (Saulus Paulus, a Jewish and Roman combination). One was a Jew who had turned into a sorcerer. The other was a Jew who had turned into a Christian. They had parted ways. They had been swept apart by the forces from the dark side of the spiritual warfare.

The Romans were so much about mastery and control, and this Roman governor was being mastered by the sorcerer every time Paul tried to share Jesus with him. The governor was “intelligent”, meaning that he had a gift for putting things and ideas together. He had the skill to see where and how things added up, and he was oddly not able to hold on to anything Paul said.

In the governor’s oddly disabled intelligence Paul saw something more than the work of a man who simply posed as a sorcerer. He saw that Elymas was more than a poser. He saw that the spiritual forces of evil were there, and at work.

The power and the wisdom of God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, filled Paul. So, Paul could speak for God and put his finger on exactly what was going on. Paul saw the hand of God was at work in this moment of time. God himself was there with Paul to face the spiritual forces.

The interesting thing is that, as far as we know, nothing worse happened to the sorcerer than what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus where Paul had met Jesus. Paul, too, had been blinded for a time by Jesus himself, and had to be led by the hand, just like Elymas. (Acts 9:8 and 13:11)

Paul’s blindness and having to be led by the hand were the mercy of Jesus. They were part of the story of Paul’s salvation. They could be part of the salvation of Elymas. We simply don’t know how the story of Elymas ended. When it all happened to Paul, it was a matter of salvation and hope. The salvation and hope that come through Jesus are the power that created the armor of God.

They come to us not as a feeling but as a fact. Jesus, and everything he has done for us, almost forces itself upon us in a way that leads us to repent and surrender. We see Jesus. We see the cross and the one hanging there. We see an empty tomb and death and all our fears and defeats defeated by Jesus and the resurrection. When we see it, how can we say “no” to what he shows us? How can we escape?

We see the truth of it; and it is that truth (that factuality) that serves like a belt that holds our lives together: the belt of truth. However much we may struggle, Jesus has made the fact of his love, the truth of his love, just as great a reality as any of our struggles.

There is the “breastplate of righteousness” where everything is set right. Jesus is the righteousness of God and our righteousness too. He is the justice of God who sets us right with himself and with ourselves.

In the cross of Christ, we die to ourselves. From the tomb of Jesus, we rise as new people who can stand against the devil, because Jesus has made us right before God, and Jesus stands with us.

We are still sinners, but Jesus stands up for us against all accusers. The word “devil” means accuser. The spiritual warfare seeks to accuse us and make us give up. The grace of God in Jesus enables us to stand up.

There is “the shoeing of your feet with the gospel of peace”. Paul almost never says anything in a simple way. The gospel means good news. The good news of Jesus gives us peace with God, but it also gives us peace in every way. In Hebrew, the word peace is shalom and it is all about relationships. It doesn’t mean an absence of conflict. Peace means all relationships are healthy and flourishing, especially our relationship with God, in Christ.

The spiritual warfare attacks us when we are not nurturing our most important relationships. Or the warfare tempts us to mess with our most important relationships. The gospel of peace prepares us to stop and pay attention to people. The peace of Christ teaches us how to nurture our relationships, and this protects us, and it protects them, from the spiritual forces of evil.

There is “the shield of faith” and faith is a kind of loyalty and trust in God, in Jesus. Loyalty listens to Jesus instead of listening to our doubts, or despair, or weariness, or weakness, or our strongest desires and temptations.

Loyalty and trust help us to listen to Jesus, who forgives our sins, and so we have another way to defend ourselves than by proving ourselves, or by justifying ourselves, or by pretending we are something other than what we are. True faith saves us from pride as well as from fear.

Then there is the “helmet of salvation”. When I was seventeen I drowned, but I was saved from the lake. I was rescued from the water by Charlie Lucas.

I was rescued, then I was resuscitated, then I was safe and alive. Salvation is our rescue by God, in Jesus, and we are safe. Knowing we are safe in Christ is how we stand up to the struggle of the war.

Then there is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”. In Isaiah chapter eleven we can see the power of the Lord working through the Holy Spirit, and through the Messiah. Isaiah wrote like this, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him; the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.” (Isaiah 11:1-4)

This would tell us that the sword of the Spirit is the word that Jesus speaks in healing, mercy, and judgment. In this way, Jesus himself, in the Spirit, spoke from Paul’s heart and mouth to the sorcerer Elymas. Or we could say that Paul spoke in the Spirit, and Jesus spoke with him.

The Spirit put his sword in Paul’s hands, or the Spirit put his sword in Paul’s mouth. The Spirit gave him God’s word to speak God’s truth. It sounded like judgment, and yet it had the potential for mercy.

In spiritual warfare, we can see things as they are, and name them for what they are. At the same time, we can also leave the door of mercy open. We know that the sword of the Spirit has been given to us with an end in view; to make all things new.  

