"Reflections on the Book of Ecclesiastes"

(February 11, 2020)

Photos taken along the Columbia River
Near Mattawa/Desert Aire WA
February 2020

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity…. There is nothing for a man than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy; but to the sinner he gives the work of gathering and heaping, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:24-26)

Let us simply go. Go forth and live; in the sheer wonder that there is nothing for us, in this life under the sun, except for God to lovingly give his gifts to us; or for God to lovingly give to others through us.

Through the power of God, offering himself in Jesus on the cross, carrying the sins, and the evils, and all the striving emptiness of this world, dying and rising from the dead, we are claimed by God to be God’s beloved ones. As God’s beloveds, we are “given to”; or, as sinners, we are “given through”; through God’s power in Jesus. 

Otherwise, what is there in life for us to hold onto? What is there to call our own?

Holding on and calling anything our own are vanity, emptiness, and worthlessness in comparison with being either given to, or given through.

The whole duty of human life is to live what human life is created for, under the care of Almighty God.

All of human life (the life of the whole of humanity) is the essence of living in the fear of God. This means that our life is always full of the apprehension of a strange and blinding beauty; and of a completely undeserved, untamable, and uncompromising majesty.

The whole of human life (the essence of life for the whole of humanity) is found in our genuine experience of the ways of God, in fellowship with God: given to us so as to become the laws of our own hearts. The law for life is the intimacy of knowing God from the inside of his own heart. In Christ, the law of God’s life becomes the law of our lives.

“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgement, with every secret thing, whether evil or good.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

It is the determined will and judgement of God, for his children and for his sinners, that God will allow nothing else for us but this. God will certainly preside (over our lives, and over everything in creation, for all time) to protect us from everything that does not bring this life to us. Everything else (in this world under the sun) will be refused, and taken from us. Anything else, and everything less than this, would be nothing but worthless: an empty vapor, dust, vanity, no life at all. God will give us nothing less than what is truly life.

Lord, Who Am I in You? - Life"

Preached on Sunday, April 21, 2019

Easter-Resurrection Sunday, at the main service

Scripture readings: Matthew 28:1-10

Some people complain that each of our four gospels tells the events of this Resurrection Day differently, some more differently than others. You’d think that, with an event so big, the tellings would come out the same.

Walking near Crab Creek, Desert Aire-Mattawa
Holy Week Crosses, Riverside Community Church
April 2019

Actually, if the tellings had all come out the same, the world would suspect the authors of collusion. The truth is that, when the world judges the actions of God, for better or worse, God never gets treated quite fairly.

I would say that this has been true since the first humans believed devil’s lie in the Garden of Eden. This is only one symptom of why we need the cross and the resurrection of Jesus in the first place.

Adam and Eve took the first bold step of human nature in the direction of a lie. It was the first layer that humans laid for themselves on top of God’s foundation.

It was never built straight after that. It all needs to be done over, from the bottom up. That’s why God became a human. The Lord came to earth in Jesus in order to become the first true and genuine human being in a new human race. Jesus was and is the beginning of a new creation of a new heaven and earth. In the end, his death and his life will work backward until this world’s last day becomes the new creation’s first day. God will say, “Let there be light!” and there will be a new heaven and earth.

You see, it’s important, this day.

The English and the German speaking people are pretty much the only people in the world to call this day by a pagan name. All other languages use a better name: something like pasch, or Pascua de Resurrection. Pasch and Pascua mean the Passover.

The Hebrew, Jewish Passover was from slavery to freedom in the Promised Land. It was really a prophecy of our own Passover: our passing over from death to life in Jesus.

You might say, “But we still live in a world where everyone dies.” That’s true for now. Christians believe that life with Jesus, in this world now, is a richer, fuller life: what the Jesus called life abundant. “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) You might say, “At least, life now has a little bit of heaven in it.” Or you might call it “Life with a little bit of resurrection in it.

In the old world, as it was before Jesus came, you died in a world where no resurrection had ever happened. Someday that would come, but it wasn’t a part of that old world yet.

