Going with Jesus: Holding It Together

Preached on Sunday, November 11, 2012

Scripture readings: Matthew 28:16-20; 1 Peter 5:1-14

I was at the Washtucna School the other day, talking to someone who was in the middle of eating their lunch. They were eating a sandwich, and it took me a while to notice how it was constructed. Instead of the insides of the sandwich being laid out between two slices of bread, they were laid out between two leaves of lettuce. That sandwich looked like it had a lot of good things inside it: and so I thought, why not?



A trail along the Feather River

Slices of bread hold the contents of a sandwich together, and keep the sandwich from becoming too hard, too messy, to eat; maybe not all of the time, but most of the time. The lettuce seemed to work the same way.

But some things seem unlikely to hold things together and prevent a mess. A sandwich made between two layers of tomato would not work so well. A sandwich made between two layers of tuna salad or egg salad would not work at all. Even though they are good things to eat, they are very messy things to hold onto. Those things need to be inside the sandwich, and they need to be held together by the right stuff.

The closing words of the Gospel of Matthew are called “The Great Commission.” They are shaped in a way to hold good things together; things that could be messy if we tried to hold onto them by themselves. They are Jesus’ “marching orders” to us, as the members of the body of Jesus that is called his church. They are orders to go to everyone, and make learners of everyone; to claim everyone for God, to give them everything Jesus gave us. We need a way to hold onto all of this, and Jesus gives us his way. It is a way called grace.



The great commission is the work Jesus gives us to do. It is our mission. “Go and make disciples of all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20a)

But is this our work, or the work of Jesus? Alright, it’s the work of both. It is our work and Jesus’ work. It is certainly the work Jesus wants done. It is not always the work we want to do.

The only help for us, sometimes, is that Jesus has shown us his truest and deepest self, and so we love him with all our heart, and we know he loves us with all his heart. When you love someone, and you know that that particular someone loves you, and you know that that someone wants you to do something very important, then you have got to do it: you have got to try, or you can never be happy.

This is so not bad, really; and it is about love. Real love is strong. When I have been in love, I wanted to know that girl. I wanted to know how to make her laugh, or smile. I wanted to know how to get her to touch me and hold me. That is a very strong thing; just wanting to know how to do that. And the love of Jesus makes us want to do something we might not choose to do, otherwise.

Walking along the Feather River

Everything he tells us to do is about love. What does it mean to make disciples, except to make them eager to learn from the one who loves them?

The classic pick-up line of Jesus to any of his disciples has always been, “Come, follow me.” Be with me, and spend time with me. Watch me and listen to me. Talk with me. Let’s watch and listen to everything together. Let’s do everything together. This is love, and this is the deepest friendship. Disciples do this together with Jesus.

Baptizing everyone is about claiming them for Jesus and writing his name on them. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is like being ready to write the name of all the fullness and the totality of God on everyone you meet.

The water is a sign of the saving love of God who can float them safely through the dangers of a fallen world, and wash them clean from the stains of that world, so that they can hold their heads up high to that world and say: “God has made me new and confident to live for a better world.” This is all about love.

Teaching everyone to obey everything that Jesus has commanded you is just the same as not leaving out anything they need to know about living and going with Jesus. It is about sharing everything that Jesus has said and done and how that changes and shapes us.

Even Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead teaches us the secret of being a disciple and going with Jesus. It is the most important commandment of Jesus. We know that the secret of going with Jesus is his invitation to die to ourselves and to rise in his love and power every day. This is also love.

But it is still hard. It can even be dangerous. Peter has spent a lot of time telling us what we should already know, that going with Jesus, in this world, sets us up for being misunderstood, and laughed at, and mocked, and treated unfairly, and downright mistreated. Going with Jesus, in this world, sets us up for suffering and sorrow.

This world is determined to compete with Jesus and rob us of him, if it can. There is a spiritual power that is opposed to God, which Peter compares to a roaring lion. That is the devil, which means the accuser and the enemy. (1 Peter 5:8-9)



Jesus says, “Go, and make disciples of all nations.” By “all nations” he means “everyone in the world”, and (as it applies to us) it means everyone we meet.

Looking into the Feather River

But this is very hard. How can we make learners of everyone, when it is so hard to learn ourselves? How can we make learners of everyone, when they aren’t interested? How can we make learners of everyone when we don’t like them, or when they don’t like us, or when they don’t like what we stand for, or when they see through our misrepresentations of Jesus?



How do we make disciples of everyone (or learners of everyone) when the learners we do have just won’t settle down together and learn from each other? Peter says, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” (1 Peter 5:5) But that doesn’t feel very helpful. We don’t find humility very much fun; and it is so hard to get others to appreciate it and play along.

Being people who are committed to going, as Jesus said, instead of staying; being people who are committed to going to everyone, as Jesus said; being people who are committed to making everyone into learners, as Jesus said; being people who are committed to claiming everyone, and to giving them everything that Jesus has given to us, as Jesus said, is hard and messy work, even though it is all about love.

