Passionate Jesus - Till the End of Time

Preached on Sunday, April 8, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This would be scary, except for one thing.

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

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

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

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

The Advent Kingdom - Creation 2.0

Preached on the Second Sunday of Advent, December 17, 2017

Scripture readings: Isaiah 52; Revelation 21

We are reading about God making things new.

God tells Isaiah about a new Israel and a new Jerusalem. He says they will finally be safe, in the end, because no one who is uncircumcised or unclean will enter.

Christmas lights: Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
December 2017

The uncircumcised and unclean are really the same thing, so all the nations except Israel are shut out. But, in the end, God tells Isaiah that many nations (which really means all nations) will have something done to them that will change them completely.

 They will be sprinkled by the Servant (the Messiah, the Christ). And, so, they will all be clean. They will become citizens of the kingdom of the Messiah. But the kingdom of the Messiah is Israel.

This means that Israel will be new indeed; new in a way it has never dreamed of. Israel and Jerusalem will be everyone. The unclean will be gone.

The same is true in the Book of Revelation. The gates and foundations are labeled with the names of the tribes of Israel and the apostles of the Church. All of the nations will come to the New Jerusalem to give their praise and glory to God; their praise and glory to the Lamb. The New Jerusalem will be home for everyone. And the gates will always be open. There will be no cover of darkness for evil and enemies to enter and destroy. But the truth is that all evil and all enemies will be gone. They’ve been put out of the new creation forever. They have disappeared into the Lake of Fire.

When we have a solid feel for what Israel and Jerusalem have been, through the centuries, and what they are now, we can only say: “Well! That will be different! That will be something new!”

The same has begun to be true for us. Some glad day, it will be completely true for us; true for everyone who truly wants it. But it has begun to be true now. We have been given the first installments of something totally different, something totally new.

Have you ever been made new before? Have you ever felt that your life had become completely different than it was before?

If we must be spiritually correct, we would say that we became new and different people when we wholeheartedly opened ourselves to God in Christ. One of my most favorite sentences in the Bible was written by Paul, in his letter to the Galatians. It’s his description of being completely new and different. Paul wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

I have another favorite line by Paul. It comes from his Second Letter to the Corinthians: “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

We, as Christians, honestly, don’t always look to others as if we were completely new and different. We can look like we think we’re members of some sort of exclusive club or lodge. Even Christians forget that being a member is not a matter of having your name on a roll, or in a record book. Being a member is not about being on the list of past or present officers.

Being a member of the Church is about being in Christ: a part of Christ. It’s about being a member of his body, as opposed to being dismembered. A member is someone who is an organ, or a ligament, or a muscle, or a finger, or a mustache in the Body of Jesus, the Body of Christ. The head of this body is Jesus, although we might serve as one of his many, many eyes, or tongues, or ears, or mustaches.

What would it be like, as a member of the church, to be a nose in the body of Christ? It would have to be much more than being able to say that the potluck was ready to eat. What would it be like to be a completely new and different nose than you are right now?

Have you ever become a completely new and different person?

There was a guy in my first church who became a new Christian. He was talking a lot about this. I thought it must have happened before I had arrived, because I was a really new arrival. But, when I said this to him, he grinned and tapped his finger on my chest. He gave me the credit. That was such an honor.

Ralph was a lumbermill worker, and he had been most of his life. If I recall correctly, his youngest son was still in high school. Some of Ralph’s older kids had given him and Virginia grandkids. So, he had lived long enough to have formed a very definite pattern of personality and abilities.

Before he was found by Jesus, Ralph had been a harsh, critical, and judgmental man, even within his home and family; or especially there. He had also been functionally illiterate.

Now the obvious miracle was that he could suddenly read, and he soon loved to read. His favorite reading was the Bible, and he absorbed it like a sponge. He also began, at once, the new habit of reading the newspaper every day.

There was once a famous theologian who said that a good Christian was one who held a Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. That could be true.