We have many powerful swords of the Spirit in the Bible. When we recall or speak these words of God, the voice of God speaks again from the words we have read from the Good Book, and works with power.

Then there is prayer. Prayer isn’t given a name as a part of the armor of God. Yet, maybe it is also part of the sword of the Spirit. In Romans chapter eight, Paul says, “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26)

In the spiritual struggle we may be too tired, or confused, or frustrated to know how to pray, but God’s own words and thoughts (what we would pray if we were faithful, and loving, and wise) gets said. Through the Holy Spirit praying in us, the word of God gets said, in prayer; and that prayer changes things.

What God does for us in Christ is the real armor that we wear. God is our strength. The Lord’s Supper tells us this. Here is the gospel set upon a table. “Eat and be strong,” it says. “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” (Ephesians 6:10) “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

Paul's Prayer Priorities - Enlightenment

SERMON Dennis Evans 11-12-2017

“Paul’s Prayer Priorities – Enlightenment”

Scripture readings: Isaiah 42:1-7; Ephesians 1:15-23

How can any human being miss the fact that we all need some kind of light to come on and shine for us? And we all need something to come on that isn’t like the light in the refrigerator that only comes on when we want it.

Along the Columbia River at Priest Rapids Lake
Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
October 2017

Not a day passes when I don’t want some light to show me what’s going on, and how to respond to it, or to show me where to go next. That sort of light could be compared to an outside light: sorting out the world around me. Not even a porch light: but a flashlight, a street light, a search light, or a light house.

There’s that story of the policeman who finds a drunk crawling around on the sidewalk under a street light, and he asks the drunk what he’s doing. The drunk says: “I’m right here in front of my own house, but I dropped my keys so I can’t get in.” Well the cop decides to help him and he spends a few minutes with the drunk helping him search.

Finally, the policeman asks, “Are you sure this is where you dropped your keys?” And the drunk says: “No, I dropped them way over there. But the light is much better here.”

The drunk knew that he needed an outside light, but he didn’t have enough inside light to show him that he needed much more. He needed more light inside his befuddled brain. We also know that he needed more light in his heart, if he truly wanted to find the key that would open the kind of door that would let him come home to a much better home than he could ever imagine.

Paul had found such a light, and such a key, and such a home. So had his friends: all because of Jesus.

First came the light. This is how God works. The first thing God does is to say, “Let there be light!” (Genesis 1:3) But the light came even before that, because “God is light” (1 John 1:5) just as much as “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Jesus, as well, is “the light of the world” (John 8:12) and he calls us to be “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). Jesus is the light of God that comes into a dark world that has lost the light of its creation. Jesus is the light of God that comes into a dark human world where humans have chosen to live independent of the light, which means to live outside the light, but there is no life outside the light.

The light of God is no ordinary light. It isn’t the light of the sun, or the light of electricity. The Gospel of John says this about Jesus: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” (John 1:4) Jesus is the light for human beings to live by, and to have that life abundantly.

The light of God is actually life itself. By definition you can’t have most forms of organic life without the sun. Spiritually you can’t have the light of personhood, or the light of love, without the life of Jesus who is the light of the image of God. Jesus is the brilliance of God that makes human beings into the children of God. But the first humans tried to live without this light, or to rule this light for themselves. We can’t rule the light of God. The fact that we tried to be in control of the light was the choice that produced our human darkness in the first place.

In their sin of trying to live by nonsense, these first humans handed down to us a banished life, on the very edge of darkness. It’s the part of us that has damaged the image of God, and his light and life in us. But Jesus, the Son, who is the servant of all, came: “To open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” It’s just as the prophet Isaiah said it would be. (Isaiah 42:7)

Who are the blind, the captives, the sitters in darkness? It’s everyone in the world. It’s us, and everyone else.

Jesus died for us on the cross to give us the light and to show us the light. Suffering on the cross and rising from the dead, Jesus bridged the darkness to trade our darkness for his light.

Suffering on the cross and rising from the dead Jesus shows us the light, because (in doing that) he shows us what light is, and what the light does. Because Jesus shows us the light, we can not only live in the light, but also know what the light is for, and what to do with it.

The light from Jesus gives light to us, and the light in us shows others what the light is, and what to do with it. That is why Jesus, “the light of the world”, calls us “the light of the world”. So, Jesus shares his name, and his servanthood, and his calling with us.

So many of the prayers of Paul for his friends were about this very thing. It’s about them (and us) seeing the light, knowing the light, having a relationship with the light, having our lives changed and transformed by the light, having a life guided and motivated by the light, having a life rebuilt in the image of light, and with the mission and calling of being the light, showing the light, giving the light, implanting the light, reproducing the light.

Paul prayed for his friends, including us. Part of Paul’s prayer about the light went like this: “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened….” (Ephesians 1:18)

When I walk in the dark with the help of a flashlight, I’m very thankful for it. I understand what the light is for. But I would understand light in a much different way if the light was my life: if I was light.

