Passionate Jesus - True Love Is Disturbing

Preached on Sunday, February 18, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul's Prayers - Quest for the Best

Preached on Sunday, January 29 2018

Scripture readings: Proverbs 11:30; Philippians 1:9-11

Paul says, “This is my prayer.”

And then, of course, we find that it’s not a prayer. It’s an explanation of prayer. Paul is telling his friends in Philippi what he asks for when he prays for them.

The gist of this is that Paul is telling them, in a polite, and loving, and teacherly way, what they ought to be asking for when they pray for themselves, and for each other, and for their neighbors. Instead of asking this church of his to share their prayer requests with him, so that he can pray for them properly, Paul’s telling them what their prayer requests ought to be.

They’re pretty basic prayers, and everyone who knows us would live a much happier life if we were asking for these things for ourselves. At the same time, everyone who knows us might be royally offended if they thought we were praying these things for them.

“Dear God, make that other church more loving. Lord, please make my children smarter than they are. And, while you’re about it, please make my wife smarter, too, but not too smart for me.”

You see how basic these prayers are. Now the Christians in Philippi knew how Paul always wanted them to get better and better. Read the letter (it’s quite short). It really is one of the most tender, confident, and loving of all his letters. Paul knew that, even now, they were loving, and they were wise, and they were off to a very good start.

Just keep on track. That’s what Paul said. They knew that Paul loved them, and he could say anything to them and get away with it.

Lord, make me more loving. Lord, make me smarter than I am. Lord, make me smarter in a more loving way. There’s the core of that prayer. Make me smarter, make me wiser, in a more and more loving way. Nothing less will do.

There’s no more important way to be smart or wise than to be smart and wise in the ways of love. If you’re wise without love, then you’re nothing better than a wise guy… or a wise gal.

Intelligence without love, according to Paul, can never discern what is best. It’s the knowledge and wisdom that come from a more and more abounding love (think, here, of love like water; overflowing; love that’s much too overflowing to hold it in; wild and joyful love that wants to hug everyone) … only such a love can discern and choose what is best.

It’s the love that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. We really can only grasp who God is, and what kind of love God is calling us to, by watching and listening to Jesus. (John 1:18)

We know who God is through Jesus, because Jesus broke down the barriers that our pride, and selfishness, and sin have built. He has broken down the high walls that have blinded us and hidden God from us. We, most of all, know who God is through Jesus, because (as Jesus said): “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

There are some people who will say that Jesus is God-like, but I think it’s better to say that God is Jesus-like. The Father is like the Son. When “the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” is active and strong in us, it will lead others to glorify and praise God, because they have seen Christ in us and, through Christ in us, they have seen God, well ahead of the day of his coming.

In another letter, Paul says this about God showing the nature of his love for us: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:18)

One of the fruits of righteousness is love: the deepest love is like the love that hangs for us upon the cross. The love and the wood of that bloody cross, that brought Jesus to his death, is our tree of life that gives us life. The fruit of righteousness on the cross is self-giving love.

We are to love our neighbors as ourselves, or love our neighbors and ourselves, because we are all made in the image of God, and we are all made for the purpose of becoming children of God. We become the children of God because God is in Christ, reconciling us, and reconciling the world to himself, through Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

So, we are unable to discern and choose what’s best, or what’s excellent, unless we love like Jesus loves. We can’t work for what’s best in others, and we can’t work for what is best for our families, and we can’t work for what is best for ourselves, unless we love everything and everyone with the love of Jesus on the cross.

The knowledge of what’s excellent is not a love of success, or quality, or simplicity, or comfort. Excellence is dying and rising from the dead for others.

Paul will go on, in Philippians, to say that his own being in prison is for the best, and he’ll explain why. His imprisonment will tell how much more important the freedom and the grace of Jesus is than so many other things that this world counts as important, or influential, or powerful, or successful. His imprisonment will give his brothers and sisters in Christ the courage to live openly as Christians in a world where such faith seems foolish, and childish, and dangerous.

Our Proverb (11:30) says: “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he who wins souls is wise.” If you show a life from Christ, and speak for Christ in a way that truly shows and speaks the love of God in Christ, you just may win souls. You may win the wandering children of God. Jesus may be seen and heard in you, and others will learn to love Jesus through your demonstration of that love of God.

If you read around this prayer, you will find other fruit; like joy, and courage, and goodwill. And bearing fruit also means to be pure and blameless.

