Measured by the Cross: Excellence

Preached on Sunday, July 14, 2013

Scripture readings: Isaiah 55:1-11; 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5



Photos from Vacation, June 2013
Driving from Klamath Falls OR to Live Oak CA

Every now and then some people are able to kick back and say, “Ah, this is the life!” When people of faith do this, they can say two things about it: “life is good” and “God is good!” It’s about the good life.



Paul was interested in the good life (how to live well and how to think well). He paid close attention to this, and his letters to the churches show us how true this was. He wanted to see this good life at work in the people of Jesus.

For example, in his letter to the Philippians Paul wrote, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. Whatever you have learned, or received, or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:8-9)

This is the good life. Certainly it’s the life of peace. Surely it’s the life of excellence. If anything is excellent think it, say it, and do it.

Paul had an ongoing problem when he tried to lead people to this good life because (based on his experience and based on everything he knew about Jesus) he had such a strong idea about where this good life came from. Paul believed that the good life came from a cross. But he shared this message with a world that saw nothing excellent about the cross.

The message of this cross was the message of Jesus, and Jesus was such a wonderful guy. But it was God who came in Jesus and died a terrible, tortured, and bloody death on a cross outside Jerusalem.

The purpose of this death was to set a whole world of people free. It was to save humanity from a life that surely can’t keep on going the way it has. (How many times do we look at this world and say that things can’t keep on going this way?) The purpose of the cross was to save humanity from a way of life that ought to be completely unsustainable to a life that is so good that it will never end.

The kingdom of God is the kingdom of this new way of life; this future that God promises to those who believe. The problem has always been that the key ingredient of this kingdom was (and still is) the terrible death of the king of this kingdom on a cross.

As Paul found, the problem was that the heart of this message was ugly, painful, and about human evil. We have never seen a real death on a cross, no matter how well it may be portrayed in the movies. Nevertheless, we still know that the cross was ugly, and painful, and (somehow) about human evil: our own evil.

The serpent in our own heart is slithering all around that cross. Who wants to think about this? Is any normal person really attracted to this?

Paul knew this was a problem. He ran across the conflict over and over again. Over and over again, when the subject of the cross came up, it was never surprising to find that the cross provoked a riot or the imprisonment of Paul and his friends.

Paul wrote this: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) “We preach Christ crucified…Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:23-24)

The cross is the power of God. It is how God gets his best and most important work done.

The cross is the wisdom of God. It is how God thinks. It is what God loves and values.

The cross is the power and wisdom of God who is passionately devoted to loving us and creating a kingdom that will contain and nurture our new life, our good life; the best of all lives. The power and wisdom of God have designed a life for us where we are assured of living well and thinking well forever. It is a kingdom that will give us the excellence we were created for.

But, because the power and wisdom of God are cross-shaped, the hitch is that our living well and thinking well will have to be cross-shaped as well. It means that our life as a family and our life in the church will have to be cross-shaped.

If it isn’t, then whatever we choose to do and however we choose to think will not get us very far. Without the weakness and foolishness of the cross we will not give a very strong or wise showing in the end.

God’s cross-shaped thinking required a real cross for God to save us: to give us a sacrifice that was so extreme that there is no other way to receive it except by dying to ourselves. In order to have faith in the cross, and to really trust what God, in Christ, has done on the cross, we have to realize that our own need is just as extreme as the cross.

The cross tells us that God’s wisdom has taken a good look at our lives. God’s wisdom has taken a good look at the way our hearts and minds work, and God has seen that we are dying because of our distance and isolation from him. His thoughts are not our thoughts and our ways are not his ways. (Isaiah 55:8)

There is no life outside of him. The wisdom of God tells him that the only way for him to reach us, and the only solution for what is keeping us away from him, is for God (in all his power and wisdom) to die in our place.

Whatever is wise, or smart, or clever, or strong, or talented, or excellent in us is not enough to compete with the love of a cross-shaped God. “For since (in the wisdom of God) the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased, through the foolishness of what was preached, to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:21)

In Jesus, God came as a servant. Jesus said, “But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:27) This is what it means to know this God: to know the Jesus of the cross.

