Passionate Jesus - Till the End of Time

Preached on Sunday, April 8, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This would be scary, except for one thing.

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

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

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

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

Passionate Jesus - A Life of Seeds and Storms

Preached on Sunday, March 4, 2018; Third Sunday in Lent

Scripture readings: Psalm 65; Mark 4:26-41

Various Photos from Desert Aire, WA and Washtucna, WA

In an old story about gardens, there’s a little girl who begged, and begged, and begged her parents to let her plant a garden all her own. She jumped for joy when they finally said, yes.

So, she borrowed some of their seeds. She also borrowed their tools and one of their bedsheets. She did her seeding, and she built an awning with the sheet draped over sticks to protect her seeds from the sun.

After that, she did as much as she could to get those seeds to sprout. She didn’t want them to dry out, so she poured water on them when she got up in the morning and before she went to bed.

She waited, and waited, and waited. Her parents garden was sprouting and growing, while not a single shoot appeared in her own garden.

The girl got so excited that she couldn’t help herself anymore. She used her own fingers to gently dig the soil in the lines she had marked, where she had planted those seeds, to see if they were beginning to sprout. And they were! Except that they stopped growing after she dug them up.

The story of the child reminds me of Jesus’ story of the farmer who goes out to inspect his fields night and day, waiting for the seed to sprout and grow.

You’ve got to understand that Jesus’ parables, or stories, often have crazy people in them and there’s no other way to understand them. Sometimes we can’t understand ourselves unless we compare ourselves to crazy people. Sometimes we can’t understand what God wants unless we compare what God wants with a lot of things that we would never do because they sound crazy to us.

The farmer is as crazy as a little kid, most farmers grow out of this, somewhat, although you really may have to be a bit crazy to be a farmer. I don’t think it would be much fun any other way. Hunters and fishermen and maybe golfers are just the same.

But farmers, and golfers, and little kids need to learn how to be patient. If you plant an orchard you have to wait for years (well, just a few years) before you see enough fruit to go out and bring it in. If you go for winter wheat, you seed as soon as you can after harvest, which happens in Eastern Washington around late July and into August.

If there’s enough moisture in the soil, you plant winter wheat in September or October. Then you wait eight or nine months (or more) until your next harvest is ready.

During those months, anything can happen. I wonder if the nervous farmer gets up in the middle of the night to look around because he’s wondering how that seed is going to grow with all the stuff that can possibly go wrong? That’s what I would do.

I know farmers who can look at the bare ground of their field and guess pretty well what’s going on underground. They can look up at the sky and read the wind, and any sign of clouds, and know if it means something good, or trouble.

The child and the farmer were crazy with impatience; but, if they acquired just enough patience to be only slightly crazy, then you would be able to see what their impatience was hiding.

The little bit of craziness that remained would show up as eagerness. You wouldn’t get up at all hours any more, but you would feel the eagerness that comes from love and from faith. As a farmer, you love your connection to the earth. A sane farmer has enough faith to trust that, whatever may go wrong, it will all work out.

The seed in chapter four of Mark is not a simple thing. The seed is too much even for Jesus, in the sense that it’s too exciting. Jesus knows that his seed can do so much. It can make such a difference. It’s so exciting that Jesus is not afraid to plant his seed over the world from the elevation of the cross.

In the first big seeding and harvesting parable (one that we didn’t read) the seed means the word of God or the message of the gospel (the good news of God). Then Jesus changed his mind, and the seed became the people who lived on the farm road, and the people in the rocks and the weeds.

With the mustard plants, Jesus changed his mind again, and called the seed the Kingdom of God, which means God’s positive power turning the world around until it moves with the will and love of God. The kingdom of God means that the love of God will be in charge, in order to change the whole world, and all the people in it, into a life full of love, and joy, and glory. Jesus has the crazy eagerness of a little child, a happy golfer, and a grateful farmer.

If our farmer is obsessed with worry and anxiety, it’s because he hasn’t learned to trust his good seed. He hasn’t learned to trust the soil beneath his feet, or to trust the sky above him.

