Things Invisible - Meeting and Beating the Devil

Preached on Sunday, April 22, 2018

Scripture readings: Genesis 3:1-15; Revelations 12:1-12; John 8:31-59

The first time I remember almost stepping on a snake in the wild was when I was about ten years old. My family was on vacation and we were staying in a campground at Lake Shasta.

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

I was just coming out of the restroom, and there was a little gully that I had walked through, from our camp, to get there. I took the same path to get back to our camp.

Something near my feet caught my eye. It made me jump. A rattlesnake lay stretched out in that gully, and I realized that it must have been there when I came that way in the first place. I had almost stepped on that snake twice.

Since then, I’m sure I have almost stepped on a snake at least once every year. I know it was three or four times just last summer. Of course, they weren’t all rattlesnakes. So, by my guesstimate; I may have almost stepped on about 120 snakes in my adult lifetime. That tells me, all in all, that I must be pretty lucky when it comes to snakes.

  There’s one mean serpent, though, that I haven’t been so lucky with. That serpent has been around for a long, long time. It’s about as old as the creation. It’s one of those snakes that never stops growing as long as it lives. It’s been around so long that it’s even grown extra heads. It’s even grown horns.

The Book of Revelation gives us a pretty good snapshot of this serpent. “Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.” (Revelation 12:3-4)

If you wonder what the numbers mean (the seven heads, and ten horns, and all that), It means that it’s got plenty. It means that the dragon has more than enough fight in him and more than enough brains in him to do a lot of harm, if he can.

Sometimes, in the Book of Revelation, and a few other places in the Bible, Jesus is a Lamb: The Lamb of God, wounded, bleeding, the perfect sacrifice for all the sins of the world. Sometimes, in the Book of Revelation, Satan (the Devil) is a reptile: snake, serpent, dragon.

This doesn’t mean that the Devil really has become a reptile or that the Devil has horns or anything else that pictures show. In the same way, Jesus isn’t really a lamb. He doesn’t have wool or hooves. But if you had a special dream, or some such thing, with a reptile or a lamb in it, the stories of the Bible could give you a clue about what they are, or what they mean.

Why was Eve talking to a serpent in the Garden of Eden?  The common answer is that Satan took over the body of a living snake in order for Eve to see and talk to something that didn’t scare her. No creature would be scary in those days and in that place, where God’s harmony and peace protected everything and everyone from each other.

Why did the Lord punish the innocent snakes for something the Devil did by forcing them to crawl on their bellies? I think the snakes already crawled on their bellies. It was no punishment for them. But that fowl spirit, Satan, and his team, were humiliated in some way that we cannot imagine. Some power or some dignity, or else the ability to deceive themselves about what their own sins had done to them, was taken from them, and they would never get that back. And Satan would never be able to destroy his own future destroyer.

In all three of the scriptures we have read, we meet some of the same results. First (in God’s prophecy in the garden), we are told of the world as it has become. Next (in the gospel), we meet the same current world as it is resisting the love and peace and freedom of God. In Revelation, we meet the invisible spiritual warfare that goes on in this world, where Jesus has died and risen from the dead, and yet where the Kingdom of God hasn’t been fully installed yet.

In each of these scenes, we meet the snakebite of the world. We meet the Devil and the power of sin as conflict, as deceit, as poison, as the use of ourselves against ourselves. We meet the reason why so many people hate snakes.

Until the final judging and healing come, in a new heaven and earth (heaven and universe), there will be war. That war will be spiritual. The war will also be physical: flesh and blood, and weapons, and killing. In between the war of the spirit and the war of bombs and bullets, we have our own potential for war on the personal level.  This war will be bad attitudes, broken relationships, pride, blame, guilt, resistance, invasion, abuse.

We see and feel this every day. We are all part of it.

It’s poison, it’s sickness, it’s human will, and choices, and habits. It’s lurking there like a snake, so well disguised, so easy to step on, or to step into.

Genesis and Revelation have so much in common. God provides a garden of grace and healing at the beginning of the world and, in the end, when the long war is over, we will all come home to a garden of grace and healing provided by God.