Paul’s friends, just as we, have met the light, and our lives have been changed by the light, because it is something we can hold onto. Holding onto the light helps us to walk in the darkness.

Paul wanted much more than this for all of us. He wanted the light to take over our hearts.

Paul wanted the light to enable the power and the motivations of God to change us. Paul wanted the light to guide us through the maze and dungeon of the darkness, in ourselves, and for us to be led to the freedom that comes from the life that is also light. Paul wanted the dungeon torn down and replaced, so that light would be what our lives and our hearts and our minds are made of.

There are other faiths or religions that talk about enlightenment. Because of this, many Christians have become suspicious and afraid of the word enlightenment. It is a Bible word: not a common Bible word, but it is there, and it’s important enough for Paul to care deeply about it. Everything in this particular prayer relates to that enlightenment.

Light helps you to see better, and to know better. Paul prayed for the Father to “give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” (Ephesians 1:17) It’s all the same thing. The Holy Spirit plays a part in answering the need of our heart, and the core of our being, to know God better. But the enlightenment means that we need that light to come inside us so that we can become the light.

The Holy Spirit could just tell us things, and give us a lot of accurate information: inspired information, and doctrine, and instructions. But the Holy Spirit also must become the light inside us that makes us light. Information, doctrine, and instructions are not enough, no matter how inspired they are.

The light must come inside and make us into lives that are light.

This is grace. This is what grace is for, if God is going to completely have his way with us. The cross and the resurrection were acts of God, in Jesus, to call us his own; to change our name from sinner to child of God, but even that is not enough.

In Second Corinthians, Paul wrote: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9) In the same way, we may say that Jesus became dark on the cross so that you might become light. In the same letter Paul wrote: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 6:17)

We will not understand the prayers of Paul very well unless we remember that these were prayers for others. We know that Paul prayed for himself. We just don’t have many examples of those prayers.

Paul commonly asks for his friends to pray for him, but he never asks them to pray for the gift of things. He doesn’t even ask them to pray for his health; although we think that he tried this without success, if that was what his thorn in the flesh was about. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10) The Bible instructs us to pray for people’s health, but our prayer list should include the much greater needs of others.

This prayer surely gives us something to pray for, for ourselves. If Paul prayed it for his friends, then his friends could join Paul in his prayers for them. They were, after all, clearly prayer partners, all of them together. So, let’s pray these prayers for ourselves, never forgetting that every other Christian needs our prayers for their enlightenment, because we are all prayer partners, all of us together. Let’s also remember that those who are not yet being invaded by the light need our prayers as well.

Enlightenment, for us, in the Bible, means seeing reality as God sees it. It means seeing our lives and God’s goals for our lives, as God sees them. It means seeing the whole world and everyone and everything in it as God sees them, and as God wants them to be.

In Paul’s prayer, enlightenment means the beginning and the growth of hope. “in order to know the hope to which God has called you.” The world and everything and everyone in it needs hope and needs this prayer, and so do you. Pray to be made into light, and pray to be made into hope.

Enlightenment means the beginning and the inward growth of power. Now, power, here, is a translation for the Greek word “energeia”. It’s energy. It’s energizing.

We and the world give up. We run out of energy. Or there is a break in the circuit, and the energy isn’t flowing into us. In a way, the same word means “working”.

Sometimes I wish I had power. But I would probably mess everything up with it, if I had my choice.

God’s power isn’t about power, as we think about it; or as politicians, and monarchs, and dictators covet it. It’s the ability and the energy to work.

For us Christians it’s a very special focus of work. It’s the kind of energy or power that only does certain kinds of work. It’s the power that created the universe and our world. It’s also the power that raised Jesus from the dead. God’s power reverses weakness, evil, sin, and death.

So, it’s the kind of work that gives form and substance to something that wasn’t there before. It’s the kind of work that reverses evil, and death, and darkness, and defeat, and weakness, and sickness.

That is the nature of God. It’s the power that we are supposed to see in the world around us when we see God in our world. It’s what the world needs to see through us. It’s the ability we want the world to know and receive for itself. It’s the ability that is needed by everyone we know or hear about: the energy to do something new that wasn’t there before, the energy to bring dead things, weak things, tired things, and even outdated things, to life.

We are right to pray for such a power. We are right to pray this power for others.

When Paul says that God “appointed Christ to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way,” (Ephesians 1:22-23) it means, at very least, that in Christ, in the Church, the energy that raised Jesus from the dead still works and pushes out in God’s plan to fill the world. It’s the very core and center of everything God is about. Enlightenment shows us this.

Paul’s friends, as well as we, have been tempted to think that we are stuck on the outside of everything looking in. Enlightenment would begin and grow the understanding that God has: that Christ in us is the center of everything that matters. Christ in us is the center of everything this world needs. It’s at the center of what God want to do in the lives of the people around you.

Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, called “The Message” puts it this way. “At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world, the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.” That’s what God (that’s what Jesus) wants to do through us, together.