The structure of Jesus’ instructions tells us how to take hold of this hard and messy work. Jesus begins and ends his instructions with grace. Grace holds the instructions of Jesus together from front to back, from top to bottom; like the bread or the lettuce of a sandwich.



The first layer of Jesus’ instructions is his authority: “all authority in heaven and on earth.” The Greek word for this authority is not about Jesus holding a position that gives him the right to give us orders. This word is also translated as “power” and it is not about the ability of Jesus to use his power to make us or obligate us into following his orders. The authority and power of Jesus is the essence of who Jesus is.



Looking into the Feather River

Authority and power are the essence of what is in him. They are his ability to be what we need most. They are his ability, as God and Human, to form a perfect bridge; to come down and be with us, and to hold us close, and to bring us up to live on higher ground in his presence. So he shares our birth and our life, he shoulders our sin and weakness on the cross, he shares death and defeats its fear and power.

There is the advertisement about a “power drink” that asks the question: “Is it in you?” The power and authority of Jesus is “in him”. It is who Jesus is by his nature and by his action. And what is in Jesus is also in us, as he lives within us by faith.

The other layer of the sandwich that holds together the work of Jesus is “his presence.” “I will be with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

The power and authority of Jesus is the foundation of the work he calls us to do. The top layer is the presence of Jesus who is with us always. His presence covers us every day.

This is the grace of God in Christ. Going with Jesus requires life as a sort of “grace” sandwich.



The other day I needed to pull up some black locust shoots that had grown surprisingly big while I was gone for a few weeks. They had wicked thorns. I got wounded in the attempt, so I put on my work gloves in order to get the work done.

If you want to do some hard, tricky, messy work, like the work of a metal shop, or cutting roses for a bouquet, you want to wear work gloves. You have to hold the work of Jesus in the gloves of his grace. You have to wear his authority and his presence. You have to work that close. He never intended to send us out any other way.



Walking along the Feather River

There is something we need to know about the presence of Jesus, when he says that he will be with us always. The Greek says that he will be with us “all the days”, until the end of the age.

It’s easy to think of “always” as a unchanging thing. But we really need to have the presence of Jesus matching the challenge of each day as it comes. The easiest days may be our most dangerous because they lull us into forgetfulness. When we think of Jesus being with us “all the days”, it teaches us to count every day, no matter what that day brings.



We have good days, and we have bad days, but we have no days without Jesus. We have no more of Jesus on the good days than we have on the bad days. But we have him with us differently. We have no less of Jesus on the worst day of our life than we have on our best. Jesus is with us, exactly as we need him, “all the days”.

We may think about wasted hours, and wasted days and years; but the hours, and the days, and the years by which we count our time with Jesus are never wasted; no matter what we may think, and no matter what others may tell us.



The Bible is the word of God, through which we can receive the mind of God; the very thoughts of God. There is a thought we need to learn about the end of the age (or the end of the world, as some translations make it). The thought is that there is a structure and purpose in time, as God has designed it and created it.



Long ago, the Jewish rabbis came to think that, from the very beginning, God did not create only one world, but two worlds. They came to believe that, from the very beginning, God created this world (or this universe) and the world (or universe) that is to come.

And these two worlds bear a special relation to each other. The world to come is designed to be built on this world, like ripe fruit is built from a blossom.

Walking along the Feather River

The “end of the age” is almost like the concept of closure where things come together. The end of this world, where there is so much going wrong (where there is so much injustice, and hurt, and anger, and fear, and blindness, and tragedy) is about the righting of wrongs, the healing of hurts, the deflating of anger, the lifting of fear, the opening of eyes.

The author Ernest Hemmingway wrote this: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” But the end of the age which Jesus promises, and which Jesus rules (where Jesus is the king) goes much farther for us. The end of the age is the time and place where no one who comes to Jesus will go un-mended.  The age to come is built on the mending of every broken person in every broken place.

The way to the end of the age is by dying and rising with Jesus. When we die and rise with Jesus there is no breakage that will go unnoticed and unmet. Every broke place will have the glory of Jesus in it.

Every broken place in the creation will be like a jewel or a crown in the world to come. Every life in Christ will wear a crown. Every day in Christ will wear its crown.

Nothing will be wasted. Peter says: “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.” (1 Peter 5:10)

Sometimes this glory is the power to give comfort to others. The Apostle Paul once put it this way: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4) It is the very nature of who God is; to make us strong in the broken places.



East of Live Oak looking toward the Feather River

Even in this world, even now, we see just a bit of this at work. This is the grace that enables us to follow the great commission and command of Jesus. This is the grace we wear when the work is tricky, and hard and messy.

This is how, when the days seem bad, Jesus makes us strong, firm, and steadfast for those days. But Jesus is with us always; all the days. And, as Peter says, “This is the true grace of God.” (1 Peter 5:12) And by “this” he means God gives us the gifts we need for everywhere he sends us, and for everyone we must meet and claim for him, and for every way we seek to teach and help others follow him. This is the true grace of God.