If we don’t live our lives and plant our good seeds in faith, then we will live like the crazy, worried farmer. We need to trust God’s seed, whether it’s the word and message of God’s plan, or whether it’s the good news of Jesus carrying out that plan. We need to trust God’s good seed even if that seed may be everyone we know, and everyone we meet, wherever they are; in the good soil, in the rocks, in the weeds, or on the farm road.

The farmer in the big parable that we haven’t read is God. We are God’s field, God’s farm, and we are the workers in it at the same time. By this you can tell that the parables of Jesus are very wild, and moving all over the map.

Yes, even Farmer God is a little crazy. He’s too extravagant. He’s actually careless and wasteful in his love and grace. He’s crazy because he wastes his seed. To any good farmer this looks just about a crazy as a farmer can get. A good farmer never wastes seed.

If he lets his kids play in the wheat in the back of the wheat truck at harvest, the good farmer reminds them to empty their shoes, and empty their pockets and their pants cuffs back into the truck bed before they climb out of it, because there will always be some wheat caught in their shoes and all that, and wheat is real gold for the farmer. You’ll never have a harvest unless you scatter your seed on the soil, but you never, never, never waste your seed. Farmer kids learn that early.

But Farmer God is crazy graceful in a wasteful way. He pours out the good seed on everyone, wherever they happen to have fallen, on the road, on the rocks, or on the weeds. So, God’s people need to do the same. They need to prove that they share God’s heart, the way God does when he scatters the good seed on everyone, everywhere.

That’s why Jesus has to live in our hearts. Without a heart that’s crazy graceful to others, we won’t really look like him at all. The resemblance will only be a good makeover that’s less than skin deep: thin enough to see through.

You spread God’s seed by what you say and do. You spread God’s seed by living the message of the good news of Jesus. Your life embodies the kingdom of God that governs you with so much harmony: all this means trusting the precious seed of God as you plant it.

Trust means treasuring that good seed so much that you never hoard it. Faith means to spend that seed; to invest that precious seed for an even more precious harvest.

I have driven a wheat truck at harvest time, and parked with all the combines and trucks together in the last piece of the last field, when all the farm has been cut, and all the wheat has been gathered into the bins and elevators.

It feels so good to stand there with the rest of the harvest crew. It’s like heaven. I’m sure it’s a foretaste of heaven. It’s precious. It’s golden. We’ve won.

The parables of Jesus invite us to live our lives with him in a world like that. We trust the seed of God’s message and love. We even call that seed our own. We trust God’s crazy grace. We pour God’s seed out on everyone, because Farmer God does it.

We can trust the kingdom which is God’s good skills, and God’s good methods, and the power of love to rule us all, and to rule us well. The farm itself is the kingdom of God. In the old days, the farmhands were like family and they found a good life for themselves in the kingdom of the farm.

The parables are Jesus’ way of telling us this. They are also a lesson that we can never learn what it means until we take the time to sit close to Jesus and let him explain it to us, over and over again.

Seeing and hearing are not enough. We come to Jesus to perceive, to understand, to turn around, and find ourselves forgiven. Forgiveness is how the harvest grows.

The parables of Jesus tell us that understanding doesn’t come easily. And that even a farmer might know less about his own business than he realizes.

The worried farmer is right, in his own way. The story of the storm teaches us why the message of the gospel, and the crazy graciousness of our sharing, and the Kingdom of God, itself, need to be learned.

The worried farmer was right that anything could go wrong. There could be drought, or rain, or hail at harvest, just as a beautiful lake can sink a boat.

Except for the fishermen, the people of Israel, usually avoided being on the water. In their mind, bad things happened on the water. The worst of it was that, unlike being on the land, if something went wrong on the water, there was no place for you to turn and run.

They had legends of sea monsters. One kind of monster was called Leviathan, and it loved to play, but its play was evil. Leviathans at play raised the winds and the waves.

