Things Invisible - The Secret Working of Goodness

Preached on Sunday, May 6, 2018

Scripture readings: 2 Kings 6:8-17; Mark 9:1-13

A pastor flew to the big city for a convention, and he got into one of the cabs at the airport. Right from the start, the pastor knew that he had chosen the wrong cab.

Driving along Crab Creek, Smyrna and Corfu, WA
March 2018

The cab was dirty and foul. The cabby was dirty and foul-mouthed. He drove like a maniac. On the way to the hotel the cabby ran a red light and the cab was broadsided by a truck. The cabby and the pastor were killed instantly, and they found themselves at the pearly gates of heaven. St. Peter met them there.

Peter greeted the cabby first. Peter knew him by name, and gave him a beautiful silk robe, a golden staff, and a crown. Then he opened those pearly gates and the cabby marched into heaven.

With the pastor, St. Peter had to search for his name in the book. Then he gave him a brown bathrobe, a wooden staff, and a seed cap.

The pastor was upset. “Why are you treating me like this? I’ve served the Lord all my life.  Why did the cabby get all the good things?”

St. Peter gave him this for an answer: “Up here we’re interested in results. When you preached, people slept. When that cabby drove, people prayed!”

The words we have read from the Bible don’t claim to show us heaven, but both of our readings show us something heavenly. They don’t show us the center of heaven, the throne of the Lord, and the joy and worship that never ceases.

They don’t answer the questions of what life would be like in heaven. (God’s word tells us nothing about that, anywhere.) But they show us what heaven is like when it reaches out to us. They show us a bit about how heaven enters our world and touches our lives, perhaps every day.

There is an unseen reality that surrounds us. The servant of Elisha, and the disciples with Jesus on the mountain, were allowed to see with their own eyes something that most of us are only allowed to see by faith.

They were allowed to see what the world is really like, what the world really is, because the earth is the footstool of God (Isaiah 66:1; Matthew 5:35). In the language of the Biblical world, heaven and earth are two parts of one single thing, which is the creation of God.

This world is really the threshold of heaven (or the threshold of both heaven and hell). The most real things in this world are the invisible things. And this is like the difference between a car, as seen by most drivers, and the same car as seen by the mechanic, or the mechanically inclined.

Most drivers probably see their car as a box of metal and plastic that rides on four wheels, and has places to sit on the inside, and a steering wheel to guide it, and a place to put in the gas. And it has an engine that we don’t usually even look at, unless something is wrong and, even then, we don’t know what we’re looking at.

The mechanic spends most of his time working with the hidden machinery inside the box. What to us is a sound or a silence, to the mechanic is something solid that is part of a system of systems that works together to make the car go.

What we don’t see in this world is the stuff hidden deep within the box. This is the stuff that really makes the world run. Inside the secret places, are the armies of angels and the generations of people who struggled, and believed, and have gone into that invisible half of creation ahead of us. And they are not just there minding their own business. And they are not just living their own lives.

They forget about themselves and they get joyfully involved in God’s business.

Many people today have a great interest in the angels, but they have very little curiosity about what the angels are most interested in. The angels (like those people who have gone ahead, before us) are most interested in worshiping and enjoying God and each other. And they equally enjoy life as they serve God, and serving God leads them back to us, to serve us. In Hebrews, it says: “Are not all angels ministering or serving spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14).

Those who are so interested in angels should realize that angels are not interested in themselves at all. They are too filled with praise and love to be interested in themselves.

There is so much going on, perhaps all around us, all the time. In the world, as the Bible tells it, you might be anywhere, minding your own business, and meet the Lord in a bush, or by the door of your own tent. If you were sleeping out doors and woke up at the right time you might see armies of angels passing by.

Even in the Bible this was very rare, but it was possible because it was the real world as we seldom see it. Jesus said that heaven is God’s throne, and God is everywhere. Jesus is always with us and Jesus shares the throne with his Father. And Jesus says: “I will be with you always.” (Matthew 28:20)

All the generations that have gone before us, and all the armies of angels with their fiery chariots, are as near to us as God is. They are God’s people and God’s army playing their part in the Lord’s plan and purpose. But that is invisible to us most of the time

In the visible world, Elisha, the disciple of Elijah, was a man often in danger, and here he was trapped by the Syrian army. In our visible world, Jesus was a wonder working carpenter; and that’s what everybody saw when they bothered looking at hi..

In our visible world the truth is that things are not always what they seem to be. The unseen reality has always been much different. And yet nobody could see it without special help.

The fact that the Lord is here now, and that the Lord is working now, is usually absolutely invisible to us, but sometimes we are given a gift, and our eyes are opened, and then we can see what we usually aren’t allowed to see. Lord, open our eyes!

We are surrounded by an unseen glory.

Elisha, and his servant, and the disciples of Jesus were surrounded by a glory they did not know how to see.

