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.

Reformation - Faith Alone from God Alone

Preached on Sunday, October 8, 2017

Scripture reading: Rom. 3:21-26; Luke 18:9-14

A man was on his way home from work, and he stopped at a florist’s shop. He went to the roses, and picked up a dozen of them, and he took them to the clerk at the cash register. She asked him, “Are these for your wife, Sir?”  “Yes, they are!” “For her birthday?”  “Nope.” “For your anniversary?” “Nope!” And as he headed for the door, she called after him, “I hope she forgives you!” (Reader’s Digest, Jan. 96, p. 59)

Walks around home and Crab Creek
Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
August-September 2017

The word forgiveness is not in the verses we have read. But there is the issue of how we can stand before God when we have gone wrong: and we have all gone wrong.

Perhaps most people in our society would just smile, if we bring this up, and say that we shouldn’t worry our little heads about this. They have learned some famous words from the New Testament, and they will say that, “God is Love” (1 John 4:8), and they know that, since God is love, that God will smooth over any and all difficulties, and they don’t have to do anything.

We can answer back and say, “Yes, you are right. God has done something to give us peace and confidence in the way we share our life with God. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified (set right) freely, by his grace, (his beautiful, undeserved love) through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”  (Romans 3:23-24)

And they might say, “Whoa now! Don’t bring up this sin stuff. I’m not a sinner. And why would Jesus have to die for me, I’m not that bad. I haven’t killed anybody.” (You know, some people have really given me the fact that they haven’t killed anybody as proof that they’re not sinners.) They probably mean: “What I have done doesn’t matter that much to God.” 

Later, I’m going to tell you a little bit more about the meaning of the word sin. For now, in Paul’s common Greek (hamartia), it was a word from the sport of archery. Sin is a kind of missing the mark, missing the bull’s eye. It’s overshooting, undershooting, missing off to the left, missing off to the right.

I have known only two people in my life who were not sinners.

One was a guy who lived in the town where I served my first church. I can see his face, but I can’t remember his name. Let’s call him Bob. I knew Bob for five years through the Lions Club. I had gone over to him and his wife’s house for a visit, and I must have been talking about why Christ came and died.

When they know you’re a pastor, people talk about themselves and God. They bring this up even when they don’t believe in anything at all. I guess they think they’re supposed to.

Anyway, all of a sudden, Bob said, “I’m not a sinner!” And I said, “Well, we’re all sinners. We all go wrong!” And Bob said, “You might be a sinner, but I’m not.” 

I never called him a sinner, in the first place, but he got really steamed about it. Now it so happens that, even if Bob wasn’t a sinner, he was still a stubborn, egotistical, hard-nosed, hard-drinking, loud-mouthed, foul-mouthed, belligerent man, and, if you disagreed with him, he would tell you that you were just plain stupid. Aside from that, I really liked the guy. He was a lot of fun, but I was glad I never had to spend more than an hour or two at a time with him.

The other person who wasn’t a sinner, was a woman named Orleana. She never told me this about herself, because she clearly believed that she was a sinner. But, once, I was visiting her husband Ken when she wasn’t around, and he was the one who told me that she wasn’t a sinner. 

We were talking about Jesus on the cross, and about Jesus rising from the dead, and we were talking about heaven, because Ken was dying of cancer, and Orleana had told me that Ken had never really committed his life to Christ. She was concerned about this.

I told Ken, “Orleana believes this.”  And Ken said, “My wife is not a sinner. She’s a wonderful woman. She couldn’t be any better, and I wouldn’t want her to be any different. I don’t know why she has to go and believe that she’s a sinner.”

Ken believed that Orleana’s faith had burdened her with an attitude of unworthiness, or a guilt, that she didn’t deserve. What could such a sweet woman ever do to feel that she needed to be forgiven?

I had to admit that even her faults were endearing. This was simply true. Ken was right about that. I wasn’t sure what to say about his idea that she would be better off, emotionally, if she didn’t accept what the Bible teaches about sin and human nature. 

I can’t remember how that conversation ended, except I told Ken that Orleana’s faith was the very thing that had made her the woman he loved. I never saw an unhealthy guilt in Orleana. I only saw a woman with great love, patience, gentleness, generosity, and strength, and faith.

