"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? – Equipped and Under Orders

Preached on Sunday, May 5, 2019

Scripture readings: Genesis 1:26-31; Matthew 28:16-20

There’s a friend of mine who has told me that he became a Christian when he held his first baby child in his arms. He knew, in his heart that he, as he was, was not the man to raise this child. He needed to become a new man. So, my friend gave his life to Christ, so that he could be a wise, loving, faithful father.

Walking near Crab Creek, north of Desert Aire-Mattawa, WA
Late April, 2019

The truth is that my friend was raised in a Christian home and seemed to belong to Christ already. But, his baby daughter became the witness commissioned by Jesus to go to the nation of Washtucna and make a disciple out of her new father, teaching him to observe all the Jesus had commanded her.

Paul writes: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17 RSV) My friend became a new man for a new world: the new world of fatherhood. By the way, my friend’s wife was always a saint. She must have seen his future when she said, “I do.”

My friend saw his old world passing away. In the bigger sense our whole world is passing away, ever since Jesus died and rose from the dead. (1 John 2:17) A new world has begun because of Jesus.

To us, this world still looks like a dying world. We will only see that new world of Jesus when he comes again. We live in a new creation and we, who are in Christ, are a new creation, even though we don’t look anything like new.

We are called by the Lord to live as his new images in this new creation. We know there must be different rules and a different calling than we had in the old creation, when we were trying to make ourselves in our own image, in those bad, old days in that bad, old world that was turned away from God.

God gave my friend a new calling, with his new heart, in the new world called fatherhood. This new calling was what we might call a covenant; a fancy Bible word for a holy promise bringing and holding God and human beings together.

The last few lines of the Gospel of Matthew are such a covenant, such a holy promise, that brings us and holds us together. Through this promise, we have a relationship of grace and empowerment with the Lord Jesus.

Jesus begins his new promise like this: “Behold, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” And Jesus completes his new promise like this: “And, lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

Jesus places himself at the beginning and at the completion of the promise to show that he is the one who holds it all together, for us, from the beginning to the end. The grace and the empowerment promised to us by Jesus is very clear, here.

What Christians commonly call “The Great Commission” is our calling and mission in the world that has been claimed by the authority of Jesus. Jesus came into our old, broken, rebel world from the throne that he shared with his Father in heaven. He dispensed with his heavenly authority for a while: while he was growing up, and working, and journeying toward the cross and the tomb. Jesus became truly human for us, in order to claim us from the inside out.

The classic way for an explorer to claim a new land for your own nation is never by gazing at its shoreline through binoculars and saying some magic, claiming spell. You have to set your own foot inside the new land and raise your nation’s banner.

Jesus set his feet inside the broken world of the human race, in flesh and blood, as though he was making himself a citizen of the place. Then Jesus raised the banner of the cross and claimed us for his kingdom.

Jesus built the only kind of human life in which we can follow in his footsteps. He built this new shape of human life for us when he was baptized for our repentance, and received the Holy Spirit, just as we all must baptized for repentance and receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus opened the door into what we must all receive, in order that we may be washed clean in our hearts, and be moved, and enabled, and directed by the Holy Spirit in our own lives. So, Jesus moved in first, into the new world of repentance, and baptism, and receiving the Holy Spirit. Jesus claimed authority over our transition from our old life into our new life.

He did this before us, and he did it for us, so that we don’t take those alone. Our repentance, our baptism, and our life in the Holy Spirit are just as good as his, because he walks with us through it.

Jesus pushed his authority further when he made his way to the center of our hearts and took our sin and rebellion upon himself, on the cross, and made our lives stronger than sin and stronger than death in the resurrection.

Jesus reclaimed human dominion in this world when he reclaimed us in birth, in life, in death, and in resurrection; and defeated the powers of Hell and the Devil. In Jesus, there is no longer any place for us to go where he hasn’t been already. He is with us always, in so many ways, until all the ages and all the places of creation are brought together for the new heaven and earth.

Now that he has created and claimed the new earth and our new life, Jesus has sent us on a mission a bit like the mission of Adam and Eve in the old creation. They were commissioned to “dress and keep the earth”; or to “work it and take care of it”. (Genesis 2:15 KJV and NIV) This was the dominion of Adam and Eve. It was their rulership over the earth: to work on the earth and take care of it, to be servants and guardians of it.