Jesus was surrounded by a glory he was very familiar with. He was the one shining with glory. The glory came from him. Jesus was the one showing himself to his friends as he truly was.

What he was giving them was sort of a temporarily confidential secret, at least for the near future. What they saw was given to them to help them, because things were not going to get easier for them. It was Jesus’ way of taking care of them before the bad turn up ahead.

It was like a big, deep bear-hug you would give to your child.

As for Elisha, apart from the fact that the chariots of fire were there for his protection, the servant saw them as if God had his arms around Elisha. They were the Lord’s love.

The unseen truth is that everyone you know (or don’t know) is just as likely to be surrounded by chariots of fire as Elisha was. The truth is that, if God had a wallet, he would have your picture in it. God would carry your children’s pictures in his wallet too.

Well, you must realize that God would have everyone’s picture in his wallet. That would make a very big wallet, and that’s probably why God doesn’t have a wallet. He carries everyone’s picture in his heart instead.

We are surrounded by an unseen power.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses said to his people, “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” (33:27) They couldn’t see it but it was true.

Elisha told his servant the truth, ‘Don’t be afraid, “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”’ 

On the mountain, Moses and Elijah were talking with Jesus. Luke’s gospel tells us more plainly what they were talking about. They were talking about Jesus’ departure which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. But the Greek word for departure in that verse is the same Greek word as the title of the Book of Exodus. They were talking about Jesus’ exodus.

When Jesus’ departure happened, it looked exactly like death by torture on a cross. It was a terrible thing to see. Everything about the cross told the story of Jesus’ failure; Jesus’ utter and brutal defeat.

But all of that horror and pain were only the reality of things as the people around the cross saw it. The visible reality, as they perceived it, made some of the people there laugh, or taunt. Or it made them angry. Or it made them despair. Or it simply made them weep. The visible reality, as they perceived it was not true.

The unseen reality was completely different. The unseen reality was Jesus the pioneer, blazing the trail that all of his people would follow. The exodus trail of Jesus is our way to the promised land. The exodus trail of Jesus permanently divides the red sea of death. Jesus’ trail makes the desert of sin into a valley of springs. The narrow path is a park where manna bread falls from the sky.

Of course, when it came time to happen, it wouldn’t look anything like an exodus. It looked horrible. It looked like a crucifixion: one of the worst ways to die.

Moses and Elijah were talking to Jesus about the cross, and the nails, and the tomb.
The cross was the visible side of an invisible power. The cross is the strategy which Jesus used to capture us and change us: if we would be willing to receive it.

The cross held the invisible power to crack the barriers of this universe, in order to create it new. The cross would make heaven and earth (the home places of angels and humans into new places. The cross would bring heaven and earth together into one place where the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit would dwell with all his creatures.

The cross holds the invisible power to tell us we are loved and there will be no more tragedies, no more sorrows, no more griefs. The cross is the power that fights our enemies: fear, hatred, discouragement, sin.

            The Lord’s gifts to his people are often visible signs of an invisible power and grace. They look like one thing to our eyes of flesh and blood. They are a completely different reality, spiritually.

When we sing and pray and listen to God word read and preached, the grey carpet in this room turns into holy ground. But you’ve also got holy ground at home and, next door, your neighbor’s floors are holy ground: or they can be.

Quiet, with your heads bowed, and with your hands folded or raised, aliens from another planet might not suspect what to make of you when you pray, but the invisible reality is that you are standing around God’s throne singing thanks for God’s answers to your prayers.

The Lord’s Supper looks like bread and juice, the invisible reality is that Jesus is feeding us with himself: with all that he is and with all that he has done for us. It’s a heavenly feast served with unending pitchers of wine.

The water of baptism looks like whatever flows from your faucet or whatever you swim in at the river. The invisible reality is that it is much more like the river of life that flows from the throne of God in the new Jerusalem come down from heaven.

The stories of Elisha and the chariots, and Jesus and the transfiguration sound like miracles, and maybe they are, only they are the rare opportunities that come and allow us to see the real rules of the universe behind the visible, measurable reality that we take for granted. Miracles don’t break the rules of nature. Miracle obey the simple rules of the part of nature we usually don’t see, even though that reality surrounds us all the time and never goes away.

Every human being on this earth is the same kind of miracle. All the human beings who have ever lived, or those who ever will live, have the potential to be more than they appear to be. Even now they may be resisting, or they may be in the process of becoming, like the riders of those fiery chariots. Even more, they may be resisting, or struggling, or in the process of becoming, like our Lord Jesus when his friends could see him shining like tender, loving lightening.

Everyone you know is made to shine, and you are the ones who know the truth. You are the ones who can go to others in your God-given light and be just a little part of a whole choir of light with which the Lord surrounds each and every unknowing, unsuspecting person around you.

You can be God’s gift and serve God’s purpose to make that invisible light and power to come on for them forever. Let’s think and pray to find the ways to work and to live it, and the ways to speak and to share it, that God in his grace can use to make that invisible world visible in this one.