There was heaven, yes, but heavenly life only after departing from a defeated and tired world that was lost in lies and death. It is a very different thing to die in a world where someone has defeated the power of sin and death. Because of Jesus we depart from a changing world, where someone has made a start by rising from the dead.

In his body now, Jesus carries around with him his own tiny bit of this defeated and tired old world. Only, that bit of our world, from which we have been made, isn’t defeated and tired anymore. We live, now, in a world where there is someone who will not die, and cannot, die.

We die, now, in a world that is in its first stages of being brought back to life. In Jesus we have the slow beginning of a tidal wave of life.

In God’s time, we will all be part of the great change that will bring an end of death: an end of lies, an end of brokenness, and hurt, and scars, and hate, and fear, and decline, and every kind of ugliness.

The day of the cross and burial, and the day of grief, and the day of rising from the dead are the days that changed with world. It’s the three days that changed the world, and heaven too. Life without sin, life where every human achievement, every blessing of your life and mine will reach its mark, life without death, has begun.

Everything that ever has caused harm, and pain, and tears was carried by God, in our mortal flesh and blood, in Christ Jesus. Our freedom from all of that is gone, when we seek Jesus, and Jesus comes to us and says “REJOICE!” Xairete, in Greek!

English Bibles are so mild-mannered. Jesus walks right up to those women disciples and says “Greetings!” “Hail!” It’s like saying howdy! “Hi there.”

In the Spanish Bibles Jesus walks right up to the friends who are looking for him and says, “Salve!” That can mean “hello” too. But Spanish says salve (as in salvation). Jesus has given the word a hidden power because, from the mouth of Jesus, you feel saved, and safe, and healed, and joyful. Jesus has given this to us: Salve!

Those who spoke Greek usually said “rejoice” instead of saying “hello” or “ola”. They said it as a polite custom, just as we Anglos say “how are you?” without really wanting to know. What the Greeks said without caring, Jesus says because his dying and rising for us are real. His living and dying, and rising are where all lasting, never-ending joy will come from: A new heaven, a new earth, and a new everyone, and that means you.

It can be you.

I know Jesus. Jesus is my oldest and dearest friend, but I seek Jesus every day. I look forward to my friend, and Savior, and Lord every day. Do you? Do you seek Jesus? Then Jesus says “salve” to you. You are saved. You’re eternally safe. Rejoice!

In my imagination, the angel says these words with a smile, a joyful smile. The angel knows that what these women and disciples will find is much better than anything they are looking for now. They’ve been seeking the dead instead of the living.

The angel knows that they will have to get used to living in a whole new world. So do we. So do you. Someone has risen from the dead. No one ever saw the need before. And, if they saw the need before, they weren’t able to do it.

Jesus saw our every need: above it all and beneath it all. Jesus saw our need to die to a dying world, and to live an undying, everlasting life. When we grieve, or when we fear a future grief on the horizon, it’s the image of God in us, telling us that love is meant to last forever and never, never die.

Because Christ has risen indeed, from now on, we die in a world where we will never do anything in the future but live: live now in the Lord’s well-being, live to come, in the Lord’s heaven, which is only the recess until a greater life comes, live into the living future where death will be no more. The only brave new world is found in Jesus.

Are you looking for this? Then are you looking for Jesus, the Lord of Life. Today is the Passover to life. Life invading a dying world has begun, and we celebrate today because we know that we belong to life. We are part of this invading life, in Jesus.

The Battle Primeval – Desires, Wishes, or Hope

Preached on Sunday, November 25, 2018

Scripture readings: Genesis 3:17-20; 1 Corinthians 15:12-22; Luke 24:1-12

Southern California and Santa Catalina Island, June, 2018

Once upon a time, there was a Bible Zoo. The owners collected animals from all over the world so that people could come and see all the animals mentioned in the Bible. As much as they could, the owners tried, in each exhibition, to show the animals in the scene, or in the action, mentioned in the Bible

So, a guy was taking his family through this Bible Zoo, and around these exhibits. They came to the one with the verse from Isaiah 11:6-7 “The lion shall lie down with the lamb”. That’s not actually in the Bible that way. (There are wolves and lambs, and lions and calves, but not lions and lambs. We shouldn’t fuss about this.) But, the zoo had them lying down together, anyway, on a small lawn with a lily pond, because everyone was expecting to see them like that.