The Great Commission of Jesus for us doesn’t take the First Commission away. Instead, Jesus adds the mission of partnering with him to care for and protect the new human world by bringing our living witness to Jesus wherever we go, into all the nations, or just into our own nation.

We are to go to all nations. If we don’t go to all the nations, then we go to all the people around us.

We take part in the Lord’s work of recreating everyone who will listen, and be moved, and follow. Everyone is beloved by the Lord, and the Lord’s greatest joy is for them to become new creations where the old has passed away.

This is where being in the image of God comes in. The image of God is not having a face, and hands, and feet, and internal organs. The image of God is not some spirit, soul, mind, and body thing. God’s image isn’t even a matter of being a person of self-awareness and purpose, although that comes a lot closer. God’s image is intimate relationship. God’s image is intimate, faithful love.

The idea of a mirror comes into this, in the Bible: “seeing in a mirror dimly, and then face to face (2 Cor. 3:18)” or looking into “the law as into a mirror (James 1:23.” Human sin interrupted the faith that comes from looking into the Lord. Human sin interrupted our ability to look at any time and see all that God is; and caring for all that God cares about. In Jesus, God has stopped and untangled this interruption.

Because of this, you can pay good attention (quality attention) to everything that matters most to God in your life and, yet, center your attention on God at the same time. You can play with your kids. You can pay your bills. You can work at your job, and your art, and your garden. You can work on your check book or online banking site. And you can look into the presence of God at the same time.

You can write a book or read a book. You can watch television and hear the news. And you can look into the presence of God at the same time.

That’s what being the image of God is about. Then, whatever you are thinking, whatever you are saying, whatever you are doing is what God would do if God were you. Then people will look at you and see God: see Jesus, see God in Jesus Christ, in you. They may not know it. But they may crucify you for it just as easily as they may praise you for it.

That will be one of the ways you can measure your competence, your abilities, your success. For better or for worse you will play and fit the role of Jesus. You will spread the new creation for the new world; the new heaven and earth that are coming.

Making disciples means bringing people into the image-changing and image-making that comes from this intimate relationship. You learn from Jesus by listening and watching. You learn from Jesus by following, which means going where he wants to go: not to the righteous but to sinners. You will be the good physician. You will be the good nurse to those around you.

To baptize them means to give them a good, Christ centered death and resurrection in Jesus. They will die to themselves and live in Christ.

Teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded you means bringing them all back to your own calling. Wherever Christ has found them, that is the starting line of their part of the race in the image-of-God relay.

They will love taking care of and protecting the least of the people around them. They will love bringing others into the life that makes us the image of God by intimacy: looking and listening and following the presence and purpose of God. You teach others to observe all that the Lord has commanded you by sharing your life’s work and your life’s discoveries and your greatest loves with them.

Then the whole business spins around, and around, and around. It goes from generation to generation, family to family, country to country. It’s like a country folk dance, or a square dance, passing under the over-arching arms of the ones who are smiling at you through the lands and the ages of the kingdom of God.

There was a man whose name I can’t remember, and whom I have never met, but Christians in my home town used to talk about him. He came to my home town, from South Korea to America, because God called him to be a missionary to us.

The Americans had brought their faith to his country. Now the Lord called him to bring his faith to ours.

He was smart but, most of all he was humble and childlike. He was in a new world, for him, and other Christians helped him as they could. By helping him, they learned to grow in their own faith through him. Non-believing Americans understood the good news of Jesus better for having known him.

I don’t remember what became of him. It’s only one example of how The Great Commission works. It’s how the sacrifice and the resurrection of God in Christ creates the new creation around us, as we live face to face with the presence of Jesus.

Jesus holds us together, through the strength of his promises, for as long as the ages and worlds gather together in his kingdom. Jesus is with us always, as we go with him into this bold new resurrection world.

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.

Kingdom of the Caregivers (Part Two) - Reading the Heart of Need

Preached on Sunday, January 20, 2019

Scripture readings: 2 Kings 5:1-19; Matthew 9:1-13

Usually, when people ask me how I’m doing, I just say: “Fine! How are you?” Sometimes they’re already gone by then, because “how are you” can be just like saying “Howdy, catch you later!”.

Looking around near Bridgeport Bridge
Near Malakoff Diggins and North Bloomfield
California, May 2015

This winter, this past month, when people ask how I’m doing I tell them how long I’ve had my cold; and I explain how this is not because I’m getting old. It’s because I’ve always had disgustingly long colds. I go on to tell them how my roommates in college would complain about how long my cold had been going on, and how annoying I was, and why didn’t I go to the doctor?