Going with Jesus: Spreading Jesus

Preached on Sunday, November 4, 2012

Scripture readings: Matthew 28:16-20; 1 Peter 4:1-11

My Aunt Joyce belongs to the Schmitz Family of Mason City, Iowa. Somehow (and apparently completely against her nature), when she was a young woman, she came, on an adventure, to southern California, where she met and fell in love with my dad’s brother, Don.



September Going to Seed in Washtucna

But, somehow, her true love has always remained the Schmitz Family of Mason City, Iowa. When my Uncle Don retired, that is where they moved for their golden years; from sunny southern California to northern Iowa.

It is because of my Aunt Joyce that everyone in my family has learned the story of “The Music Man” by heart. “The Music Man” is a Broadway musical written by Meredith Wilson, who also grew up in Mason City. The story of the musical takes place in River City, Iowa, which is really Mason City in disguise.

The character of “The Music Man” is a traveling salesman named Harold Hill, who sells boys’ bands. He comes to a town and pretends to be a band director, even though he can’t read a note of music. He organizes the boys of the town. He orders instruments, uniforms, and music. In River City, he orders the music for Beethoven’s Minuet in G.

Harold pretends to get them started learning how to play their instruments by using a special method of his own invention that he calls “the ‘think’ system”. He explains to the boys, and their parents, that they will be able to learn to play by “thinking” the Minuet in G: and, in the process of all this (of course), he falls in love with Marian the town’s librarian.

Harold Hill is a fraud. He’s a fake, and he doesn’t know the territory, and (in the end) he gets caught. He is put on trial by the mayor, in front of the whole town.



More September Going to Seed

He appears to be doomed, until his love, Marian the librarian, cross-examines him and the townspeople. It turns out that Harold Hill really loves bands and, wherever he peddles his scheme, he always convinces himself that there really is going to be a band. He believes there is a band, until he has to make his inevitable escape.

Marian the librarian gathers the boys from the crowd. They all have their instruments in hand. Marian forces Harold to lead the band, and (sure enough) they manage to play Beethoven’s Minuet in G. They sound horrible; but the parents fall love with it.

And so Harold is saved. And Harold and Marian are sure to live happily ever after.

Harold Hill truly loved Beethoven’s Minuet in G, and the band that would play it. We are Christians, and we are disciples of Jesus, and we are the people who love Jesus, and the music of Jesus, and we love the band that will play it.

This is why we do what Jesus said. We go around everywhere in hopes of making disciples of everyone, baptizing them, and (in the words of Jesus) “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:20)



Even More September Going to Seed

For now, we are the band that plays the music of Jesus. The aim of Jesus is to get all the people of the earth in the band.

The music of Jesus is everything that Jesus taught, and everything that Jesus did. Everything that Jesus taught and did is a command for us.

Even the cross is a command. For instance, Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25) And very close to this are Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)

Suddenly, I realize that, if I am thinking about what Jesus commanded me, and if I am responsible for teaching others “everything”, including this cross and our poverty of spirit, then, maybe, I am starting in exactly the wrong place. Maybe I ought to start in a happier place.

Late September Wild Asters

When Peter lays the foundation for how we are to meet the evils of this world, he also starts in exactly the same wrong place, as I just did. “Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.”

If Jesus’ commandments begin with suffering, it is hard to see how they begin in a happy place. When we are seeking to win others to Jesus and attract them to his music, we may be tempted not to go there. We may be tempted to avoid teaching everything he commanded; at least at first.

But such commandments are not really about suffering at all. They are about love: and, surely, we are deeply interested in love; although not in the thought that love includes a surprising amount of pain and suffering.

I mean that Jesus’ whole plan was to face the worst for the sake of our very best. When our love is most like his, we are willing to do the same. We are willing to fret, and worry, and fear, and become indignant. We are willing to resort (in desperation) to the humblest, quietest, gentlest, most persistent, and possible most annoying ways of getting through to people; or of righting wrongs, or persuading minds, or transforming hearts: when it truly matters to us. We are willing to plead, and cry, and shout, and bear with huge agonies, for the sake of love.

We are not only done with sin (as Peter says), but we are done with all other selfishness. We are done with everything that stands in the way of loving with a sufficiently strong, and transforming, and redemptive love.



Horses Enjoying Whatever Is Going to Seed

There have been times when I wanted to do something other than what I knew Jesus wanted me to do. There have been times when I wanted to have a different kind of spiritual life than the life that comes from the gospel. But the sight of the suffering of Jesus, crucified for me, has essentially stopped me and peeled away the layers of my resistance.

The cross is the saving, redeeming, and rescuing, forgiving, transforming, healing, and empowering love of God. That we should be commanded to love with that kind of love is the most attractive of all the commandments of Jesus. It is pure music. It is surely at the heart of everything we want to teach others.

