Passionate Jesus - Till the End of Time

Preached on Sunday, April 8, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This would be scary, except for one thing.

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

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

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

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

Passionate Jesus - A Life of Seeds and Storms

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

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

Various Photos from Desert Aire, WA and Washtucna, WA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Incarnation - The Conquering Light

Preached on the Second Sunday in Advent, December 4, 2016

Scripture readings: Psalm 8; John 1:3-5

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Riverside Community Church
Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
December 2016

There is a great war going on, in this world, between good and evil, between love and hate, between light and darkness. What we celebrate, at Christmas, is a victory of the light over the darkness. It’s a victory that the darkness cannot overcome.

But it’s a strange war. And there are two strange things about it.

One of the strange things is the way people respond to it. Some people respond by saying that there is no such war at all. They say there are no such things as light and darkness, only shades of gray.

They say there are no such things as an absolute right against an absolute wrong. When they say such things, do they only mean that absolute right and wrong simply don’t apply to them?

But we are all born into this world, and we all share the human nature that we see at work around us. In times like ours it should be easy to see the absolute wrongs of this world: vengeance, cruelty, injustice, oppression, lies; abuse, addiction, and the use of money and power to break down common people, and their communities, and their liberties.

These are like the tentacles of death reaching out to strangle life. These are like a cloud of darkness trying to snuff out the light.

John says that there is a life and light which are stronger than this death and darkness. He says that the Word (who is Christ, who is God) has life and light: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

Life and light, here in the gospel, are easy enough to understand. They are everything good. They are every good thing. They are kindness and devotion, faithfulness and humility, innocence and justice, peace and generosity, joy, truth, hope, work, rest, creativity, helpfulness. These are all part of something that is absolutely good. These things are all wrapped up in good passions. They are all part of love.

It is a strange war; the war between good and evil, light and darkness, love and hate. It is a strange war because God makes a strange choice of weapons, doesn’t he? And this confuses us.

In Psalm 8, David speaks of the war against the enemy, the foe, and the avenger. What weapon does God create, to resist and defeat his enemies? God’s chosen weapon is the praise on the lips of babies, and infants, and little children. The message of the baby cannot be overcome by the darkness.

Then David looks at human nature and asks: “What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?” How does God deal with human pitifulness, and lowness, and helplessness, and sin? God deals with human nature through compassion, mercy, and love. God deals with human nature through grace. “You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor?”

In the New Testament, we read that the Father does this through his Son: by his Son becoming, for a little while, lower than the angels; by his Son becoming a human baby in a stable, a human among all the rest of us, and a man hanging in our place on the cross.

God is love, and he used himself (becoming human like us) to be his own weapon. In Jesus, God is the light that the darkness cannot overcome. Jesus the baby, Jesus the man, Jesus the crucified, is God’s weapon for the light of the world.

John says: “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” This tells us what the Lord loved, and came to save.

The praise on the lips of the baby in Bethlehem was his love for everything that he had made. There was nothing he did not make or love. He loved it all, and he came to claim it all by becoming the little bundle wondered at by Mary and Joseph. That is what the words mean.

There’s a novel by Wendell Berry, where the main character, named Jayber Crow, is converted by love, and he tells how he grew in his understanding of God’s love: “Could I not see how even divine omnipotence might, by the force of its love, be swayed down into the world? Could I not see how it might, because it could know its creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?” (“Jayber Crow” by Wendell Berry, chapter 32, p. 251)

Evil, death, darkness, has great power. In one sense, it always succeeds. It’s so easy to destroy what’s good.

All of us know how to destroy. Sad to say, surely, we have all taken our turn destroying something or someone. A hasty word can wound a child, or a grown-up. There are times when we want to hurt people, if only to share our own hurt with them. Another person’s peace or happiness can make us angry and destructive.

One spiteful word or action can destroy a day, or wound a human heart for life. And yet some people say there is no such thing as sin. Any caring person should see that the power of such a sin lives within them, within their own heart: that others have used this power against them, and that they have used this power against others.

And then there are the world-sized sins, hatreds, and evils. What an easy thing, to destroy a tribe, or a nation, or a way of life. And this is done, time after time, for someone else’s power, or wealth, or anger, or mere convenience.