Pure means that we are to be transparent, like pure glass. It means to be one thing through and through. It means to be full of loyalty, and truth, and sincerity.

To be blameless, means to not be the one who divides people, or wounds them, or offends them. To be blameless, means to not be a contributor to the harm that goes on in this world. It means to not be one of those who bear the blame. To be blameless also means to not be one of those who are shuffling their feet on the sidelines, because we’re too clean to get involved. To be blameless means to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.” A tree is always much bigger than its fruit. Our fruit of righteousness is much bigger than we are. We need to remember that. Our love, our joy, our courage, our goodwill, our ability to become partners with others seem very hard. They seem much too big for us to bear. For the fruit we bear is much bigger than we are. We are to bear the fruit of Jesus. That is how our fruit becomes a tree.

What goes out from us to just one other person beside ourselves, can become a tree growing up from them to shelter, and strengthen, and fill more and more people, until the Day of Jesus comes. True, self-giving love loves to be able to love other people into their joyful place, beside us, in that good day.

True righteousness is fruit. It is the sheltering tree. Fruit turning into more and more fruitful trees, which bear more and more fruit, is what the righteousness of Christ was made for. It’s what you are made for. It’s what everyone in this world was made for.

No one is smart enough for this. Sometimes we don’t know if even our love is sufficient for choosing what is truly the best.

The faith that comes from seeing, in Christ, who God truly is… that faith will trust this God until the day of Christ comes. The Day of Christ is the day for seeing Christ’s ability to bear fruit through us.

Jesus gives us the wisdom that comes from love, and that wisdom from love is the gift that is wise enough to choose the best way for us all to get there. 

Faith's Underbelly - Anger Gone Wrong

Preached on Sunday, September 10, 2017

Scripture readings: Numbers 20:1-13; James 1:19-25

You’ve heard of Murphy’s Law, which goes like this: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” The law comes from Edward Murphy, who was an Air Force major and an aerospace engineer. I’ve found out that his saying was what he called a rule for “defensive design”. He devised his law to encourage planning for the worst-case scenario. Apparently, he hated the way his law got turned into comedy.

The Hills of Southern California
June 2017

My dad liked to consider himself to be Irish, which was a big over-simplification of the truth, because he was really only one eighth Irish. My dad thought that Murphy’s Law was an old Irish saying. So, he had one plaque hanging in the garage with Murphy’s Law on it, and he had another plaque with the words: “Murphy was an optimist.” This worked for my dad. It says a lot about him.

I wonder if Murphy may actually have been Jewish, because anything that could go wrong really did go wrong in the exodus of God’s people through the desert. Finally, Murphy’s Law happened to Moses. For me, that’s what we read about in the scriptures for this message.

Moses was done in by his own anger. This might seem strange to you. After all, the Book of Numbers also describes Moses this way: “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men who were on the face of the earth.” (12:3)

But meekness describes a different kind of mildness or softness than you might imagine. In the Bible, a meek person is the kind of softy who is soft to God. It’s the quality of being a servant. It means responding to every signal from God, giving to God exactly what God wants.

A perfectly trained war horse was expected to be bold and fearless, and also to be perfectly meek to every signal from its rider: to charge, to halt, to retreat, to turn on a dime. That was the meekness of Moses toward God: except for this time. This time, his temper, that always went right, finally went wrong.

Paul says, “Be angry but do not sin: do not let the sun go done on your wrath.” (Ephesians 4:16)

I think anger can be the right response, the meekest response, under the right circumstances. There is such a thing as “righteous indignation.” So many people in the Old Testament seem to be angry all the time. In the New Testament, Paul gets mad. Jesus gets mad. And, as such, Jesus is the perfect image of God, because God seems to get mad a lot, and that seems to be the very result of God’s holiness and righteousness.

I have a different problem. I don’t seem to be able to get mad without getting sinful about it. One way I go wrong is by holding onto it. Paul’s teaching applies to that. It’s OK to get mad, just don’t hold onto it. And then there is this: don’t let your anger make you do something that breaks God’s law of love. That’s hard.

Then James tells us something that I believe applies to where Moses went wrong in his anger. James says” “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, for man’s anger doesn’t bring about the righteousness that God desires.” (James 1:19-20) This applies so many ways.