Living and Dying, Earth and Heaven

Preached on Sunday, May 7, 2017

  

Scripture readings: Psalm 73:21-26; Philippians 1:19-30

“How many of you want to go to heaven?”

An old-time preacher asked the question, “How many of you want to go to heaven?” And everyone raised their hands, except one child. The preacher asked the child, “What about you? Don’t you want to go to heaven?” And the child said, “Yes I do; only I thought you were trying to get together a load to go right now.”

The Heavens
Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
March 2017

Paul wrote a strange, radical thing to his friends in Philippi, in the north of Greece:

“For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (1:21)

Paul was living the life of a prisoner. He was chained up in a stinking, underground dungeon. The remains of this dungeon can still be seen today. He was being held for trial before the emperor’s court, in Rome. He was on trial for his life. 

Being on trial for his life was a very familiar experience for Paul, except for the part about the emperor. That part was exciting. But Nero was the emperor now, and Nero had started to persecute Christians as dangerous conspirators, the enemies of humanity and enemies of the order of the empire.

There had been a great fire in the city of Rome. Some citizens blamed Nero who had been making plans to redevelop the city.

Nero needed someone else to blame, so he blamed the Christians, and he had many of them tortured and killed. And once he had painted them as the real enemy, if he didn’t want to look dishonest, he had to keep it up.

Things did not look good for Paul. It was a serious time to settle the mind, to keep focused on what was truly important. But the question was: was it time for Paul pray for inner peace and strength, or else should he prepare to let it all go, and focus on heaven?

Or else, should Paul pray for a dismissal, or an acquittal in court? 

And should he pray about his old missionary plans? Should his goal be traveling west to Spain; or back east again to visit the churches he had started in Greece, and beyond? What should he want?

Paul’s friends wanted him to live. They wanted him around.

But what did Paul want? Certainly he wanted to be around. But should he want this? Should he be ready to die, or ready to live? And what does it mean to die? And what does it mean to live?

Paul tells us what he believes, “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

Now this is sort of like saying, “To live is great, and to die is even greater.”  If we found ourselves in Paul’s situation, it would be understandable if we considered our life to be over and hopeless. But, for Paul, sitting in the stink of one of Rome’s worst jails, waiting to have his case heard by an emperor who was politically motivated to torture and kill him... for Paul, in that time and place (even there) to live was Christ. 

When he says that “to die is gain” he doesn’t mean “There is nothing left for me here.” There is more to it than meets the eye. Even here, in this prison, in the shadow of death, life is Christ.

I once heard a professional mountain climber being interviewed. This man was well on his way to his goal of climbing the fourteen highest mountains on the earth, and doing it without any bottled oxygen. We are talking about heights of twenty-eight thousand feet, and more. Up there, the air is so thin that the muscles and the brain begin to starve, for the lack of oxygen. The muscles are depleted. The brain loses judgment, and a clear sense of time and direction. Up there, the exhaustion and cold are torture.

Climbing each mountain takes months of training, and preparation, and attack. By the time of his interview, this climber had conquered nine of the fourteen mountains. He loved doing this! For him to live was mountain-climbing.

Paul was a spiritual mountain climber. And he was facing the tallest mountain of his life. And he said, “For me, to live is Christ.”

I want to list for you a few of the parts of Paul’s life that were NOT what he meant when he said “to live is Christ”. Here are some things that Paul, as a follower of Jesus, could point to and say, “To live is a great thing.” Yet these are not the same as saying, “To live is Christ.”

Here is the Christian life as a great thing. For a follower of Jesus, having sisters and brothers in Christ is one of the things that make living great. There are people you belong to, and they belong to you. But this sense of belonging doesn’t happen only because you share a common cause, or because you’ve spent time together, or even because they may be your very own flesh and blood. There is a sense of belonging that can include all that, but it’s much more than that.

There’s a sense of belonging that comes from knowing the fact that we don’t own each other. The greatest sense of belonging comes from knowing that we are given to each other by God. Actually, everyone we know, everyone we meet, is God’s gift.

The most normal thing in the world, when you think of your brothers and sisters in Christ… the most normal thing in the world is to give thanks. In every letter but one (Galatians), Paul starts out by giving thanks for the people to whom he is writing; even when they are driving him crazy with their backsliding, and their immaturity, and their conflicts.

When Paul says that he hopes to remain with them, and he says, “I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you,” the word translated as continue is really a side-by-side-continuing. “I will stay, and I will stay beside you, with all of you.” This staying side-by-side with people who are given to you by God, and made a part of you by God, is a part of following Jesus. It is something that makes following Jesus a great thing.