The church of Jesus in the Greek city of Corinth was a great church that was forgetting how to live as the children of a cross-shaped God. The church is the body of Christ and Christ is the head of the church; but the body of Christ in Corinth was acting like my body does. My body doesn’t always do what its head tells it to do.

The church in Corinth forgot who they were when the message of the cross first took hold of them. “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-27) There is something gallant about this; something excellent.

In Christ, the cross-shaped God hung on a real cross as if he were really weak and foolish, and this is how he served us and saved us. This same God called the Corinthian Christians and us to identify with his strange excellence.

We are called to be weak and foolish for the sake of the kingdom of God; or at least to be willing to feel that way. It is what we feel when we are facing our greatest challenges. It is what we feel when are seeking to live out our most important purposes in life.

I bet the best parents often feel weak and foolish in the face of their children. It must happen whether they are getting up in the middle of the night with their babies, or calming a child in the middle of a tantrum, or motivating their teenagers, or praying for their adult children. Surely such parents (in the middle of feeling weak and foolish) pray to say and do the strongest and wisest things.

Weakness and foolishness apply to friendship because (whether you are a child or an adult) friendship can call you to be more than a friend. It can call you to be a servant. How can you help your friend?

A community can make you feel weak and foolish. How do you get people to work together? How do you get people to drop their emotional responses for the sake of what needs to be done? To maintain a community requires people to serve even when (and especially when) their calling makes them feel weak and foolish.

The family of the church requires its members and its servants to feel weak and foolish with each other in order to go on acting like real Christians together. The calling of the church makes us feel weak and foolish when we think about how to share and live the message of the cross for the sake of those outside the church.

Family, friendship, community, church and so many other relationships: these are just a few of our special callings. The truth is that all of these callings are part of the good life. In every calling, the cross-shaped life is essential for excellence. The cross-shaped life is how we go the distance when we are tempted to take the easy way instead of the purpose of God.

Paul wrote about going to Corinth “in weakness, and fear, and with much trembling.” (1 Corinthians 2:3) This is because he knew that whatever he said or did among the people there (whether they believed or not) was (in the light of eternity) a matter of life and death. It was a matter of showing the way to life. Paul was no coward, but he took his serving seriously.

Our message is “Christ crucified”. It is about a cross-shaped God. The cross can represent so many of the challenges we don’t want to deal with and, yet, the cross is about love.

It is the love that is extreme enough to make a difference and nurture life. The cross is a message about gratitude and thanks for what love is willing to do. If we are weak and foolish, then we have a God who knows us just as well as he knows himself.

We have a God who will take responsibility for us. We have a God of patience. We have a God whose power and wisdom are perfectly matched to our every need. We have a God of grace revealed on the cross.

The cross is the power and wisdom of God. It is the way that God’s best work gets done in us and through us. This is the key ingredient for the good life. The cross is the real meaning and measure of excellence from God’s point of view.

The Truth behind Freedom

Preached on Sunday, July 7, 2013

Scripture readings: Deuteronomy 10:12-22; John 8:31-36



Photos from June 2013 Vacation
Shaniko, Oregon and the Drive toward Klamath Falls, OR

A warlord in central Asia liked to play the part of a judge. When prisoners were brought to him for a decision he would condemned them, and he would offer them this choice: the firing squad, or the black door. Most chose death by firing squad, even though they were never told what was on the other side of the black door.

A visiting general watched the warlord at his game, and asked him what was on the other side of the black door. The warlord answered, “Freedom, and only a few have been brave enough to take it.” (Timothy J. Helm, “Parables, Etc.”; May ’85)

Jesus promised to give freedom to those who follow him, hold onto him, listen to him, believe in him, trust him, walk with him, and do what he teaches. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

The surprise is that some of the people who had the most problem with this were the very people who believed in him. Why would the people who believed in Jesus, even for only a short while, not want to know Jesus’ brand of truth and experience Jesus’ brand of freedom?