Enlightenment enables us to see things the way God sees them, and to see our tasks and callings as God sees them. It is this enlightenment that says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)

The Lord’s Supper reminds us that the power which raised Jesus from the dead and through which all the gifts and riches of Jesus are ours, is the power that works in us. The crucified Jesus lives in us.

The holy meal says this. Because this Jesus lives in us, we are also promised that the great energy and work that raised him will also raise us (raise us in the end, but also raise us up every day until then). The energy of the resurrection will work through us, for others, and for God.

This enlightenment gives us the knowledge that comes within us through experience. With that intimate knowledge comes light, and sight. With that light comes hope. With that hope comes a power that energizes us for the work of the kingdom to change lives, and to change the whole world.

In this enlightenment, we will truly see, and love, and follow Jesus, and live out his plan for us.

Freedom and the Gospel (Second Edition)

Preached on Sunday, July 3, 2016: This is a slight re-editing of an earlier sermon from 2011.

Scripture readings: Leviticus 25:8-13; Romans 8:1-21

Flags blowing around Desert Aire/Mattawa WA
July 2016

We can’t understand what it means to be a Christian unless we know what it means to be free. Freedom is not the most common word used in the Bible to describe a Christian, but freedom (in the Bible) is just as important as any other word to describe who we are, and what God intends us to be. The word freedom is just as important as any other word in the Bible to help us understand the Good News of Jesus, and new life that comes from Jesus.

The good news of Jesus dying on the cross for the sins of the world, and his rising from the dead to defeat the power of sin and death, is God’s fulfillment of a promise he made to the world many, many times through the people of Israel. It’s the central promise of the Old Testament. And the promise has always been about freedom.

In the Garden of Eden, our human race rebelled against God in the desire to be our own gods and goddesses. (Genesis 3:5) It was a rebellion to make ourselves smart enough to be independent, so we could be in charge.

In a sense, our rebellion was about freedom, because we thought that the freedom for which God had made us was not nearly enough. When we rebelled for the sake of our own brand of freedom, we altered human nature. We became a hereditary race of rebels and failed gods. 

This is not the way to freedom. This is not the way to the sort of freedom that brings any meaningful, lasting happiness.

Every new generation has been born with their parents’ addiction to this ancient rebellion. The patterns of human life show our slavery to this addiction. And yet, in that same garden, God promised that there would come a time when the human race would be set free from slavery.

The promise was brief, and simple; and it was made (strangely enough) by God to the devil, who had taken the form of a snake. God promised that a time would come when a descendant of Adam and Eve would crush the devil and his power. God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15) A human would be hurt and, by being hurt, he would kill the devil.

Jesus was terribly hurt by the devil, working through human powers, on the cross. Jesus was hurt to the death. But he rose alive. He can no longer be hurt or defeated. He’s infinitely free.

The devil is the defeated one. We can rightly call him a dead man walking. The devil and the rebellion he led are defeated and in retreat.

Jesus in his hurt, and in his rising, sets us free from the devil, and from sin and death. Jesus plants his Holy Spirit in those who trust him, and the Spirit has the power to plant the sacrifice and victory of Jesus in us.

Through what Christ has done for a fallen world, and for each one of us, the Holy Spirit has the authority to write our personal declaration of independence from the power of the devil, and from the power of sin, and death: and this is exactly what he has done. This is the meaning of what Paul writes to the Christians in Rome: “Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of Life has set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:2)

In the Gospel of John (8:36) Jesus says, “If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed.” So, if we belong to Jesus, we ought to know what it means, and what it feels like, to be free.

But freedom is confusing. Sometimes the rebel nature, lurking in us all, jumps at the chance to be confused about freedom. Our confusion about freedom gives us an excuse to go back to our old addiction. There are so many advantages that come from the excuse of confusion.

Sometimes freedom seems to be the exact opposite of what Christians are about. Being Christian seems to be about rules and not freedom.

If you think about it, though, freedom needs rules. The old radio news-man, the late Paul Harvey, would say, “Freedom without self-discipline is anarchy.” Freedom needs priorities.

My grandpa Evans had an insight into the danger of being confused about freedom. He had a saying he used, when someone passed him on the highway in dangerous circumstances. If someone passed him on a curve where no one could possibly know what was coming, or if someone passed on a straight-a-way where anybody could see the cars approaching without the room to pass, he would say, “That guy is in a hurry to his own funeral.”

I drive fast, but I am very cautious about passing, most of the time. I also try to always stop in time, but that clearly doesn’t work. We all know people who, in the name of freedom, are in a hurry to their own funeral.

The sin, and the defeat, and the slavery that came out of Eden began when human beings decided to set up shop as their own little gods and goddesses. They wanted the failed freedom of being in charge, and of being at the center of their own lives. (Genesis 3:5-6)

Everybody is tempted this way. Some people try to pretend they are their own little gods and goddesses by living like they’re in a hurry to their own funerals. Others are in a hurry to the funeral of their relationships with the people who love them and count on them. They’d rather have what they want, the way they want it, than have real love. They kill the freedom that comes from trust and hope. They’d rather keep their false freedom.

