Things Invisible - The Secret Working of Goodness

Preached on Sunday, May 6, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are surrounded by an unseen glory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are surrounded by an unseen power.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 - Blowing Our Minds

Preached on the Sunday of The Resurrection of Our Lord (Easter Sunday), April 1, 2018

Scripture readings: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Mark 15:1-8

Spring Walks and Gardens of  My Past

One of the greatest events ever to happen in the history of the universe happened around the dawning of the first day of the week, almost two thousand years ago. The first people who discovered this greatest thing were three women carrying armloads of funeral spices. They were on their way to a stone tomb carved into the side of a hill, just outside the walls of Jerusalem.

They were on their way to give a very sad and tragic gift to their dear, dead friend and hero, whom they had lain to rest in that tomb.  They were on a mission to complete the embalming of his crucified corpse. They had loved Jesus, and they had hoped great things of him, but Jesus had led them straight into a fatal ambush, and a dead end to their love and to their hopes.

Jesus had seemed to have what it would take to open up a new world that they had all learned to call “the kingdom of God.” Jesus had freely owned-up to being the rightful king of the kingdom of God.

This was surprising because, although Jesus was a descendant of the famous David, the greatest of the kings of Israel, he had long worked as a carpenter, just like his father Joseph. The clan of David had been poor and struggling for so long that they had made a sort of mockery of the whole idea of their family producing anything like a Messiah. It just looked totally impossible for any of them to be a king raised up by God to conquer the world and put all nations under the power of the kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of God.

But, when Jesus was with his friends and followers, anything seemed possible. With God’s help their possibilities looked unlimited. And God was definitely with Jesus, making the impossible things possible: the dead rising at one touch of Jesus’ hand, or the mere sound of his voice. The wind and the waves of the sea stopped at his command and they became a place where a man might walk, if he had the faith to do so. People of wealth and influence were becoming beholden to Jesus for his healing of their loved ones and servants. Yes, with Jesus the possibilities looked endless.

Then Jesus was arrested less than a week after his triumphant, royal parade into the capital. The Passover crowds claimed his as their king under the noses of the Roman army and the Temple police. No one raised a hand against him.

Then, Jesus was seized by a joint action of the Roman Army and the Temple Police. Jesus was beaten, and scourged, and nailed on that cross; heckled, and bleeding, and suffocating to death, defeated for all the world to see.

He was clearly done with and finished for all time. Jesus had even yelled, “It is finished.” But he shouted those last words as if he didn’t mean them. Or else he meant something completely different from the way they felt, and from the way they were feeling now.

They were all finished now.

They and their friends would be lucky to survive much longer. The world had turned out to be much worse, and much darker, and more hopeless than they had ever imagined before Jesus had come to them, and called them, and raised their expectations.

They knew, now, that they lived in such a world where even someone as remarkable as Jesus could come and never make any difference at all. They had good reasons for being afraid but, somehow, their sense of fear was very low compared to their mountains of disappointment.

They and their friends had felt all of this for three days, but they had lost their sense of time. Their feelings were immeasurable. There is a modern British poet named T. S. Eliot. He was a great poet, really, and a Christian but, looking at the world and where most people’s ambitions were taking them, he wrote one of the bleakest and most depressing poems ever written, and it ends with these lines. I think it gives us the picture of life in this world as the disciples of Jesus were seeing it in their own time. Here it is:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

                                                                        (“The Hollow Men”)

I’m sorry to talk like this. Even on the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord we can’t understand the greatest things that have ever happened in the universe unless we see how Jesus had actually judged his own accomplishment when he shouted that it was finished.

There’s nothing good about any cross, and there’s nothing good about the cross of Jesus, unless it leads from something bad to something good. In a world like ours, the best possible good would be to produce the end of all crosses (or anything like a cross). The best possible great thing would bring an end to everything that could be woven into a world where crosses exist. The cross of Jesus exists to put an end to all other crosses, someday.