The reason why evil, death, and hate seem so successful to us is that we live in the created world of time and space. The darkness that we fear comes from the rebellion of part of the creation against our creator.

God is love, and there were angels and souls who wanted freedom from God; and they could have no freedom from God without freedom from his love. They had to love God less, if they wanted freedom from God. They couldn’t be free from God, from whom all life comes, without being free from his life. They couldn’t be free from God who shines in the darkness, without being free from that light.

The enemy and the avenger have great power, but only in time and space. Their power is not eternal, but souls are eternal. We are living souls. We are made to live forever. We can live outside this world of time and space.

We can be set free. God’s love can change us in ways that will last forever. We can love others forever, and be changed by their love forever. We are made for loves that are too big for time. We are made for loves that are eternal. This is why grief hurts so much, when death interrupts our love.

Since God is love, his weapons, in this strange war, don’t look like weapons. God’s weapons are compassion, mercy, forgiveness, patience, grace, sacrifice, crucifixion: crucifixion beginning with incarnation; the cross and the baby. God gives battle to darkness and hate by becoming one baby, one vulnerable human being. This is how God so loves the world.

If we are children of God, then we are children of the baby of Bethlehem. In some strange way that baby is our father. We learn from the story of Christmas how to live, in practice, the light that the darkness cannot overcome.

What do we learn here about being God’s children in the world? What do we learn about the power of love?

God deals with us, and with our whole world, by means of a manger and a cross, and everything in between. This is not what we would have expected or deserved, but it was the only thing that could save us, the only thing that could reach inside us in order to change us, and make us new people, people of life and light.

The manger and the cross are mercy and grace. They are what we need, and not what we deserve. And that is part of what we need to bring to this world, ourselves: mercy and grace.

To be the children of God, we need to bring to the world what it needs, and not what it deserves. This is how we are to treat our neighbors, our friends, and our family. This is how we are to treat our enemies. This is how we are to treat our church, our community, our country, and the whole world. We are to think of what they need, and not of what they deserve.

Now it is true that what some people may need is the equivalent of a good kick in the behind. If the love of God tells you to give them that kick, then that is the kindest thing that love can do.

But, then, what comes next?  What if God gave us the good swift kick we deserved, and dusted himself off, and said, “Well, my work here is done!”?

In the kingdom of God, there is always a next thing that is needed. In our own lives, when we have given what was needed (even if it was that good kick), there is always the question of the next thing.

Our most important decisions every day come down to this: shall we give what is needed, or shall we give what is deserved? That is the light that the darkness cannot overcome.

That is what we have in Christ. That is what Christmas is about. If we belong to Jesus, then we are called to do our part in the victory of light and the conquering of the darkness. We are called to live out God’s light for others, trusting that, in Jesus Christ, we cannot be overcome by the darkness, because the darkness can never overcome him.

The Kingdom of Jesus - Reach Out and Touch

Preached on World Communion Sunday, October 2, 2016

Scripture reading: Matthew 8:1-13

When I was a little kid, in the nineteen fifties, there was a thing that would happen in school, especially in the first or second grade. It was a kind of game. If a boy accidentally touched a girl, or a girl accidentally touched a boy, someone might shout “Ugh, cooties!”

Crab Creek, North of Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA: August 2016

Cooties were an invisible bug or a germ. Nobody knew exactly what they were, but if someone touched you, and if the other kids said you had caught the cooties, then you had to tag someone else really fast in order to get rid of them. Everybody ran around tagging each other, and getting tagged for a few minutes.

I can’t remember exactly how it would all end. I think it went on until the school bell rang for the end of recess.

It was very funny. It could also be very mean, because some kids seemed to carry cooties on them more than other kids. For some reason, I was one of the luckier kids, because I almost never gave anyone the cooties.

In the eighth chapter of his gospel, Matthew puts two stories side by side in which Jesus is willing to touch (or try to touch) someone who has cooties. Well, it wasn’t cooties really. One of the people had leprosy, which is an infection that can be seen on the skin and, at its extreme, can cause tissue loss and some deformity of hands, and feet, and limbs.