Other things that make following Jesus great are these: standing for the truth, being witnesses of good news in a world that is crying out for good news. There is having a God-given purpose in life. There is standing for compassion and mercy. There is being prayed for by others, and praying for them. There is being a servant. There is the help of the Holy Spirit, or the supply of the Spirit. This comes when the Lord renews your strength, or gives you insight into life and shows you the way. To live (following Jesus) is great.

But Paul says... “For me, to live is Christ...” This is something more.

Partly, this is a matter of what is important to you. For instance, you might say: “Farming is my life”, or “Education is my life”, “My work is my life”.

You might say: “Success is my life.” You might say, “Survival is my life”. Or you might say: “My family is my life”. Or you might say: “My happiness, my comfort, is my life”. These are answers to the question: What is the most important thing for you? And then you could say: “Christ is my life”. That brings us closer to what Paul is saying.

Now what if you are like me, and you have a lot of different things are important to you? What if there was a conflict between your work and your family, and both were in competition for the center of your life? What if your work was not good for your family life; or your spouse and children hated the work you did? That happens to people working in the ministry.

The Bible doesn’t really say that one kind of work is more holy than another. It just says to work, if you can, and to do honest work.

The Bible says to work so that you can eat. It says to work so that you can have something to give. Otherwise you’re free. You have lots of options; unless God gives you only one.

And then the Bible says to be a good husband or wife. Be a good parent. Sons and daughters: be good to your parents by obeying them. These are not options. Here we are not free. Surely your family life is more important than the work you do. And if they are more important than your work, then they will motivate how you relate to whatever work you do; so you do the right work, in the right way.

If Christ is your life, then Christ will win in any competition with any other part of your life. But Christ will also motivate you in every other part of your life. Christ will motivate you as a worker, and Christ will talk to you about the kind of work he calls you to do, and he will make your special calling become a way of following him in holiness; in the Lord’s unique purpose for you.

If Christ is your life, then the Lord will make your relationships with your family into ministries. Your spouse, your parents, your children will all be holy ground for you. If Christ is your life, then even your relationships with strangers will turn into ministries. Christ will give you your priorities, and he will show you where to sit tight, and when to hang loose.

But you can say “Christ is my life” and still not understand what it means to say, “For me, to live is Christ.”  You can say “Christ is my life” and be only a slave in the way you live for Christ. You can be a drudge for Christ.

To say, “For me, to live is Christ” is more like being in love, which is wonderful, and scary, and joyful, and challenging, and frustrating, and exciting, and confusing, and fulfilling, all at the same time.

The word atonement, in the Bible, which refers to something that brings people together with God, and brings peace with God, means the action of making them “at one”. Atonement means “at-one-ment”. There (in “at-one-ment”) to live is Christ.

It’s like marriage, where two become as one. In love, there is passion and the desire to be together all the time, and even if that seems to cool down, there are always thoughts like: “She would love to see this.” or “This is something he wouldn’t like.” To say, “For me, to live is Christ” means “He is my reason for living. And he is not only my reason for living; he is the very source of my life. He is the love of my life. He is my joy and my peace.”

“For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” I think this means something like, “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is to gain more of Christ.” Paul surely says this very thing when he writes: “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far...” (Philippians 1:23)

But better than what? Better than being of use to his friends and family in Christ? Paul loved being useful.

Heaven will bring us the pure enjoyment of love and thanks in a way that is separate from usefulness. This is very strange. When Paul talks about staying, he talks about his presence with his people being necessary, and then he talks about leaving that behind.

Going on to be with the Lord will be something different from usefulness. It will be the end of being of use, and of being necessary. Or it will be a graduation to something better. Perhaps there is something more wonderful than being of use, and much better than being necessary.

I do believe that there may be some kind of joyful work or service to do in the everlasting life, after we depart to be with the Lord. It’s possible. But we will not do it because we are indispensable, or even merely useful. We will not be loved for what we do; we will do because we are loved, and because we love.

If we want to know anything about the Lord, we have to know that the whole message of the good news of Jesus Christ is that he did something for us that we could not do for ourselves. Until we get that, we don’t get anything. And here we fret and we think that our life has no purpose if we cannot do things for others, or even for ourselves. 

But that isn’t true. We have a purpose because God made us, because God loves us, even when we are helpless and useless. This is the truth. But it is very, very hard to grasp.

A new born baby has a purpose in life. An unborn baby has a purpose. A flower in a vase has a purpose. A hug and a kiss have a purpose. The clasp of a hand has a purpose. A song has a purpose.  A sunset has a purpose. None of these things are of any material, practical use to us at all. But they are priceless: absolutely priceless. 

Craig Barnes was a young pastor when he faced a long and difficult battle with cancer, and the treatments left him too sick to be of any use to his congregation, or his wife, or his children, and he didn’t know if he would ever recover. This made him feel completely helpless and hopeless. Then, one day, he felt that the Lord was telling him this: “You are too important to be necessary. You deserve to be loved.”

Part of heaven will be the experience of this love. “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” To die is to gain more of Christ.