The main difference between the gardens is that the Tree of Life in the first garden will be replaced in the eternal garden by the Tree of Life that is the Cross, and the fruit and the healing leaves will be Jesus, and all the nations (and all of us) will come home to the garden and walk with him, and talk with him, and never need to hide, and never need to ever be afraid again.

All of the conflict and poison of this world, as we see it in the Bible, comes from one sin. It’s been said to be a kind of pride, but it’s also a deep desire for something we don’t have. It comes from a decision to disapprove of what God has made us to be.

We want to redraw God’s design of us in a way that gives us more of an advantage. We want control. We want to be Gods. Eve and Adam wanted to be wise, but this was no trick of the Devil.

The Devil knew that they loved and worshiped what they saw in God, when God walked with them, and when they were tending the garden designed for them. They were created to begin a family of the human sons and daughters of God, but they could be drawn in to a temptation to take it for themselves, without partnership with God. They could just eat the fruit that would give them the knowledge of everything.

They would know the pros and cons of everything. They would know that if you did “A” and “B”, you would get “C”. The value on the other side of the equations wouldn’t be “X”. It wouldn’t be unknown. They wanted to be Gods not by being created in God’s image, but by self-creation and self-design.

The Devil himself had started his devilry with the same motives. That’s what the war in heaven is about. The Devil is in an agony of envy, to become God of a creation of his own making, even if it means creating a dead and poisoned and starving and hating creation.

The poet Milton was wise when he put these words into the Devil’s mouth: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” That is the philosophy and motivation of the Devil and his kingdom.

This is not so far from us. Jesus called a crowd of people who were believers (people who had chosen to follow Jesus and listen to him) . . . Jesus called them “children of the Devil.” (John 8:44)

They were still ready to turn on Jesus if he disappointed them.

It didn’t take much. Jesus poked at them a couple times and the truth came out. They wanted to create a kingdom of themselves in their own image, and Jesus wouldn’t play along. He never does.

We all see this in the end. Following Jesus, “we die daily.” (1 Corinthians 15:31) We die to ourselves to be recreated in Christ’s image. That is what the kingdom of God is for.

How do we beat this? How do we beat the Devil himself?

We do this by prayer: prayer without ceasing. We do this by knowing and understanding the Bible: learning from our heart the mind of God through the word of God.

We beat this by internalizing a reality of Jesus that we call “the full armor of God.” We find this armor spelled out in Ephesians 6:10-18.

Something more is hiding in our reading of the Book of Revelation. There is a song of victory. Someone is singing about the victory of God’s people over the Devil, and how they did it: “They overcame him by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” (Revelation 12:11)

Let’s take the last phrase first: “They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”

We give our greatest gifts when we give the fullness of our own lives. Soldiers do this. Husbands and wives in mutual devotion and thankfulness do this. Parents do this for their children. Sometimes we do this for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We do this for Jesus.

When Adam and Eve tried to hide from God, they lost themselves by trying to save themselves. The step they took, in which they ate the forbidden fruit, led to the next step of self-preservation to rob God of the gift that he had given to them: the gift of his creation and his love.

They robbed God of his created family, because they (along with all of us) were to be God’s family in flesh and blood. The fear of losing what we want to claim for ourselves is a kind of fear of death that can never stand up to the Devil.

Our defense against the dark arts is to love others more than we love ourselves. Our defense is ultimately to love God more than ourselves. We are not afraid to die to ourselves. Fear of anything less is defeat.

For the soldiers of Jesus, the second defense against the Devil is “the word of their testimony”. Another way Revelation phrases this is to call it, “the testimony of Jesus.” (Revelation 12:17) There is a very strange use of the same phrase later on: “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” (Revelation 19:10)

It’s a phrase that means two or three different things at the same time. It a sword that cuts both ways. The word of their testimony and the testimony of Jesus is what you say to others about Jesus. It’s also what Jesus says to you. It’s also what the scriptures tell you about Jesus. It’s also the over-arching story of what the gospel (the story of the good news of Jesus) tells you.

Our weapon against the dark arts is to know what Jesus has done for you and what he is still doing for you: to know it, and to share it with others, and to talk to Jesus about it in prayer and thanks.

This weapon against the dark arts is what the Word of God tells us, but it must do more than this.