No one could control it or tame it but God himself. In fact, the stories of God taming Leviathan became the picture of God’s power to beat and defeat evil: the picture of God taming the waters and the oceans where the monsters lived. God possessed the power to do this because God, alone, is the creator, the Lord of heaven, earth, and sea, and storm.

Moses and Joshua made a path through the Red Sea and the Jordan River, but it wasn’t really them. It was God. Elijah was another one who stopped the Jordan but it wasn’t him either. It was God. Only God could command and subdue the seas and the rivers. No other human could ever hope to do it.

Then Jesus, who was not afraid to sleep in a sinking boat, calmed the wind and the waves of Galilee. Jesus did the job without using a tool like a holy staff or a mantel. Jesus did the job with his word; just as God the Father created the heavens and the earth, and tamed the monsters of the sea, with his word.

Jesus does what God does with a word. Jesus tames the storms of the sea, and the monsters within, with a word. Jesus tames our own storms, and the monsters within us. Paul wrote this: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Corinthians 5:19) Jesus and his Father do the same thing. They share the same work. They work the same way.

Sitting and listening to Jesus tell parables or stories, and explain them, was so nice, so easy. They could go on like that forever.

Following Jesus showed his disciples (his friends) that living with Jesus included stories and storms, seeds and storms. Galilee wore a monster’s face in that storm; like old stories coming true.

The truth is that, wherever Jesus went, and wherever they went with him, they seemed to meet up with enemies, and danger, and evil. Jesus would go into a town, and the demons would drag their victims up to Jesus and make it look like Jesus was really being praised by the devil, as if he was serving the devil’s side of things.

The rabbis accused Jesus of this at least once. The devils were putting on a show in order to put Jesus in danger of being killed as a wizard. The disciples could be judged guilty by association.

After the resurrection, and after Jesus returned to heaven, the joyful disciples soon found that their lives still consisted of seeds and storms.

There is a battle: a spiritual battle. Churches and Christians, especially if they are faithful, will meet with storms: and sometimes those storms will be evil in disguise.

This comes not only from the outside. It comes from the inside too: inside a church, or a fellowship, or inside each one of us. It happened to the disciples with Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples.

This is hard. It’s not enough to go by what you see and hear alone. You have to go deeper. You have to want to perceive and to understand, to turn and bring God’s power of forgiveness, which is the power of the cross. That is still how the kingdom grows. Even that might take some understanding.

If we have faith in God’s seeds, we must have faith that these seeds also work in the storms. We speak God’s word to our storms, the situations and the people.

We speak God’s word by living the life of Jesus in this world. We continue to live with crazy, extravagant grace and not withdraw. We let God the King give us our marching orders, because we are nothing if we are not a colony of his kingdom. We let God rule us more and more. That is another way to trust the good seed.

One thing about seed is that it looks nothing like the harvest. One thing that seed does have is that the harvest is present, hidden inside the seed. Every healthy seed has a tiny plant inside it, waiting to grow and bear fruit.

What we say and do for Christ may not look very much like Jesus himself, but we are the seed with Jesus in us waiting to sprout, and grow, and bear more seed. And God is the plant inside of Jesus, the seed inside of us, waiting to sprout, and grow and bear more seed. The harvest is really more of God, in Christ, in us. Someday everyone will know this.

Jesus is the seed: a baby in a manger, a carpenter turned teacher, a convict dying on a cross, a dead man rising with more life than he ever showed before his death: this is the seed. Even this doesn’t look like a new heaven and a new earth. This cross and empty grave don’t look like a multitude, from all nations and races and languages, that no one can count. The cross and the grave don’t look like a whole world of people who are also risen and new inside and out. The seed of the cross and the empty grave don’t look like all of this, but it has all of this in it, waiting to sprout and grow.

We have all of this in us: in ourselves, because we have Jesus in us. The life of seeds and storms is the life of Jesus, and we can trust this. We can be eager as kids, and golfers, and farmers. We can live crazy, gracious lives. We can live peaceful lives of seed-time and storm-time. We are made for both. We are save for both. And, someday, the harvest and the end of all storms will be ours.