There’s nothing outstandingly good about the resurrection of Jesus except for the fact that it follows something evil. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate cure for all evil and sin. We share in that cure when we die with Jesus by faith, on the cross, and rise with Jesus by faith from the darkness of our living tomb. The resurrection of Jesus creates a new world that is going to destroy the old world of crosses.

The Cross is the picture of death and evil completely defeated and completely destroyed. This is why we talk about that Old Rugged Cross and cling to it. The gift of the old rugged cross is to exchange itself for a crown on everyone’s head.

If we truly understood this, in all its weight and glory, it would blow our minds.

Where the cross and the resurrection are not understood, they seem foolish and perhaps even evil. Some people who are much too modern for their own good, or anybody else’s good, say that a father who sends his son to die on a cross is an abusive father. That’s what some people say.

The ancient Greeks and Romans thought the same way. This is why Paul wrote about the foolishness of God in the cross and, by extension, in the resurrection. What God knows is wise and what we humans think is wise are at odds with each other, and who will you listen to?

Paul wrote: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) In his own time Jesus also knew that most people wouldn’t understand him and wouldn’t believe that he was who he claimed to be. (Luke 7:33-35) Jesus knew that few of his own people (God’s people) would appreciate how his death on the cross would explain the old laws and prophets, and the perpetually unsolved conflicts between God and his people.

It is a shock to the system to go from seeing things the way they normally make sense to us to seeing things the way God sees them. It’s a shock to go from what you thought made sense of your life, to what God sees as sense: from what you think is wise to what God knows is wise, from what you think is powerful and possible to what God knows is powerful and possible.

In the early morning hours of the resurrection, the women, who had just been confronted by God’s wisdom and power, were scared by what they found. When the women did their appointed job to share this frightening good news with the other disciples, those others found God’s wisdom and power not to be scary but to be impossible, something not to be believed.

That first Easter dawning, the whole church as it was, or the whole family of Jesus was in two locations. One small group stood at the empty tomb and talked with angels. They were given a calling, or a mission, to help people believe what seems, at first, to be impossible.

They had an impossible mission even though they believed that the truth they served was true. The other disciples were called to believe what seemed impossible and foolish.

We have been given both callings; both jobs. The women couldn’t reach inside the doubting men and push the faith button. They had an impossible task; an impossible job to do. The men had to believe the impossible. In the end, only Jesus could make their calling work.

Our job together, like all of those apostles combined, is to believe the impossible and to do the impossible.

In the end, they did both. In the end, we can too.

It must be said here, that having this twin calling of believing and doing the impossible doesn’t make you special. It only makes you very, very needy. And that’s the only place where the impossible becomes possible. This is the foolishness of what we preach: the foolishness of our message. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)

In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote some of my favorite words. He wrote of a time in his life when he prayed and prayed for God to mend some desperate situation and the Lord gave him this solution: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul wrote how the solution worked for him in his mission impossible: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Working together, and working each in our own way, we are called to something that the world and the people around us would regard as foolish, irrelevant, a waste of time and effort: an impossible faith for an impossible mission.

For the disciples at the tomb and the disciples in hiding, two of the best things the world could offer (the Roman peace and the Jerusalem Temple) were bad enough and strong enough to kill Jesus, the Son of God, God incarnate. It was a horrible thing think this way. It was even more horrible to watch it happen. And it was a horrible thing for Jesus to go through. Therefore, the only valid, logical option left was for Jesus to rise from the dead.

Jesus died on the cross, bearing the weight of the attack of the world on his own shoulders. It’s a weight that we all must carry, either with Jesus or without him. It’s a weight that seemed to defeat him because it killed him.

Then Jesus did the impossible thing. He defeated the power of defeat. Jesus defeated the power of evil to defeat, or corrupt, or ultimately co-opt goodness.