The Word of God must feed you Jesus. The Word of God must be Jesus knocking on the door of your heart. The Word of God must be a picture of a baby in Bethlehem, and a man teaching and healing others in the desert. The Word of God must be a picture of that same man nailed to the cross, dying for you, and rising from the dead in order to raise you up and to give you life.

Here, again, beating the Devil requires you to make your life into something about more than yourself. Your life is for others. Your life is for the Lord.

The third weapon against the Devil is “the blood of the Lamb.” Again, you have the victory if your life is not about you, but truly a gift designed and shaped by the bloody hands of the one who died for you and for the whole world.

Here is what Jesus means when he started poking at the ones who thought they believed him when they didn’t really believe at all. “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)

The freedom of reigning in Hell instead of serving in heaven is no freedom at all, in the end. Jesus died in order to give birth to us as sons and daughters of the Living God, and to be brothers and sisters to each other, all around the world. Lesser loves bring the venom of conflict and separation. Freedom is love in Jesus, and in his family.

Faith's Underbelly - Anger Gone Wrong

Preached on Sunday, September 10, 2017

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

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

The Hills of Southern California
June 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faith's Underbelly - Stepping over the Line

Preached on Sunday, September 3, 2017

Scripture readings: Numbers 14:1-25; Romans 11:25-32

Santa Monica Pier, Southern California
June 2017

In the latest episode of the Exodus, right when they seem to have arrived, right when they stand ready to enter in, God’s people decide that entering into the Promised Land will be the death of them. They want to survive at all costs, even if it means going back to slavery in Egypt.

All through this saga, God’s people never come out with the adult equivalent of the child’s question, “Are we there yet?” They’re always thinking that they were better off before they left Egypt. There’s a home of freedom ahead of them; but they’re always hankering for the home they left behind them.

It’s Moses, for all his maturity, who is always reminding the Lord of how important it is to get them to their new home. He’s always reminding God to fulfill his promises.

The Lord’s reputation for faithfulness was on the line at the expense of his anger. Moses warned the Lord not to let the nations say, “The Lord was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath.” (14:16)

Moses kept insisting on what he knew about the true heart of God. He had seen that heart many times. Moses says to the angry God: “In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now” (14:19) This was the real rule of God’s heart.

This had to be how Moses knew that it was possible for God’s people to successfully, effectively enter the Promised Land: their new home of blessing, their new home of freedom. Moses knew God’s faithfulness, at its most tested, and he trusted that source of strength in the heart of God.

This is what true faith does. Faith has layers. Those layers go deep, or else they go high. Faith takes us somewhere. Faith is more than knowing. Faith is trusting what you know. That requires you to allow the God you trust to take you somewhere.

Chapter eleven in the Letter to the Hebrews is called the faith chapter. It gives us a number of working definitions and examples of faith. It contains a long list of the people of faith and, in each case, it tells us where faith took them, or what faith enabled them to accomplish that they would never have accomplished otherwise.

One of the definitions of faith is found in verse six of the faith chapter. It says: “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

In that sentence, you can see at least two layers of faith. Faith begins with a conviction of the reality of God. You meet God. You know, at some point, that there is a higher power that requires some level of mutual recognition. That’s essential, but it’s not nearly enough.

To say that “God is the rewarder of those who earnestly or diligently seek him” implies change. It implies a process of trust, and the crossing of a line, and entering in. The reward is a goal. It’s the end of a quest. It changes you and it makes you a new person. Hebrews will go on to tell you that faith leads you to run a race, and that it’s the sort of race in which only faith will enable you to “not grow weary and lose heart.” (Hebrews 12:3)

The people of Israel knew that God existed. The Lord was right there in the pillar of cloud and fire. The Lord never left them alone although it seems like they often wanted him to leave them alone.

They knew that God existed, but they took their faith no farther. They didn’t turn their faith into trust in the heart and the faithfulness of God. They wanted survival, and they thought that God’s chosen future for them would put their survival in jeopardy. In spite of the faith of Moses, and Aaron, and Joshua, and Caleb, God’s people lost heart at the thought of entering into a new world and a new life.