Good people are different. It is easy for good people to be tempted to use goodness as a mask. Without admitting or facing what they’re doing, they act like little gods and goddesses by using a bunch of rules to give them the right to sit in judgment on others. They use the mask of goodness to control and wound others.

It all comes from the same old motivation. It’s all part of the same natural reflex of our slavery to the old rebellion of Eden. Paul wrote most of his letter to the Romans to warn his friends of this danger. If we belong to Jesus we will learn to listen to his friend Paul.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, the work done for us by Jesus becomes part of us. The personality of Jesus becomes part of us. It motivates us and grows in us. It’s not like being brainwashed, or having part of your brain removed. It isn’t like being bullied by someone bigger, and tougher, and smarter than you are; although God is bigger, and tougher, and smarter.

It is more like finding a friend and finding your real self that was lost in Eden long before you were born. And that friendship, and that lost self, fit you so well that you will never be happy without them again.

Paul describes the new self that is really your true and long-lost self. He says that the Holy Spirit makes it possible, and the Spirit doesn’t interfere with your real freedom when he gets this new life growing in you. It is life in the image of God, and you were created for a life in the image of God in the first place. Your long-lost self is your long lost freedom.

Paul says that the image of God planted in you by the Holy Spirit looks like this: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

We stop thinking about rules that hold us in a vise, or laws that others are always using to judge us when we fail. The Spirit gives us a holy freedom.

When the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives we stop thinking about rules and we start thinking about Jesus. We start thinking about the love of God, and how we desire to love God with everything in us, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The Spirit brings Jesus into us. We grow in our freedom to love God, and our neighbor, and even ourselves in this new life.

Martin Luther, one of the great reformers of the church five hundred years ago, wrote something about all of this that is so good that (if you have never heard it before) you need to hear it, and think about it. Luther wrote: “A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none, a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.” This is the freedom of being a Christian. This is the freedom of belonging to Jesus.

This leads us to the Book of Leviticus and the amazing principle of The Year of Jubilee. In Old Testament times, if you lost everything, and if you lost every legitimate way of supporting yourself and your family and, if your relatives had no way of helping you, you only had two options. One was to become an outlaw and live by robbery and murder: and that was forbidden.

The other option was to become a slave. Then someone with resources would take you in and provide for you, in return for your labor.

But God’s law for God’s people required that anyone who bought you would only have you and your labor for six years. When the six years were over and the seventh year came, you had to be restored to freedom (if you wanted it), because God’s people are supposed to be free. (Exodus 21:2-11; Leviticus25:39-43) When your slavery was over, you recovered your long-lost self. You found your true freedom-self.

In the Old Testament world, land was the symbol of freedom and dignity. When the people of Israel entered the Promised Land, each family received an allotment of land that was supposed to remain with that family forever.

This allotment of land represented their inheritance and their resources as children of God, as the people of God. It stood for their relationship with the God of freedom who set them free from centuries of slavery in Egypt.

Sometimes a family would get into so much debt that they had to sell part of their land, or all of their land. It would be bought by a more fortunate neighbor. But there was supposed to be a year of jubilee, every fiftieth year, when every family that had lost their inheritance, as the people of God, would have it completely restored to them.

To be among the people of the land was to be free, and to have your land restored to you was like receiving your long-lost self, the dignity of the children of God who had their rightful and equal place among all the rest of God’s people. But there is no record, anywhere in the Bible, of this law ever being kept.

Even though it was never kept, it was never forgotten. It was a symbol of the freedom promised by God all through the Bible.

The year of Jubilee is a symbol for Jesus, who restores to us the life of the image of God for which we were created. Jesus is the Jubilee. Jesus is our freedom.

But Jesus also lives in us in order to live through us. You can’t understand the good news of Jesus unless you understand the old law that the people of Israel never kept.

The people of God were expected to form a freedom-giving environment, not just for themselves but for everyone.

Land, in the Old Testament, gave you freedom. Land was the means to be your full self. In a sense land gave you dignity, and resources, and abilities: and these came from God, the real owner of the land. (Leviticus 25:23) And this helps us understand the meaning of freedom.

Our full self was designed by God to have the resources (and the means) of focusing outward. Our real self was designed to have the ability of caring for others beside ourselves. Our full self was created to love God; and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Perfect love is freedom.

The truth is that this full, many-sided love can only be given by you to others when you, yourself, are restored to your long-lost land, or to your long-lost self. In Christ you are given the dignity, and resources, and abilities that you need to live the full life of love, and you are able to help those who have not been restored to their long-lost life, and freedom, and dignity.

Now we have to remember that, in the Old Testament, freedom and dignity were things that were lost and restored, over and over again, in times of famine, and in times when Israel was occupied and ruled by its enemies.  The freedom of each slave came in the seventh year, and the restoration of the land was supposed to come every fiftieth year.