Ralph also began reading books like “The Works of Flavius Josephus”. Flavius Josephus was a Jewish army officer at the time that the people of Israel rose up in rebellion against their Roman overlords, in the middle of the sixties, and up to 70 A.D., or so. He wrote a first century history of the Jewish people down to the time right after Jesus: the time of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. In fact, Josephus mentions Jesus in his history, briefly. Josephus is not easy reading.

So, that was brand new. That was different. That was Ralph and Jesus.

But there was something just as good and even better for those who knew Ralph, and even better for his wife and family. Ralph became a loving, gentle man. He became patient, and compassionate, and generous. His wife would talk to me, personally, about the wonderful change in Ralph.

 The change was so impressive and persuasive that Ralph’s eighty-five-year-old father-in-law (Bob) became a disciple of Jesus after a lifetime of scorning religion in general and Christians in particular. Of course, he had never scorned his own wife Nellie, or his daughter Virginia. For years Bob, like Ralph, had tolerated their faith. Now they embrace that faith. So, Bob’s wife, Nellie, and Ralph’s wife, Virginia, were having a good time with this.

But how can someone, who doesn’t know this peculiar brand of newness and differentness, understand, by looking at us (when we don’t look all that new and different) understand what we hope and pray that they will understand?

We long for them to understand what they can become with Jesus. Is there something that anyone can understand about being a new person (a different person) than you were before? What has changed you into a new and different person? What, in life, has changed your life?

In the Book of Revelation, the new universe, the new heaven and earth, the new future life of all believing human beings who will ever live, can be described and pictured in the same, common ways that our current lives are changed.

It isn’t so much a matter of having a new life merely because you have a new house. It isn’t the kind of new life that comes with a new job.

A real-life change might come with the birth of a child. Such a thing changes a woman into a mother, which (I’m told) is a complete difference.

I’ve known men who told me that the first step they took toward Jesus was completely unconscious and completely unintentional. It was simply the fact that they held a child of their own flesh and blood in their arms.

The experience told them that they needed to become something they had never been before. It opened them to change on an almost miraculous level or depth.

This is the change in life described to us when we learn that the new universe and the new way to be human is to truly be born again. In the world to come, we will become, like never before, the direct children of God. “The one who conquers will inherit these things. I will be his God and he will be my son (my daughter)” (Revelation 21:7)

I’m also told that marriage changes your life. I also suspect that, if it doesn’t make you a new person, you will not be about what marriage is for.

The future world, and the future you, will be “prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Revelation 21:2) The Christian hope is that the future world, and the future you, will be like a wedding that won’t stop. There will be enough joy, and giving, and love, and passion for that wedding to go on and on in that timeless world.

A member of one of my churches, whom I’ve known for decades, passed away recently, and I was suddenly reminded of the terrible auto accident she had been in with a friend, years ago. The friend had died. Linda was about seventy years old when she was injured. She was in the hospital for weeks. She was in physical therapy for months.

Linda, and her husband Bob, had been living in the grand, old, brick, family farmhouse that Bob’s father had built. They had been living independently, and graciously, and generously, and hospitably, and deeply spiritually for many years.

Linda’s good friend had died, and Linda almost died. She, herself, when she was in the greatest danger, had an encounter with Jesus beyond this world. Afterwards, in her humility, she said little about that experience, but the whole thing touched her deeply.

For months no one knew what progress she would make, if any, in the end. After months, she was well enough to return home and live, very much, the way she had before, at least for a while.

She was a saint before. That never changed. But she saw her physical presence in this world very differently. And she saw all her relationships much more preciously than ever.

After my dad had heart surgery (a triple by-pass), he wasn’t in the hospital very long, but he changed. This happened shortly after he retired, so he was in his later sixties. Suddenly he would tell us grown up kids (I was in my early forties) that he loved us. He would say (out of the blue), “Son, I love you.” I had never heard him say this before. I’m sure he never, in my life, told me that he loved me until that time. It was so strange. I never got used to it. My dad had become very different and new.

I understand that recoveries like these can make you a new person. Recoveries can make you a truly different person than you were before. I believe this.