Orleana had a tender conscience because she had a sense of the Lord’s glory. She had a powerful sense of the Lord’s holiness and perfection. Glory, holiness, and perfection can seem frightening or, at least, off-putting. Well, when certain people seem to be full of their own glory, holiness, and perfection they are definitely off-putting.

If we meet God, as he truly is, we find that his glory, holiness, and perfection all work hand in hand with his love. Perhaps the power of God’s love takes God’s glory, and holiness, and perfection by the hand and makes them beautiful, and desirable, and powerful in their ability to humble us and (surprisingly) to make humility absolutely beautiful and desirable to us. It’s love that has the most power to make us truly like Jesus, and not be off-putting.

Paul says something like this in his second letter to the Corinthians. Paul writes, “And we all with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness, from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Cor. 3:18)

It is true that we don’t feel very glorious. But what if the beautiful things we see in Jesus, the plain humble things we see in Jesus, in the gospels, are exactly the glory he wants to give us? Imagine for a moment that being lovingly truthful is glorious. Imagine that forgiveness is glorious. Imagine that a strong sense of justice and fairness is glorious. Imagine that using your life to serve others in any way is glorious. Imagine that compassion is glorious.

We see how glorious all of these things are in Jesus. Seeing him, we also can see how far we miss the mark. This makes our consciences tender. We know what we are not giving. We know what we are not doing. We know how what we say, and what we do, often accomplishes exactly the opposite of what Jesus is working for.

But why set ourselves up for this frustration and this sense of failure, by setting our sights so high? And, why should God care if we are not like Jesus?

When we meet God, in Christ, we begin to care, because we know how great this goal is. We know that this is what God created us for. We know how much is lost in a world like ours, where all the billions of missed targets add up to such great pains, and sorrows, and evils. The glory of God, the beauty of the Lord’s goodness, is what helps us understand sin.

Orleana loved the Lord. She knew how great the Lord is. She knew she needed him, but she also trusted the Lord’s great love for her.

I know what Ken was afraid of. I once saw what he was afraid of. I saw it in a little girl.

Once I was at a church picnic, and I was talking to this girl. She was about ten years old. She was being raised by her grandparents. I can’t remember why that was.

She was a serious and religious child: really much too serious. She had been reading some good stuff in the Bible, about the creation, in the first two chapters of Genesis. She asked me, “Do you know what God made us out of?”  And I said, “Yes, God made us out of dust.  And that means we are made of the same things everything else is made of.” And she said, “No, it means we’re dirt.” And I said, “But, do you know what the dirt is made of?” And she said, “It’s made of mud and worms.”

And I said, “Don’t you know what the mud and the worms are made of? They’re made of rocks, and roots, and trees, and grass, and lots of other living things. And everything they are made of comes from up in the sky, where you can look up and see the stars at night. You are made of the same stuff the stars are made of.” And she said, “No, we’re dirt.” I looked into her eyes and saw that, somehow, this little girl had taken to heart a great and sad distortion of herself, in the guise of the Christian faith.

Paul said, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace...” (Romans 3:23-24) To be justified, or set right, by God is to become a sinner living in the presence of glory. There, in a single sentence written by Paul, Sin and Glory come together when God has bridged the gap. 

I have told you about three people. Each one had a different way of thinking about sin and glory.  Bob had no use for either one. The little girl, sadly (really sadly), had no sense of beauty and glory. Orleana showed an awareness of both sin and glory: her own sin and God’s great glory. Because of this, she knew that part of God’s glory was his way of loving her just as she was, and making his glory a part of her.

I believe that the good news of Jesus tells us that every bit of human goodness is a gift. It is not a human achievement, but a gift from God. It is, in some way, a partnership with God, but, most of all, goodness is simply a gift from God. Just as life, itself, is a gift from God.

I don’t think that many people want goodness or righteousness to be given to them from the outside. They don’t want the goodness in them to come, not from themselves, but to come from someone else. Maybe they have a hard time believing it’s possible (or even fair) to be given someone else’s goodness. They don’t want to be dependent or in debt to another, not even to God.