This guy was amazed to look at them: the lion and lamb together and quiet. He turned to a nearby groundskeeper and asked him: “How do they do that?” And the groundskeeper replied, “Well, they have to replace that lamb every day.”

There are plenty of people who look at the promises of the Word of God that way. Even Christians find it hard to understand the very concept of hope. Even the common English language is confused at the concept of hope, to say the least.

A few weeks ago, I was thinking about what I had to get done that day. I said to myself, “I hope it doesn’t freeze tonight.” I hoped that because I hadn’t gotten around to insulating my outdoor faucets yet. In spite of my hopes, I left my other stuff undone, for a while, in order to get those faucets covered.

Of course, once that was done, I didn’t have to hope that it wouldn’t freeze that night. In fact, I didn’t need hope at all, anymore.

People like me say that kind of thing all the time. “I hope this doesn’t happen. But I sure hope that happens instead.” We’re not talking about hope at all. We’re talking about wishes: only wishes.

It’s as though we have no idea what hope means.

In the Bible our hopes are only wishes when we place our hopes in something else, or in someone less, than God; or else, our hopes are only wishes when we make our God too small, or when our hopes have forgotten who God truly is, and what our God can do.

Our three readings from the Scriptures are about hope, or about the lack of it, or about why our hopes are so weak and small.

The reading from the third chapter of Genesis (Genesis 3:17-20) tells us that we humans, who were given the opportunity to live abundantly and forever, chose death over life when they ate the fruit of a knowledge that was way too much for them to digest. They ate the knowledge that was too much for them, in order to make themselves like God.

They knew they shouldn’t do this. They knew that death was part of their choice. Waiting for the God who walked with them in the garden to choose a time to give them the fruit if he thought it was time for it, that could have been one of their greatest hopes, but they chose against hope and for their own destructive desires. We inherited from them a nature that prefers desires (and even wishes) to hope.

Only in Jesus does God offer us a life of hope again. When we choose him, we choose hope, but first we must relearn, from Jesus, the hope we’ve never known before.

Adam and Eve believed false hopes (or wishes) in the form of lies, because choosing the lies served them better than faith and hope. The result of this lost capacity for a reliable, God-centered faith and hope, is that we find ourselves in this broken world, and in these broken lives, where death seems stronger than life, and evil seems stronger than love, and stronger than God.

Because we have inherited the mental and spiritual deformities of sin, and of this world, we can only see the evidence of what has gone wrong, and we can only see that the odds are against hope. We don’t realize that God isn’t bound by what we see, or by how we count our chances. In God, in Christ, hope is not about the evidence. Hope is not about the odds.

Writing to the Christians in the Greek city of Corinth, Paul responded to the rumors that his friends, there, found it hard to hope in a resurrection of their bodies. They were convincing themselves that not even Jesus defeated death with his own physical body. They liked the idea of heaven much more than they liked the report of the resurrection.

They thought that perfection and glory were only possible for spiritual beings, because they believed that all matter (like their bodies) marched in lock step with decline and decay. If Jesus raised his own body from the dead, then he was doomed and so were they.

They didn’t want to save the world they lived in, and they didn’t want themselves to be saved in flesh, and blood, and bone. They wanted to escape from the world. They wanted to escape from their bodies. They wanted to be souls only; flying around freely in a far-away heaven.

Paul told them that exactly the opposite was true. Paul told them that the salvation and life that came from Christ was a lie if Christ was unable to conquer this world, and their bodies, and everything wrong with this universe. Christ was able to do anything he chose. Christ could conquer and heal and empower everything good. Christ could conquer everything created by God for good, no matter how much of a lost cause it may seem.

Timothy Keller says this about the conquest of Jesus, and what it means for our lives. “If Christianity is true, the good things we have cannot be lost.” Jesus enlarges our hopes to include every gift that lifts our hearts and gives us joy.