Teaching others to obey everything that Jesus has commanded us is really nothing else than giving them the total Jesus: Jesus with nothing left out. But we can give the total Jesus to others only if we have received everything from Jesus for ourselves. We can only give all that Jesus commanded to others when we know that he has also commanded it all to us; and when we love all of it, every bit of it: when we love all of Jesus.



So we are all, to some degree, like Harold Hill the Music Man. We are all, to some degree, frauds and fakes. Chances are we will all get caught, sooner or later; or more often than not.



The Process of Attracting Attention

In fact, when Jesus gave his disciples and us this mission to “Go” it comes right on the heels of incredible failure. His own disciples were prone to be fakes. We see that: “When they saw him they worshipped, but some doubted.” (Matthew 28:17)

The result of this was that Jesus didn’t split them up and give his orders only to the faithful. He gave his orders to us all.

His orders are not for the special Christians. They are for us all. They have nothing to do with our qualifications. They have everything to do with his qualifications; his authority.



Jesus has “all authority in heaven and on earth.” We claim to have the authority to exempt ourselves, but heaven and earth belong to Jesus, and none of us are off the hook.

If you love Jesus, if you have truly met him, you are an extension of him, for better or for worse. You will have worshiped all of Jesus (in which case you will be able to give all of him, just as he is, to others).

Or you will have held yourself back. You will have doubted; and you will only be able to give a portion of Jesus. You will only be able to teach others about a Jesus who is less than full; a Jesus who is not all that he can be. Doubting just makes being an extension of Jesus into a struggle, for yourself and for others.



Attention Attracted!

Peter tells us about this extension. He tells us that our existence, as an extension of Jesus, is a gift of grace. “Each one should use what ever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 4:10-11)

We do not speak “as if” we were speaking the words of God. We do not serve “as if” God were providing us with his strength. The idea of doing something “as if” God were doing it is only a form of pretending. It is only another form of making the Lord to be less than he truly is.

If you have met Jesus, you are extensions of his grace in this world, and you have gifts, through Jesus, to spread that grace everywhere you go. You may not use those gifts. But (as Peter said) each one of us “should”.

This is how we live out the promise that we will look at next week. Jesus said: “And surely I am with you always.” This is the promise to make us his extensions in this world.



Got One, Lost the Other

If you have met Jesus (as he truly is, and as he fully is) then you are a carrier of Jesus everywhere. You have him, and he has sent you to share him, and to be, with your brothers and sisters in Christ, the extension of Jesus in this world.

Remember that Jesus did not give his mission to you in order for you to do this alone. Jesus gave his orders to all the disciples together; the worshiping and the doubting together, the faithful and the not so faithful.

Jesus did not split up his disciples for the work of following his orders. He has sent us out as a church, as his own body, and we need to stick together, and we need to find every way possible to stick together, in order to be able to teach everything he has commanded.

Jesus has sent us out, and he goes with us to see it through. Jesus has sent us out to fill the earth with himself, with his presence, with everything that he has commanded us. Then we will give the total Jesus to the world, just as he has given his total presence to us.

Going with Jesus: Claimed and Owned

Preached on Sunday, October 28, 2012:

Scripture readings: Matthew 28:16-20; 1 Peter 3:18-22

You know that when kids go to camp the parents are supposed to label all their clothing. This doesn’t always help.

The only time I went to camp, it was a Y.M.C.A. camp. It was the summer when I was eight years old. The last day of camp we packed up all our things, and we piled our luggage on the road so that it could be loaded onto the buses, and we were all supposed to take showers so we would be clean enough for our moms’ inspections.



A Hazy September Day

In the process of taking my shower, I lost my underwear. It didn’t matter that it was labeled. I lost it anyway, and I couldn’t find it. I cried like a baby. And my other underwear was in my bag, which was buried under the luggage of other boys who were ready to take the buses for home. I cried with embarrassment because I was obsessed with a peculiar kind of nakedness that lurked under my clothing.

In the scriptures we have read this morning, Peter tells us about a form of embarrassment felt by God’s people. It is a peculiar kind of nakedness. Jesus, sending his people out, under his authority, into a world that is under his authority, gives to his people a permanent label that covers this nakedness and protects them from this embarrassment.

A lot of Peter’s first letter is concerned with a very peculiar form of embarrassment. It is the embarrassment that goodness feels in a fallen world. It is the embarrassment that comes from having been caught not wearing the uniform of the world.

There is a universal uniform of the heart, and the mind, and the life that does not know the grace of God. God’s people do not wear that uniform, and it sets them apart. It makes them look strange.

There is a universal style that says, “We are in charge of ourselves. We will serve ourselves.”

You can serve yourself by being a rule-breaker. To a lesser degree you can create a specialty of your own by flaunting certain rules, and a lot of people choose this way to run their own show. It is a way of being in charge.