In Jesus’ parable of the two men praying in the Temple (the Pharisee and the tax collector) something in our heart really wants to be the Pharisee. But the true goodness comes to us only when we pray: “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” (Luke 18:13)

The Lord gives us goodness through the cross, and so we are, “justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” (Romans 3:24-25)

The sacrifice of atonement means that God makes peace with us: and even makes himself one with us. Knowing Jesus means knowing God as our friend. Redemption means being bought and being set free from slavery, Jesus Christ is God breaking the power of sin over us, and in us.

God justifies us. This means that God, our judge, acquits us. He doesn’t make excuses for us, but God pardons the guilty, he treats us just as if we had never gone wrong.

We don’t work for his love, as Christians. We begin with his love. Martin Luther rediscovered the ancient truth of the Bible. Only a few months after Luther nailed the Ninety Five Theses (or the points of argument about the selling of indulgences), back in the year, 1517, he wrote, a few months later, another set of points for debate to be argued in the city of Heidelberg. One of his points was this: “The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it…. Rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good. Therefore, sinners are attractive because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive.” (Thesis #28 of the “Heidelberg Disputation”; “Luther’s Works”, 31:57) Our life, in which we are born again as a child of God, begins with God’s love alone.

And we keep beginning with his love every day of our lives. Jesus died on the cross to give us this love, this freedom, this friendship, as a gift: a pure gift. And faith means receiving this gift from the Lord, like a little child who receives everything from his or her parents. We receive this gift of God just as a child receives life from his or her parents.

Martin Luther put it this way: “This is wonderful news, to believe that salvation lies outside ourselves.  I am justified and acceptable to God, although there are in me sin, unrighteousness, and horror of death.  Yet I must look elsewhere and see no sin.  This is wonderful, not to see what I see, not to feel what I feel.  Before my eyes I see a [coin], or a sword, or a fire, and I must say, “there is no [coin], no sword, no fire.” The forgiveness of sins is like this.” (Martin Luther, quoted in “Here I Stand”, by Roland Bainton, Chapter 13, p. 178)

This is the kind of grace and faith that will reform any church and its people. This kind of grace and faith will reach out to others, and change the world, and point to the coming kingdom of God.

The Declaration of Something New

Preached on Sunday, July 2, 2017

Scripture reading: Acts 17:16-34

Photos from Independence Celebrations
Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
July 3-4, 2017

A new garden-lover asked a master gardener for advice. “What would be good me to plant in an area where we get very little rain? And my best place for a garden has too little afternoon sun, clay soil, and it sits on a rocky ledge?” The master gardener thought for a moment and asked, “How about a flagpole?”

By the time he left Athens, Paul may have felt like he’d been trying to plant a garden in a spot like that. Athens was the one spot where he had been least persecuted, and yet the least accepted. Still, I think, many have underestimated his success in Athens. Paul made a dent in it for Jesus.

It hadn’t been Paul’s plan to plant anything in Athens. He was there by accident. He had simply been kicked out of everywhere else along the way. His only real plan was to wait there for his friends and helpers to catch up with him. His friends (Timothy and Silas) were slow in coming because it took them a lot longer to get kicked out of a place than it did for Paul.

Whatever the plan, the waiting seemed endless. Paul grew impatient and agitated, which might explain why he was so good at teaching patience and peace to us.

If Paul had been a tourist, or an historian, he should have loved Athens. Athens was a beautiful city: the cultural heartland of ancient Greece. It was full of beautiful temples and statuary. But the white marble statues were painted in vivid living color, and a lot of them were naked, and a lot of them portrayed gods and goddesses that were being actively worshiped by everyone there. That is now mostly all in the past, and those statues and temples have become admired as great art and architecture.

It would have bothered us as much as it bothered Paul, to see the evidence that the temple of the goddess of love served as a house of prostitution. Chariot salesmen saw nothing wrong with asking the god of business (Hermes) for help in making sales. People in troubled times would burn incense to the dead emperor Augustus. Would we have smiled at this, snapped our photos, and thought it was all so quaint and picturesque?