Often the Bible compares death to sleep. The body stops, and takes a long, long rest.  Other times the Bible talks about death as moving away from our bodies and this world, into the presence of the Lord. “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.” 

“I desire to depart and be with Christ.”

The word that’s translated as “depart” tells us what it means to die. The word could be used a number of different ways. It literally means the loosening or the untying of something. It’s the word people said when they struck camp; when they loosened the ropes and the stakes on their tents, to pack them up and move on.

When I was a kid, we went camping every summer, and it was one of the great rituals, setting up the tent. And it was just as important a ritual to take it down exactly right, so it would go up exactly right, next time. And when we struck camp for the last time, then it was time to go home.

The word “depart” means loosening, and untying of the moorings of a boat, so that it can launch out.

In one of the churches I served, we went for an annual rafting and kayaking trip every summer. On these trips, we had this great ceremony in the mornings, when the rafts were packed and ready, and everyone was in their places, we said a prayer, the knots were untied, and we pushed off down the river.

The word we translate as depart also means, of all things, unraveling a problem, it means finding the solution. There’s a time and a place where all the hurts are healed and all the questions are answered. Those who wait till the end will understand.

There’s a phrase from an old prayer that goes like this: Help us to live as those who are prepared to die. And when our days here are ended, enable us to die as those who are ready to go forth and live, so that whether we live or die our LIFE may be in Jesus Christ our risen Lord.

Paul said, “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Earth is for life. Heaven is for life. Living is for life. Even dying is for life. In Christ, it is like being in love.

This is what Paul believed. This is what the Bible teaches. This is what we believe.

Faith for Life - The Lord of Tears and Eternity

Preached on Sunday, April 2, 2017

Scripture readings: Daniel 12:1-3; John 11:17-44

A four-year-old spilled his milk on the floor and he wanted to clean it up, so his Mom told him that the mop was just outside the kitchen door, on the porch. Well he ran to the door, and he opened it, and he saw that it had gotten dark outside and, all of a sudden, he felt scared.

Burkett Lake, North of Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
March 2017

He ran back to his Mom, and told her about it. And she told him that Jesus is everywhere, even in dark places, and that Jesus would always protect him and help him. This made him happy, so he ran back to the door, and opened it up, just a crack, and he yelled, “Jesus, if you’re out there, could you pass me the mop?”

When Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus, he was sharing the darkness with us. Jesus is God in the flesh, and you would think that nothing could make God cry, but maybe God understands the dark times that make us weep even better than we do.

Sooner or later we run out of tears, or we put the time for tears behind us, but Jesus, in his stay on earth, showed us that there is something in the heart of God that is always ready to weep in the presence of sorrow, and loss, and pain, and evil, and death. God has something in his heart that weeps when he sees these things: these wrenching, aching needs. Somehow, even in the middle of all the glory, and joy, and peace of heaven, God sees these things, all the time. As we see God in Jesus, we see God weeping.

How does the Lord handle it?

First, the Lord handles it with a plan.

We see this during his visible stay with us, in Jesus.

Jesus worked with Lazarus and his family according to plan.

There was a plan then.

There is a plan now.

Jesus never acted as though he were in the middle of an emergency, as though he were caught by surprise. He always knew what would happen, and he always knew what he would do about it. So, when Jesus heard about the illness, and the danger Lazarus was in, he said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory, so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” (11:4) The Lord had a plan for Lazarus’ death, and a plan for Lazarus’ life.

We human beings have all kinds of wrong ways of dealing with God’s plans. We worry and we fret about the plan of God. We make other people feel guilty when we say, “If you had only had been more obedient to God, this bad thing wouldn’t have happened.” or “If you had prayed with faith, your prayer for healing would have been answered.” 

It’s better to be silent and say nothing than to mishandle God’s way of working when we talk to others. None of us knows enough. Especially none of us knows enough about God’s ways of working with other people to try to teach others about God’s ways and plans. I try to be very careful about this, although I’m trying to shed some light on it here. You be careful too.

Martha and Mary had sent an urgent message for Jesus to come, and he waited instead. When Jesus came too late, they were upset. For them, saying, “If you had been here, this wouldn’t have happened” was no different from saying, “If only you had listened to us this wouldn’t have happened.” We have these false ideas of the plan of God that we use against others, against ourselves, and against the Lord.

We misread God’s will and God’s plan. When Jesus went to Lazarus’ grave, and ordered that the stone be removed from the entrance, Martha protested. I wonder if Martha was thinking something like this: “Don’t do it, Jesus. We were there. We know what happened. We know what God’s will is. Let it go. Let it be.  Accept it. It’s all over now.” 

But it wasn’t all over. They were thinking about what could be done and what couldn’t be done. But they were misreading the plan. They were misreading God’s intentions, and God’s will, and God’s heart.