Passionate Jesus - True Love Is Disturbing

Preached on Sunday, February 18, 2018

Scripture Readings: Leviticus 13:40-46; Mark 1:40-45

Walking the shores of the Columbia River
DesertAire/Mattawa, WA
January 2018

Three long-time friends were having a friendly talk, and their talk turned serious. They began to talk about what they thought were the most important priorities they fulfilled in their own lives. They wondered, if they were allowed to visit their own funerals, after their own deaths, what they would find that others thought of them. They talked about what they would like to hear people say about them, when they looked into their coffin.

One friend was a physician and he said, “I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor who took his patients seriously, that I was a good golfer, and that I spent plenty of time with my family.”

Another buddy was a teacher, and he said: “Well, when they look into my coffin, I want them to say the same thing about me and my family, and that I turned out an amazing number of students with the foundation they needed to make a difference in the world.”

The third buddy said: “When they look into my coffin, I’d like to hear them say: “Look! He’s moving!”

In ancient Israel, even in the time of Jesus, the scariest people in the world (next to invading soldiers, and armed bandits) were lepers.

I know almost nothing about leprosy. I just looked it up, last night, for the first time in several years. It’s a bacterial infection that damages the skin, the nervous system, the lungs, and the eyes.

You eventually lose your sense of pain, so you don’t know when you’re sick, or have a scratch, or abrasion, or a splinter, or something in your eye. That’s the way leprosy spreads its infection and damages your whole body. It eventually deforms your features, and your joints, hands, feet, and mobility.

Leprosy is not highly contagious except for places where there isn’t good hygiene or sanitation. That would include most of the ancient world. The mucous from your lungs and nose would carry the bacteria, through a cough, or a sneeze, or just through unwashed hands.

The mutilation, or deformation, it caused and its effect on the joints, and on one’s coordination and mobility, were terrifying. Leprosy was considered to be a fate worse than death, and it was a death without a funeral.

Those who were declared to be unclean with leprosy were immediately forbidden to return to their own homes and family. They were forbidden to enter any village, or town, or city. They were required to disfigure their hair, to cover the lower part of their face, to wear torn clothing, even to wear a special kind of bell that would alert anyone near them, and to shout, in the presence of other people, “Away! Away! Unclean! Unclean!”

Their disease was so terrifying that God’s people were taught by God’s law to consider lepers to be dead. But there was no funeral for them. No one spoke loving or encouraging words in their presence.

Leprosy was considered a punishment from God. Only God could make a person into a leper, and only God could heal a leper. A leper was unclean, and that meant he or she was polluted, but the pollution was spiritual.

Death itself, was a spiritual condition. All humans died and returned to the earth because all humans carried the weight of sin. In handling a dead body, you needed to prevent yourself from touching it, skin to skin, even when you were washing the body. Otherwise you became spiritually unclean.

Your uncleanness, even though it was a spiritual condition, was contagious. If you touched a body, you were unclean for seven days, and you, yourself, became untouchable.

You were prohibited from touching others or being touched for seven days, and then you had to wash from head to foot. You had to bath completely before you were clean again. Failure to bathe meant that you had to wait seven more days and then bathe in order to become officially clean again.

When you touched a dead body, skin to skin, you carried the weight of death upon you. You were a danger to everyone around you.

The uncleanness of leprosy carried the weight of the walking dead, the living dead. Those who touched the walking, living dead, carried the weight of that uncleanness upon them. They would probably hear no good words from anyone because they became so dangerous and scary.

I’m not going to say any more about this, except to say that Jesus touched the walking, living dead, skin to skin, when he healed the leper. During his ministry, Jesus repeatedly handled the walking dead.

Jesus touched the lepers. Upon himself, Jesus walked under the weight of death. He wore, like a badge of honor, the uncleanness of the walking dead.