Here’s another word study: righteousness. Righteousness, in Hebrew and in Greek, is about rightness. It’s about being right and doing right. But being right is not about being correct. Being right is about doing and being what you are supposed to be, whatever the circumstances, and making things good, and making things better. I

t’s like the song “Things go better with Coca Cola.” That means that Coca Cola is righteous, within certain limits.

God’s righteousness, in this light, is very clear. God’s righteousness is his faithful love that is devoted to getting his people to freedom and the Promised Land, no matter what.

When God got angry it was part of the process of providing for his people, teaching them, shaping them, building their faith and trust and love for him, and for each other. Even God’s discipline (or his punishment), in anger, is basically devoted to providing for his people and giving them a grace and an abundance of gifts for which they are clearly not ready, and for which they show no desire whatsoever. In all that God does for them, they show no sign of change.

But God is faithful. That is God’s righteousness: just a small part.

God has ways of showing his people that he is always with them. The pillar of cloud and fire was just a small part of that. That was his righteousness too.

God was going to give them water again, even though they forgot that he always made sure they had water when they truly needed it, and even though they could see that God was with them all the time. They acted as though God wasn’t there at all. They acted as though Moses was the one who was leading them through the desert all along.

In spite of this, God was going to give them the water he knew that they needed, anyway. And his reason for doing this was because he is holy and righteous.

God’s plan in having Moses serve as the spokesman for God to the rock was a plan to show his people that God was a God who would always care for them. God would always stick to them, even when he was angry.

God’s people would get their water, even when they didn’t deserve it; even when they turned spiritually ugly in their unfaithfulness to God and to Moses. This would help them understand his holiness and righteousness. It was God’s plan to faithfully teach and shape his people.

Over and over again, we see that, when God gets angry, and when Moses gets angry, Moses consistently prays (in his anger) for the undeserved grace of God to forgive and help his people. I wonder how Moses did this over and over again. It would be so easy for Moses to get his anger wrong. It could have gone wrong so many times. But it didn’t go wrong, until it did. Murphy’s Law proved true.

On a human level, Murphy’s Law is never out of sight. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, in the beginning. We were created for the joy of seeing our love blend with God’s love, and to see our love doing good, and making good, and being good. We were made for this joy, as well as for this love.

Soon after the beginning, in the garden of Eden, the Garden of joy and love, we decided to limit our love’s dependence on God’s love. We decided to make ourselves into our own little gods, with our own independent instinct for good and evil, on our own terms. And, so, Murphy’s Law was born.

God had a defensive design from the start, and so he told Adam and Eve about that design as soon as he got them out of hiding. There would be, sometime in the future, a son of Eve who would grow up to be wounded in the heel by evil, and the serpent Satan. But this child of Eve would crush evil, and the serpent, with his heel. In the ages to come Jesus would be the son of Mary, the long-drawn-out descendant daughter of Eve. (Genesis 3:14-15)

On the cross, Jesus would be bitten with evil’s poison, the poison of the serpent, and sin, and Murphy’s Law. Then Jesus would crush those enemies with his wounds. The wounds of Jesus, the wounds of his death on the cross, were the fatal bite of the serpent that killed Jesus. The wounds of Jesus were also the weapons of his victory over the serpent’s bite.

Jesus was able to stomp that serpent of evil. Jesus rose from the dead as conqueror of the serpent, and as the conqueror of the sin and death that came from the serpent’s rule. Jesus’ prayer, “Father, forgive them,” was like the prayer that Moses was always saying for God’s forgiveness and grace for his guilty people.

Jesus’ prayer got everyone who would become one of his people back on the track to the Promised Land. The cross of Jesus is the very heart of his prayer that changes those who trust him into receivers of God’s holiness and righteousness.

God’s anger at Moses seems ungracious, at first sight. Moses’ unrighteous anger didn’t break one of the Ten Commandments, but it did break Jesus’ law, in the Sermon on the Mount.

In the case of Moses, we see something surprising about the heart of God. We see God get angry about anger. God got angry at the anger of Moses. And there, God, in his heart, looks suddenly, on that point, like Jesus. Jesus got angry, but he also got angry at anger.

Jesus said: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’” (Note: that judgment, here, means death by stoning) “But I tell you that anyone who is angry at his brother will be subject to judgment. Anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca (or worthless empty head!)’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” (Matthew 5:21-22)

It wasn’t only because Moses didn’t mention God when he struck the rock, or that he struck the rock instead of talking to the rock. In essence, Moses, in his anger, forgot the heart of God that he normally knew so well. He and his brother Aaron had just been in the direct and full presence of the Glory of God. They had heard the voice of God. (Numbers 20:6)

In seeing and hearing this, Moses saw the holiness and righteousness of God, which expressed God’s faithfulness and grace for the unworthy. He saw what he always remembered to pray for; until now.