They formed the majority, and they won that day, and they also lost. Moses and his friends, in the minority, won the day, but they had a very strange victory. Moses’ prayer for the love of God to prevail was answered. The plan for God’s people to enter into a new life was on track, again, but it would take a lot longer now.

One of the things we learn, here, is that faith is not about survival, per se. Faith is about a higher calling. Maybe we could say that survival, itself, at its best, is about more than mere survival. Any survival that is worth of the name is about a higher calling, or a farther calling.

Something that Jesus said puts these things together. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)

There can be a real difference between life, and life to the full. Jesus said that life is not about mere survival, because he said this: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

Faith is about a higher, fuller life; and God, in Christ, calls us to this kind of life. It’s part of the life of a higher, fuller faith that trusts the heart and the faithfulness of God. Such a faith steps forward. Faith crosses the border and enters into that life.

This is essential to simply being a Christian and following Jesus in a genuine commitment. I made a commitment to Jesus when I was in the fourth grade and watching Billy Graham on television. It wasn’t hard to do. I always love Jesus. I always prayed and read the Bible, or Bible stories. And I tried to do what Jesus wanted me to do; like, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12) I understood that.

It was also easy to stop going to church when my family stopped, when I was about fifteen. And my church didn’t seem to know how to give me what I needed. I was the last to keep going, but it was easier to let the majority rule. I suppose it still is.

Then, when I was eighteen, God told me to go back to that frustrating church. I had to do that by myself, on my own. It didn’t seem to matter to God what I felt, or what I expected.

This turned into something completely different than I expected. There was a really good youth group leader who seemed to understand what I needed. And he took the youth group to a huge youth evangelism rally. And the Lord told me to go forward.

I told him that I didn’t need to go forward, because I already trusted him and belonged to him with all my heart. Which was true except for the fact that I was too chicken to do anything for him out loud or in public. So, I had to go forward, for that very reason.

I also had to go forward because the Lord seemed to be pushing me to understand that the only alternative to my not going forward was for me to be willing to be someone who said no to him. I didn’t dare not go forward.

Faith requires you to do things in order to know God better, and in order to move, and change, and enter in. You can’t do that by saying “no”.

This applies to much, much bigger issues in life. Marriage and family would be such a bigger issue. I think I’ve really tried to get married before, but my best efforts never worked. Someone once offered to help me get a bride from China, and I said no to that, but I think it was right for me to say no to that.

I’ve been in the pastoral ministry for a long time. I didn’t want to do it, but the Lord kept making a point of his requirement that I not say no to him. No one who knows my life would ever accuse me of being in the ministry as a matter of survival, because (a lot of the time) it hasn’t been that easy. I certainly have learned much more than I meant to. Faith (such as it is) will do that.

The people of God need a faith that goes much farther than mere belief that God exists, and even farther than believing that Jesus died for our sins. The faith of the people of God must trust God enough to move out, and step over borders, and enter into larger and higher callings. We must trust God enough to be ready to do the next thing he shows us. Maybe he will point the way soon.

What if we fail? The Bible teaches us that God doesn’t fail, and that his people remain his, and God’s plan goes forward. Paul says: “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.” (Romans 11:29) The failure of one part of God’s people simply allows God to include more people in the growth of his plan and his kingdom.

In the present episode of the exodus, the Lord declared his pardon of his people. It was a strange pardon that felt more like a punishment. God’s people, who didn’t want to enter the land, would not be allowed to do so. They had complained that it would be better for them to die in the desert than to try to enter the land and, so, the Lord granted their wish. They would die in the desert exactly as they claimed to prefer. But they took this badly.

They expressed the fear that, if they tried to enter the land, they would be losers and their children would be taken as slaves. So, the Lord promised a solution to their fears. The Lord promised that their children would enter the land as conquerors, in their place.

God’s people wanted to choose a leader of their own choosing and, so, God really did punish them, this time. God gave them back Moses to lead them for the rest of their dreary lives. Moses was given the blessing of leading those pathetic, faithless people for the rest of his life.

The punishment was that there would be more hardship ahead, for a very long time. The forgiveness was that there would be plenty of miracles, and the chance for their children to learn the strength and the faithfulness of God that their parents had yet to learn. The children had the chance to live a larger, deeper faith. It was part of the punishment, to be sure, but it was also part of the forgiveness. It was God’s faithful blessing of his people, in success and in failure.