This formed a clear pattern in Jesus’ life. This pattern reveals the nature and the very purpose of the great power we call the gospel. Gospel means good news. The pattern of Jesus taking on himself the contagion of the walking dead shows us what his good news means for us. Touching the lepers shows what Jesus does for us, and for everyone.

There’s still another strange law, found in Deuteronomy (21:23). It says, “Anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” (See, also Galatians 3:13.) The Jews of Jesus’ time saw the Roman cross as a kind of execution tree that carried the uncleanness of a cursed death.

When Jesus touched the walking, living dead, skin to skin, he took upon himself the weight of the curse of their death.

You can see the pattern. You can see how it goes all the way through the good news. It became the passion of Jesus to carry that weight, and he bore more and more of it until he died and hung on the cursed tree of the cross, as though he carried every curse for everyone in the world.

That is God’s salvation given by God to us, when we trust him and put our faith in him; in him alone and above all else. To be saved is to be rescued by God from the curse of death, which is also the contagious curse of sin. Jesus carried it all, in our place, as our substitute.

I believe that, as we are inspired by the love and faithfulness of God in Christ, our partnership in that love and faithfulness can help us to carry, for others, the weight that they carry because of their sin. Because of the human nature we share with others, and because of the nature of Jesus’ touch upon us, we all belong to the walking, living dead and we also belong to God. We, like Jesus, can bridge the gap, and our lives can touch the lives of others in a healing saving way.

Lepers couldn’t enter the Tabernacle of God. Later on, they couldn’t enter the Temple, in Jerusalem, that King Solomon built, and which was rebuilt by King Herod, as the time of Jesus’ birth and life and sacrifice came near. They were banned from the house and presence of God.

As hard as this was upon them, and as unfair as it seems, the lepers were God’s picture of what we all are. And without the healing that only God can give, we cannot come into the house and presence of God. The Jews knew that only God could heal a leper.

So, leprosy truly couldn’t keep God away from them, but it kept them away from God. So, leprosy was a picture of sin. Sin doesn’t prevent God from coming to us and touching us, but it keeps us from coming to God and touching him.

Until God makes us clean, until Jesus carries the curse, we remain the walking, living dead. We may be able to know something, but it’s never enough to open the gate to the place where we see God’s face and know God’s heart, as given to us in Jesus.

When we have seen God’s face and known God’s heart, then we can follow where God went, in Jesus, and we can carry help others to carry their curse, their loss, their separation from God. We can touch them and carry them to Jesus.

It’s the mercy of God that we normally can’t see into people’s hearts or read their minds. People are deep, deep mysteries.

Why, we can hardly understand ourselves. The curse in us, and in others, is mostly hidden as well. God’s grace carries and covers our own curse is hidden from us. Otherwise we might get too discouraged to walk with Jesus to the end, and enter the gate to life and God.

So, by the mercy of God, we can touch other people, and other people need this more than they know; just as we need to be touched more than we know. We can touch them and pass on to them, through Jesus, what they need: at least a little bit of what they need.

We see what this is like when Jesus met the leper.

The leper was so used to being completely terrorizing to everyone that he risked his own death by coming to the crowd that followed Jesus. It seems as though there were always loose rocks lying around, everywhere in those days. The crowd could have grabbed those rocks and pitched them, hard as they could, at the leper, till he died. He was endangering them all so they harbored their right to endanger him.

Jesus always knew, and always knows, what’s going on. He knew this danger for what it was, the moment it came.

Maybe the crowd was so startled by the leper’s bold behavior that they were paralyzed with fear or shock. So, Jesus stepped in right away. This may have scared the leper himself.

“If you are willing, you can make me clean.” No one had been willing to do anything for him since the diagnosis was first announced by the local priest. The leper did need to know that he needed someone who was willing to take care of him and help him.

You may know someone who is a leper without knowing it. Somehow, they live in a world where no one has shown a willingness to help them. No one has followed through.

There is probably someone around you who needs your willingness. God will help you recognize that person.