If these laws were followed they would have involved everyone in the practice of planning and preparing for freedom, for themselves and for others. Setting people free, and restoring them to their landed dignity would have become a way of life. It would have formed the very spirit of their community and their nation.

God’s people were supposed to form a community where the freedom and dignity of others was the natural concern of everybody. As a body they would know that the gift of freedom was being given to someone every day.  Everyone would be counting the years and the days for someone’s freedom.

The church is called to be nothing less than that. Are we working for the freedom of others? Are we giving others the opportunities they need? Are we giving others the encouragement and the patience they need to find the freedom of Jesus?

Now, in the Old Testament, this freedom was not only a matter of words. It was very practical. It involved labor, and money, and land, and the will to do something with it.

In the New Testament, the people of God, the people of the church were concerned about very practical issues. They were concerned about slaves and masters, workers and employers. They were concerned about the role of marriage and family. They were concerned about the poor. They were concerned about victims of disasters, and so they raised funds for hunger relief in the Holy Land. They visited the sick. They visited people in prison.

They were concerned with how to play a part in their society. They thought about how to live with the laws of the land and how to relate to the emperor and his government. They were concerned about laws, and rights, and justice. Paul was concerned about his right to be properly tried when he was arrested and jailed. (Acts 25-26) 

His friends and their churches cared about this too. They all cared about these things because their freedom and the freedom of others were at the heart of the matter: because, through Jesus Christ, they knew the God of freedom.

In the United States of America, we have a tradition of freedom that owes a great debt to the founding generations of our nation. Those founders were raised and educated in communities, and in an environment, that were deeply rooted in the Bible.

In the events that led up to our Declaration of Independence, and our war for independence, and the writing of the constitution, they were very worried and serious about what kind of nation they were creating. They wanted to design a nation of freedom; a national community that nurtured freedom and dignity for everyone.

They knew that we would not survive as a nation of freedom if our citizens only cared about being the enjoyers of freedom. They knew that our laws and our customs would have to allow freedom, and to teach freedom, and (as much as possible) to require our citizens to make the effort of acting and living like freedom-minded people, and to be loving freedom-givers.

They knew that Americans would have to be people who spent time, and energy, and resources (and even their lives) helping people into freedom. In one tiny way, Benjamin Franklin helped establish a free, public lending library to educate the people of Philadelphia, because he knew from personal experience that education was essential for freedom.

One of my great-great grandfathers came to America from Great Britain around 1850. He came here with practically nothing. It took him a while to get settled. His family back in the British Isles had a number of different trades. One of them was candy-making.

On first arriving, my great-great grandfather worked as canal digger. Then he worked in a starch factory, which was much better than digging canals. Eventually he started a business as a candy-maker, but he also worked as a part-time missionary, teaching in a Methodist Sunday school. In those days Sunday schools were established to teach the factory children who weren’t able to go to the regular schools during the week.

There were no child labor laws. Many children worked six days a week (just as most grown-ups did) and they had only Sundays free. Some of these children wanted to learn how to read, and write, and do arithmetic, so they went to a Sunday school where my great-great grandfather, and others, taught them.

Doing this would set them free. It would open up whole new chances for freedom in their lives. My great-great grandpa also taught them how to live well, and he taught them about Jesus who would give them the strength and the will to find that better life; the life of freedom.

He taught them about Jesus who would lead them to an even greater freedom, an everlasting freedom: the freedom of the gospel, the good news of God. In that freedom, those children would learn, like my great-great grandfather, to use their time, and their money, and their energy to be givers of freedom, and the nurturers of the freedom of others.

If we know Jesus, then we will be lovers of freedom, and we will work to make this freedom real for others. If we know Jesus very well, then we will want our communities and our nation to enable and nurture true freedom for everyone.

Pushing Boundaries: The Spirit-Prepared Life

Preached on June 6, 2016

Scripture readings: Ephesians 4:1-16; Acts 1:1-14

The 2016 Wahluke High School Valedictorian, Guadalupe Abarca, made a statement that is so normal to hear at any graduation, and yet it is very important. She said, “I believe this class will push boundaries to make this world a better place, whether in large or small ways.”

Photos at White Bluffs, Hanford Reach Nat'l Monument
May 2016

In the Book of Acts, Jesus, just before he returned to the command-post of heaven, called his people to push boundaries. Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) Is this a calling or an order? Is it a prediction or a challenge? “You will be my witnesses.” You will do it.

Somehow, I seem to remember a phrase from when I was a kid, and maybe it comes from the old World War Two Prison Camp comedy “Hogan’s Heroes”. My friends and I used it on each other for fun. A German officer said (in an American imitation of a German accent), “You vill do it; und you vill like it!”

Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” It’s as if Jesus gave us a crazy target laid out more or less flat on the ground of this round earth. The bull’s eye is where we stand and we find that the target is as big as the world; maybe as big as the universe. To hit the mark, and win, means going out, as far as you can. It’s a crazy target.

We Christians get the target completely wrong. You see how it is. Maybe it’s Jesus’ fault. Jesus is the bull’s eye. Jesus is the center. We come to Jesus. We find his love. Our target is the center.

No, his love finds us. And we find ourselves with Jesus at the center. Then Jesus does his magic (his sleight of hand) and the mark, the bull’s eye, moves to the outside. Who can play this game?

You see how we get it wrong. Jesus is the center, but we start out as Jesus’ target; Jesus’ mark. It’s hard to be an intense follower of Jesus (an intense Christian) unless we see how the target works for us; how (without Jesus) we are farthest out from the center, until Jesus hits us with his arrow of love. (Jesus is the best cupid.) But, without that, we are (each one of us, in our own way) one of the farthest out.

The great British preacher of more than a century ago, Charles Spurgeon, expressed this feeling of being farthest out. Spurgeon said, “While others are congratulating themselves, I have to lie humbly at the foot of Christ’s cross and marvel that I am saved at all.”

Charles Spurgeon was only 15, and he was a very, very good boy, when he met the living Jesus, but Spurgeon knew his own heart. And he knew that all human hearts, and every human life, have the same deep need. All humans are, in some way, furthest out, and they need to be found and given meaning by the infinite love of Jesus.

We never know that we have been farthest out until we understand why Jesus chose a cross as the only way to reach us, and hold onto us, and change us. We never understand what all people need until we know that only an arrow in the form of a cross can go the whole distance; all the way to the farthest out. We never understand what people need until we know that this arrow is never meant to hit anyone, except in the sense of winning them and loving them.

What brings this out (what powers us to understand, and motivates us to want to take Jesus’ arrow to those who are farthest out) is the Holy Spirit. We never understand this crazy game, and this crazy target of Jesus, until the Holy Spirit fills us.

The disciples are a good lesson for how it is with us. The Spirit was with them. Jesus was working on them with the Holy Spirit. We read that Jesus instructed them through the Holy Spirit. (The Holy Spirit is the life-giving power of God.) The Holy Spirit makes weak things powerful. The Spirit makes dead things, or inanimate things, alive.

The infinite love of God, in Jesus, is a living thing that can’t live in us until the Holy Spirit gives us enough life, within ourselves, to receive it. The infinite love of God, in Jesus, is a living thing that can’t reach out, through us to others, until the Holy Spirit gives us the living heart and the living will to reach out to others, even to those who seem farthest out.

Jerusalem, all Judea, and Samaria, and the ends of the earth are like rings of a target that really has an almost infinite number of rings.

Here the crazy target changes again. Here we are at the center again. Once again the whole point is not to stay in the center. Just as shooting at a target and hitting the bull’s eye is hardest, when you’re standing away and aiming at the target from a distance; so it is true that, when you are at the center, and the game is to shoot farthest out, then the farthest out is the hardest shot, and we don’t want to do it. We don’t even want to try. We pretend that aiming at the center (where we are) is best.

That’s one reason why the disciples asked Jesus for the target of restoring the kingdom to Israel. That was a model for a different target where it was best to live at the center and let the farthest out come to you. That would be easy. And a lot of Christians want the model of the target to be the one where it’s good to stay in the center.

There is a lot to learn from Jesus’ crazy target. We are called to be witnesses. Surely the most important job of a witness is to provide evidence.

It’s our job to provide our evidence for Jesus to the world. We are called to start by aiming at the center, closest to where we are. This part of the target is the part of the world that includes our families, and our friends, and our neighbors.

This model for the target means gradually moving out, geographically. We actually do this because we give our resources, including our money, and this supports mission around the world.

The churches of the early disciples helped to support Paul, and the other apostles, and the other witnesses, who went farther and farther out from the center. The Book of Acts tells us about Christians trying to fill the world with the message of Jesus who does fill all the world, and who wants to fill all the hearts of all the people in the world.

The Holy Spirit gets his way with us, and baptizes us with his truth, when we look at those who are nearest, and at those who are farthest, and (looking at both) we see people who will have a new life if they are filled with Jesus. Even the people we treasure the most may be full of so many great gifts, and yet they lack the gift of Jesus who would pull all their gifts together. Or maybe they lack the gift of Jesus in the same way that we may lack that gift: if we have the Holy Spirit teaching us, but our hearts are not being filled with the Spirit.

Jesus told his disciples not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the baptism, or the immersion, and the flooding, and the washing of the Holy Spirit. So we are often called to wait for the things that are most important. But you need to know that waiting is active. Waiting, in the Bible, is not like sitting in a waiting room.

Waiting means being ready for anything and, in this case, ready for something. Waiting is not about sitting, or puttering around, or doing what you normally do. I normally like to read. That’s how I like to wait. I like to read in a waiting room in order to get my mind off of what’s actually going to happen next. That’s not the waiting that Jesus asks for.