The Christian hope, the future world, the future you, will be a recovery like that. John tells us that: “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev. 21:4)

We have lived in a world that has borne a long illness, with its long history of death, and mourning and crying, and pain. Whether we have heard, and believed, the promise of recovery, or not, we have known no other world than the one in which we have been living, under the influence of this long sickness, and all our lives have shared this sickness in common. We may have begun the gift of recovery in our own lives, but we know no other world.

But now, our lives have seen some of the future change. When the fullness of time has come, the change will be perfect. We and the new world will be well. A medieval nun had a little song that went: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” (Julian of Norwich)

Sometimes life changes when someone comes to live with you. When my Polish Grandmother (my Baci, or Babcia) retired, she didn’t come to live with us. She went to live with her son (my mother’s brother, Uncle Eddie, and his family). I know this changed my cousins’ lives.

But Baci would come and spend her summers with us. I was about thirteen or fourteen, when this began.

I changed because I became Polish. My Baci would teach me to talk with her in Polish, and to help her cook Polish food. I learned to make pierogi. I thought that, when I got older, I might do some college work in Poland. Maybe I would get some experience that would qualify me for working with the State Department.

Of course, God had other plans for me that I was already seriously resisting. When Baci, or some of my other older Polish relatives, would come and visit us, they would talk with me and tell me that I thought like a Polak. I had changed.

This was quite a compliment. No one can receive a finer compliment than to be called a Polak. It’s a Polish word that means a Polish person. What could be greater than that?

Change comes, and it makes all the difference in the world, when someone comes to live with you. John tells us that: “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.” (Revelation 21:3) Surely everyone here knows something about this, even now.

The newness described all through the Book of Revelation is a special kind of newness. There are two words for newness, in the Biblical Greek.

There is an ordinary, standard newness called “neos”, which is like getting a new computer, or a new car.

Then there is a radical newness called “kainos”, which means a whole new order of change, as if change, itself, will change into something else.

New heavens and earth don’t mean that heaven and earth will be replaced. Becoming a new creation doesn’t mean that we will have the secret of eternal youth, or an intelligence boost, or an altered memory.

What you will be, and whatever this world will be, will become something we can’t even imagine now. What we want will change. What we enjoy will change. What we’re able to do will change. What we see, and hear, and take into ourselves will change. What others are for us, and what we are for others, will change.

We, and the whole world, will be so surprisingly new. And yet we will be ourselves. What we are now will be recognizable in what we will be. What we are now will have played its part, in the love of God in Christ. What we are now will have played its part in the person that God has planned us to be, all along.

How will this new change become ours? How will this future hope, this future world (this future heaven and earth), become ours? Two things go together in this, in a way we don’t ordinarily notice.

The language of the Book of Revelation is Greek, but the thinking in it is Hebrew. In Hebrew thought you can put things together that seem different, side by side, and they really are part of the same, single thing. The different things share one meaning in common.

So, John hears about the Lion of Judah and he looks and sees a Lamb that was slain. These are two different things that are the same thing. John hears about the Bride, and he looks and sees the New Jerusalem City. And all that we are told about what’s in the city is that there is a throne, with God and the Lamb sitting on it, and fruit trees, and a river, as if it were a garden: maybe even the garden of Eden, all over again, but safe and complete. These all seem like different things, but they’re the same thing.

John hears about two things that don’t sound like the same thing. He hears that the thirsty will receive the water of life: which means that they will live in the New Jerusalem. He hears that the ones who conquer, or overcome, “will inherit all of this”: which means that they will live in the New Jerusalem.

John is telling us that the one who thirsts and the one who conquers are the same. You conquer by thirsting. You thirst by conquering.

It’s the same thing. You want something so bad, or (better yet) you want something so good, that your desire and your commitment become your deepest need, and your deepest need grows to become your greatest strength.

You want just one thing, and you don’t settle for anything else. You don’t settle for anything less. You become true, as in true-blue, to your need, and to your strength, which is God.

This need and this strength begin with what Isaiah tells us comes from being sprinkled by the Servant, the Messiah, the Christ. John tells us that this need and this strength come from being washed in the blood of the Lamb. This comes from the love and grace of God, in our Savior Jesus Christ.