When Jesus told them that they would know the truth, the message was clear that he thought they didn’t know the truth yet. They believed in him without truly know who he was. They believed in him in the belief that he would turn out to be something that he had no intention of being.

As Jesus spoke to them, they felt tricked. They felt that, with Jesus, they were the victims of a bait and switch scheme. When they believed in Jesus, they did it in order to buy a ticket to a destination of their own choosing. Instead, Jesus refused to give out any tickets except to his own destination.

They knew what they wanted. They wanted Israel to beat and rule the Romans. They wanted Israel to be the kingdom of God in the sense of being the boss of the world, and they would be in on the bossing. That was their truth. That was the truth that would make them free to be free with the kind of freedom they wanted. They thought that Jesus could make this happen. They thought that believing would pay the way for this ticket.

Instead, the freedom of Jesus was a ticket to an unknown destination. The only clue about that destination was Jesus himself. Did Jesus seem like the kind of guy who would let them be what they wanted to be, and let them have what they wanted to have?

Jesus was like a black door to them. He wasn’t to be trusted if they couldn’t depend on him to lead them on their own terms. Jesus offered them a truth that was on his terms. They would have to let Jesus always be Jesus and nothing else. And Jesus offered them a freedom that was probably going to turn into the freedom of being like Jesus and nothing else.

The truth was that Jesus didn’t accept the way they wanted to take him. He intended to be something quite different. And Jesus clearly had ambitions for them that were not to their liking. They didn’t understand Jesus and they didn’t understand what Jesus wanted to do with them. Jesus was a black door to them.

Jesus saw a truth about them that they didn’t want to see, and he wanted them to see this truth that they could not accept. Jesus had come to save them from a reality that they were desperate to deny at all costs. In the end they would rather kill Jesus than face the truth and deal with it.

And that is what they did, and yet that is exactly why he came.

The truth they didn’t want to see was their sin and slavery. The truth was that his kingdom would only fight to topple the kingdom of sin and slavery and the power it had over the human race.

In the Hebrew language of the Old Testament sin is often something like finding that you have crossed a line that should not be crossed. It means finding yourself stuck in a place you should not be.

In the Greek language of the New Testament, sin is an archery word in which you miss the mark. You are both the archer and the arrow. You overshoot or undershoot. You veer to the left or the right. In the end, you find yourself stuck in a place where you should not be.

In both cases you find yourself outside of your true home. You find yourself outside your true mark, your true place; the place of the prize, the place you belong. You find yourself outside of true freedom in a place you should not be.

Jesus used the image of slavery for this. The slave looks at free people without having the power to be one. The slave is on the wrong side of a line, or outside the mark. The slave can only look at freedom from the outside.

The Ten Commandments show us what true freedom is, as much as they show us what the outside looks like.

There are the commandments about the slavery of having other gods, and the slavery of making images of God. These commandments are meant to protect the freedom of having a God who is everything that God can be: the God of gods and the Lord of lords. (Exodus 21:1-7, Deuteronomy 10:17)

Deuteronomy says that we have a God of “great and awesome wonders” who wouldn’t be anything less; a God to fear, and love, and serve, and walk with; a God to hold on tight to, with all our heart and soul. How can we be happy with a God who is anything less; a small god who bargains, and negotiates, and changes his mind, even to suite us?

So many times, in our desire to be free, we have made choices that trapped us and hurt others and ourselves. The commandments tell us of the danger of seeking a smaller god who will let us be free. Jesus promises us the freedom given by the infinite God of gods and Lord of lords.

The law of the Sabbath is God’s protection against the slavery of not being able to rest, and not being able to enjoy and take pleasure in his gifts and his world. Sabbath is the freedom of rest, and peace, and appreciation, and thanksgiving. It is about joy and pleasure. (Exodus 21:8-11) It is about praise. (Deuteronomy 10:21) We are truly free when we can stop and count our blessings. In Jesus, God gives us everything we need. Only in Jesus can we be truly free.