Maybe that’s why it might be more polite, sometimes to just say “fine”?

No, when I ask you how you are, I really want to know. I Want to know how you are!

I wanted to be an astronomer, off and on, when I was a kid. I still have a small telescope that my parents bought for me when I was about ten years old. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve taken it out but I have used it, now and then. I’ve used it since I’ve lived here.

In the summer, I like to put a cot out in my back yard, with a sleeping bag, and just lie there looking up. I like looking at the stars and the planets and guessing which ones they are.

All of you are just like that!

To me, at least.

I mean, I really could just stare, and stare at you and wonder what you are and where you really are, way up there in the heavens above me.

Last Sunday I started a short series of messages in which I want to think and share what it might mean to care for the spiritual needs of others. How can we do that when we are like distant but wonderful stars and planets moving in the circles of the heavens? We’re all so mysterious.

That could be a good way of playing it safe with each other. One of the scary things my mom said to me when I was a child and I had done something wrong was this: “I can read you like a book.” That sure scared me. And school teachers claimed to have eyes in the back of their heads. Grown-ups were strange creatures who could know everything about you without your even saying a word. They know exactly what you will do next, and you can never know what they have in mind about you.

Now that I’ve more or less grown up, I don’t quite buy into that scary part anymore. I know that I can’t read you like a book. Although, I have been held responsible, before, for things that I should have known without having been told.

That’s just not in my grasp. If you tell me something important and expect me to read between the lines in order to “get it”, that will never, never happen. I am incapable of reading between the lines.

It can be a lonely thing, being a star out in the Milky Way, so far from the other stars. How can we help others in their need if we can’t read them? How can we ever hope to have our own inner needs understood and cared for if we are such mysterious creatures to each other?

We could share more. We could talk more, and be more personal.

That would help.

But that can be hard, too. And, then, what if our own hearts seem as far away from us as the stars and the planets of everyone else? What if you are too separated from your own star to know what’s really going on way out there, or way in there?

Today’s readings from the scriptures tell us about how the spiritual needs of people, including our own, can be hidden and disguised, or else How these needs can become visible, and clear, and accessible to our care, and the caring of others. Naaman the Syrian General with his leprousy; the paralyzed guy who was carried by his friends to Jesus; and the tax officer named Matthew, who because the source of our first gospel, all showed their spiritual needs that differed greatly from their apparent needs, or lack of needs.

I mean they all showed their innermost, genuine needs to Jesus. The people in the crowd hardly had a clue.

In the gospel, Jesus gave the young paralytic exactly what he came for, which was healing, but healing was not the first this he needed. The first Jesus gave him something completely different from physical healing. Jesus gave him forgiveness first.

Jesus gave Matthew something that no one else of his own people would ever dream of giving him. Most of his own people wouldn’t have given Matthew the time of day, if he asked for it. (Of course, no one had watches back then, to tell the time by.) Matthew’s real need was for forgiveness, like the paralyzed guy. Or, was it acceptance? Was it a purpose that mattered?

The young paralyzed man and his friends came to Jesus because he clearly needed more help than any human being could possibly give him. No human being could take away his paralysis. His best friends gave him the only thing they had to give by bringing him to Jesus; whatever Jesus might be.

All five young men were people of faith. They had no theologically and Biblically correct idea of who in the world Jesus was. But I think they could have said something like: “This Jesus comes from God. He comes right here to our town and he can take care of absolutely any need that anyone brings to him. Maybe he’s the king Daniel writes about, who goes to heaven on the clouds to sit on the throne with God. Who can know?”

It would be nice if the five of them knew this. But they may not have been that clear. It was only clear that Jesus was wonderful, and that he helped everyone who came to him.

Matthew had no faith. Maybe he once had a faith he had said “no” to. In any case, he had left his faith behind to work for the Roman dogs who had invaded and occupied the land that God had promised to Israel.

There’s no sign that Matthew was aware of any spiritual need at all. He as doing quite well, thank you. Matthew didn’t come to Jesus at all, let alone ask Jesus for anything.

Jesus came to him. Only Jesus saw Matthew’s real need.

Jesus came as a care giver for those in spiritual need. The healings, the miracles, the turning around of people lives, and calling them away from their old way of life (whether fisherman or taxman) was only part of the caregiving purpose of Jesus.