Then he came back and looked at the people who hated him, and who had no faith in the God who had forgiven them countless times before. (Numbers 14:18-19) When Moses came back and looked at these people, his anger returned, and he forgot God’s absolute love.

Moses called God’s people “rebels” which was perfectly true, but God’s intention of showing his forgiveness to his people was a greater truth. Moses failed to give God’s message to God’s people. Moses might just as well have called them “fools”, as Jesus warns us against.

In praying for God’s forgiveness of his people, so many times, Moses had prayed according to what he had seen of the heart of God. In praying according to the heart of God, Moses had been praying according to Jesus.

Jesus is the heart of God’s holiness, and righteousness, and faithfulness. Moses, praying as he did, was, in his own heart, giving his people Jesus. Moses praying for his people’s sins, and for their forgiveness, was praying an equivalent to, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  By forgetting to hold such a prayer in his heart, Moses was withholding Jesus from the people.

Anger can do this. Anger can withhold the love and grace of God, in Jesus, from those who don’t deserve it, and yet they need it. And we are in the same boat. We don’t deserve grace, but we need it. It’s the faithfulness and holiness of God.

There are many times when anger is the right thing, but it will always go wrong if we don’t hold onto the heart of God, in Jesus, when we are angry. We will repeat Murphy’s Law.

Other people are just as much the image of God as we are, and we condemn ourselves when we forget to work for the righteousness and holiness of God in those people’s lives. Anger goes wrong when it stops showing the absolute love of God.

Moses was punished because he let his anger make him forget to pray for his people, even though they played the part of being his enemies. Moses forgot to love them anyway.

Jesus is the voice of God telling us to never forget to love others, even when we are angry. Moses shows us, and Jesus tells us and shows us on the cross, to remember to pray for others and to speak and work so that God’s grace becomes known to them. Let’s not go wrong with this.

Faith's Underbelly - Living God's Presence

Preached on Sunday, August 27, 2017

Scripture readings: Exodus 33:12-34:9; Matthew 28:16-20

Photos taken around Imperial Beach and San Diego, CA
June 2017

When I was a student in seminary, there was another student named Gordon. One day, at lunch, Gordon shared a conviction of his that people could never properly understand the Bible, unless they knew Hebrew and Greek.

Gordon was a pretty scholarly guy, and I knew that he had more Hebrew and Greek in him than I did; so, naturally, I disagreed with him. I told him to the effect that if you read the Bible sincerely, and prayerfully, and humbly, that the Holy Spirit will help you to understand and to learn whatever you need to know.

Gordon disagreed with me. He and I argued about this for a while, and neither of us changed the other’s mind. I still haven’t changed my mind.

As I think back to that incident, I find myself wondering where on earth Gordon was coming from. For me, one of the primary realities of God is the constant effectiveness of God’s presence. God’s presence is constant and infinite. God’s presence is constantly effective, constantly working: meaning that the Lord’s presence is constantly available to those who seek it, and the Lord’s presence constantly works to give them the help they need.

The Lord’s presence enables us to understand his message in the Bible, according to our need. The Lord’s presence also enables us to do even greater things, and much harder and seemingly relentless things.

Moses and his people had all seen the power of God’s presence. In spite of this, God’s people, and even Moses, show a lack of faith in the constant, continual nature of God’s presence. And, although they knew how powerful God’s presence was, they lacked faith in its effectiveness.

The people were afraid that their problems were too big for God to handle. Moses was afraid that his people were too much for God to handle.

Was God truly stronger than their weaknesses and their sins? There are people who fear that their weakness and their sins may prove stronger than God effective presence. To live life in all its potential and fullness we need God’s presence to work effective within us. We need God to have his own way, and to not leave us to our own ways. “Lord, teach me your ways!”

Growing up, I had some weaknesses that my parents tried to cure, but I outlasted them. Were those weaknesses stronger than my parents’ love? Families deal with such things all the time.

God’s people had a knack for blowing their relationship with God. Since God, himself, claims to be “slow to anger” I think we can assume that we know only a fraction of the times his people got it wrong every day. Was their knack for betrayal and dysfunction stronger than God’s knack for being slow to anger? Did the anger of God that we so often read about really build up slowly?