Afterwards, the world didn’t seem any different as a result, but God was beginning a long impossible victory. This victory would challenge and inspire those who came to him for all the centuries that have followed. It was the victory of having faith in a future new world: a whole new creation.

The cross and the resurrection are things that seem impossible but they make everything else possible. They are the victory in Jesus that becomes our victory: the cross and the resurrection of Jesus.

What’s possible or impossible is a matter of perspective. In the spring of my twenty-first year, when I was in college, I was helping a bunch of friends pre-fabricate a log cabin. I didn’t know what I was doing, of course, but I did as I was told.

I found myself standing on the eaves, above the loft, when I fell. I fell as far as most people fall when they fall off the eaves of a house.

Amazingly, I landed on my feet. I also landed on a nice wide board that was steady enough for me to keep standing on my feet, when I hit the ground. And that board had a fair-sized construction nail pointing up through the board at the point where my right foot landed.

That nail went through the sole of my right shoe and up between my second and third toe. I felt it go between my toes and it came out the top of my shoe. I saw it sticking out, about two or three inches, above the top of my tennis shoe.

I was fine. I was untouched. There was not a scratch: not one scratch, or mark, or bruise. It seemed impossible, but many such things happen.

I don’t know if that would be a miracle or not. It’s within the realm of remote mathematical possibility. But perhaps God’s miracles are just his input into our universe with its laws of nature and physics. We have our input, and God has his. And the two sources of input are not worth comparing. But they work together.

Paul wrote about this in his letter to the church in Rome: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

With God there are possible impossibilities that work, that have power, that change everything. These possible impossibilities change us.

The cross and the resurrection of Jesus give us a foolish message as far as this world’s wisdom goes. It’s an impossible message, and sometimes we are tempted to rejoin the world in our opinions.

The cross and the resurrection of Jesus call us to walk into the impossible where we take up our cross and follow Jesus. We can love and serve our Savior, and we can love and serve the world, and our neighbors for whom Christ died and rose from the dead, even when it all seems impossible.

With our minds properly blown by our Jesus, this will surely take us through whatever comes next.

Passionate Jesus - Rip the Veil and See

Preached on Good Friday, March 30, 2018

Scripture readings: Mark 15:21-40

I don’t know where all the pictures in my head have come from that show me the stories of Jesus. I’ve got these pictures in my head. Some of them are moving, talking pictures of the crucifixion.

Some Stations of the Cross
Our Lady of the Desert Parish
Mattawa, WA
Spring, 2017

I see Jesus struggling to breathe, and he raises himself up on the nails in order to take each and every breath. In the end, he’s trembling when he lifts himself to take his final breath. He shouts a loud shout, and I think he says, “It is finished.” Finished means that he has accomplished what he came for.

Then the earth shakes and cracks open in places. The rocking of the world moves the Temple, perched high on its terrace on what they used to call Mount Moriah.

This shaking does something spiritual and miraculous. By the hand of God, the curtain or veil that covers the entrance to the Holy of Holies is ripped open from top to bottom. The Holy of Holies, in Jesus’ time, was an empty room where God concentrated his presence and his attention.

Centurion means the commander of somewhere from eighty to one hundred men in the Roman army. Because it was supposed to have a hundred men, a centurion’s unit was called a century. That would make him the equivalent of something like the captain, or the major, of a company in the United States Army or Marine Corps.

Maybe there wasn’t a whole company or century of soldiers at the cross. Maybe the centurion brought some smaller detail to do the job of the crucifying and guarding of the convicts. But Jesus was a kind of security risk to the province and to the Temple. They were on alert because of Jesus.

I was surprised, this year, comparing the four gospels. I found that it wasn’t only the centurion who came to a strange, miraculous conclusion about Jesus. Matthew says that the whole detail was shaken from their mission and from their dice game.

In just a moment, they took it all in. They found themselves saying a bunch of stuff at the sound of the shout and the earthquake. Probably the whole scene came through for them, along with the uncanny darkness of the sky. What they had heard and seen of Jesus, how he conducted himself, and how the crowd (and how nature itself) responded to his execution.