In the twentieth chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us that he has a caregiving job to restore the world to God. The job of caregiver, no matter how big and great, is still always the job of a servant. “Whoever is great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28)

Jesus came to save an enslaved world. We are born with a need to be ransomed from the slavery of the sin of the world.

The Old and New Testaments, from that point of view, both give us servants (except for Elisha’s servant) who know how to help, and (more importantly) servants who know the root of the need.

The servant girl knew where the general could be healed. The general’s servants knew that their “father” (as they call him) needed to stop playing the hero and the great man, if he wanted to be healed. The general, after his tantrum, thoughtfully listened to the wisdom of his daily caregivers.

Because their identity as servants taught them their master’s greatest need, he became a changed man. He became a servant of the God of Israel.

The prophet Elisha had, from the very first, given the general a little task for his deeper healing. Elisha knew how to do this because he was, at heart, a servant. Elisha knowingly gave, for the general’s physical healing, a silly, repetitive, boring task, that could easily humiliate him, and enrage him.

The prophet was a caregiver, too, and was wise, like any servant of Jesus, to read between the lines and see the real need, not the obvious need. Serious caregivers learn how to look deeper, and go deeper, than others can see or do.

Jesus, from the first, gave the young, paralyzed man the forgiveness of his sins.

Two things make us forget that there is a simple purpose in forgiveness and so (if that is true) then Jesus intended to give forgiveness, plain and simple. The Pharisees turn forgiveness into a distraction and a complication.

In his effort to reach out to them, Jesus asks them to use this forgiveness to learn from him more willingly. Jesus tells them that now they know what his authority is, but that’s not why he started with forgiveness in the first place.

First, I want to explain something about authority in the Bible. There are a couple words for authority and power in the New Testament language. This one is “exousia” which cannot be passed on to anyone, although it may be shared. Exousia, in this way means “substance”. It has to be part of what you’re made of. There is a substance to being a spouse or a parent that really can’t be given to you. It must be ingrained in you, in these cases, over time, and they are never finished forming.

Ok, when it’s not part of who you are by birth, it must be learned, and you never stop needing to learn learning.

The authority of forgiveness in Jesus is a very part of him. In the animal kingdom, some animals (like wolves and dogs, maybe with the exception of poodles) are essentially, substantially predators. It’s their inborn authority to be predators.

Jesus is a forgiver. It’s as essential to the nature of Jesus as the authority of love. Because God is love. Jesus shares the nature and authority of God.

It may sound as though Jesus gives us the authority to go out into the world, but it is actually, always his authority, and not our own. Jesus’ authority is not a matter like saying that “the buck stops here”. It means that when we do what we are authorized to do, we are not doing it on our own.

Jesus is doing our task with us, and through us. Every act of our authority is a partnership, and a communion with Jesus. Jesus is being the caregiver through us.

The wisdom of the Caregiving God is working through us, helping us to see what others don’t see. The wisdom of the Caregiving God, in Jesus, is helping us to go and to do what others don’t know how to go and do.

The young, paralyzed guy needed forgiveness more than anything else. This much is the same with all of us. We all need forgiveness more than anything else.

But there was something that only Jesus could see. It wasn’t that sin or shame caused the paralysis. Forgiveness was simply the greatest need in this one person’s life. In some way his life was marked by failure that made him ashamed. It overshadowed him in a way that may not be common to most of us.

Without the wisdom of the Caregiving God, in Jesus, we might miss the need in others for simple, unconditional grace and forgiveness. We are called to be servants who serve with caregiving wisdom to forgive others with the love and grace of God.

Matthew’s greatest need was to be a servant of the Kingdom of God and not of the Empire of Caesar. Matthew needed to be the traitor and thief among the first disciples called by the grace of the Lord.

Matthew needed this, because we all need a traitor and thief to be loved, and close, and a chosen servant of Jesus. It’s by Jesus caring for the need that he saw in Matthew that we know that Jesus can call us away from being thieves and traitors; and not be like Judas.

Not everyone can come, and love, and serve Jesus as an honest man or woman. We, in order to be true servants of Jesus, need to know this. We, ourselves, need a life changing call. There are people around us who need a life changing call and purpose in life. There are people whose greatest needs may be acceptance and purpose.

We might only see those who don’t deserve such a call or invitation, but the wisdom of the Caregiver God, in Jesus, will tell us otherwise. Our own hearts will be changed by that wisdom to change the lives of the spiritually failed and loveless into the inspired and beloved of Jesus.