You can also serve yourself by being a rule-keeper, and that is the uniform and style of religious people, who still manage to serve themselves instead of God. They run their own show by appointing themselves to be the chief score-keepers and the judges of others. No matter how strongly such people orient themselves to God, they still assert their own way of being in charge.

In a fallen world, human nature maintains its independence from God by any means possible, and at all costs. Whether by rule-breaking, or by rule-keeping, they wear the uniform of the world.

The people who know the God who became a human being in Jesus have seen the face of a God who pours himself out for us as a sacrifice to set us free from our isolation from him. The people who know the God who became one of us in Jesus know their need for such a sacrifice.



Old Farm Equipment

They do not live in the uniform of the world: the world’s heart, and mind, and life. They live in Christ, who died and rose for them. And so the sinners and the religious people of the world may think they are strange, and even bad; just as the world thought that Jesus was strange and bad, and crucified him for it.

So Peter, as we have just read, tells us about “those who speak maliciously about your good behavior in Christ.” (1 Peter 3:16) In the previous chapter, Peter said, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12)

You have to understand, here, that good lives and good deeds, as Peter speaks of them here, do not mean lives and deeds of rule-keeping. There is more than one New Testament Greek word for goodness, and this particular goodness, as Peter tells it, means the lovely goodness of lives and deeds done in the grace that comes from God.

It is a goodness of beauty. It is a goodness of attraction. It is a goodness that carries an infectious power that can that can reproduce itself in those who are on the seeing, and the hearing, and the receiving end of that goodness. It is the goodness that first came to us with the love of God in Christ that covers our sins, and changes us from the depth of our hearts. It is the goodness that God came to show us in Jesus.

It melted our hearts. It stripped us of all our self deceptions and self righteousness, and all the defenses we had built to protect us from losing our independence from God. It is the goodness that now enables us to stand before God and this world with a good conscience.

Our problem, as God’s people, is that we can have this goodness of God’s grace and yet we feel naked because we have lost the universal uniform of a fallen world. They think we are strange; and we wonder if they are still right, after all.

We inherit the uniform of the world at birth. We learn to love the uniform at a very early age. It gives us the self confidence that comes from blending in. It gives us the confidence that comes from the acceptance of others.

I was visiting cousins, years ago, and reminiscing with my cousin Don about songs our family used to sing together, and we started singing bits and pieces of them. My Cousin Candy’s son, Kevin, was in the living room with us. Kevin was seven or eight years old. Either Don or I thought of “The Leland Stanford Junior Farm” song. It’s a college drinking song and there is just a little bit of mild vulgarity in it.



Fall Colors in the Weeds

I said, “We can’t sing that. Kevin is here.” And Kevin said, “I want to hear it!” Kevin wanted to wear the uniform of the world. Now Kevin wears the uniform of a Marine Corps captain.

Think like a child again. What is it like to be a child and not know the meaning of a word that everyone else seems to know? What is it like to know that you are the only kid in your class who has not done a certain thing?

You think you must be the only person in the whole world who has not done it, and you feel ashamed and naked. You are missing an essential piece of the uniform of the world.

What if you are a grown up, and you know that other people are doing something in the way that they report their income, for taxes, and they are making more money than you are because of it? You think you are missing out on something. You feel foolish, and embarrassingly innocent.

Peter says, “It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.” (1 Peter 3:17) It is better to be embarrassed by the exposure of your goodness. It is better to have others think you are different, and to have them think you are naked because you are different, than it is to have the confidence of the uniform of the world. And yet, sometimes, we feel we have let ourselves be cheated, because we have not been smart enough to put on that uniform.

We feel guilty of a kind of failure to measure up to the values of the world around us: a peculiar kind of nakedness. But this is the peculiar kind of nakedness that forms the uniform of Jesus.



Jesus was crucified for his goodness, and for the goodness of his mission. He was stripped nearly naked for our salvation on the cross. “It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ died for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.” (1 Peter 3:17-18)



Bird on a Wire Fence

The soldiers at the cross took Jesus’ clothes, as the gospels tell us, but the ultimate nakedness is the emptiness with which we leave this world. Jesus put on that nakedness when he died for us. Death is a peculiar kind of failure; a sort of nakedness that shows we are not in control.

The cross seemed like a kind of failure; the failure of goodness to succeed in this world; the failure of goodness to thrive. It was the righteous one who died, and only two unrighteous people died with Jesus; one on each side of him, on crosses of their own. The rest of the fallen world crowded around the foot of the cross, and they mocked and heckled Jesus in his nakedness.

Who looks more successful when you look at a picture of Jesus on the cross? And yet Jesus rose from the dead and has the final word on everything in this world. The nakedness of Jesus and his people always has the final word over the uniform of the world.

When our goodness is not the goodness of the grace of God at work in us; when our goodness comes from our selves, and from our own competence, and from our standing up to the world on the ladder of our self righteousness; this world will pull our pants down and show that we have nothing underneath. (I really saw something like this happen to someone when I was in high school.) Then we have something to be embarrassed about. But, if we stand up to the world by standing in Jesus, and in his cross, and in his resurrection, and in his righteousness, then we will have nothing to be ashamed of.