The mystery is that God’s people were pardoned because an overruled minority believed what they didn’t believe. Even such a minority counts for something in the effectiveness of the grace and power of God.

Moses, and Aaron, and Joshua, and Caleb would faithfully walk the path of hardship, and delay, and punishment with their people. Faith and faithfulness do this.

Jesus came to walk the same path with us. God came down, in Jesus, to walk through the wilderness of this world with us. He walked through the dangers, and injustices, and anger, and hatred, and hypocrisy of a world torn by unbelief, and selfishness, and rebellion, which are the result of sin.

God, in Christ, walked the longer path of suffering that led to the cross, and sacrifice, and loneliness, and pain, and death. The Lord does this in good faith, in the power of his love to overcome all that is wrong in our hearts, and minds; all that is wrong with the world.

The Lord died and rose from the dead to open a door to a new life, a life of freedom from the power of sin and death. By faith and by trust in the heart of God, we can die with Christ to ourselves and we can cross the border, and enter into that higher life, that abundant life.

We have this call, as children of God and as the people of God, the church. Let’s hear the call, and trust the one who calls us, and let us move forward.

Faith for Life - The Power for Getting Unstuck

Preached the Sunday after Easter, April 23, 2017

Scripture readings: 1 Peter 5:1-4; John 21:1-19

On a Walk by the Columbia River, Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
April 24, 2017

When you get to the end of Chapter Twenty, in the Gospel of John, it sounds like John is bringing his writing to an end. Then he starts Chapter Twenty-One and he brings it to an end, for a second time, with these words: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)

I think that’s why John couldn’t quite bring himself to stop. There was so much to say about Jesus. I also think that’s the reason why, when you read about Jesus rising from the dead, in all four gospels, they don’t tell us any of the same things, except that the tomb was empty. There is always too much to say when Jesus is doing something.

In the twentieth chapter, Jesus teaches us about the power of his rising from the dead, and how this power works for our peace, and for our own forgiveness, and for our giving forgiveness to others. It tells us how his rising from the dead gives Jesus the power for sending us (making us sent people; people with a mission like the mission of Jesus).

In the twenty-first chapter, Jesus gives us a demonstration of how his rising from the dead gives him power to be the good shepherd, even after he lays down his life for his sheep. His rising from the dead also gives him the power to make us shepherds like him, if we love him.

Part of our church’s ordination vows (both for pastor’s and elders) is a promise to submit to the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as “God’s word to you.” I have to submit to them as God’s word to me and, if you became a minister or an elder, you would need to vow to accept them as God’s word to you. But, if you’re not what we call “ordained”, that doesn’t let you off the hook.

Besides, our church holds the belief that all of us are ministers. Minister is an old word that means servant. So we are all servants of Jesus, the chief servant, and servants of each other, and servants of the gospel to the world, and servants of everyone out there.

Peter writes, in his second letter, describing himself as an elder and (as such) he addresses his fellow elders, and calls them shepherds. Here, again, you’re not off the hook, you are all shepherds.

When I say that I’m a pastor, pastor is simply a fancy old word meaning shepherd. When I say that I’m a pastor, you shouldn’t quite believe it, because it isn’t exactly true. It’s more correct to say that I am an under-shepherd to the head-shepherd Jesus.

You are shepherds, too. You are not shepherds under me. You are under-shepherds just like me, because you and I serve together under Jesus, the head shepherd.

Also, we are not only shepherds to the church and our brothers and sisters in Jesus. Jesus once described his job this way: “For the Son of Man (Jesus) came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) So we’re shepherds to everybody.

Oddly enough, this is the very thing we see Jesus doing in the twenty-first chapter of John. The disciples (bless them) had managed, in just the few days since Jesus rose from the dead, to get themselves lost again: not lost from him or from the Father, but from themselves and from their purpose in life.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gave instructions for the disciples to leave Jerusalem, for a while, and go north, back to their home places in Galilee. The instructions were that they would see Jesus there. (Matthew 28:10)

Someone remarked that, after the resurrection, none of the disciples ever went searching for Jesus. He always came in search of them.