Jesus would have let himself be touched by someone who was unclean. It was bound to happen.

There are people whom we don’t want to come near to us, let alone touch us. The conventional wisdom of the world tells us that this is the smart thing to do. It can be very hard work to let yourself be so touched by such a person.

You may not be able to succeed to make that person touching you be changed by love. You may not have the resources to make a real difference. Then you may let them go, and pray and learn what you can from that experience. But God will help you to recognize someone who needs you, yourself, to let their life touch yours.

We read, here, that “Jesus was filled with compassion”. “Filled with compassion” is an odd word that literally means that his guts were wrenched, and twisted inside him. Has anyone ever tied your guts in a knot? Welcome to the world of the love of Jesus.

That’s what you get. Don’t be surprised.

But it was strangely the gut wrenching feeling of love. My mom would say, about the time when she was falling for my dad, that the thought of seeing him made her sick.

God’s love, when it takes human form, in Jesus, or in us, can be that way. Our touching and being touched (and how we feel about it, and worry about it) can make us sick inside. This may be the way that we experience a new level of true love that we have never felt before. Have you felt this?

We read that, “Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning.” So Jesus’ guts were tied in a love knot, and what we hear from him next is almost a shout. It’s almost yelling. It’s almost anger. When you study these phrases, you find out that this may truly be so: the anger and the warning of love.

Jesus warned the healed man to show himself to the priest. There was a seven-day-long process that began with walking up to a Jewish priest in your village and saying, “You know that I was a leper, but now I’m healed”. Then the priest has to give you a complete check-up to see if you look healed. Then you get locked up for seven days and then you get another check-up. Then, on the eighth day, you offer a sacrifice to God for the official completion and recognition of your healing. Then you may go, or try to go, back to the life and the loved ones you left behind, if you can.

But no one could treat you like a healed leper, and stop treating you like the walking, living dead you once were, until the work of the enclosure, and the inspection, and the sacrifice were done. The leper whom Jesus healed didn’t do that.

Some people are so desperate to deny their true need that they refuse to take a course of medication to the end. Or, they refuse to carry out their physical therapy to the end. They deny their past reality. They deny their need to go all the way, and see their healing through. Jesus got mad because he knew that this is what the healed leper would do. He wouldn’t follow his own healing to the end.

It’s right to warn someone, and it’s right to show anger, if you recognize the danger of someone not completing the good work of God within them. It’s part of your God-given responsibility, even though you can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. But that is the patience of the faithful love of God for us and for others.

This is the responsibility of the love God calls us to. We see our calling to this kind of love in the faithful responsibility that Jesus showed.

We do this by following in the footsteps of his love. We do this through our direct fellowship with Jesus, and that means the power of his partnership and his investment in us, through his Holy Spirit.

This comes from the good news, the great news, of Jesus. It’s just like the good news of hearing Jesus say to you: “If you would come after me, then you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) This happens when you know the passion of Jesus for you, and for others, and when you carry that passionate new heart within you.

The fullness of the passionate love of Jesus can be a disturbing love. When you meet this love, it can fill you up, and empower you to do amazing things. It sets the passion of Jesus free within you. Others can see you moving and that you are truly alive.

That is what salvation means. That is the good news.

To the Cross - Where Life Imitates Christ

Preached on Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Scripture readings: Micah 6:6-8; Mark 12:28-34

There are six-hundred-and-thirteen commandments in the Jewish Torah (our first five books of the Bible). They all had to be followed and kept. Six-hundred-and-thirteen commandments: It’s a mind-numbing number, or else it makes for a wonderful puzzle or game.

Walking along the Columbia River at Desert Aire
Late afternoon, January, 2018

I know some of you love puzzles. You love putting each of a thousand things in their proper place. But there was a wonderful puzzle or game that the Jewish rabbis and the Pharisees loved to play. It was the game called: “Which is the most important commandment?”