I read a bit about it in order to remember it better. It’s fairly complicated in its symptoms. It’s not as infectious as its reputation tells. But it’s scary.

The laws of God, in the Old Testament, seized upon leprosy as a symbol of the uncleanness of sin. The Old Testament laws required people with leprosy to live alone outside the community. They couldn’t come to worship in the places where the Lord made his presence known. A leper couldn’t touch other people or allow themselves to be touched. They had to cover their lips and shout the word “Unclean! Unclean!” to warn others off. (Leviticus 13:1-46) For the rest of your life, no one would ever touch you again.

In ancient times, more than one disease was classified as leprosy and some of these could run their course and be gone. And there were cases where real leprosy was healed miraculously. (2 Kings 5)

When a person was healed, the law said that they should present themselves for examination by a priest and be certified as healed. (Leviticus 5:1-13; 14:1-32) Then they could make an offering to the Lord and come back to their community and their family, and into the place of worship. They were clean again. They were whole. The symbol of sin and separation was gone and they were free to return to human life again. Other human being would touch them again, at last.

Jesus broke the law (or at least the taboo) by simply touching the unclean person, but Jesus made his touch from being taboo into a miracle. He not only healed an unclean disease, but also brought that healed person back to family, and friends, and community, and worship: back to human life and back to their acceptance by others. They were free from the stigma of a kind of cooties that was both physical and spiritual.

The other form of cooties was to be a foreigner. The centurion was a commander of roughly one hundred soldiers. He may have been Roman, but he could also have come from one of the nearby provinces, so maybe he was Syrian or something else. He may have come from any one of the many nationalities that lived within the Roman Empire.

But he was an outsider. He was the same as a foreigner.

It wasn’t against the Old Testament law for Jews to touch foreigners, or non-Jews. But it was still taboo anyway. A foreigner might have eaten pork, or shrimp, or neglected to wash the way the rabbis taught when they interpreted the law.

If you were Jewish, you shouldn’t touch a non-Jew, or let yourself be touched, or enter their house, or let them enter yours. You simply didn’t know where they might have been, or what form of uncleanness they might have touched. You didn’t take a chance with them.

They didn’t necessarily have a disease. What they did have was a kind of spiritual cooties that you might catch from them, and you couldn’t play tag to get rid of it.

Jesus was playing a dangerous game because it looked like he was on his way to enter a non-Jewish home and he was going touch a non-Jewish slave who was sick and dying. He was ready to walk into a buzzing hive of cooties.

The centurion was afraid this might happen, and he did prove to be exactly what the synagogue elders said he was. He was kind. He was a friend. He spared Jesus from the stigma that Jesus was more than willing to carry for the sake of love.

He had delegated some elders from the Jewish synagogue to bring his plea for help in the first place and he sent a delegation of friends to keep Jesus from degrading himself by coming to his house.

The story of the leper and the story of the centurion share something in common. Both involve healing, and the authority and power of Jesus to heal the sick. But we can see that same authority and power working on a much higher level than physical healing, because Jesus does something (or is ready, willing, and able to do something) that wasn’t asked for.

The leper didn’t ask for Jesus to touch him. The centurion didn’t ask Jesus to come to his house. Jesus showed that he could heal from a distance, and so he also could have healed the leper without touching him. But the simple action of touching meant something. That’s the real point about Jesus and about those who would follow him.

The walk to the centurion’s house would have meant something. In the centurion’s case, Jesus said what he meant to show by his willingness to go to the house of cooties. Jesus said that all people, and all kinds of people, and every nation of people are welcome in the kingdom of God. Everyone is invited to the feast of God, if they will come in faith and trust.

Jesus was willing to reach out and touch the untouchable. Jesus was willing to go the distance to where the untouchable live. That is what the love of God does in the thing that we call salvation.

The cross is the heart of this. On the cross the arms and the hands of Jesus reached out to hold the nails, but that was his way of reaching out to hold onto (and go all the way with) the distance that sin creates in us: our distance from the reality of God; our distance from harmony and peace with others – from family, neighbors, enemies, and the whole world.