Of course, they wouldn’t even have known where to look, would they? If they went to Jesus’ house in Capernaum, looking for him there, the gospels don’t tell us, but we’ve already noticed that there is way too much to tell.

They went to Galilee, not knowing what to do next. They decided to go fishing, instead. At least that was something they knew how to do, and they might make a few bucks while they were at it.

It was their old way of life. They grew up with it. It felt good. Or it would have felt good, if they had caught anything.

Well they knew all about that, too. Just because you know what you’re doing doesn’t mean it will go well. And they were dealing with nature: with fish and with weather. With our orchards in bloom and our freezing spring nights, I’ve been praying for the farmers. They know what they’re doing, and yet who knows what will happen by the time harvest comes around again. It’s the same with fishing.

The disciples didn’t know how to look for Jesus. They were wandering. They were on auto-pilot. Yesterday, I heard the pastor at Bill Siegfried’s memorial service, talking about the disciples, after Jesus rose from the dead, being “stuck” in the past. I’ve been reading the same thing all this past week, so it must be important for you and me to get unstuck.

The funny thing, here, is that Jesus takes those disciples back in time, in order to unstick them. In the Gospel of Luke (Luke 5:1-11) you can read about the first time, or so, when Jesus found Peter and his friends.

It was almost the same. They had been fishing all night and they hadn’t caught a thing. Jesus told them to go out again and, that time (again), they caught so many fish that they needed another boat to come out to help them haul the net.

Even after Jesus rose from the dead, Peter and his friends had to learn the same old lessons. Both times, they were lessons about themselves. Both times, they were lessons about Jesus being up to the task of taking care of them, and providing for them, and leading them.

In the twentieth chapter of John, Jesus said to them “Peace be to you.” (John 20:19,21) He actually said it twice in close sequence. This time Jesus said to Peter, “Do you love me?” and he repeated the question three times.

The disciples had all deserted Jesus when he was arrested, and Peter had (three times) denied even knowing Jesus. The offering of peace and the question of love may have had something to do with their guilt, shame, sin, and regret. They had all gone through something terrible, and they had all responded badly, and they were lingering over it. They had gotten stuck.

Jesus never mentions their guilt, shame, sin, and regret. He never names them. But Jesus shepherds the disciples in their stuckness.

Jesus repeats his lessons willingly. They don’t look for this. They don’t expect this, themselves. Jesus is the one who knows better, and so he looks for this, and he works it out, again and again.

He repeats himself a lot with you and me; and, boy, do we need it. If this is God’s word to you, then it’s your job and mine to do this (to repeat the same things) for each other, and for those who don’t really know much about Jesus and who aren’t even looking for him. We are willing to repeat the same things over and over, because we know what it’s like to not be looking for Jesus, because the word of God teaches us that we aren’t.

Also, it teaches us that we can be creative, like Jesus. It’s hard to talk about sin. Jesus, at this point, wasn’t saying anything about sin; or about any such things. All he did was talk to them about peace, and love, and taking care of others. We can do the same.

Maybe, like Peter and his friends, we are not only dealing with guilt, shame, sin, and regret. Maybe it was (and is) simply discouragement. So, Jesus teaches us about his ability to find us, take care of us, and feed us, so that we can be shepherds to the discouraged.

We can be shepherds of encouragement. We need it ourselves, and so does everyone else.

One of the secrets of getting unstuck is to not hold so tight to the past and its patterns. “Do you love me?” “Feed my sheep.” “Follow me.” These are not about the past. These are about the present, and the future.

I get awfully stuck in the past. It’s one of my sins. I try to focus on what God wants me to do next. I make lists of things to do, and people to think about, days ahead of time. I have a sticker on my prayer wall that says, “Next Thing.” I need even better reminders than that.

The Gospel of John ends on a note where Jesus says, “Let me get you unstuck, so that you can follow me.” This is his command to every disciple, including you and me.

It’s his command to every church, including this one. We are commanded to come unstuck, because Jesus has died to make this possible; and Jesus has risen from the dead to make this possible. So, anything is possible. All things are possible. And Jesus says the words you’ve heard him say many times: “Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Follow me.”