Paul was distressed by this. So, he stopped waiting and he went to work for Jesus. Paul did what he was so good at: sharing his faith, sharing how strong and real Jesus is, and how good it is to know him. For Paul, the clinching sign of Jesus’ power was shown by his resurrection from the dead.

Resurrection, in Greek, is Anastasia. Anastasia sounded like the fancy name of a goddess. Greek gods often came pairs: male and female, husband and wife. Jesus and Anastasia: were they a foreign god and goddess pair? The Athenians wondered.

To Paul’s amazement, he wasn’t kicked out of town, but he was called to court to explain himself.

Some people were laughing at him, calling him a “babbler”. If Paul spoke the way he wrote, in the letters we have of his, it might explain the laughter. The “babbler” word, in Greek, is hard to translate. It literally means “seed-picker”; like a bird pecking here, and pecking there, hopping from place to place, seemingly at random. Paul, as a speaker, might not have been so easy to follow. What made up for this was his enthusiasm and creativity.

Luke tells us that the people of Athens loved to talk more than anything. So, they didn’t mind encouraging even a babbler to join in their talk.

Let’s look at the story of Paul in Athens. Let’s think about the strange, mixed response he got there: laughter, interest, and faith. Paul tried to translate the message of Jesus into their thought patterns. He tried to shed a light into the weakest and neediest places of their ways of thinking.

The people of Athens had built many little philosophical worlds in their own minds to help them deal with reality, and with the spiritual reality that was populated by their gods and goddesses, and yet also pointed to something beyond those many gods and goddesses.

Some of their philosophers, for a long time, wondered if there was one thing, or one single source, of everything. Paul had to open up those little worlds, and his efforts only succeeded for a few of those who heard him: at least at the start.

Luke mentions two main groups of philosophers: The Epicureans and the Stoics.

The Epicureans taught that the most important thing was to be happy. Some of them really went overboard on that, and these have plenty of followers today, although I don’t know anyone who calls themselves an epicurean. There were party-animal epicureans. Their philosophy of life was, “eat, drink, and be merry, and let the good times roll.”

The stricter epicureans were fairly serious people. They said that, the way life is, it’s hard work to be truly happy in the end, especially if you go overboard. The serious epicureans said to seek the good life by setting your sights a little lower. Live a quiet life. Try not to let yourself get involved in other people’s troubles. Don’t expect too much; and, then, you won’t be disappointed.

They read this lesson into their history, which was easy for them to do. Four centuries earlier, the Greek city states (especially Sparta and Athens) became strong and wealthy. Sparta and Athens became ambitious, and proud, and they basically exhausted themselves in a twenty-seven year-long war (the Peloponnesian War).

Sparta won, and went straight into decline. Athens was conquered, but kept its fame. Everyone wanted to go to Athens: to see, and listen, and learn.

Pride and ambition had reduced Athens to being a tourist destination. So, the epicureans said: be satisfied with a little. Keep a low profile.

There was, in Athens, at least one altar dedicated to An Unknown God. The Greeks knew about lots and lots of gods, and it was quite a lot of work to keep on the good side of them all. Then someone had the horrifying thought: what if there was a god that no one knew about, and what if that god felt left out and got mad at them for forgetting?

People could get into a lot of trouble because of this. So, they built the Altar to the Unknown God, in order to cover all their bases.

As long as they had that altar, and left offerings on it, they didn’t worry whether he remained unknown. They were satisfied to keep it that way. The epicureans believed there couldn’t be any true contact with the divine, anyway, so why bother?

Once, in our own early history, there was a temptation to a political way of keeping your sights low. In colonial times, in America, Britain began trying to make real money off her colonies. The King and Parliament took away the colonists many of their existing legal rights to pass their own laws, and set their own taxes, and elect their own officials. Some of the colonists were tempted to just go along with it, set their sights low, and make the best of it. They had always thought of themselves as loyal British citizens, and so it seemed like treason to stand up for their old freedoms.

One of the leaders in Massachusetts, named William Prescott, wrote against this temptation: “Our forefathers passed the vast Atlantic, spent their blood and treasure, that they might enjoy their liberties, both civil and religious, and transmit them to their posterity. Now, if we give them up, can our children rise up and call us blessed? Let us all be of one heart, and stand fast in that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free….”