Sin (in the New Testament Greek) is an archery word that means missing the mark. Close only counts in the game of horse shoes. Sin is a word about distance. The cross is God going the distance to touch the untouchable, and to knock on the door and come into anyone’s life, wherever they have made their home.

The centurion understood faith because of his experience with authority. He was under authority, and he had soldiers and slaves under his authority. He understood that Jesus had authority over illness, but it should also be clear that he also placed himself under Jesus’ authority. He trusted Jesus’ command. And Jesus related to the centurion’s understanding of his authority as real faith. Jesus praised that kind of faith which trusted his authority and acted accordingly.

Think about what it means for you and me to be under the authority of a commander who is ready, willing, and able to go beyond the call to duty: to do more than anyone expects, or asks, or even hints. Jesus was ready, willing, and able to do more than anyone even knew how to ask. He touched the untouchable, he went the distance to the untouchable.

The truth is that Jesus never thought of anyone as untouchable, and neither should we. The thought should never come into our mind.

I think that this world around us is very ready to think about untouchability, and apply it to others, and we should never be a part of that. The world may be very ready to apply untouchability to us or to think that we apply it to them.

The world outside tries to make the first move: the pre-emptive move. They are more than ready to leave us alone, as a precaution.

I think that this world around us would never think of asking us to touch them, or to go the distance for them. We aren’t asked to, and so we don’t have to, but we are under the authority of a commander who set us an example and shows us his way.

The first generation of disciples seem to have gone as much of the distance as they could. Ancient stories tell us of the first generation reaching Britain, and Spain, and Ethiopia, and India.

Over the past two hundred years, missionaries from Europe and North America have gone all over the world. We are still doing that. We have Wycliffe Bible translators who serve in the South Pacific and have a home here in Desert Aire.

When I was a teenager I heard stories, in my home town in the Sacramento Valley, of a Korean Presbyterian who had come to our area because the Lord had called him. In seminary I had a friend, named Abraham Lim, who was attending seminary for more advanced studies. Abe was from Taiwan and, for years, he had been a missionary from his church in Taiwan to primitive tribes in the jungles of the Philippines. I had a classmate from Pakistan, named Iqbal Nisar who, after his studies, went back as a professor at a seminary in Islamabad, Pakistan, and eventually he became president of that seminary. When I served a church near Fresno, there were missionaries in the area from the Presbyterian Church of Mexico, and our church nested a Latino church with a pastor from El Salvador.

The point is that, following under the authority of Jesus, the people of Jesus are called to go the distance: to go anywhere and everywhere. Learning from the point of our two stories, we know that the healing which comes from going the distance means also going a great distance spiritually. Those distances exist all around us. Those distances may exist between us and those who are closest to us. This doesn’t faze us, because we follow a commander Jesus who will go that distance with us, even when he is not asked.

Recently, I read that Christians are unique among the faith groups in this world because we are almost equally everywhere. We are as much in Asia as we are in Europe. We are as much in Africa as we are in North America, or Latin America. And we might go from anywhere to anywhere in order to live for Jesus and serve him wherever. And we do. And maybe we should. At the very least, we are called to go the distance here.

Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so that they would know everything and be smart enough to be in charge of their own lives. They wanted to be in charge of how close they needed or wanted God to be. The result was the creation of a great distance between them and God, and between them and each other, and between them and the world. God came to us (and to the whole world) in Jesus, to bridge the distance through the cross.

God’s own people couldn’t understand what Jesus was up to. Although they had special inside knowledge of what God was up to, they didn’t understand the importance of God becoming a servant and a sacrifice. They didn’t ask for God to do such a thing, but the true God does that very thing unasked.

We belong to him. In Jesus, God has bridged the distance and brought us home. The Lord came to do this for everyone, unasked. We have the same mission because we have been brought home.

The project of the kingdom of God is to bring the world home, and that project is happening now. It might seem to be happening more in China and in India than it seems to be happening in Desert Aire and Mattawa, but our mission is the very same mission that is being carried out by our brothers and sisters around the world with their own neighbors.

There is only one Jesus, and only one great fellowship of love called the church. We need to pray for the wisdom and power of God that our brothers and sisters have around the world to share their work here. We are, after all, under the same authority, and Jesus has the power, and he always will.