John tells us to thirst and to conquer. Isaiah tells us to wake up, and get up, and sing out, and to come out, and to chill out (don’t rush, don’t worry). Read more about this in Isaiah chapter fifty-two.

But, a little bit later (in chapter fifty-three), Isaiah says that the servant who is the Messiah, will change us, because he has carried our sorrows and our sins. Carrying us gives him the ability to do something he calls sprinkling us. The sprinkling power, coming from suffering, will be able to make us all into new people. The sprinkling that comes from his suffering is intended to enable all who desire it to enter into the new future creation of God.

The servant Jesus was born in Bethlehem to carry, on himself, our sufferings and our sins, on the cross. Doing this, he has made newness and difference possible.

John tells us that it is the Son of God, the Word of God, the Lion who is the Lamb who was slain for us on the cross, who is responsible for making the great thirst and the great overcoming possible.

If we do hold onto that overcoming thirst, as if our life depended on it, that newness, and that difference will become our abundant life. It will become our everlasting life.

The Advent Kingdom - Food/Fight

Preached on Sunday, December 10, 2017

Scripture readings: Isaiah 46; Revelation 19:1-16

Walking along Crab Creek; Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
November, 2017

Here’s a completely inappropriate joke for you: A newly wed couple just got home from their honey-moon, and the bride wanted to make their first home-cooked meal into a truly romantic, sensual experience. So, she thought it would be nice to do some fancy cooking with wine. After her first five glasses, she couldn’t even remember why she was in the kitchen.

Here’s another thing that I don’t know anything about. I imagine that most meals of a couple, before the wedding, are meals of exploration, and courtship, and longing, and promises. The meals of the wedding and the honey-moon are meals of celebration.

After that, meals are made from sharing, and giving, and serving. Perhaps those meals are where their strongest love will find itself.

Now we’ve read about a romantic meal in the Book of Revelation. It’s the wedding supper of the Lamb Jesus and his bride (which includes us with all of God’s people, from all times and places). Only, we don’t ever see the wedding or the supper take place: at least not maybe until very the end of the story, in chapters twenty-one and twenty-two.

In that case, the wedding supper is made from the fruit of the Tree of Life and the water of the River of Life, in the new heavens and the new earth. The Book of Revelation works like this.

I’ll give you a lot stranger way of reading about the wedding feast than the new creation. We could see the ingredients of the wedding supper when we look at the beginning of the battle that we’ve read about. The half dozen ancient Christians whose commentaries I have been consulting, this past week, tell me that the wedding feast must be the body and blood of Jesus.

Over the course of a year, the Church sees the first appearance of the body and blood of Jesus in his birth. The baby Jesus wasn’t bleeding; although he must have bled after his circumcision eight days after his birth.

Anyway, through most of his infancy, he wasn’t bleeding, but he had a real body with a heart pumping his blood, just like you and me. The Baby of Bethlehem is his flesh and blood given for us, saving whatever is young in us, saving all our beginnings. The Baby Jesus is part of the wedding feast.

Jesus is God in the flesh, as a real human being. Jesus took our body upon himself in his infancy, and his childhood, and his life as a young man and workman, and his life as a wandering teacher and compassionate healer, and his life as a crucified and bloody mess, dying for our sins, and dying to defeat sin, and death, and the devil.

This is the foundation of the Book of Revelation. It’s a book that takes what God has done in Christ, and reveals God’s promise of the shape of things to come.

In the picture language of the Book of Revelation, ancient Christians identified the rider of the white horse as Jesus. And those ancient Christians believed something that may seem very strange to modern people: that the white horse was picture language for Jesus’ pure and sinless body crucified for our salvation, and it simply says that the robe he wore was full of his own blood shed for us.

This teaches us something that will never stop being true: that our marriage to Jesus is made and fed from his body and blood, and it will never be any different. Jesus is our food.

We might have many meals where we are exploring, and courting, and longing, and making promises, and celebrating with Jesus. Jesus, for his part, knows us very well and has, in some mysterious way, already chosen us. He feeds us with his own sharing, and giving, and serving; as if we have already been married to him for a long, long time.