The command to honor father and mother protects us from the slavery of thinking that what made you and shaped your life has nothing worthwhile to give you, and you owe nothing to it. The freedom to honor those who have been a father and mother to you, and even to honor those who did the best they could even when that doesn’t seem like much, is the freedom to say that you have something to give because of what was given to you. (Exodus 21:12)

Because of whatever shaped your life, because of those people who shaped your life, you know something that no one else knows. You have something to give that no one else has. This is the freedom to say that God never makes junk.

The commandments give you the freedom that comes from knowing that the lives of all people are holy, because they are made in the image of God. (Exodus 21: 13) Freedom comes from knowing that all relationships are holy and that they are not to be betrayed, because they give us a way of knowing the God who created us for a relationship with him. (Exodus 21:14) Freedom comes from knowing that the truth is holy because God made all things real, and God’s reality is not to be tampered with or broken by lies. God’s reality is the solid ground that we explore and build our life on. (Exodus 21:16)

Freedom comes from knowing that it is good for you to have what you have, and being truly glad for having it, knowing that you can make good use of it. And the same freedom comes from knowing that it is good for others to have what they have, and to be truly glad for their having what they have, and not needing to have it yourself. This is the freedom protected by the commandment, “You shall not covet. (Exodus 21:15, 17)

Slavery means looking at these great freedoms from the outside. Sin, in our deepest nature, makes us such slaves. Knowing the truth means knowing that God sets us free.

God bases his gift of freedom on real actions that he undertakes for our sake.  “He is your God who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes.” (Deut. 10:21) It is the nature of the God we meet in Jesus to be the instigator, and actor, and achiever of our freedom. “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)

We are not made free by the inspiration of fine words spoken by the Lord, or by his best wishes for our success. We are set free by the direct actions of the Lord, who led his people out of slavery in Egypt in a real journey through a real wilderness to a real Promised Land.

We are set free by the real, direct actions of Jesus on a real cross, truly dying for our sins. He truly died like a slave, on the cross, to take our slavery away. He took our place so that he was the one looking in from the outside, on the cross.

In our reading from Deuteronomy, Moses lets up on the language of slavery, and he simply calls God’s people aliens. Aliens are also people on the outside looking in. Moses told God’s people to remember the truth that they were once aliens, because the truth about being alien gave them the task of bringing others in; bringing them into the freedom of the people of God.

The Lord did real things for his people and he wanted them to remember this so that they would be motivated to do real things for others. The Lord who came to Israel in Egypt, and who came to us in Jesus, wants us to bring outsiders in. Who are the outsiders you know? Maybe there are people that you know you don’t know, and your job is to find a way to bring them in.

The Lord wants us to make slaves free. Who is living like a slave that you know? I mean, who is trapped, who is drudging, who is struggling?

Part of the glory of God is to do real things to bring outsiders in and make slaves free. This is the freedom of God.

If you want to have the freedom that Jesus died to give you, then be givers of freedom and guides to bring the outside in. Then you will have the freedom of being sons and daughters of God. You will be brothers and sisters of Jesus. No one is truly free until he or she is as gracious as God is gracious.

We are a nation with a story and a mission, to bring the outsiders in, and to set the slaves and the oppressed free (except those for those who were brought here to be slaves but, hopefully we have gotten beyond that). Our founders believed that maintaining a land of freedom was like offering a door to the world.

Freedom was the door to go through, in order to find out who you truly are in the sight of God, and to find the life you were created for, instead of someone else having the power of telling you who you are supposed to be. Because of the influence of the gospel and the Bible in early America, our founders believed that freedom was the door through which people could discover their identity as creatures made in the image of God. We are set free when we hear Jesus tell us, through his cross and his resurrection, who we really are

There were people listening to Jesus (and even believing in him) who decided that this freedom was not for them. They didn’t want Jesus to tell them who the really were. I wonder what became of them.

 Knowing the truth isn’t the same as knowing a thing, or an idea, or a fact. Knowing the truth means knowing Jesus, because Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) What Jesus says about “if you hold to my teachings (or to “my word”)” tells us to hold onto him, because the most important teaching of Jesus are about who he is, and what he will do for us and through us.

Faith is a way of holding Jesus so that we can know him. That is the truth behind all freedom.