Christ could only save them if he was Lord of All. Jesus is Lord of the creation. He is Lord of the atoms, and Lord of the galaxies. He is the Lord of our souls, and the Lord of our bodies. He is the defeater of sin, and death, and the devil. He is able to replace the whole universe with eternal, and victorious, and overcoming life.

The Corinthians had made the mistake of settling for hopes that were much too small. They felt safer with smaller hopes, but small hopes don’t make a full life. They would only find life if they had a large and daring hope; only if they hoped for the unimaginable and the seemingly impossible and stake their faith and hope on a God who promised to take care of it.

In Luke’s telling of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the angels told the women who had come to the tomb: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you….” (Luke 24:5-6) Jesus had already told all of his followers, many times, what he had to do. Jesus had promised them, many times, that he was more than able to truly do it all.

Here, again, they had made their capacity to hope too small. They had made their hope small because they had made Jesus small, and they had also made the Father, who sent Jesus, small. They had made the Son and the Father smaller than the evils of this world.

The women at the tomb, and the other disciples, had made God smaller than sin, and smaller than death. They measured their God by the yardstick of their own loss and grief.

They had made their God too small. They had hearts too small for the hope that comes from God: the hope that God insists on giving us. And we often do the same.

The greatness of God, that we see at work in Jesus, is the Lord’s yardstick to measure our hopes and dreams. So here it is.

God’s goodness is stronger than evil and sin.

God’s forgiveness is stronger than guilt, or shame.

God’s peace-making is stronger than our division and alienation from him, and from others, and from the creation.

God’s peace-making is stronger than all our divisions, our conflicts, our covetousness, our envies and jealousies; stronger than the wounds we give and the wound that we receive.

God’s abundance is stronger than our needs.

***

If we have faith in this God; if we trust this stronger God, then our faith will grow. Then, Hope will sprout out from our faith. Our lives will be empowered, and changed, and set free by faith, and hope, and love, in the form of Jesus.

We will live up to God’s gifts more than we live down to our losses and griefs.

We will live up to God’s promises more than we live down to our fears, our worries, and the world’s low expectations.

We will live up to God’s eternity more than we live down to the limits of our time and strength.

We will live up to God’s crosses more than we live down to our compromises.

We will live up to God’s mysteries more than we live down to human common sense.

We will live up to God’s self-giving in Christ more than we live down to our own self-preservation.

We will live up to God’s humility and servanthood in Jesus more than we live down to our own dignity.

We will live up to the abilities of God’s grace more than we live down to our own sense of weakness and disqualification.

We will live up to the life that says “Our life is hid with Christ, in God” more than we live down to our weariness of life. Those who grow tired of life need to know that what they truly need. What they truly need to desire, and to hope for, is more life, and not less.

Living by great and daring hopes, as well as living by great and daring faith and love, will make us faithful witnesses to the good news of the gospel. We’ll join the fellowship of all God people in heaven and earth in the unimaginable purpose to which God has called us, in Jesus: “To make known among the Gentiles (or among the nations) the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27)

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.

The Advent Kingdom - Creation 2.0

Preached on the Second Sunday of Advent, December 17, 2017

Scripture readings: Isaiah 52; Revelation 21

We are reading about God making things new.

God tells Isaiah about a new Israel and a new Jerusalem. He says they will finally be safe, in the end, because no one who is uncircumcised or unclean will enter.

Christmas lights: Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
December 2017

The uncircumcised and unclean are really the same thing, so all the nations except Israel are shut out. But, in the end, God tells Isaiah that many nations (which really means all nations) will have something done to them that will change them completely.

 They will be sprinkled by the Servant (the Messiah, the Christ). And, so, they will all be clean. They will become citizens of the kingdom of the Messiah. But the kingdom of the Messiah is Israel.

This means that Israel will be new indeed; new in a way it has never dreamed of. Israel and Jerusalem will be everyone. The unclean will be gone.