Naaman must have had a real spiritual need lodged underneath his outstanding competence and his ability to be recognized for always coming to save the day. The caregiver Elisha healed Naaman not only by having him wash in Israel’s river, but made him, from that time on, an undercover Israelite behind enemy lines. When Naaman led the king of Syria into the royal temples, he was really worshiping the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus Christ, to come.

There are people who have the spiritual need to live with family and friends as if he or she is an undercover agent behind enemy lines. They may live in a world empty of the people of Jesus to love and understand them. We see their real need. We are ready to be there for them, to help them.

What benefits came to those whose deeper needs were met? Did they go on to live happy, fulfilled, successful lives?

Naaman had to live the rest of his life knowing that so much of what he did was fulfilling his duty to the wrong side. He had his troops, his treasures won in war, his palace and his servants who called him “father”, but he lived the rest of his life knowing that the world should not be the way it is. He lived knowing that he was of very little use where he was, and he would watch everything go on to the breaking of his heart. Naaman went on to become sad, but wise.

The forgiven and healed young man may have gone on to live the rest of his life as a normal, ordinary, independent human being. What a great gift that would be, don’t you think?

Malakoff Diggins, old hydraulic mine
Looking across that big hole in the round

If he and his family went on in living faithful to Jesus after the Cross, and the Resurrection, and Pentecost, he would have been a perfectly normal human being who would have to keep his priorities clear and hold onto Jesus, no matter how the persecuting world was moving around him, and maybe against him. He would be persecuted, but useful to his brothers and sisters in Christ, and possibly happy in spite of the fear, or persecution.

In the rest of his life, following Jesus, Matthew traveled with the good news of Jesus to a whole lot of places (Persia/Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and especially south of Egypt) South of Egypt is said to be where he was a very successful witness for Jesus. He was so successful that he was killed there (burned alive) for his success. We just don’t know much about Matthew and how he ended.

There are other spiritual needs hidden in the stars of the souls around us. Caregiver Jesus, calls us to be caregivers with him to these and many, many others.

We can’t merely say, “How are you,” and know what to do. We don’t know where our caregiving will take those we help or where the help we receive will take us, in life. But we can learn what servants learn when we start serving the Servant-Lord Jesus.

The Battle Primeval – Don’t Worry Be Thankful

PREACHED ON THE SUNDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, November 18, 2018

Scripture readings: Psalm 104:1-24; Luke 12:22-34

A woman was at work when she got a call from her babysitter. The sitter told her that her daughter was very sick with a fever.

A Few Family Photos Over the Years

So, the woman left work, and raced to the drugstore, to get some medicine for her daughter. When she got back to her car, she found that she had locked herself out. She ran back into the store, and she called home, and she told the babysitter what was wrong, and the babysitter told her that her daughter was getting worse and that, maybe, she could get a coat-hanger to open the car. The store-clerk gave her a hanger and she ran back to her car.

She was panicking now. She suddenly realized that she had no idea how to unlock a car door with a coat-hanger. She prayed desperately for God to help her.

Suddenly a beat-up old car, covered with bumper-stickers, pulled up next to hers. Out came this hulking-bearded guy, with tattoos, and a biker’s jacket, and a skull rag on this head.

He asked if he could help. The woman told him about her daughter and her keys: “Can you use this hanger to unlock my car?” And he says, “Sure thing!”

In a few seconds, he gets the door open. The woman jumps on him and hugs him tight. Tears running down her smiling face, she says, “Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir! You’re such a nice man!”

The guy says, “No ma’am, I’m not nice at all. I just got out of prison this morning. I was in for car theft. I got released just a few hours ago.”

The woman laughs, and cries, and hugs him again, and prays, “Thank you, Lord! Thank you for sending me a professional!”

OK, the verse we read from Luke don’t have the word “thanks”. Jesus is talking about worry. Actually, he’s talking about the antidote, the treatment, for worry. Worry is one of the enemies of thanksgiving. We, on the other hand, seem to have designed our special Thanksgiving Day to be full of stuff to worry about: perfect travels, perfect timing, perfect meals, and no family feuding.

Thanksgiving Day is the celebration of being people whose very nation is built on the heritage of giving great thanks. The Pilgrim’s experience taught them to think of their presence in this land as a divine miracle, and that the Native Americans were a part of that miracle, and the Pilgrims shared that celebration day with them. At least that’s what they say. They must have done something right that day. Plymouth Colony never fought the Native Americans and never needed to.