For his part, all our meals with Jesus come from his sharing, and giving, and serving. Jesus said it long ago: “For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) 

Jesus came with this in mind, so that we could see that God, in the flesh and blood of Jesus, carries out his great mission. The mission of God is what the prophet Isaiah heard him say so long ago. “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” (Isaiah 46:3-4)

Our life with God, our life with Jesus, is like the course of many meals that carry us every day, no matter what. Our life is like all of God’s people being present together (including you and me) sharing one table with Jesus. Our lives are sustained and carried all the way because of all these meals which are the body and blood of Jesus; the body and blood of God.

When you eat every day with someone who feeds you from their own heart, from their own giving, and sharing, and serving, you must be changed. How can you avoid (though some people do avoid it); how can you avoid being changed and becoming a new person?

Life together includes much more than that, but this much is true. And the fact that most of you have grown up (and were helped to grow up), meal after meal, at such a table. And most of you have watched others grow up, and you have helped them to grow up, as you have served them at your family table. And this must change you.

I think that the Tree of Life must be the cross and the fruit of the tree must be the body of Jesus. The River of Life must be the running wounds of the blood on the cross. These are our daily bread, just as much as our normal breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

This must change you. This is what the grace of God in Christ is, and why it is so strong.

The vision of the Tree of Life and the River of Life is something that we have not read together, yet. But they tell us that there is no other way to live. This is how the Lord will sustain us, and carry us forever. This is how we will change and grow forever.

This is the Kingdom of God, now, and more and more, forever. We have this now. We wait for more to come, and it will come. This is a lesson of Advent, which means coming; and waiting for what is coming.

It’s as necessary as food and eating and drinking. It’s as necessary as sharing a table with others, like you and me. It’s urgent, and it is also the most important reality we can know.

We must live in a world where God comes.

God saved humanity by making our personhood, and our flesh and blood, his own. God saves the world by visiting it and walking on it the way we do. God saves history itself, and the history of our lives, by visiting it, and living in it, as we do.

In Jesus, God is our meal together. And our meal is also our leader in battle. You hear the blessing of our invitation to the wedding supper, and the very next thing you see is a battle forming.

Well you don’t hear a description of any of the actual fighting, but you see Jesus and his people together: his people in white robes that are bright, shining white because they are washed in his blood. But Jesus is robed in his own red blood; maybe because it takes his blood to make us shine. So, Jesus goes with us to war, dripping red.

We are in a war, right now. This war has been going on ever since the cross, ever since Jesus died on the cross and defeated sin, and death, and the devil in the resurrection.

Jesus is the Word of God. And the Word of God is also the sword in Jesus’ mouth, and the Word of God is the testimony of Jesus, and the message of the good news, and the gospel of Jesus, and this is the weapon that won the war and will keep on winning this war until Jesus comes again.

The Word, which is Jesus, the Word that is our king, the Word that is the message of the cross, is essential for our life. The Word that is Jesus and the sword in his mouth are the only weapon that can win our war and our struggle with this fallen world that won’t let up on us.

We have so many battles that could ruin us, and embitter us, and make us hollow, and empty, and false, and make us spoilers and vandals of other people’s lives.

We need Jesus fighting in our hearts and minds, and in our bodies. We need the power of his Word, his sword, which is our food and also the meal we share with those who strengthen us and give us growth. We need Jesus fighting for us and feeding us every day.

Jesus has made all of us the same, in this way. In Jesus, every day of our lives can be a battle that we don’t see, but Jesus wins, and we win with him. In Jesus, every day of our lives can be a meal shared with him and with each other that gives us fullness, and strength, and growth, now and forever.

This is the Kingdom of Jesus today. This is the future that we are waiting for. It is a promise that he makes to us, and Jesus is called “Faithful” and “True”. His kingdom will come.