Some early Americans refused to let go of a spirit of adventure; a desire not to make the best of things as they were. That refusal to give in made our revolution possible. As you read history, you discover that this spirit of adventure had been in decline, and only revived about forty to thirty years before our revolution, during the time called “The Great Awakening”. It came from a spiritual revival that swept the colonies. The adventure of becoming spiritually alive, within, had made other adventures and revolutions possible.

When Paul preached in Athens, he quoted words written when it was still an adventure to be Greek. In those earlier days, centuries before Christ, they had known as much of a spiritual adventure as they were capable of having before the gospel came. These were words about one God, and this is how they went: “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” “We are indeed his offspring.”

It may have embarrassed Paul’s hearers to be reminded that they had left their adventures behind them, and that they had sunk to the level of being content to let an unknown God remain unknown.

The days of groping are over, Paul said. Yet many things remain unknown for us. The epicureans kept their sights low, for fear of being disappointed.

Have you ever been afraid of being disappointed in God? Have you ever been afraid to pray? Have you been afraid to pray for someone to be healed, or for yourself to receive guidance and direction?

Of course, we know that God is God, and we aren’t God. We know that God will only answer our prayers as he knows is best for us; but have you ever prayed to know God’s will and then found yourself too fearful to listen for the answer?

There are times when I’m afraid to know God’s will, because, then, I might have to do something about it. For instance, if I know God desires you to have more freedom in sharing your faith with others, then I know that I will need to do it more myself. And, if I’m afraid to live out my life with energy in the will of God, isn’t it because I’m afraid I’ll fall on my face? And, if I’m afraid of that, isn’t it because I’m afraid that God won’t help me? And, if I’m afraid he won’t help me to do what he wants, isn’t that because I still don’t know him and trust him well enough?

There is a tremendous part of his love and power that are unknown to me. George MacDonald says, “Faith is doing what God says.” Until I do that, I won’t know much of him, or be much like Jesus who died for me to make me a child of God. I want to “live, and move, and have my being” in Jesus.

For the people of Athens, their little world of low expectations kept them in the dark.

Another little world that kept them from responding to Jesus was the world of the past. You didn’t have to be a philosopher to come under the spell of the past in Athens. The hill called the Areopagus, or the Hill of Mars, on which Paul and his audience stood, or the court building in which Paul may have spoken, was surrounded by monuments of the past and the homes of great men long dead. They looked at the past and whispered: “What if?” and “If Only?”

They relived old battles and they placed the blame for the failures of long ago.

There’s a saying that goes like this: “We are too soon old and too late smart.” Athens was an old, old city, in Paul’s day; and even the young people in it were old and set in their ways, even though Luke says that they loved talking about the latest thing. They loved talking, just as long as it didn’t lead to doing. Even the young were old.

Paul gave them his theory of history. “God made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them, and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps feel after him and find him.” (Acts 17:24-27)

Paul spoke to people who had built up a world of attitudes that taught them to see the past as lost opportunities for success that made every new possibility impossible. For them, knowledge had come too late.

Not so, said Paul. The past wasn’t only your chance for getting what you wish you had. The past was a challenge to feel after God and find him. You can still do that, now. That invitation has not passed.

Paul turned the focus to the present. Paul said: “But now, God commands…” (Acts 17:30) Paul’s call (God’s call) to repent means two things. It means to reverse and go back to God’s place for you to start. It also means having a new mind, and having (within you) a new “everything within” that comes from God, not from yourself. That becomes the new present.

That present (God’s present) is holy. God overlooks the past ignorance, the missed chances, for the sake of the holy present, now.

There is such a thing as lost opportunity. Those lost opportunities do affect the present.

As individuals, as a congregation, as a community, and as a nation, we live with the consequences of our choices; but this is God’s present moment. The whole purpose can get going again, now. The purpose, even of the failures, is…what? The purpose is repentance. It’s a changed mind, a changed feeling, a changed heart, a changed state of faith and hope and love.