Jesus was to blame for this. Jesus always kept them off balance about his plans, when all they wanted was just to know what to expect. But that was the problem. Instead of wanting to know what to expect, they should have wanted to know Jesus better, and trust him more.

We want to have confidence in things. Jesus wants us to have confidence in him; and not as a last resort, the way we normally do.

We don’t need to know the plan. We only need to know that there is one, and trust the one who knows what the plan is.  Let’s trust Jesus.

When Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death,” Jesus is talking about his plan for all of us. This is what it means when he says: “I am the resurrection and the life.” (John 11:25) Jesus is talking about his plan to share the power of his life with us, beginning now.

None of our sicknesses will end in death. Jesus gives us a life where we don’t have to be afraid when it looks like we, or someone we love, is coming to the end. We do not end in death, because death is not the end. He gives us a life that will never end. “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

When Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he is talking about his plans. Jesus dealt with darkness, with pain, and sorrow, and evil, and death, through the plan of the cross.

Jesus died on the cross, so that the cross would be a bridge of mercy, where we could cross over, and away, from our entrapment in everything that’s wrong with us, and we can cross over to the freedom that comes from the mercy of God.

The cross is his plan to take us across to safety, away from a life that will run down, away from a life that will run out, across to a life full of glory that will grow and grow. For us death turns into the glory of heaven. Then, in some future time, the glory of heaven will turn into the glory of the resurrection.

Then, someday, the glory of the resurrection will turn into an even greater glory. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another….” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

Jesus deals with death, and all the bad stuff, by carrying out this plan of the cross. Faith means trusting this cross: trusting him.

And then, Jesus deals with sorrow, and pain, and loss, and evil, and death by grieving. The shortest, plainest verse in the Bible says it. “Jesus wept.” (11:35)

Something in God’s heart knows how to weep.

Why would the Lord weep when, all the while, he knew that Lazarus would live again? Why would Jesus weep, when he knew he had the power to conquer death?

Jesus wept because of what his friends were going through; because his friends had to experience the loss and absence that come from death. More than that, Jesus wept just because there was such a thing as death in the world.

Jesus was surrounded by people who were hurting inside. Jesus knew that the whole world was like this. It’s reputed that there was a Jewish rabbi in the first century who said, “Be kind to others, for everyone has a hard road to travel.” (Philo of Alexandria)

The Bible tells us that human death and suffering were not originally part of the world, as God created it. Suffering and death came from our rebellion and conflict with God. They came from the original human beings cutting themselves off, and passing down their isolation to their descendants: separating them and us from true oneness with God and with each other.

It’s in this sense that death is normal, but death is not entirely natural. Our life and our relationships were not designed for death, and that’s why grief (much more than death) is natural. Jesus grieved because he saw what was wrong with the world, and so grief came naturally to him. Jesus looked straight into the mess we had gotten ourselves into, and he wept, and then he did something about it.

We need to grieve deeply. But then we also need to look beyond our own losses and hurts, and see how we are not the only ones hurting.

We need to look at the things that are causing hurt and grief in the world around us, and decide to be healers, if we can be. We need to look at the causes of hurt and evil around us, among our neighbors, in our society, in our world. We need to identify what’s wrong, and grieve for it, and pray about it, and see what we can do to go against the flow, to cut against the grain, and stand for something different. We need to live for the kingdom of God in a sad world which has no idea that things can be any different than they are. And this begins with the ability to see and to grieve.

Jesus deals with sorrow, and loss, and pain, and evil, and death, by asking us to believe him: by asking us to trust him. Jesus says, “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 will never die. Do you believe this?” (11:25-26) “Do you believe this?” he asks.

 He means, “Will you believe in me? Will you trust me?  Will you depend on me?” Ole Hallesby, the old, Norwegian Lutheran theologian, in his book on “Prayer”, says that the secret to true prayer is helplessness: that you can never learn to pray until you come to the point where you know that you are not able, but God is able.

When I drive down to see my relatives in Southern California, and when I’m driving through downtown Los Angeles, or in the suburbs in Orange County; all through those places, I see how God’s creation is being covered over by human creation. They have so little chance to see God’s world. They have practically built God right out of their world. Yet we are not so far away from them as we think.

The original sin grew out of a desire not to need to depend on God alone. Maybe we all take pride in some part of our life which we have reserved for ourselves, to prove something to ourselves, and say, “I can do this all by myself. Here is one place where I don’t need anyone’s help.”

If we insisted, I think that this would be fine, unless we wanted to see the power of God.

Martha tried to keep Jesus from making a fool out of himself by opening Lazarus’ grave, even though he had already told her, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  When Martha tried to stop him from trying to get at Lazarus, Jesus scolded her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the power of God?”

Martha was falling back on her ability to be prudent and practical. She was falling back on her own strength. 

Jesus wanted to take her to a place where she was absolutely helpless. There was no way for her to contribute to what Jesus wanted to do. Jesus could do it, but Martha had nothing to give. Here was a place where she couldn’t make anything happen. She had to just believe. It must have felt awful. It was a crisis.