A New Kingdom - It comes with Birth Pains

Preached on Sunday March 22, 2015

Scripture readings: 2 Peter 3:3-16; Matthew 24:4-31, 36-44

Various Unrelated Photos that Are Signs or Warnings

There is a friend of mine who is a faithful church elder and a great Christian and he’s lots of fun. He takes Christian fellowship, and the Christian virtues, and prayer, and the Bible absolutely seriously. He takes the truth of the return of Jesus very seriously, but he doesn’t take all the talk and the books about the return of Jesus seriously. More than once David has said to me, “What the Bible tells us is that our side wins.” I have to agree with him.

I’ve been re-reading bits of the first systematic plan of the return of Christ that I read when I was a young Christian. It is the book “The Late Great Planet Earth” and its author is Hal Lindsey. The book and the author were famous. I devoured all his published books when I was in college. I confess that I loved his ability to put so many complicated details into a comprehensive and comprehensible form.

But at the same time I began to read other similar books full of comprehensible and very detailed plans. I found that the plans were different: sometimes only in little ways, sometimes in bigger ways.

So about forty years ago, I prayerfully and studiously decided that simple was best. I believe that we have made Jesus’ answers about his coming, and the rest of what people call Bible prophesy, more complicated than it is meant to be. I believe that this is because the experts, and the people who love the experts, read so much into all of it.

The disciples asked Jesus two questions. One was about the destruction of the temple. The other question was about the coming of Jesus in glory, which will be the end of the age of fallenness: the end of the age of rebellion, and darkness, and suffering. About the coming of Jesus in glory, the disciples wanted to know the signs. They wanted Jesus to give them, in advance, some sort of warning signals, or attention signals, to give them a heads up so that they would be ready for him.

Jesus gave them a long answer. Most of his long answer is really more about what their mission and purpose should be, while they waited for him to come in glory.

It’s about our mission and purpose too, while we wait for him to return, no matter what happens in the meantime. Jesus’ answer included some details that would be clear to anyone living in the Holy Land in the first century. And that’s our problem. We’re not first century people. That is our main handicap in understanding Jesus’ answer.

But think about this. When the question turned to signs, Jesus gave them only one sign of his coming. I mean, the question was about a sign and he only mentions one sign by name. He only uses the word “sign” to describe one single thing. This is what he says: “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” (Matthew 24:30:31) That’s the only sign of his coming, according to the simple words of Jesus.

Notice that, according to Jesus, we will all be there when that happens. When everyone sees Jesus coming, and when everyone hears the trumpet call, then all who love and trust and wait for Jesus (whether in heaven or on the earth, whether living or dead) will be gathered together to join with Jesus when he returns to change the world.

Paul wrote about his confidence of being caught up with Jesus, if Jesus came during Paul’s lifetime: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

When the Lord comes with lots of noise and glory; that’s when the dead will rise and that’s when we who are living on this earth will meet him. Paul wrote about himself and his friends, “we who are alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17)

The Lord’s plan is simple. It’s all one big thing. The world is what it is and what it will be until Jesus comes. It will be what it is, but going from bad to worse until he comes. Jesus said, “Don’t be deceived. Don’t be alarmed.” That is because, in this world, as Jesus describes it, we need to beware of the dangerous and deceitful thought that says, “It can’t get any worse.”

The coming of Jesus and our being caught up with him to join him in his return to change the world will be one, single, great event. The people of Jesus, living and dead will all be part of the great victory dance: dancing with Jesus in the end zone with the whole world looking on and taking it all in. Notice that Jesus and Paul agree and they make this very basic and simple.

I tell you. I love to make things complicated. Some of you are learning about this. I do it because that is when I tell myself that I finally understand everything. But then I get all wound up and crazy and that doesn’t do any good. Then I get tired and I end up leaving lots of things untended and undone; just like Jesus tells us not to do. So I like to keep Jesus and his coming simple. It’s beautiful.

For some reason the multiplication of signs and details make the other versions sound very knowledgeable and convincing. If it takes so much study and so many brain cells to spell out the plan we are tempted to think it must be right. When I was reading these books (in 1971 through about 1973) I knew of quite a few guys who were planning to go to seminary, but the timing of the plan in “The Late Great Planet Earth” clearly suggested to a lot of us that Jesus was coming forty years after the founding of the nation of Israel, which happened in 1948. That would set Jesus’ return at 1988. Subtract seven years from that for the rapture, if the rapture happened before Jesus returns and not during his return (the way Hal Lindsey and many others teach), and that would make 1981 the end of our time as Christians on this earth.