The ancient world didn’t believe in change, except as a change for the worse. Are we any different? Do we believe that God could turn a world like ours around? Do we believe the course of things can change? Do we believe that we can change?

The state of our faith may be such that only God still believes that there can be a new direction, or a new chance. If only God were more realistic! The word of God, through Paul, says that everything else was times of ignorance, but now…. Change in you and change in me, and change in the most surprising things, if only we will not be prejudiced against God’s will by the failures of our past. The past cannot be changed, but now…now, what will we do?

The other little world of philosophy was the stoic world. One of their teachings was “self-sufficiency” or “self-mastery”. It was a kind of independence. Part of it was not letting the world and the people in it sap your strength. Don’t depend on these too much. Be responsible for yourself. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself up. You have ability within you, if you choose. The stoics taught this.

The stoic way is (in many ways) the American way. The American Founders were trained in the old classical philosophies, and Stoicism was a favorite of theirs. But it really only became the American way as the Great Awakening receded in their memories.

If you know much about Benjamin Franklin, his words, spoken at Independence Hall, at the Constitutional Convention, may surprise you. Franklin said: “In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. And have we now forgotten this powerful friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need his assistance?”

Paul pointed to dependence on The One who rose from the dead. He said very little about this in our record of his speech on the Hill of Mars: perhaps because the laughter cut him short.

The goal of history for nations (to have the chance to seek, and feel after, and find God) would wind up not in the self-sufficiency that is so popular now, but in a declaration of dependence. Our dependence has to take seriously the words of the Declaration of Independence: “With a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.” Reliance has nothing to do with independence.

We depend not only on God watching out for us daily, but on someone who died and rose from the dead, for us, to make an inner change possible.

This is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We know what he is like. We can read about him, and we can meet him for ourselves, if we want, if we ask him in our heart.

Even if we feel good about ourselves and what we have done, here is someone who has done more for us than we can ever do, in return, for him.

We don’t have an unknown God to speculate and make guesses about, although we may have so much more to learn and to know about this God.  We have a God who is a risen Savior, and we can know him, and depend on him.

Just as in Athens, we don’t always make much of a response to this Lord. But, let’s give God, in Jesus, something to work on in us. Let’s give him a great expectation that matches our growing knowledge of him. Let’s give him a willingness to let the present be the start of something new in us. Let’s give him a decision to depend on Jesus who died and rose to be our Savior and our life: life for us and a new life for the people and the world around us.

Faith for Life - Hope for the Whole Person

Preached on Sunday, February 5, 2017

Scripture readings: Isaiah 35:1-10; John 5:1-18

Whenever I read this story about the man healed by Jesus, at the pool of Bethesda, I don’t know what to think. I can’t help asking, “What, on earth, is wrong with this guy?”

Along Lower Crab Creek, Desert Aire/Mattawa WA
January 2017

Of course, there was something physically wrong with him for a long time. John, the author of the gospel, doesn’t tell us exactly what that was. In Greek, John tells us that he was “dried up” and that would suggest that he was withered or atrophied, but we don’t know why. He seems to imply that he was barely mobile, and perhaps couldn’t walk at all.

We don’t know what caused this. The thirty-eight years of his disability probably meant that he had been an invalid for most, if not all, of his life.

Some people think that he had only himself to blame for this. They think that he had done something wrong and that this had happened to him as a result.

Here’s the reason why they think this. It’s because, later, in the Temple, when Jesus found him for a second time, Jesus said a strange thing. Jesus gave him a warning. Jesus said, “See! You are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” (5:14)

Some people think that Jesus was saying that the man’s long suffering was also because of sin, but Jesus may not have meant that at all. Jesus was saying that the man was currently sinning, perhaps even as Jesus was there speaking to him.

Maybe it wasn’t an old danger, but a present one. The sin that Jesus warned him against may have been whispering in his ear ever since his healing.

There was something going on with him. There was something wrong with him.  I believe Jesus was saying that there are worse things in life than to be an invalid, or even to be paralyzed, for thirty-eight years.

Jesus was able to see what was going on in people’s hearts. (John 2:25) He knew what was going on inside of them, just as he still does with each one of us. Jesus warned the healed man because of something in the man’s present, not only in his past.