 There is a crisis that the Lord sets up in people’s lives (as he did with Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus) where we are powerless, but God is able. And we must break down and truly believe at last.

We are faced with something that proves we are helpless. We are not able, but God is able. Then we can see it. Then we can experience it: the power of God.

There is a freedom and power that comes from finally letting God be God.

As I thought about his, I do believe that there are just a couple things we do in worship that tell us that we are truly helpless without God. They’re the sacraments.

Baptism is about dying with Christ and rising with Christ from the dead. You can die by yourself, but you can’t do anything to rise from the dead. Only God can make that happen.

The Lord’s Supper tells us that there is something absolutely necessary for our life that we can’t do for ourselves. In the Lord’s Supper, God is our food. We can’t live without food. We can’t live spiritually without the food of God. 

Life in this world brings us up against many brick walls: sorrow, loss, sickness, evil, death; and we are all mostly powerless. But the Lord’s death on the cross makes things possible for us that are beyond our power; and his rising from the dead, and his living presence with us today, is part of a plan to give us a life that will not be defeated by anything; not even by death.

Jesus has a plan to show us his glory and his love. Jesus is the Lord of our tears, and he is the Lord of eternity, and eternal life. Jesus calls us to live in faith, so that we can see and experience the power of God.

Heaven - In My Father's House

Preached on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 3,2016

Scripture readings: Psalm 23; John 13:36-14:9

There was a child who described an elevator ride this way: “I got into this little room, and the upstairs came down.” (“1000 More Humorous Illustrations”; ed. Michael Hodgin; # 78)

Enjoying April Flowers, Desert Aire, WA: 2016

That isn’t far from the way it will be when Jesus comes to us at the time of our death. Jesus said it like this: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:3)

Jesus said, “In my Father’s house, there are many rooms; if it were not so I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2) Jesus was talking about heaven.

The disciples desperately needed to hear him talk about this, because they were afraid. They didn’t know how close they were to the things they were so afraid of. But they were only a few hours away from the cross. Jesus was about to be betrayed, and beaten, and nailed to a cross. He was going to die on that cross.

They were going to be at a complete loss without him. They were going to wonder why. They were going to wonder what it meant. They were going to wonder what would become of them. Jesus was answering those questions but the disciples didn’t understand. That’s how we are.

For months, maybe for most of the years they knew him, Jesus had been talking about this; sometimes clearly, sometimes in mysterious ways. In mysterious ways he called it being “lifted up” (maybe because, on the cross, his feet wouldn’t touch the ground). (John 12:32)

Maybe being “lifted up” was more like another mysterious way Jesus had of talking about his dying on the cross. He called it “being glorified”. (John 12:23-24)

His death on the cross would be glorious because it would show God’s love; as in the verse, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” (John 3:16) There is nothing more glorious than that. Jesus thought it was glorious because he said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) That’s glorious too.

Jesus had been talking like this more and more and, that evening of the last supper, he told the disciples that he was going away now. They couldn’t follow him, yet; but they would later. This scared them as much as anything else that Jesus had ever said.

So Jesus told them about his Father’s house; just a little bit. Let us take a look at what that house is like: what heaven is like, in the words of Jesus.

Jesus said, “I go.” (14:2, 3) Jesus was going away because his Father’s house was not in this world.

In the sixteenth chapter of John, Jesus said, “I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.” (16:28) Heaven is not a part of this world of time and space, where we live now.

How will our life in heaven unfold, since it exists outside of time? Eternity is not a thing that goes on, and on, and on, and on until we are tired of it, because things going on and on can only happen within our universe of time and space. And yet eternity is a thing that will never stop or end.

What kind of scenery, or architecture, or “geography” will heaven have; seeing that it does not exist in space? Since heaven is beyond time and space, it can’t be measured by length, or width, or distances, because it has none. If heaven can’t be measured by distance, then it may not be very far from us, here in this world; even if we have to go there, in order to be there. It’s mind boggling.

Heaven is another place: a place to which we must “go”, in order to be there, because our Father’s house is a place from which Jesus said, “I will come.”

Our whole life with Jesus, even now, is a life where Jesus comes to us. Jesus is constantly arriving. Jesus told the disciples that they would see him again after he died on the cross and rose from death; even though the world was going to think that he was gone and done with.

He said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” (14:18-19)

When we know Jesus in all his mercy, and power, and love it is almost like seeing him. Seeing Jesus makes everything in our life more alive.  It’s like having heaven now. Because Jesus lives, we are more alive than people without Jesus can imagine. Or we should be.

Christ comes to us and gives us glimpses of heaven on earth, not necessarily in the sense of supernatural euphoria, or good-feeling, or spiritual goose-bumps, and not necessarily in the sense of actual visions.