The same is true in the Book of Revelation. The gates and foundations are labeled with the names of the tribes of Israel and the apostles of the Church. All of the nations will come to the New Jerusalem to give their praise and glory to God; their praise and glory to the Lamb. The New Jerusalem will be home for everyone. And the gates will always be open. There will be no cover of darkness for evil and enemies to enter and destroy. But the truth is that all evil and all enemies will be gone. They’ve been put out of the new creation forever. They have disappeared into the Lake of Fire.

When we have a solid feel for what Israel and Jerusalem have been, through the centuries, and what they are now, we can only say: “Well! That will be different! That will be something new!”

The same has begun to be true for us. Some glad day, it will be completely true for us; true for everyone who truly wants it. But it has begun to be true now. We have been given the first installments of something totally different, something totally new.

Have you ever been made new before? Have you ever felt that your life had become completely different than it was before?

If we must be spiritually correct, we would say that we became new and different people when we wholeheartedly opened ourselves to God in Christ. One of my most favorite sentences in the Bible was written by Paul, in his letter to the Galatians. It’s his description of being completely new and different. Paul wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

I have another favorite line by Paul. It comes from his Second Letter to the Corinthians: “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

We, as Christians, honestly, don’t always look to others as if we were completely new and different. We can look like we think we’re members of some sort of exclusive club or lodge. Even Christians forget that being a member is not a matter of having your name on a roll, or in a record book. Being a member is not about being on the list of past or present officers.

Being a member of the Church is about being in Christ: a part of Christ. It’s about being a member of his body, as opposed to being dismembered. A member is someone who is an organ, or a ligament, or a muscle, or a finger, or a mustache in the Body of Jesus, the Body of Christ. The head of this body is Jesus, although we might serve as one of his many, many eyes, or tongues, or ears, or mustaches.

What would it be like, as a member of the church, to be a nose in the body of Christ? It would have to be much more than being able to say that the potluck was ready to eat. What would it be like to be a completely new and different nose than you are right now?

Have you ever become a completely new and different person?

There was a guy in my first church who became a new Christian. He was talking a lot about this. I thought it must have happened before I had arrived, because I was a really new arrival. But, when I said this to him, he grinned and tapped his finger on my chest. He gave me the credit. That was such an honor.

Ralph was a lumbermill worker, and he had been most of his life. If I recall correctly, his youngest son was still in high school. Some of Ralph’s older kids had given him and Virginia grandkids. So, he had lived long enough to have formed a very definite pattern of personality and abilities.

Before he was found by Jesus, Ralph had been a harsh, critical, and judgmental man, even within his home and family; or especially there. He had also been functionally illiterate.

Now the obvious miracle was that he could suddenly read, and he soon loved to read. His favorite reading was the Bible, and he absorbed it like a sponge. He also began, at once, the new habit of reading the newspaper every day.

There was once a famous theologian who said that a good Christian was one who held a Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. That could be true.

Ralph also began reading books like “The Works of Flavius Josephus”. Flavius Josephus was a Jewish army officer at the time that the people of Israel rose up in rebellion against their Roman overlords, in the middle of the sixties, and up to 70 A.D., or so. He wrote a first century history of the Jewish people down to the time right after Jesus: the time of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. In fact, Josephus mentions Jesus in his history, briefly. Josephus is not easy reading.

So, that was brand new. That was different. That was Ralph and Jesus.

But there was something just as good and even better for those who knew Ralph, and even better for his wife and family. Ralph became a loving, gentle man. He became patient, and compassionate, and generous. His wife would talk to me, personally, about the wonderful change in Ralph.

 The change was so impressive and persuasive that Ralph’s eighty-five-year-old father-in-law (Bob) became a disciple of Jesus after a lifetime of scorning religion in general and Christians in particular. Of course, he had never scorned his own wife Nellie, or his daughter Virginia. For years Bob, like Ralph, had tolerated their faith. Now they embrace that faith. So, Bob’s wife, Nellie, and Ralph’s wife, Virginia, were having a good time with this.

But how can someone, who doesn’t know this peculiar brand of newness and differentness, understand, by looking at us (when we don’t look all that new and different) understand what we hope and pray that they will understand?