Yet, maybe there was something wrong with the man that had been going on for a long time: not in the past before his illness but maybe there was something wrong in his heart during that long, long time of suffering.

The clue to this may be in Jesus’ very first words to the man: “Do you want to get well?” We may see what was wrong in the man’s own answer, when that man didn’t answer Jesus with a “yes”. He didn’t say that he wanted to get well.

There are a couple of things we need to know about the world of the man at Bethesda Pool. One fact is that he had to be a beggar who made a living from his suffering. Passers-by would give him money in order to participate in the mercy of God, and to be partners of compassion with God. He probably did very well with this, because he showed a talent for tugging at the heart-strings of those who came to him.

He tried to do this with Jesus, not so much to get well as to make a decent living. And, next to the Jewish Temple, which was practically right next door, he had one of the best locations for the begging business in the world. The Jewish Temple may have been the number one best location, but the pools of Bethesda had to come in second.

It was a spiritual landmark. Bethesda was a phenomenon. Something would happen with the water. The water in the twin pools would suddenly move in a strange way and the first person in would be healed. Some people said that an angel moved the water and gave it miraculous power. When the Romans destroyed the Jewish city of Jerusalem and the Temple, in 70 AD, and then rebuilt it as a pagan city about fifty years later, they restored the pools and they built a temple beside them dedicated to the pagan god Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing. Asclepius was the same god who had the winged staff with the snakes that you see as a symbol for doctors and medicine today. Even in the days of Jesus, the pools of Bethesda were a holy tourist trap.

If Jesus healed the man, the man would lose his means of making a living and he would have no skills for supporting himself. He would have to start from scratch at the age of at least thirty-eight.

What would he do? Would anyone with such a history dare to truly desire to get well? If you wondered what might be wrong with the man, and the reason why he didn’t say that he wanted to get well; it might have its roots in that. Even after he was healed, his healing may not have been what he wanted most in life.

His answer to Jesus’ direct question was to avoid giving a direct answer. “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” (5:7)

For one thing, there had to be someone who was available to carry him to his reserved spot at the pools (probably a relative or a family member) and to take him home at the end of the day. That’s how this all worked.

But there was something that sounded like a plea for pity in his voice. He had spent many, many years seeing other people healed, and knowing himself to be passed by. He may have started out wanting to be healed. And yet he found himself being used by his own family. We can only imagine.

As I read the story, I wonder if there was something more there than self-pity. I wonder if there was something much worse going on that could lead to something worse happening to him.

I wonder if his answer to Jesus was the sound-track of his life. I wonder if those words, and more words like them, were constantly running in the background, in his head, all the time, and even when he slept. If that were so, those thoughts would have become something like a poison; something deadly, like anger and judgment, always accusing others, and the world, and himself.

Sometimes I think I have a subtext in my life; of hurt, anger and judgement. My temptation, my sin, is to play that subtext over and over, and I rob myself of life by doing that. Jesus gives me life, every day, abundant and free, and I let the opposite of Jesus drip, and drip, and drip into it. It’s something like the voice of that man by the pool.

I pray about this. I pray to the King Jesus who is so much the king that he refuses to limit himself and what he has to give. Jesus doesn’t hold himself back from people like me. He gladly gives us life. He dies to do this and, even though there is this vein of sin that kills him on the cross, Jesus is the king who is so much stronger than what I have in myself that he can rise from the dead and keep on giving and not be defeated. I need the life from Jesus that is stronger than my sin. I need the life from Jesus that will not let itself be defeated. In this strange healing, we have read the story of this determined King Jesus.

Simply having read the story we have been told something that I haven’t said anything about yet. That is, the man who was healed had no idea who Jesus was. The man who was healed didn’t know that he was in the presence of a healer when Jesus said, “Pick up your mat and walk.” He couldn’t have had faith in Jesus, because he didn’t know who Jesus was. Even when he knew, he didn’t understand.

There is one other person like this man in the Gospel of John. In the ninth chapter, John tells us about the time when Jesus healed the man who was born blind. (John 9) The blind man didn’t know who Jesus was, either.