That is the good conscience, the clear conscience that Peter is talking about. He is telling us about the difference in the kind of success offered to us by the uniform of the world as opposed to the better success of the promise and the goodness that do not come from ourselves.



It is the promise and the goodness of life, coming from the resurrection of Jesus, that overcomes this world. The victory of Jesus has the final word, and Jesus is the place where we can stand with confidence.



Baptism, as Peter puts it, tells us of the resurrection power of God in Christ to stand over all other powers of this world, and to bring us through this world knowing that we can hold up our heads when the world tells us we are naked, and empty, and foolish. The power of the resurrection of Jesus carries us to safety out of a fallen world.



The flood, in Noah’s time, as Peter puts it, was the proof of the power of God to carry his people to safety, out of a fallen world. Jesus spoke to that ancient world of Noah’s time by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus offered that world a safety that only Noah and his family accepted. Whatever we imagine seems more successful and more powerful than we are, Jesus is able to speak to it, and overcome it, and have the final word, and bring us through it.



Pretty Fall Weeds

In our reading from the Gospel of Matthew, the good news was still brand new. Jesus was dead, killed on the cross. Now Jesus was alive. Jesus proved that he had the final word over a world of evil, and sin, and death. He conquered them all, when he conquered death.

He proved that “all authority in heaven and on earth” was his. He proved that he was the king of heaven and earth. He sent out his people with the promise of his presence to give them the power to serve him. He sent out his people telling them to bring his lost world to him. He gave them the authority to baptize people everywhere “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19)

The words of Jesus that tell his disciples and us to make new disciples “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” are not about a ceremony or a formula of the right words to use. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are the fullness of God. They are everything about God who creates, and saves, and empowers us with the fullness of his presence, and his life, and his work.

Jesus was saying, “Go out and claim people for the fullness of God; which includes me, the Son. Label them with the ownership of God. Put the name of the completeness of God upon them.”

This world with all its false promises tries to own us, and but its label on us, and make us wear its uniform. God puts the stamp of his ownership upon us in a way that cannot be lost.

You see, we do not put the label on ourselves. These words tell us that Jesus sets a pattern for us. We are authorized to claim others and not ourselves. Once upon a time, in our own turn, we were claimed by God. And so the claim placed upon us gives us the authority to claim others. Grace is always given and received. No one comes into the kingdom of God any other way.

Think about children. Children learn confidence by being claimed, in love, over, and over, and over again.

Even if the children who seem unclaimed have to battle their way to adulthood by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, and by claiming themselves, that kind of success is naked without the humbling success of first being claimed and owned by someone else.

You cannot learn the art of love without learning to be loved, without letting yourself be loved and claimed beyond your control. Nothing else works. We can hold onto Christ, and claim the love of Christ in our great need, but we do not truly know him, as he is, until we know that it is his nature to claim us first, without our having any claim of our own, on our part.



Washtucna on that Hazy September Day

Once we know this, we have the authority of Jesus to claim, for him and for his kingdom, anyone like us who has no dream of a claim on the kingdom of God. That means anybody and everybody. The kingdoms of this world have become his kingdom. (Revelations 11:15)

He authorizes us to establish his authority over this world and over all the people in it. We claim them for the grace, and the love, and the goodness of God that they cannot claim for themselves.

God, in Christ, is our Lord and Savior. Standing up with a good and clear conscience, against all that this world throws at us, comes from no other place than the nature of God himself, and we only know who God is through Jesus his only Son.

That is the authority that rules heaven and earth and gives us our message. And we need to hear that message for ourselves. We need to hear the message of the resurrection power of Jesus, and find that it has the final word for us.

The Great Game of Elections, Citizens, and Saints

Preached on October 21, 2012

Scripture readings: 1 Peter 2:13-17; Luke 20:20-26 

In seventh grade gym class we spent the fall playing flag football. We were assigned to our teams and we stayed on the same teams all through that fall season. Each team had a name. I don’t remember what we called our team, but I remember that we lost every game.

Yes, we lost, and we lost, and we lost, and we lost, and we stopped caring anymore. We didn’t even hang our heads in shame because we didn’t care.



Sad Looking Primrose

We made a joke out of it. We became the clowns of the field. Sometimes we scored; but most of the time we scored because we played so badly that we completely confused the other team. We played so badly that we would throw the other team off their game.

Every morning, at the beginning of the period, the coach would read the standings, and he would always get to us last, and say something like 0 – 10 (0 wins, 10 losses). And we were so shameless that we would cheer: “Yay!” The next day the coach would shout our name and say “0-11”: “Yay!” “0-12”: “Yay!” We never won a single game: “Yay!”