At least a couple of these guys decided that it wasn’t worth it, spending so much time preparing for the ministry, when there would be so little time left to serve in the ministry. So they gave up their sense of calling, and maybe they were right to do so. Maybe the Lord wanted them to serve him another way.

Jesus didn’t call anything else a sign: only his actual appearance. He said that no one knows when it will happen, except his Father. It’s as if God is very humble, and childlike, and loves surprises. He even likes to surprise himself and to be surprised by himself.

In the Trinity, the Son is a servant and a servant is willing to be surprised. It’s the job of a servant to never be surprised by surprises. In the life that the Son gives to us, we are servants. It’s not a bad thing to be surprised. And God enjoys it so much, so why don’t we just let him do it that way?

There was the question about the destruction of the temple. I believe there is a relatively simple way to look at this: a simple way with a long answer that I will give you now.

It has a relationship with the idea of birth pains. How many birth pains does it take to birth a baby? Do you think a mother has ever successfully counted her birth pains? I wonder: how many birth pains should it take for God to complete his purpose for this world; before he makes a new world?

Peter, in his second letter, said that people will make fun of how long it takes. They will use the delay as an excuse for not believing.

The destruction of the temple is something oddly like a birth pain, especially if we expand it slightly to apply to all the desecrations of the temple: every crisis that made the Temple unholy. Jesus only hinted at the destruction of the temple, but he did talk about a strange thing from the Old Testament Book of Daniel, called the “abomination of desolation”. (Daniel 9:27) Eugene Peterson calls this the “monster of desecration”.

For us, the shedding of blood in a church would desecrate it. That church would have to be rededicated, or re-consecrated, or re-blessed. Desecration makes the holy unholy.

The Temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt for the first time when the people of Israel returned from exile in Babylon and Persia. A couple hundred years later, the Greeks conquered the Holy Land, and one of the Greek kings decided to make the Jews into Greeks, and he decided to make them worship the Greek gods.

This king’s name was Antiochus, and he actually claimed to be the incarnation of Zeus, the king of the gods. He conquered Jerusalem in 167 BC and set up a statue of Zeus in the Temple. The statue looked a lot like Antiochus. Antiochus tried to make the Jews sacrifice pigs on the altar of Zeus. The Jews rebelled and rededicated the Temple and, after a lot of fighting, they beat the Greeks. The abomination of desolation was undone.

The Romans conquered Jerusalem in 63 BC, and the victorious Roman general Pompey insisted on going inside the holy of holies, the inner room that represented the presence of God. Only the high priest could enter that room (and only one day a year on top of that) without making it unholy, so there would have been the need to rededicate the desecration and the desolation of the Temple after that.

When the Jewish radicals rebelled against the Romans and started the war that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, again, they started their rebellion by killing the high priest, who was too friendly to the Romans. That was in the year 66 AD.

They killed him inside the temple. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote about this and he called it the abomination that makes desolate. The holy place had been made unholy again. The Temple had to be reconsecrated.

The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD. They took their military standards that held the image of the divine Caesar into the remains of the temple, and they offered sacrifices to Caesar there: worshipping a man as a god in the Temple. This time the Temple was not reconsecrated.

In the second century, the Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman city. The emperor Hadrian had his people build a temple dedicated to Jupiter, the king of the gods, on the Temple Mount. When the Roman Empire became Christian, the temple of Jupiter was torn down, and the Temple Mount was used as a dump. When the Muslim’s invaded they hauled the trash away and built the Dome of the Rock.

Between the prophet Daniel and the disciples, the Temple had been desecrated, more than once, by humans who claimed to be stronger than the God whose Temple stood in Jerusalem. Since then, this has happened on the site of the Temple quite a number of times. Each time it has happened, it has caused someone, somewhere, great distress and anguish. Many times it has happened in war and with a staggering destruction of life, and hope, and beauty.