All the blind man knew was that someone put mud on his eyes and told him where to go in order to wash it off and, when he washed the mud off his eyes, he was healed. Jesus also went looking for him, and told him who he was, and the formerly blind man bowed and worshiped Jesus. (John 9:38)

When the lame man who was healed at the pool was found by Jesus, Jesus warned him that he was in terrible danger from a sin that lurked in him. He responded by going away from Jesus and reporting him to the authorities.

John tells us, in the twentieth chapter of his gospel, about his purpose in writing it. “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31)

Christ means king in the sense of a very different kind of king than one who is a head of state. The Christ is the king of the kingdom of God. Jesus rules a kingdom that he creates by dying for the sin of the world, so that those who believe in him become truly alive in a way that no one who belongs, heart and soul, to this world is alive.

The Prophet Isaiah, pictures the kingdom of God as a place where all harms are healed. All barrenness is replaced by fruitfulness. “The eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.”(Isaiah 35:5-6)

It’s a new world. The Bible calls it a new heaven and earth. This world, with its rebellion, and darkness, and selfishness, and violence, and injustice, and hatred, and victimization (and all of that) is a world that God plans to replace. And God wants to make us into people who belong, heart and soul, to that new world, beginning as soon as we begin to know him, and trust him, and follow him. Jesus is the king of this new life, and Jesus, dying on the cross and rising from the dead, is the way to this new life.

The man born blind was healed when a king he didn’t know came to him in the darkness and gave him sight and light. He got in trouble because of Jesus healing him but, being found by Jesus, and learning who Jesus is, gave him joy and life.

The man who was an invalid for almost forty years was given strength and motion when a king he didn’t know came to his place of begging and ordered him to his feet. His life changed forever.

Like the blind man, he also got in trouble because of Jesus healing him. He was judged and sort of put on probation (probably) and, being found by Jesus, and knowing Jesus as his healer and the giver of a new life, and being warned by Jesus of the dangers of not entering into that life, he chose to go to the judges who condemned him so that he could get off the hook.

He sided with the judgers and the condemners of healing, instead of siding with the giver of healing and life. He sided with judging, instead of siding with compassion. He went to the rule keepers, instead of following the grace giver. He went away from Jesus, instead of worshiping him, or following him. He knew Jesus as his healer, but not as his Lord and Savior.

Jesus gave to both men a grace so perfect and complete that they didn’t have to know anything at all. They didn’t even know enough to have the thing we call faith. It was enough for the king to be faithful to them, and to keep faith with them, even when they couldn’t meet whatever requirements you would think to be necessary for entering God’s kingdom.

The man at the pool is a warning to us. There is a temptation that exists for those who receive wonderful gifts from Jesus.

The temptation is to not enter into the spirit of the gift; to not enter into that grace. The temptation is to choose the old world left behind. The temptation is to go back to the old life, and the old ways, and the old rules. The invalid chose to live a life where he could win points and enjoy a status that he could get by joining the angry, and by joining the judgers.

But I don’t want to judge him. I only want to be warned by him. I see that Jesus is willing to bless anyone, absolutely anyone, whatever that person may deserve. Jesus even loves those who will never love him back.

I want to love Jesus back. I want to be thankful for his grace. I want to be thankful for a life I cannot earn or deserve.  Jesus has died for me, and for the whole world, in order to give to us all a love that is infinitely strong. As the king of that life, Jesus may warn me but never condemn me.

This world is ruled by judgers and condemners who do enormous evil. Anger and hatred are symptoms of this judging and condemning world, which is opposed to the kingdom of God as we see it in Jesus.

The world, as we know it, is a scary place and, even though we know the love and grace of Jesus, we are tempted to revert. We are tempted to go back into that angry, and judging, and condemning world; and we are tempted to live by its rules, even though the power of Jesus offers to set us free and give us that new life.

Jesus is God as the seeker of the lost, the wholeness giver, the healer. Jesus is God as the judge who turns judging upside down, and turns the judgers into the judged. Jesus is God blowing our minds by giving grace to the undeserving, and calling us to blow other people’s minds because we do the very same thing. This is what it means to have life in his name, and to share it with the whole world.