This experience has put me in the unique position to understand what Peter means when he writes, “Submit your selves, for the Lord’s sake, to every authority instituted among men.”  The problem with most translations of this verse is that they overly translate it, so that the words apply only to the next few words, only to how Christians are to relate to kings or governments. “Every authority instituted among men” probably refers to everything through the end of the second chapter of this letter and into the third chapter. So the so-called “institutions” of authority that Peter writes about are really all kinds of human relationships.

They are relationships between citizens and leaders and governments; relationships between slaves and masters; relationships between wives and husbands, husbands and wives; relationships between Christians; relationships with absolutely everyone.  These relationships are the authorities, the disciplines, the boundaries of our lives. “Honor everyone,” Peter tells us. (2:17)

Relationships! Relationships stand up around us like authorities that require us to decide how we will live and what kind of people we will be in this world.

God has designed and created us human beings so that we must live our lives within a great, complex network of human relationships, and obligations, and rights, and freedoms, and responsibilities. There are marriages, families, friendships, churches, faiths, boards, clubs, councils, businesses, communities, and more. There are economies, and societies, and political parties, and nations, and more.



In Peter’s writings, the thing he calls “human institutions” does not means humanly created human relationships, it means divinely created human relationships. The “institution” word, in Greek (ktisis), is actually a God-centered word. It is the Greek word that the New Testament uses to describe God’s work of creation, not human creations.

My seventh grade experience tells me that Peter’s words “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution” means “play the game”. Play the big game in this field of relationships. Play like you take the game seriously; and play your part, play your position as well as you can, and play it with joy, because it is God’s game, God’s creation.

The game is a huge game, but we are playing for life, we are playing for eternity. Some of the plays are seen by no one else but God. These plays are made in our minds and hearts. Some of the plays take place in our family. Some of the plays take place in the larger world outside our homes. Some of the plays take place in our elections, and our politics, and our lawmaking and government.



Sunflowers

God created the game in the sense that the rules are his. We don’t honor the king, or the emperor, or the government just because they write the laws. They are players in the game too, just like us; and they are accountable to keep the rules, themselves; but how we play, and how they play, will all contribute to the course of the game.

God is the creator of the game because he wrote the rule book, and measured and marked the lines on the field; the yard lines, the side lines, and the goal lines.



The question to Jesus, about whether to pay taxes to Caesar or not, was a trick question, but it was a question that mattered to a lot of people. It was basically to ask: are there parts of the big game that you can sit out, if you want. In Jesus’ time and place, God’s people wanted to know if they could sit out the Caesar part of the game; the secular part of the game. Was that a part of the game they didn’t have to play in?

Jesus answer was that they had to play the whole game, even the secular part. Belonging to God, knowing the Lord, does not let you off the hook for sitting out the game for what is going on in the nation, or in the world. Or, even if you think that you are only stuck on the sidelines, you are still part of the game.

In a monarchy, like the Roman Empire, submitting to the game looked different than it would in a democracy, or a republic. In the empire people either obeyed, or they could write letters or send petitions which might get them in trouble, or might actually get them a hearing from the emperor.

In a democracy or a republic we submit to the game by keeping well informed, and meeting, and voting, and joining, and contributing, and by running for office. Jesus’ answer about “giving Caesar what is Caesar’s” applies to this because, ultimately, in this nation, we are not under obligation to human leaders; we are under obligation to the constitution. The constitution is the covenant of the people of the United States. We have no right, for the Lord’s sake, to sit out the constitution part of the Lord’s great game.

Jesus didn’t say to “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar” (Luke 20:25) because Jesus thought that Caesar was a good guy who was doing a great job. The case was just the opposite. Jesus spoke at a time of the beginning of a string of mostly bad emperors. The emperor in Jesus’ day was Tiberius, who lived in splendid isolation of the Isle of Capri and let corrupt underlings do all his work. The emperor at the time when Peter wrote about honoring the emperor was Nero, who had his own mother killed, and who is famous for “fiddling while Rome burned”, and who lighted his evening garden parties with torches made of burning Christians.

Honor doesn’t mean closing your eyes to evil, or compromising with it. Honor is the stubborn and gracious determination to remember, no matter what, that other people (whomever they may be) are still (and always will be) creatures of God, made in the image of God. If you have contempt and hatred for anything or anyone God has made, you will not play your part in the game well. When any team plays the game with contempt for the other team they begin to play badly.

There was an ancient Christian named Justin Martyr, born around the year 100 A.D., born in the city that is now called Nablus, in the West Bank area of the River Jordan, in what is now the Palestinian Territories. He wrote an open letter to the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius and his sons. He wrote: “So we worship God only, but in temporal matters we gladly serve you, recognizing you as emperors and rulers, and praying that along with your imperial power you may also be found to have good judgment. Suppose you pay no attention to our requests and our frank statements about everything. That will not injure us, since we believe, and are convinced without doubt, that everyone will finally experience the restraint of divine judgment in relation to their voluntary actions. Each will be required to give account for the responsibilities which he has been given by God.” (FIRST APOLOGY, 17)

Perovskia: Russian Sage

When Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Luke 20:25) he doesn’t mean that we have compartments in our lives. You can’t let the world claim part of you, or claim part of yourself for your self, and then let God have the rest.