Faith for Life - The Wounded Hero's Arsenal

Preached on Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday, April 16, 2017

Scripture readings: Exodus 15:1-3; John 20:19-31

I saw a cartoon once with a young minister talking to his little boy. The minister has his sleeve rolled up, and he’s pointing to a long, jagged scar on his forearm, and he says, “And I got this scar in the battle for the new church carpeting.”

Spring Photos Around Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
             April 2017

We get other kinds of scars from much worse battles and ambushes.

Jesus got many scars. He was scourged, and crowned with thorns, and nailed to a cross, and he died there. On his way to death he received many wounds. After he was dead, his heart was pierced by a spear. When he rose from the dead, he showed those wounds to his disciples.

Most soldiers would rather not talk about their battles. Still, Jesus was like a soldier showing the scars he had gotten in a war that he had won.

In another way, Jesus was briefing his disciples by showing them his wounds. His disciples would have to take up the fight for themselves because, although the war was won, the enemy had not surrendered and the fight was still going on.

The same fight is still going on to this day. It’s our fight too, and we need to be briefed in the fight by Jesus.

The scars of Jesus are the signs of his victory. The simple fact that he was so terribly wounded, and died, and rose from the dead was the very way he won the war. His scars are his trophies, his medals, from that war.

But Jesus has better trophies than these: the trophies that he is most proud of. After he showed the disciples his wounds, he told them what he had won for them, and for us.

The greatest trophy is everlasting life as the gift of Jesus to us; with heaven first, and then our very own resurrection (the resurrection of all things). When he raised his friend Lazarus from the grave, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25)

After the resurrection, Jesus seemed to be always starting with the word “peace”. We catch him repeating himself, that first day with the disciples. “Peace! Peace!”

When Jesus said “peace” the second time, he began to give his disciples some gifts and instructions. I think it’s not out of line to look at those gifts and instructions as playing a part in the peace he gives to us.

These gifts are his arsenal and strategy. Even peace is part of his arsenal. All of these gifts are his resources for us in the good fight.

I think I should say something about peace, first. Peace, in the Bible, means “well-being”. Peace is a kind of healthiness and thriving. You have peace when things are working well inside you, no matter how things are working on the outside.

Of course, there is an outward peace too. In the outward peace, in a nations peace, in a world truly at peace, everything works. Everything and everyone thrives. We don’t always see a lot of that in our world. That kind of peace will be the rule only when God creates a new heaven and a new earth.

Right now, by the word peace, I mean a spiritual health within. Things are working well in your soul. Also, peace means that things are working well between you and others or, at least, you are relating to others in a healthy way, whether they relate back to you in a healthy way or not.

Even on the cross, Jesus had this kind of peace. This is part of the peace that we need, and that Jesus gives.

The kingdom of God will be a kingdom of peace, because everything in the kingdom of God will work in healthy ways. There will be no injustice. There will be no judging or lording over others. People will serve and take care of each other. People will be free to grow and develop their gifts without fear.

Peace in the church is supposed to be exactly like that. Peace in the church can be seen where the grace of God is evident. People serve and care for each other. People grow together spiritually and in their ability to use their gifts, and there is plenty of wisdom and mercy spread around.

Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20:21) “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

There is peace in being “sent people”. It means that wherever you go you have a purpose. You have a mission. You have a mission to your family and neighbors. You have a mission to people who are completely different from you, to people who are strangers, and to people you may never meet. You have a mission to people you disagree with, and you have a mission with people who are in conflict with you. You are always sent.

Sometimes we don’t want to be sent. We want to pursue our own priorities. We want to be on our own, and to be independent, and we want to be uncommitted (or at least selectively uncommitted). If this is what we want, then we won’t receive the peace that Jesus is reaching out to give us: the peace he wants to breathe into us.

Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” Jesus was sent from the heart of God. In the first chapter of John, John tells us, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side (or the Father’s bosom); he has made him known.” (John 1:18)

The One and Only is Jesus, who came to earth from the Father’s side, taking up our human nature. We have to be sent from the heart of the Son who is in the heart of his Father. We have to serve where we are sent, knowing the very heart of God. We have to know what it means to say, “God so loved the world.” This is an essential part of our arsenal: the arsenal of the wounded hero Jesus.