These are all birth pains. In our fallen world it takes a long, long labor of birth pains before the time for a new world comes. And yet, Jesus says, “Keep watch!” (Matthew 24:42)

It’s very simple. There is harassment, persecution, evil, lovelessness, danger, injustice, cruelty, violence, humans setting up humans and governments higher than God, and it goes on and it gets worse, until Jesus comes, for all the world to see and hear. Then Jesus will bring the new world.

Jesus’ warning about the abomination tells us that the church will be around to see people and governments setting themselves up in the place of God many times. The lesson about getting away from the places where people are playing God is that, no matter what outrages are committed in this world, if we listen to Jesus, if we are faithful to him, we will get through it. He will take care of us, and we (and the church) will survive to stand and see him come in glory to make the earth new.

Each birth pain is outrageous. Each one hurts. Each one may hurt millions and tens of millions of people, and more. Jesus says: “Don’t be alarmed. Don’t panic! Don’t act like it’s the end of the world.”

I remember my dad telling me many times: it’s not the end of the world.

To avoid being alarmed, when Jesus warns us against being alarmed, Christians seem to have created the ability to combine two strange substances: joy and calculation. Christians live in a state of joyful calculation so much of the time. I believe this comes from reading too much into what is relatively simple. Some people count earthquakes, and wars, and calculate their increase, or their rate of acceleration, in order to create a sign that Jesus is on the threshold.

When Jesus said not to be alarmed at the birth pains, we manage to make our calculations into a sign, even though Jesus didn’t say that the elements of our calculation were a sign. We claim we are not alarmed, but we make our joyful calculations, and so we get around the warnings of Jesus.

I recently heard about some cases, in the Pacific northwest, where school kids have been told not to wear crosses to school. We are living in America, where we have freedom of religion and freedom of expression. We have the right to resist, and go to court, and have our representatives make laws to remedy stuff like this. But I sense outrage and not love in this.

It can be done in love and it should be done in love. Where cross wearers are outraged they are not acting like Christians. They are showing alarm at the birth pains just as Jesus told us not to do.

Jesus said, “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” (Matthew 24:12) Jesus warns us not to be deceived. (Matthew 24:4) But here is a case where the world is deceiving us and making us not the people who stand firmly in the love of Jesus. And then, again, it also proves that we have not really stopped being alarmed. We have only disguised our alarm.

Sometimes Christians will talk about being taken up to be with Jesus before the trouble gets too tough. But why should any Christian want that? Why except for the fact that we don’t want to get hurt. We don’t want to suffer.

Some of the families of the Egyptian Christians whose relatives were recently killed in Libya were thankful for one of the things that the ISIS executioners did. The people who recorded the execution did not mute the shouts of the Christians, about to be killed, praising the name of Jesus. Their families at home were thankful for this.

That is real Christianity. What we call “The Great Tribulation” will be a great honor. Paul would agree, because this is what he wrote to his friends in Philippi, “It has been granted to you, on behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” (Philippians 1:29)

Remember, this was on behalf of Christ, who suffered for our sins on the cross. His suffering is our salvation. It also “leaves us with an example that we should follow in his steps.” (1 Peter 2:21) Of course it is a gift to suffer for Jesus.

I don’t think I’ve made this too complicated. But I’ve said more than enough for now.

We live in a world full of birth pains. Those pains have been going on for a long time. It is a long, long labor. It is not a labor for one child, but for a whole new world where everyone will be there by patience, and by repentance, and by endurance. It will be a safe world at last, shaped by the timing of the Father, and by the servanthood, and the cross, and the resurrection of the Son.

Don’t be alarmed. Don’t grow less in love. Don’t let your love grow cold. Don’t be deceived into losing your Jesus-way of thinking. Don’t lose your Jesus-say of responding to the world, and to others, in patience and love.

Keep reading Jesus’ long answer to the end and see the simple way he wants you to be ready. Be ready to wait. Be ready to put what Jesus gives you to good use. Be ready to live in a world that doesn’t love you and makes it hard for you. And especially be ready to care for the people who seem to count the least, because those are the people whom Jesus calls his brothers and sisters.