Moses keeps bringing up the matter of God’s real constant and effective presence. Moses is clearly worried. Under many variations, he asks the Lord: “Teach me your ways. Show me your glory.”

Moses wanted to see, or to know, God clearly enough so that he, and his people, could securely rely on God not giving up on them until his will was done. Would the Lord truly promise to be with them always, and no matter what? Could Moses meet with the Lord in such a way, and with such intimacy and clarity, that he could truly and finally know for sure?

Do you want to know for sure?

So, what does Moses ask to see and know? And what do we read that he saw?

My knowledge of Hebrew has shrunk to a pitiful state, but maybe it would be good for me to give you an idea of the strangeness of what we are thinking about. The Lord told Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (33:20) Earlier, in verse fourteen, the Lord told Moses, “My presence will go with you.” (33:14) The interesting thing, here, is that the English word “presence” translates the Hebrew word “face”. “My face will go with you.” But it is a face that cannot be seen. The thing is, here, that the Hebrew word for “face” doesn’t stress the anatomical face with its measurable and physical features: eyes, nose, mouth. The word “face” means being close, and in contact, and directly present. A husband and wife can be face to face together in their room, in the darkness of night.

The word “glory” doesn’t mean appearance. It means heaviness. It means being heavy and weighty. How much weight you carry doesn’t mean what the scale says when you stand on it, or how much weight you can press or lift. The weight you carry sort of means how much push or pull you have in the world around you. God’s glory is a weight like that, and that glory is all powerful. God has infinite push and pull.

In the Bible, God’s glory looks like light. If you saw glory, you would see light. But God’s weight is made of something. The Lord tells us what it is that gives him so much weight, in chapter thirty-four, verses six and seven: compassion, grace, slowness to anger, abundant love, abundant faithfulness or truth, keeping love to thousands of generations (which is what the Hebrew means), forgiving wickedness rebellion and sin, punishing as long as four generations; but that’s comparatively short next to his love lasting for thousands of generations. That last phrase is interesting, isn’t it?

These represent the nature of God. They represent who and what God is, and they describe God’s glory. These are the anatomy of God that describes why God has all-powerful weight, and push, and pull. In God’s universe, God’s creation, these are the energy of God: God’s weight, God’s glory. These are God’s ways: how God operates and even how God expects us to operate.

These are God’s presence. These are what God looks like. It’s what Moses asked to see, and God showed it to him. God made all his goodness to pass before Moses, and that’s what Moses saw. (Exodus 33:19)

Moses’ face got lit up like a light bulb from catching these rays. God’s glory got put on Moses’ face and the people were scared by what they saw, in that light, when Moses came down the mountain.

Why would compassion be scary? Maybe God’s compassion is so much bolder and stronger than ours that it can be terrifying. We would all, perhaps, claim that we would like to see more compassion in this world, but what if that compassion scared us, once we really saw it for what it was?

Think about this on a human level. And this isn’t even a Christian example. In rebel held areas of Syria, there are civilian volunteers called “White Helmets” who are committed to saving and helping other civilians who get trapped and injured by bombings and other violence of war. The White Helmets stand for compassion for those in dire need, even though the White Helmets have a one-in-six chance of being injured or killed in the process of their saving the lives of others. That is some scary compassion.

What if you were called upon to supply some kind of scary compassion? God’s own compassion is scary in exactly the same way. Jesus says, “I will be with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) When Jesus is with you, it means that a crucified person is with you. Of course, it also means that a resurrected person is with you, but is that any less scary, when you think about it?

Jesus was tortured to death for the sins of the world, and for your sins, and for mine. Think what it means to be guided through life by a person who was unjustly killed for you, as if he were the bad one, and that he got himself into that mess simply in order to die as a sacrifice for all the evil in the world.

He willingly became a bloody mess for everyone, and while Jesus waited in the garden for that to happen, and while he prayed in agony over it, he sweated blood. (Luke 22:44) Jesus found his own compassion to be that scary. That compassion is his glory, and he wants to share that glory with us and make it ours.