We are not sent just to serve any old way that suits us. Jesus was sent as the incarnation of God; as God present in the flesh. We are sent to incarnate Christ. We are sent to be the hands, and the feet, and the voice of Jesus in the world around us.

We can only do this, though, if Christ has taken us, and sent us from his own heart. We have to be sent from his love if we are ever going to embody it. His love is grace, and the best grace is freely given. The best grace is unconditional.

“And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life, the Breath of Life.

The first time anyone in the Bible breathed into a person to give them life was in the story of the creation of the first humans. In the second chapter of Genesis it says this: “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) The older translations say that God’s breath, or Spirit, made the man (the human) into a living soul. I like that translation. The ancient people thought of souls.

In partnership with Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is an agent of creation. In the creation, in the Book of Genesis, only of humans is it said that their soul is something that God has directly breathed into them. Other scriptures tell us that there is some way that all other creatures have their life from God’s Spirit. But Genesis tells us that our life is different from any other creature. What God has breathed has made us into living souls in his image.

Sin robs us of the true life of the soul. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into his disciples to make them truly alive, spiritually and personally alive, as they (and we) were created to be. Jesus made them alive within, in a way that they could never have imagined on their own.

Peace comes from Jesus breathing into you. Jesus breathes a presence that makes you alive in a way that you could never guess beforehand.

Without the breath of the Holy Spirit we can act like good people. We can act and talk like religious people, but there’s no true life in it.

Without the Holy Spirit, we are only a bare image of life, just a picture; maybe even just a cartoon (or a stick drawing) of life. Without the Holy Spirit, we are only play acting; and we will always be afraid of being found out. We can’t have peace that way.

We are sent, simply, to be truly alive; to be real, genuine people, each in our own unique way but, most of all, in God’s way: Jesus’ way.

Jesus said, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:23) The best way you can forgive another person is to give them Jesus, and also to be Jesus for them.

Real forgiveness, the most important forgiveness, comes from God. Jesus is saying, “If you let someone know about me, then they can experience forgiveness. If you don’t let someone know about me, then they may never experience true forgiveness.”

But, in order to have peace, and to share peace with others, we need to know that there’s a proper time to speak of Jesus, and there’s also a proper time to simply be Jesus. To know the gospel, sometimes, people need something besides talk. The Holy Spirit will change you into a real, living person who can know the difference between the time for talk and the time for service.

Then the Holy Spirit will show you when other people need some explanation from you, to explain why you are so different. Then you have the chance “to give a reason for the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3:15)

There is something important about Jesus’ using his resurrection as the time to give his disciples their instructions and their arsenal for bringing forgiveness into the world. You can’t have real forgiveness without the resurrection.

If there was only the cross, and no resurrection, then you would have only the kind of forgiveness that brings pain and guilt. Without the resurrection, you would have a sacrifice for sins without any victory.

Forgiveness is so hard, and so costly, that some people will say that they can forgive, but they can never forget. So, their forgiveness always carries a chip on its shoulder. It gives comfort and peace to no one.

Forgiveness is costly, but real forgiveness needs victory. The resurrection takes the cross to the next step. The cross forgives sins, but the resurrection reverses the effects of sin. It brings true change.

This is a mystery, but this is why the Bible can say that God not only forgives sin, but even forgets it. I can’t explain this, but God speaks through the prophet Isaiah in order to say this: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25)

We feel lost because we can’t forget what we regret. Peace comes when we know that God has forgotten what we regret. Then this new life calls us to forget as well. Or this new life gives us the gift of acting as though we have forgotten.

There comes a time when we are told by God to forget our own sins, and to forget the sins of others. That gives us (and them) God’s peace.

We are sent from the heart of God. We are breathed into by the breath of the Holy Spirit of Life. We are people of forgiveness, who can bring the message of forgiveness to others.

These are the trophies and the arsenal of a wounded Savior who give his awards to us. These are the trophies of a risen Savior, who enlists us in a war that’s already won. This is the power of the resurrection for the life we are living today. If we believe, then we will have this new life in Jesus’ name. We will have it now, and we will have it forever.