What if we thought that our presence, here in this land, was not our own doing, but a miracle from God, so that we didn’t have to worry? If you know that you are living a gift from God, you worry less and give more thanks.

So, Thanksgiving is a celebration, and you can’t celebrate when you’re worried. You might be able to fake a smile, but you’re not really celebrating. You can’t.

One of the treatments Jesus prescribes for worry is to think, and to think again. Jesus names this kind of thinking: “consider”. “Consider some things.” “Consider the ravens.” “Consider the lilies.” Considering has something to do with how you think, and how you see.

Worry doesn’t start with a feeling, and neither does thanks. Worry and thanksgiving come from a state of mind, from a way of looking at your surroundings and your life.

Jesus says, “Look around you.” And it’s true that Jesus is being selective in what he wants you to look at.

Jesus points to the grass of the field. Well, you can walk out into some field in the spring, and you can enjoy the fragrance and the wildflowers; but you could also choose to think about snakes in the grass. In a cow pasture you might choose to worry about other things hidden in the grass. Maybe you ought to take it all in, but don’t let the snakes and the cow patties make you worry and forget about the wild flowers of the field.

Jesus says, “Look at the world around you.” Look at how things fit together. See how they work. See how everything has a place. There is beauty. There is order. There is precision. There is design. This world is a work of art created by God. And you are a part of it. You also are a work of art.

Here is something we can see more than ever before, through the gift of science, which reveals more and more amazing things every day, things that cannot be explained. Oh, science can explain a lot: how it works, a bit of how the whole thing is inter-related, what it’s made of. But science can’t really explain why everything is what it is; at least not in terms of purpose: past, or present, or future.

Look at your hands. When I was in high school a girl once told me that I had nice hands. Of course, they’re getting wrinkled now. How complicated they are: and the feet, and ankles: so many little bones. And the skin: how different it is on the tops than it is on the palm and soles. Each person who has ever lived has a unique set of fingerprints, and probably toe prints, too.

Yet, if you looked inside your hand, at one, single cell; and if you were able to see what goes on inside that cell, how it’s fed and renewed, you would see a process that was just as beautiful as anything you could see with your naked eye, or more so. Then, if you could look deeper into that cell if, you saw the atoms, and the subatomic particles, and the pure energy making everything work by its attractions and repulsions, and how it was all like some faint cloud, maybe a shining mist interacting with other shining mists, which are each other.

There’s no end of design: no end of beauty. Infinite skill! Infinite wisdom. Infinite care. Not so much because they have no end, but the end disappears into the heart of the artist where they came from.

Jesus says: consider, look, think, wonder. If you are still worried, think again.

There’s a word called “providence”: Such a fancy word, and not just the name of a lot of hospitals. It has to do with God: with God providing. The teacher J. Vernon McGee had a definition of providence. He said, “Providence is the means by which God directs all things – both animate and inanimate; seen and unseen; good and evil – toward a worthy purpose, which means His will must finally prevail.” Put more simply: God, in his love, does what’s best for us, and gives us what we need. Thanksgiving comes from thinking, considering, and seeing this.

Another treatment for worry is to consider that you are important, that you matter, that you matter more than the birds and the grass. You are the objects of God’s faithful care and love.

Some people have trouble with this; and there are lots of reason why this is. Some people have been told they are worthless, or else they’ve been shown this through others mistreating them, or abusing them.

Shame, guilt, anger come from this. All of these, and more, are a kind of unsettledness akin to worry because something has gone wrong, or something hasn’t been resolved.

Sometimes the frequent defeat of our hopes, and purposes, and plans discourages us and causes us to doubt our value. Yet there are those whose lives have been marked by never having anything or any prospects, and they may have great loves, and great ambitions, and because they dare to hope, they will attempt seemingly impossible goals (which are simply about being safe, and knowing the people you love are safe, and secure, and well).

Such people may be more thankful than the richest, and the most powerful, and the most beautiful people in the world. Nothing stands between them and God.

There is something different in human beings that Jesus says is of special value. Jesus says that life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Do you realize how strange that could sound? How can life be more than food if you will die without food? How is the body more than clothes if, outside, in Desert Aire and Mattawa, in winter, your body will certainly die without clothes?