Waiting means praying, and praying means wanting, and also listening. When the disciples prayed, they realized that they also needed to be prepared. They needed to be prepared to be called and prepared to serve. That’s why they soon appointed a replacement for Judas, who had betrayed Jesus and hung himself. Waiting meant being ready to serve and being prepared to go into action, whatever that required of them.

So we are called to pray, and to pray for the Holy Spirit to find us ready for anything, and prepared for anything. They did that praying constantly, and they did it together. Each of us should have a consistent focus in prayer, not only for God to take care of us, but for God to show us how to be ready and prepared for what he wants us to do next.

But it’s not enough for you or me to do this on our own. I have to believe that Jesus wants us to pray for this together. It’s what he told his disciples to do, and our existence as God’s people is built on the same foundation as theirs. We are going to wait for what God wants us to do next by praying as a congregation, and learning (as we listen in prayer) to be ready and prepared.

We want to be ready and prepared by knowing, for sure, what Jesus has given us to live by; and by knowing how to share with others the difference that Jesus makes. We want to be ready and prepared for the crazy target of Jesus.

The disciples had trouble understanding the target. They liked staying in the center, and they didn’t even understand the center. Jerusalem was the holy city, the place where God focused his presence on his people. Jerusalem was the center, and yet it was also the place that was farthest out. Its people were the most resistant; just as we all are without the continual help of Jesus. Maybe you find the center of your own target and your own world to be the same way.

Providing evidence for Jesus by their words, and their lives, and their actions was not easy in Jerusalem, the center. You know this is not easy in our own centers. Our families and our friends who are not close to Jesus are a hard center to target.

And here the crazy target is easy to misunderstand again, because (as I have said) this is a target we don’t hit. The arrow of Jesus and the cross, and the change in our hearts because of him, are not things you can hit anyone with, although the other person may feel like you’re hitting them. If a witness gives evidence, then you are not hitting, but giving something to your target. Since the Holy Spirit is the power of God, and the power of God comes through Jesus, then you are giving them power, or offering them that power.

In that way, as witnesses, our job is to empower those who are closest to us. If we find that those who are closest to us are also farthest from us (as Jerusalem was) then our job is to empower those who feel farthest from us. It works either way.

Our own loved ones, neighbors, and friends need the empowerment that we have received, and Jesus says that the power of the Holy Spirit will make it possible to reach the outer limits and those who seem farthest from us. This can seem impossible, but the Holy Spirit empowers us and makes the impossible possible. This is what we believe.

The disciples believed this and it worked, even when they didn’t understand what they were doing. But their success, in the Spirit, was not easy. The Book of Acts tells us that every step of the way was strange to them. They were always moving into the unknown, and it was different every day.

This is the other strange thing about the crazy target of Jesus. The target in front of them was as big as the world, but there was another target within them. Jerusalem, all Judea, and Samaria, and the ends of the earth were not only boundaries “out there”. They were also boundaries within them. The boundaries were formed by what was familiar to them, and by what was unknown to them, and unwanted. These were the boundaries of where they were comfortable and where they weren’t.

The target of Jesus produced worry, and fear, and tension in the disciples. The Lord was requiring them to do today what they had never done before. Tomorrow they would have to do what they didn’t know how to do today.

They hit those boundaries right from the start. Even before they left Judea, which was the boundary of their comfort zone, they found themselves talking to the enemy Samaritans and the pagan Romans. (Acts 8 and 10) They were talking and worshiping with people they didn’t want to talk with, or worship with. They had to make decisions about how they needed to change what they did and how they thought, in order to meet the target of Jesus.

They had to push their boundaries. They had to let Jesus and the Holy Spirit push their boundaries for them. The Holy Spirit requires churches to change what they do, and how they think. The Book of Acts tells us this in every chapter.

To be filled with the Holy Spirit requires the waiting in prayer that will change us and make us ready and prepared for this. Or else, we may decide that what the Spirit calls us to is not for us. That is a decision for comfort, and comfort is nice, but comfort can be a far different thing from fullness. And that makes a difference.

Jesus died on the cross to give us a new life; a life free from everything that divides us from the love and purpose of God. He gives us a new life free from everything that divides us from the ability to truly love God, and to love others, and to love the whole world as God so loves it.

This new life begins with forgiveness and forgiveness feels a lot like comfort. But comfort is a word that originated from the idea of the strength and power to go forth and live.

The comfort that comes from the Holy Spirit always leads to the kind of life we find in the Book of Acts. In this life we have been made so alive by the power of the Holy Spirit that we grow, and we extend our reach. We reach out to others, and we change, because we have been made alive in Christ, and living things are always moving and changing.

Jesus is pushing our boundaries, and we are pushing the boundaries for Jesus.

That is what we are waiting for, and praying for, together: a new life that’s new every day: really new! running on the power of the Holy Spirit! Get ready for it to begin!