Moses prayed, “Teach me your ways.” It’s the same as asking “Show me your glory.” Jesus really says to make disciples by teaching the nations his ways, which means showing the nations his glory: “Teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:20)

Jesus says, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44-45) Jesus prayed for his enemies while they were killing him on the cross, “Father, forgive them.” (Luke 23:34” Jesus is sharing his glory with us by showing us his ways and telling us to follow. “If anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take us his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24) If we do that, we will shine with the glory of Jesus and his Father.

Moses prayed, “Teach me your ways so that I may know you and continue to find favor with you.” (33:13) Moses wanted to learn God’s ways, for himself and for his people, for two reasons. One reason was simply to know God more deeply (meaning to grow in his love and trust for God). The second reason was so that he and his people could continue to find favor with the Lord, by learning God’s ways and obeying them, making his ways into their ways.

Finding favor (as a whole concept in Hebrew) means giving pleasure, but it also means finding grace, and mercy, and the power to do the Lord’s will, by living the Lord’s ways in their own lives. Then the glory of the Lord would shine out from them, just as the glory of the Lord would shine out from Moses’ face.

The Lord’s compassion is to be our compassion. The Lord’s graciousness is to be our graciousness. The Lord’s slowness to anger should be our same slowness. And the Lord’s forgiveness being bigger than any anger should be true of us, as well.

Maybe God’s glory appears as light because our own world is often so dark.

Sometimes it’s said that seeing God’s back but not seeing God’s face means seeing what God has done, but not yet what God will do. Moses didn’t see what God would do in Christ. Moses saw that God’s love reached thousands of generations (well, for at least four hundred years of slavery in Egypt). Moses saw that God’s anger would only go for three or four.

God’s love was bigger than his anger, and this is exactly what God’s face was going to show in Jesus. The victory and the glory of the cross and the resurrection are more lasting, truer, more powerful, and more effectively present with us now, and for all time, than our own weakness, and our wrongs, and the whole world’s evil.

That is the presence of the Lord. That is God’s way. That is God’s glory, and God wants to make his glory your own.

"God's Crazy Love"

Preached on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, April 24, 2016

Scripture readings: Exodus 17:1-7; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

The whole fifteenth chapter of Luke is about being lost and found. First, Jesus tells a story about a flock of one hundred sheep, where one sheep gets lost, and the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to find that one lost sheep. Then he tells the story of the woman with ten small silver coins, who loses one and searches her dark, dirt-floored house until she finds that single coin.

Walking along Lower Crab Creek
North of Desert Aire/Mattawa WA: April 2016

Then Jesus tells the story we call the parable of the prodigal son. You know the word prodigal is one of those words I seem to have to look up every time I come across it. “Prodigal” means “wastefully, recklessly extravagant.”

So the story (which is what parable means) is about this younger son who rebels, and leaves home, and so he’s as good as lost to the family. Then that lost son comes home which (by the way, in that time and place) he would never do if he had a shred of dignity or honor.

His honor is less important to him than the power of being found, and he has begun to be found. He gets found first by the memory of his father’s love.

But there is another lost son in the story. The other lost son is the older brother. He’s lost, even though he never left home, even though he never rebelled, even though he never went astray, not even once in his life.

The reading about the Israelites returning to the Promised Land is also a lost and found story. It’s not about them finding the land that they lost, because they had never really possessed the land in the first place. They were the ones who were lost. They had been lost in slavery in Egypt. They were also lost in themselves. They were lost in the slave mindedness they got during their stay in Egypt. Even though God led them and showed his presence to them every step of the way, they were lost from God because they couldn’t know or trust God as long as they were thinking like slaves.

The old pioneer hero Davy Crockett claimed that he had never been lost: only bewildered, but never lost. I think that the so-called righteous, respectable people, who found so much to complain about with Jesus, would have picked up Davy Crockett’s boasting for themselves: never lost; only bewildered.

With the sheep and the coins, some are lost and some are not and (so far as that goes) the righteous people would have agreed. They could see some sense in searching for a lost sheep, or a lost coin. But they would never have searched for the kinds of lost people who were sought out by Jesus.

The people Jesus searched for were “sinners”. The word for sinner, here, is an archery-based word for missing the mark. Something in their lives, their habits, their attitudes, their mistakes, their actions missed the mark. Somehow, they missed their purpose and their meaning in life.

To the righteous, respectable people, the lost people, the people who miss their purpose and meaning in life, don’t deserve to be found at all. They don’t deserve to be sought out. They don’t belong. They shouldn’t be brought in because they don’t fit.