You can’t have different rooms in the house of your life. Imagine thinking your life was compartmentalized into separate rooms where you could live a different life in each. Imagine having a politics room, and a money room, and a family room, and a religion room, and thinking you could be one person in the religion room and a different person in your family room, and still another person in your politics or money room.

If your life was a house, you would be God’s house, and God would be the master and have his say in all the rooms. But in my story, you are in a great game; and your politics, and your citizenship, and your family life, and your financial life, and your spiritual life are all played out on the same field with everyone there.

You are a player in God’s game of life and you are not divided into 10 percent here and 50 percent there. Wherever you are in the game, even, if you are on the side lines, you are in it 100 percent, or 200 percent (as a coach might put it), or not at all. And that includes your identity as a citizen of the republic and your identity as a saint, a person who belongs to God.

When Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”, he tells us that Caesar is not God. The world and the culture we live in is not our God. We have no reason to listen to the world around us, or to the culture we live in, if they tell us something different than what God tells us.

When we are ready to give to God what belongs to God, then we are ready to give him our very selves (our whole selves), and we immediately become potential revolutionaries and mavericks. We immediately become ready to contradict what the world and the culture says. After all, Peter says, “Fear God. Honor the emperor.” Honor is an attitude of respect. Fear is a sense of awe and wonder. Fear engulfs honor. The world cannot compete with God.

Peter says, “Honor all men.” And he says, “Honor the emperor.” (1 Peter 2:17) There is just one Greek word originally used for how we are to relate to an emperor, or to just anyone; even though some translations use a different word in each phrase. Honor is the one thing that is meant in both places. Any human being Peter met he would honor just as much as he might honor the emperor.

This was revolutionary. It is said that there were more than 60,000,000 slaves in the Roman Empire during the first century. They were nothing more than mere property in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of the culture.

But for Peter, looking through the eyes of Jesus, any single slave, working in a quarry, or a farm, or a kitchen, or a shop, was the emperor’s equal: that was his brother. This was revolutionary. This was as much as treason.

We live in a world and a culture that have very little understanding of respect and honor. I think the church is supposed to be a culture of respect and honor. This culture used to be reinforced (more or less) by the world around us.

But now the world teaches us to laugh at people, or point a finger at them, or rant and rave about them, or just ignore them. Everyone we laugh at, every one we accuse, every one we hate, everyone we ignore is some one who is the image of the living God, someone for whom Christ has died. What are our election campaigns and political programs teaching us about the importance of respect, as citizens?

Peter writes about the Christian’s freedom. Our freedom comes from the love of God working in the cross of Christ, setting us free from our sin, and setting us free from the power of death.

There is a real freedom that is God-given. It gives us the ability to stand up against the false reasoning, the false priorities, and the false fears of the world around us.

There is a false freedom, Peter warns against it. (2:16) Peter warns us that we are tempted to think we have the freedom to do whatever is convenient for us. We are tempted to think that we have the freedom to do whatever makes us feel good, no matter what affect it has on others.

When a person’s personal freedom is more important that the life of an unborn child; that is a false freedom. When a business saves a worker’s benefits and then lays them off so as not to have to pay them a pension, that is their using their right of proprietorship as a false freedom (it’s a broken promise, after all).

I think the economic failures that continue to haunt our country and our world began because so many people in banking and investments thought that they had a right to get what they wanted just because they wanted it, and they gambled with what other people entrusted to them under false pretenses and false assurances. That was the false freedom of greed. Nations decline when they become addicted to the worship of false freedoms.

True freedom is to be a servant of God, who lays out a great game before us, for us to play in, and not hold back at the parts of the game we don’t like.

God himself is the major player of the game. He played in every part of it. He came down from heaven and was born in a stable. He played as a child, and learned to work with his hands at an early age. He left his work to teach others. He made passionate friends and passionate enemies. He was misunderstood. He stood up to the powerful. He stood up to the Roman governor, who was the local arm of the empire.



Birdbath in my frontyard

He identified with the sins and evils of this world, and died to defeat them. He died and rose from the dead to save us from our sins, and give us the freedom of the children of God.

God still loves this game. It gives him joy to play in it. And it gives him joy to watch us play.

It is a game that takes up the whole of your life, and involves you in the whole of life on this planet. There is nothing of which we can say that God has nothing to do with it. There is nothing that goes on in this world that God wants us to be indifferent to.

The election we are all thinking about is a reminder that we all have an invitation to God’s great game. Whether it is Washington, or Olympia, or Washtucna, or Kahlotus, or anywhere: nothing is off God’s playing field. Freedom is a life where everything matters, and everything counts, and no one is to be left out, and no one is off the hook.