You can see the game way back in Micah. Out of a dozen nearly impossible and terrible possible requirements, what does the Lord really require of you? Of course, Micah wins the game by cheating. He gives us three requirements: Do justice (or live justly); love mercy (which is also translated as kindness); and walk humbly with your God.

The Pharisees played the same old game with Jesus. “Which is the most important requirement?” Jesus also wins the game in the time-honored way of Micah: by cheating. Jesus makes the greatest commandment into two; or the two greatest into one.

But what does he say about these two? Matthew expands (a little bit) on what Jesus actually said about the two: he says that they are alike. (Matthew 22:34)

They are alike! But how can loving God and loving your neighbor be alike? How can they be the same, or nearly the same? The very teacher who started the game agreed with Jesus, and strung them both together into one single commandment.

Both commandments are about love. Both commandments together have a way of putting all the ways of love into one single love-package.

Some people try keeping the two apart. You’ve met people who talk about their love for the Lord, but they’re not very loving to people.

I knew a girl in college who quoted the apostle Paul for her motto in life. She went around “speaking the truth in love.” (Ephesians 4:15) That’s what she claimed that she was doing. Well, she certain spoke the truth all the time: all the time! And when you were around her very much, because she was very pretty, you wanted to wince and tell her, “Please, Christy! Please stop doing that.”

I’ve known some who separated their love in the opposite way. They loved people (or said they did) and they hated God. God didn’t nearly live up to their standards.

Micah makes God’s three requirements into one single love-package as well. You need to know that the words for judgement and justice have two sides to them. There’s a justice and a judgement that is punitive. It punishes wrong-doers. Then there’s the kind of justice and judgement that is restorative. The judge restores what has been taken, or lost, or deserved.

Punitive justice makes some people very happy. If what was taken, or harmed, or lost cannot be restored, then victims often take the side of punitive justice.

In the brutal Middle East, some of the most brutalized and bereaved Christians are famous for forgiving the perpetrators of the violence around them. Of course (to the perpetrators) forgiveness is a sign of weakness. No amount of love can excuse an infidel for their irreverent claim that God has a son named Jesus, and that God is simply like Jesus: not even if those Christians truly succeed in the discipline of acting like Jesus.

In Micah’s love-package, the justice must fit the pattern of mercy (which is also translated as kindness). Justice must conform to mercy and humility, so it’s probably all about righting the wrongs done to people, and forgiving all of the wrongs done by people, by restoring what has been lost, or by healing what has been broken.

God’s restorative judgement was carried out on the cross, where Jesus forgave us, and where Jesus also forgave his enemies, just as he asks us to do.

Micah’s three requirements are a love-package in three parts: the restorative justice looks backwards and heals and replaces the past with healing, grace, life, love, fullness, newness. It makes your abominable past into the productive past of a child of God. Kindness and mercy look forward to the future. It’s like the title of the sad movie “Pay It Forward.” You send your mercy and kindness, shown in the present, to do its work in the future. So future and past are both held together by the humility, and the grace, and the joy of the kingdom of God: walking humbly with your God.

Sometimes it almost kills me to be a forgiver. And that’s right because forgiving the sins of the world killed Jesus on the cross. You have to swallow your pride and it almost gags you to do it.

Swallowing your pride is how you walk humbly with your God. Swallowing your pride doesn’t mean hating yourself. Humility means loving God more than yourself, and loving others as yourself. It could mean simply to love fully, and not to measure any of your loves at all. To love without measure is the humblest love of all.

Lent, and the road to the cross, and to the empty grave of Jesus, is this discipline of walking humbly with God. If we know anything about God, we Christians know that God is like Jesus. “He who has seen me has seen the father.” (John 14:9)

We take up our cross and follow a Jesus-like God. This is what Lent is about. It’s the discipline of walking with Jesus to the cross. It’s also about the Jesus-like God who’s Holy Spirit empowers us to walk so humbly with our God.

The ashes of Lent and the Lord’s Supper are the love-package of Jesus. It holds everything together and there is so much in that package that it fills you up when you receive it: but only if you receive it all.