For the righteous and respectable people there is a deeper issue that reveals their hearts. Missing the mark could be a sad thing but those who missed the mark didn’t make the righteous people sad.

The righteous people who looked down on Jesus enjoyed measuring people and making comparisons. For them, to miss the mark was the same thing as not measuring up. Even now, righteous and respectable people often use a scale of measurement that puts themselves at the advantage.

They didn’t like the story of the prodigal son at all because it used a measuring scale that put them at the disadvantage. Jesus has a way of doing this, and we need to listen to Jesus.

In the story of the righteous, respectable older brother, you find the righteous people being set straight. They no longer have the shelter of a world where some are lost and some are not lost. They no longer have the entertainment of making comparisons and judgments. Both children are lost in their own way. This gives us the indispensable knowledge that we are all lost. At least we have all been lost and (therefore) we should love the lost.

This gives us the indispensable knowledge that the righteous, respectable child has also not measured up. The respectable child has missed his purpose and meaning in life just as much as his younger brother. At the end of the story the lost son is the one at home, and the respectable son is the one standing outside, refusing to come in.

We can see what his problem is, so long as we think that this story is not about us. We can see that the older brother is awfully good; with the accent on the awful part.

These stories of Jesus help us identify ourselves as lost. They tell us how and why the Lord seeks us out in order to find us.

The lost sheep nibbles its way into trouble; nibble by nibble. At first, the sheep is safe with the others, eating what they are eating. But he or she inches in a slightly different direction. It doesn’t seem different, but it leads into a slight cleft in the hill, and the sheep follows the cleft and disappears from sight. It’s just following its nose, nibble by nibble.

The lost sheep follows its nose. It follows whatever is right in front of it, and it feels right. The change is so gradual that it goes unnoticed. A change of heart can change unnoticed.

Some sheep start out in rough, dangerous, barren places; and so do some people. Following the first thing that appears to them leads them to danger right from the very start. They don’t seem to have a chance. Other sheep start out in a good place, and so do some people; and it takes them time to get into trouble, and to know that they are lost.

Little by little, nibble by nibble, people find their way into places where there are drugs, or the abuse of alcohol, or getting in over your head in relationships, or using your credit card too much, or looking at certain pictures, or telling half-truths, or simply shutting people out. There are little lies, and little thefts, and little procrastinations. Little by little, we show ourselves to be capable of awful, and shameful, and isolating, and destructive things.

Or we creep into the more respectable habits of anger, or bitterness, or selfishness, or greed, or self-pity, or excuse making, or complacency, or pride. Nibble by nibble we are lost sheep.

The lost coin is just there. It can’t move. It can’t change. Even though it is silver, even though it is someone’s treasure, it’s lifeless. This lostness is like being paralyzed. Perhaps we spend all our energy in finding reasons why we can’t do this, and we can’t do that. A church can do this too. Sometimes depression can play a part in this. Sometimes fear can become the main habit in life. This is a terrible lostness: the lost coin.

Then, there is the lostness of the prodigal. I have never understood the prodigal son, because, in my life, I am the older brother. Yet I am a prodigal too, I am wasteful of my purpose and meaning in life in my own way

The word “prodigal” never occurs in the story. It is just a word, outside the Bible, that somehow got stuck to the story. But prodigal is what everyone in the story does son does: Prodigal means being extravagantly wasteful.

The younger son wasted everything. He wasted his share of the family fortune. He wasted years of his life. He wasted and ruined his relationships. He lived as though he were the only one in the world that mattered.

He actually was not as bad as the older brother thought. The older brother accused him of doing things that Jesus doesn’t tell us that he did. Still he was lost.

If we see the younger prodigal as someone who only thought about himself, then the thing about the deal he wanted to propose to his father makes sense. He wanted his father to make him a hired servant. This is not a slave, but an independent employee.

He wouldn’t have to be tied down by his Father. He wouldn’t have to put up with his snippety brother. He could support himself and be his own man. At least, under his own roof, he could keep on doing what he wanted, how he wanted, when he wanted.

The prodigal only pretended to make commitments. He only made deals that served himself and spoiled things for the people who should have mattered to him. He knew no other way to live. This is a kind of lostness and emptiness. Notice that the father stopped him before he could make the deal that he planned.

There is another kind of lostness and emptiness in the older brother. There is such a thing as being awfully good, with the accent on the awful part. This is Jesus’ portrait of the people who complained about his welcoming sinners. They were good: awfully good.