We long for them to understand what they can become with Jesus. Is there something that anyone can understand about being a new person (a different person) than you were before? What has changed you into a new and different person? What, in life, has changed your life?

In the Book of Revelation, the new universe, the new heaven and earth, the new future life of all believing human beings who will ever live, can be described and pictured in the same, common ways that our current lives are changed.

It isn’t so much a matter of having a new life merely because you have a new house. It isn’t the kind of new life that comes with a new job.

A real-life change might come with the birth of a child. Such a thing changes a woman into a mother, which (I’m told) is a complete difference.

I’ve known men who told me that the first step they took toward Jesus was completely unconscious and completely unintentional. It was simply the fact that they held a child of their own flesh and blood in their arms.

The experience told them that they needed to become something they had never been before. It opened them to change on an almost miraculous level or depth.

This is the change in life described to us when we learn that the new universe and the new way to be human is to truly be born again. In the world to come, we will become, like never before, the direct children of God. “The one who conquers will inherit these things. I will be his God and he will be my son (my daughter)” (Revelation 21:7)

I’m also told that marriage changes your life. I also suspect that, if it doesn’t make you a new person, you will not be about what marriage is for.

The future world, and the future you, will be “prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Revelation 21:2) The Christian hope is that the future world, and the future you, will be like a wedding that won’t stop. There will be enough joy, and giving, and love, and passion for that wedding to go on and on in that timeless world.

A member of one of my churches, whom I’ve known for decades, passed away recently, and I was suddenly reminded of the terrible auto accident she had been in with a friend, years ago. The friend had died. Linda was about seventy years old when she was injured. She was in the hospital for weeks. She was in physical therapy for months.

Linda, and her husband Bob, had been living in the grand, old, brick, family farmhouse that Bob’s father had built. They had been living independently, and graciously, and generously, and hospitably, and deeply spiritually for many years.

Linda’s good friend had died, and Linda almost died. She, herself, when she was in the greatest danger, had an encounter with Jesus beyond this world. Afterwards, in her humility, she said little about that experience, but the whole thing touched her deeply.

For months no one knew what progress she would make, if any, in the end. After months, she was well enough to return home and live, very much, the way she had before, at least for a while.

She was a saint before. That never changed. But she saw her physical presence in this world very differently. And she saw all her relationships much more preciously than ever.

After my dad had heart surgery (a triple by-pass), he wasn’t in the hospital very long, but he changed. This happened shortly after he retired, so he was in his later sixties. Suddenly he would tell us grown up kids (I was in my early forties) that he loved us. He would say (out of the blue), “Son, I love you.” I had never heard him say this before. I’m sure he never, in my life, told me that he loved me until that time. It was so strange. I never got used to it. My dad had become very different and new.

I understand that recoveries like these can make you a new person. Recoveries can make you a truly different person than you were before. I believe this.

The Christian hope, the future world, the future you, will be a recovery like that. John tells us that: “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev. 21:4)

We have lived in a world that has borne a long illness, with its long history of death, and mourning and crying, and pain. Whether we have heard, and believed, the promise of recovery, or not, we have known no other world than the one in which we have been living, under the influence of this long sickness, and all our lives have shared this sickness in common. We may have begun the gift of recovery in our own lives, but we know no other world.

But now, our lives have seen some of the future change. When the fullness of time has come, the change will be perfect. We and the new world will be well. A medieval nun had a little song that went: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” (Julian of Norwich)

Sometimes life changes when someone comes to live with you. When my Polish Grandmother (my Baci, or Babcia) retired, she didn’t come to live with us. She went to live with her son (my mother’s brother, Uncle Eddie, and his family). I know this changed my cousins’ lives.

But Baci would come and spend her summers with us. I was about thirteen or fourteen, when this began.

I changed because I became Polish. My Baci would teach me to talk with her in Polish, and to help her cook Polish food. I learned to make pierogi. I thought that, when I got older, I might do some college work in Poland. Maybe I would get some experience that would qualify me for working with the State Department.