Those may happen, but Jesus normally comes to us in ordinary life. Real places, and real things, and real people will often give us a foretaste of heaven, because of Jesus always arriving and sharing his life with us through each place, and thing, and person.

I believe that Jesus will come to us, and take us home at the time of our death. Some people believe that Jesus will only come back to take us home at the end of the age, at the resurrection. But, if Jesus is always coming to us in this life, I don’t know why he would not also come to us at the time of our death.

And, besides that, the resurrection is intended to bring us here. It will happen here. It will not be a time when we go to be with Jesus. It will be a time when we come back with Jesus.

Our home, in the resurrection, will be a new creation. There will be a new heaven and earth. But it won’t be another place. It will be this place; this universe, recreated and transformed in an unimaginable way: all the evil, corruption, injustice, danger, pain, sickness, sorrow, suffering and death won’t be found anywhere anymore.

Jesus was going to his Father’s house and now he’s going to take us there until the time of the new creation of the resurrection, when we will be made new. Even our bodies will be made new. But heaven will be a great place to be, until then, because we will be there with God, and we will be there together.

Heaven is not our final home. And, in some strange way, heaven is not even God’s final home, because, in the Book of Revelation, when the new heavens and the new earth appear, God says, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.” (Revelation 21:3) Since heaven is where God is, this must mean that heaven and earth will be one.

The mansions, or rooms, within the Father’s house are described with a simple Greek word that’s hard to translate (monai). It is a word that usually means stages of rest along a journey. But a house does not go on a journey.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told the dying thief on the cross, “This day you shall be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) Paradise, as a word for heaven, comes from the life-styles of the rich and famous, and from the life styles of royalty.

A paradise was a king’s park. It had places of sun and shade, groves, fruit, flowers, open places, peacocks, wonderful things to look at. It was a place to go to rest and renew oneself. It was a bit like Camp David is for the president of the United States.

The king, with his family and friends and servants, would go to the royal paradise to celebrate life as a preparation for the next great thing to do. Heaven itself is a resting and celebrating place, before God’s next great thing.

The permanent thing about the Lord’s house, or the Father’s house, is that it is much more than a place. It is a relationship (a permanent relationship).

It’s made up of many, many relationships; but above all, it’s your relationship with God. Jesus said, “I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am.” (14:3) Heaven is being with the Lord.

David planned to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. That was the place that would be called the temple. It turned out to be a job that had to be postponed and wait for David’s son, Solomon, to build it.

The temple was different from a church building (though we know that the church is not really a building). The Temple was considered more like a house, because God’s presence would live there in a unique way. But I believe that the house of the Lord, which David was thinking about, in the 23^rd Psalm, was something outside this world. I believe David was thinking of the heavenly house of the Lord.

Heaven, the Father’s house, is the place for meeting with God in his glory and mystery, face to face. It is the place to be with the Father, and with the Son, and with the Holy Spirit.

You will meet something there that you can never get to the end of. You can never get tired of it. You will meet something there with greater and greater depths of knowledge, and love, and faithfulness. You will meet something there with greater and greater challenges, and greater and greater grace. Jesus doesn’t describe it in physical terms, except to call it home.

The Father’s house has many rooms. Jesus told his disciples that the great thing about his Father’s house was that there was always room. Heaven is big, but never lonely. It is built for hospitality, and fellowship, and wonder.

When I was a kid, one of the most homelike houses we lived in was one that was never done. It was an old, old farm house but, when we lived there, it was never finished. There was always something planned, and there was always something that was only half done. My mom often was frustrated by this.

Yet, in a sense, your room in heaven is done. It has been done ever since Jesus died for you on the cross. It’s done, but you and I will never be done with it, because your room is your access to God that comes from Jesus.

What Jesus had to prepare was not so much the place for you, as it was the road for you to get to that place at home with him, and with his Father, and with the Holy Spirit. Without the cross and the resurrection, the place would be inaccessible.

There was the canyon of our sin and our separation from God that Jesus had to cross over, for our sake. He had to build the road for us, with a bridge, and a gate, and a door that you would be able to walk on, and cross over, and pass through.

When Jesus said, “I am the way,” he didn’t only mean that he was the example to follow, although he is also that. When Jesus said, “I am the way,” he especially meant that he was the road that we must take. The forgiveness of our sins on the cross is the road, and the bridge, and the gate, and the door to the Father’s house.

Jesus is the road of grace, and we can only arrive at home through that grace. Grace should always be the greatest gift of being at home.

Some homes have very little grace in them, but the Father’s house is full of grace. Only grace will serve, and so there is no other way home. There is no other grace in the universe except the grace that comes from God on the cross. That is the truth, and that is where life is found, with Jesus on the cross and outside the empty grave.

The way, the truth, and the life are not what we do and believe, but what Jesus has done for us, and we must put our trust in what he has done, if we want to really live. A life that begins with heaven on earth comes about from discovering this amazing gift, and believing in it.