Together, the detail became a military jury rendering their verdict: “This was an innocent man. This was a righteous man. Surely, this was the Son of God.”

Something grabbed them and changed them. They had done many, many crucifixions in this rebellious province. They weren’t overwhelmed by the cruel and boring detail of crucifying criminals. Jesus made this long, tedious day different.

With a body that was beaten and torn into a bloody pulp, Jesus heaved himself up on the cross to take his final breath. With that breath Jesus bellowed, and dropped, and hung still as the corpse that he was, upon the nails of the cross.

His shout seemed to shake everything. The earth itself shook, and the people steadied themselves upon it, but their hearts shook as well.

The Temple Mount and its sanctuary shook. Its marble walls seemed, almost, to pull apart and snap shut again, but the parting tore in two the veil that hid the holiest place from view. A shaken witness reported that he had seen the veil tear from top to bottom as if it were the work of some invisible giant.

The inner room of the presence of God could be clearly seen, even by those who, in spite of the shaking earth, stood outside the Temple and looked through the line of now completely opened doors. “Look! There’s the room of God!”

The shouting and drooping Jesus was the wounded and bloody hand of God himself, shaking whatever was capable of being shaken. The bloody hand of God tore the veil from the forbidden door.

That same hand also tore the veil that hangs over the place, in human souls, where our hearts go to hide: where we hide our hearts in order to avoid knowing ourselves too well.

Just now, we may not know where our own hearts are, or what they’re hiding, until that wounded, bloody hand of God in Jesus shakes us as it shook the Roman soldiers and officers.

That wounded hand (or maybe it would be better to call it the wounded heart of God) has a special power to shake things up. It has the power to shake and to carry the sins of the world.

That power can shake the whole planet. Its wounds carry the authority of a proven faithfulness (faithful to death) to judge the whole planet; the whole universe; and each and every one of us.

When we meet that hand and heart we meet his carrying that same authority of long ago. We find ourselves shaken, and carried, and judged, and changed.

Through their army life, the centurion and his soldiers understood power and authority. They understood coming into an order of command, and training, and discipline. They understood being changed by that into something they had not been before.

That’s what I wanted to happen to me, at one time, when, late in 1968, I considered enlisting in the armed forces. Then I told my parents what I had decided, and they freaked.

They freaked out big time. They wore me down for days, till I gave up my plan.

I thought it might have made me a new man. In the end, Jesus did that in his own way. He changed me. But it was with the power of that bloody hand and heart. I couldn’t resist that when he grabbed me and held me in his grip.

I think the centurion and his detail became the first converts to Jesus after his death. That would make sense to me. They found out who Jesus is by crucifying him themselves.

Jesus, himself, changed before their eyes into someone they could never have imagined, even though they had crucified so many people before. They became changed because they saw their whole lives, up to that point, in a completely different light, once they recognized what it meant for them to have crucified Jesus (just as we all have). They knew what it meant that Jesus had died because of them (just as he has died because of each one of us). Their understanding of the whole world changed because they now saw how Rome, and its famous laws and Roman peace, that claimed to shape the world for good had been the enemy of the kingdom of God.

The mighty Roman Empire called their Emperor the Son of God, and yet Rome had killed Jesus the true Son of God. These soldiers knew this.

The soldiers would change how they would see themselves from now on. Their real life would change from representing the power of war and military security to serving Jesus the Prince and Servant of Peace, even if they still wore the uniform of Rome. Their true aim in life would turn them into servants of peace.

We all change like that down to our heart and core. We all change like that, down to every detail, when the sacrifice made for us by that wounded, bloody hand and heart have grabbed us and shaken us.

Now we see God and his Son with the eyes of faith. We recognize who God and his Son are, and what they want for us, and what they give to us. We will all be changed. In God’s time everything will change.