The older brother should have negotiated with the younger one to keep him from going away in the first place. The older brother should not have accepted his share of the estate, when the father divided it between his sons.

The older brother wanted to cut a deal of his own. He wanted to be the only son. It’s as if he said to his father, “I will be a slave to you if you will love me alone.” But the father kept on loving both his children even though neither of them deserved it. The older brother hated this.

Now we can clearly see, in this story, that the older brother didn’t love, or respect, or honor his father. He could do everything his father wanted, from sun up to sun down, and still not be, deep in his heart, his father’s true child. He was a prodigal; wasting his purpose in life.

So the Father spent all his being his own prodigal. He wasted his days on one unsatisfied and extravagant desire. He never stopped wanting both his children to really come home and be his children. The Father was probably laughed at by his neighbors as the ultimate prodigal: wasteful with his love.

The older brother is the picture of the righteous, respectable, religious people in the synagogue. The older brother is also the picture of the righteous people in the church. The older brother thought he was always innocent. He thought his motives were holy, and right, and fair.

In the story, he can’t fool us, but he has totally fooled himself. The only way that you and I can be truly innocent, and the only way that you and I can have the holiest of motives for what we say and do; is by fooling ourselves.

This is what the parable is about. It means that, in the church (as in the old synagogue), we often navigate among ourselves by living a poetic fiction. As if we were watching a fantasy or a science fiction movie, we can only really enjoy it by suspending our knowledge of reality.

We are tempted to use the church and our place in it to create an illusion of righteousness and respectability. Even if we share the story of being a prodigal, we want to escape from that story. In the church we are tempted to create a culture of respectability, because one of the basic temptations of human nature is pride.

If we listened to Jesus we would know that we are neither innocent nor holy. If we listened to Jesus, we would know that we were sinners too, and that we have come home to him by grace every day.

In the stories of Jesus, in Luke fifteen, only one in a hundred sheep was lost, and only one coin in ten was lost. But, in the father’s family, at any given time, half the children were outside, and only half of them were inside. According to that ratio, if this place were the Father’s house, at least half of the children who belong here are outside. According to this ratio, at least one half of our family in Christ must be composed of prodigals. And if they came in, the righteous people might leave.

The story asks us what the respectable children are going to do about this? The respectable son seems to say that he’d rather be outside his father’s house than inside with the prodigal. He’s hurting everyone; even himself.

We don’t know the end of this story. Jesus ends it before the end, in order to make it a question to us. What will we do with the prodigals? No! That’s not the only question. The other side of the coin is: What will we do about ourselves?

The cure for us is the same as the cure for the prodigal. The prodigal was still ready to cut a deal until the father ran and caught him at the edge of the village. The father overwhelmed the prodigal with love, protection, and extravagance. He simply defied all expectation and belief. It was a scandalous grace: a scandalous welcome. He shamed his family’s name.

If some of us are respectable children, then we need to know that we too can be scandalous and ugly in our respectability. Surely the prodigal knew, in his heart, that his older brother didn’t deserve their father’s love. Probably the prodigals around us know the same is true of us. It is true. We need to see this for ourselves.

These stories tell us that God uses all his wisdom, and wits, and skill to seek us out.  God is eager to do this.

There was a husband and wife who were walking in a crowd and he took her hand. She smiled at this and she asked, “You don’t want to lose me?” And he replied, “I don’t want to have to look for you.” God has a passion to seek us out. God uses every possible means to find us.

We have so much to learn. First we need to learn that God’s love for us is not respectable. It’s scandalous. The Father in the story gave everything he had to his children. Even though he maintained the right to use the estate while he lived; strictly speaking, it was no longer his.

In the same way, God, in Christ, on the cross, at great pains, has given us everything that is his. It is all ours: his love, his righteousness, his hope, his peace, his joy.

The stories tell us that joy is the lesson of God’s story. God so loves the lost, no matter how respectable or unrespectable they may be in their lostness. God comes in Christ and he recovers us for sheer joy. The cross is Jesus’ way to win us, but even the cross is about joy, the joy of overturning all our excuses, and explanations, and justifications of ourselves.

God is a prodigal. The cross is how God welcomes all of us, and gives us life. “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.” (Luke 15:2) If we belong to this love, we must be prodigals too. If we claim this love, we will practice and model the same love in our lives with others. We need to do scandalous things in order to welcome other people for Jesus.