What Jesus is saying is that there is something in human life that is not physical and not material. The word that Jesus uses for our life, here, is the word for soul. “Do not worry about your soul, what you shall eat. . . for the soul is more than food.” (Luke 12:22-23)

You are a soul. You have a spiritual life that is stronger than your physical life and accomplishes more. Jesus wants you to know that this makes you a being of tremendous worth to him. This is the Lord who so much loved your life within your body that he became human with a body of the same status as your own.

His death on the cross, that was made possible by his being one of us, is part of the treasure that makes his love so beautiful to us, and still makes us more beautiful to him. But there is something eternal in each one of you and me that the Lord Jesus treasures.

Consider this, when you think about your worries, and your defeats, and your survival. You are a treasure to others. You are a treasure to God. Keep thinking about this.

There was a girl who was asked what she looked for in a guy. Her answer was, “How he fits his blue jeans.” (Well, there are boys who look for similar stuff in girls.) These are values and expectations that won’t last, especially not long past forty.

There is something spiritual, eternal in us, that is made for everlasting life with God, made for an everlasting home. Caring about that life, in ourselves and in others, will give us values that last.

Those who know the Lord have a different set of concerns. We have our hearts set on different things. We’re motivated by different loves. To be in your garden in the morning, to look in on your children, or grandchildren, or so on, when they’re in bed (and not just to say, “Thank God they’re asleep.”), to look into the face of someone you love who is still willing to put up with you, to make something that runs well, that works well, that looks good, or tastes good, or to hear or read a word that God speaks to you…in an instant you know, at least for a moment, that your life is an awesome gift, and that you and they mean something. This is an antidote for worry.

You already know that this is part of thanksgiving. Just don’t forget it. Some people forget.

Jesus says, “Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them.”

Jesus isn’t saying, “Don’t work.” Jesus worked as a carpenter to support his mother, brothers, and sisters. When they were old enough, Jesus left that work, for something much bigger and harder, in the end.

Jesus’ work on this earth made our work just as holy as his first work creating time, and space, and the structures of the cosmos. Jesus’ work on the cross and in the resurrection enable all our work, and all that we work for, to have eternal significance.

Jesus says to work for ourselves and for others, and to work and live for bigger reasons and for bigger gifts. Live a life that’s different from what many others work for, because you know that your life, and the lives of others, is a treasure.

Jesus says, “Seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”

There was a native Christian pastor in Laos some time past. The communist government there wanted to stop him from preaching. They wanted to stop his church from meeting and growing. They sent soldiers to his house. The soldiers gathered the pastor and his family together. They held a gun to the head of the pastor’s twelve-years-old son. They told the pastor to deny his faith. But, before the pastor could say anything, the boy spoke up and said that he would never betray Jesus. So, the soldiers shot him on the spot. The same thing happened with the pastor’s wife. They took the pastor away to a prison work-camp.

Eventually, he escaped to Thailand, where he devoted himself to sharing Christ among the other refugees. Even though, by some standards, it could be said that he had lost everything he held dear in life, yet, by his standards, he had not lost everything. He followed Jesus who had lost everything for him, and who held everything the pastor held dear in his own hands.

He heard the voice that says, “But seek his kingdom, and these things will be give to you as well.” He shared this Christ with others out of a thankful heart. People who know the Lord find that their hearts are set on different things, and that they are motivated by a different love.

Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted.” Here Jesus says: know what counts and live accordingly.

When Jesus said to cut off your hand or pluck out your eye, if they cause you to sin; he was using strong, shocking language simply to say: take this seriously or you will be saying “no” to my life.

When Jesus said to be ready to sell what you have: he was using strong language simply to say: make a real choice about where you stand. How will you live, and what will you live for, if you believe that your Father has been pleased to give you his kingdom?

What does “his kingdom” mean? A kingdom is wherever its king rules, wherever the king’s will is done. It means that you live a life in which God truly rules. God provides for you. God works with you, and in you, and through you, and around you. You live where God’s plan is at work, under God’s protection, in God’s peace.

Heaven is yours. The coming kingdom is yours.

In a very real way, God has given you his kingdom already. You have come home. You have come inside.

God gave us his kingdom when Jesus died for us on the cross. Jesus carried whatever separates us from God and each other. He carried those things on the cross. So, that separation, whether it formed a wall or a chasm, has been broken down and bridged over with the cross.

This is the same thing John was talking about when he said, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

Knowing the Lord is all about receiving a gift from someone who loves you, and whose love you can trust. This is the antidote for worry. This is where real thanksgiving comes from.