Of course, God had other plans for me that I was already seriously resisting. When Baci, or some of my other older Polish relatives, would come and visit us, they would talk with me and tell me that I thought like a Polak. I had changed.

This was quite a compliment. No one can receive a finer compliment than to be called a Polak. It’s a Polish word that means a Polish person. What could be greater than that?

Change comes, and it makes all the difference in the world, when someone comes to live with you. John tells us that: “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.” (Revelation 21:3) Surely everyone here knows something about this, even now.

The newness described all through the Book of Revelation is a special kind of newness. There are two words for newness, in the Biblical Greek.

There is an ordinary, standard newness called “neos”, which is like getting a new computer, or a new car.

Then there is a radical newness called “kainos”, which means a whole new order of change, as if change, itself, will change into something else.

New heavens and earth don’t mean that heaven and earth will be replaced. Becoming a new creation doesn’t mean that we will have the secret of eternal youth, or an intelligence boost, or an altered memory.

What you will be, and whatever this world will be, will become something we can’t even imagine now. What we want will change. What we enjoy will change. What we’re able to do will change. What we see, and hear, and take into ourselves will change. What others are for us, and what we are for others, will change.

We, and the whole world, will be so surprisingly new. And yet we will be ourselves. What we are now will be recognizable in what we will be. What we are now will have played its part, in the love of God in Christ. What we are now will have played its part in the person that God has planned us to be, all along.

How will this new change become ours? How will this future hope, this future world (this future heaven and earth), become ours? Two things go together in this, in a way we don’t ordinarily notice.

The language of the Book of Revelation is Greek, but the thinking in it is Hebrew. In Hebrew thought you can put things together that seem different, side by side, and they really are part of the same, single thing. The different things share one meaning in common.

So, John hears about the Lion of Judah and he looks and sees a Lamb that was slain. These are two different things that are the same thing. John hears about the Bride, and he looks and sees the New Jerusalem City. And all that we are told about what’s in the city is that there is a throne, with God and the Lamb sitting on it, and fruit trees, and a river, as if it were a garden: maybe even the garden of Eden, all over again, but safe and complete. These all seem like different things, but they’re the same thing.

John hears about two things that don’t sound like the same thing. He hears that the thirsty will receive the water of life: which means that they will live in the New Jerusalem. He hears that the ones who conquer, or overcome, “will inherit all of this”: which means that they will live in the New Jerusalem.

John is telling us that the one who thirsts and the one who conquers are the same. You conquer by thirsting. You thirst by conquering.

It’s the same thing. You want something so bad, or (better yet) you want something so good, that your desire and your commitment become your deepest need, and your deepest need grows to become your greatest strength.

You want just one thing, and you don’t settle for anything else. You don’t settle for anything less. You become true, as in true-blue, to your need, and to your strength, which is God.

This need and this strength begin with what Isaiah tells us comes from being sprinkled by the Servant, the Messiah, the Christ. John tells us that this need and this strength come from being washed in the blood of the Lamb. This comes from the love and grace of God, in our Savior Jesus Christ.

John tells us to thirst and to conquer. Isaiah tells us to wake up, and get up, and sing out, and to come out, and to chill out (don’t rush, don’t worry). Read more about this in Isaiah chapter fifty-two.

But, a little bit later (in chapter fifty-three), Isaiah says that the servant who is the Messiah, will change us, because he has carried our sorrows and our sins. Carrying us gives him the ability to do something he calls sprinkling us. The sprinkling power, coming from suffering, will be able to make us all into new people. The sprinkling that comes from his suffering is intended to enable all who desire it to enter into the new future creation of God.

The servant Jesus was born in Bethlehem to carry, on himself, our sufferings and our sins, on the cross. Doing this, he has made newness and difference possible.

John tells us that it is the Son of God, the Word of God, the Lion who is the Lamb who was slain for us on the cross, who is responsible for making the great thirst and the great overcoming possible.

If we do hold onto that overcoming thirst, as if our life depended on it, that newness, and that difference will become our abundant life. It will become our everlasting life.