Pilgrimage: Waking Up Far from Home

At this posting, I just got back from a two week working vacation to my home town of Live Oak CA, to spend time with family and some old friends and to do some work for my mom. I Got back to Washtucna with barely any time to prepare a new sermon so I re-worked a sermon from 2008. We had some missionaries speaking at the Washtucna Community Church so I preached this message at the United Methodist Church (my other congregation),  in Kahlotus WA on Sunday June 30, 2013.

Photos Taken June 2013 Traveling South
Through Eastern Washington and Oregon

Scripture readings: Colossians 3:1-17; Psalm 120



My Polish ancestors came to America around the turn of the twentieth century. They came here from the part of Poland that was occupied by the Russian Empire, in the days when the czars, the emperors of the Russians, ruled.

Poland had once been a large, strong, prosperous country; with great historical traditions and achievements. But it had been conspired against, and picked apart, and divided, and occupied by its neighbors.

The Russians decided to suppress the Polish language and culture, and make Russians out of the Polish people. Things got more and more strict and threatening. There were spies everywhere, and there were arrests, and deportations to Siberia.

One day, one of my especially adventurous Polish ancestors had enough. He woke up one morning to do something bold and decisive.

It was the czar’s birthday. There would be a parade in his honor. Soldiers would carry banners with the portraits of the czar and his family through the streets of every town.

What could my ancestor do about this? My ancestor had eggs. Yes, he had rotten eggs. And, he threw an egg at the portrait of the czar, and hit it right on.

At that point, he had the choice of two journeys. He could wait till he was caught and arrested, and make a long journey east to the prisons of Siberia, or he could make a long journey in the opposite direction; a journey west, to America.

I would not exist today, if he had not had America on his mind. Once he came here, others followed. And here I am.

Paul, and the writer of the psalm, both had a journey on their minds. It wasn’t a journey you could measure in miles. It was a journey measured by a state of mind. It was a journey of the soul.

It was, for Paul, a journey, not only between earth and heaven, but between earthly things and heavenly things. Among the earthly things to leave behind, Paul mentions lies and anger. The goal of Paul’s journey was peace; the peace of Christ (Colossians 3:15).

The writer of the psalm suddenly wakes up and realizes that he is caught in a land of lies and conflict, when what he really wants is peace. He is “a man of peace”, as we read it in English. But the Hebrew interestingly says, “I am peace.” (Psalm 120:7) It is as if he feels himself to be almost completely alien from the people around him. “I am peace, but when I speak, they are for war.”

The psalm doesn’t tell us that he is going on a journey, but his psalm became a journey psalm. It became traveling music, because it became one of the “Songs of Ascents”. It is the first of a set of fifteen psalms, arranged in a row, that were sung on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

“A Song of Ascents” means a song for “ascending”. It is a song for going up. If you start on a journey from almost anywhere in the Holy Land, with Jerusalem as your destination, you will have to ascend and go up, because Jerusalem is up in the highlands of Judah.

There would be a great reason for going up to Jerusalem. The great things that the Lord had done for the people of Israel were celebrated there in the Temple. The old stories were told and retold on the great holy days; with music, and singing, and feasting.

The great things God had done were saving things. The stories that were told in Jerusalem during Passover, and Pentecost, and Tabernacles, were about the Lord saving them from slavery in Egypt. They were about the escape from slavery, and the long, hard journey to freedom in the Promised Land.

The reason for the success of their journey was not because God’s people were bigger than others, or stronger than others. Their journey to freedom was a success because their God was big. The Lord answered the little and the weak in their cry for help.

They were not successful because they were more righteous than others, or smarter, or wiser, or cleverer; because they weren’t. They were successful because the Lord was wise. The Lord knew what was good for them.

They were not successful because they were richer than others; because they had nothing but what they could carry on their backs, or put on the back of a donkey. They were successful because the Lord was abundant. The Lord provided what they needed.

Most of all they were successful because they had help. They had God’s help. They had God’s grace; God’s gracious, patient, unconditional love. God’s help brought them safely out of a world of slavery into a world of freedom and peace; if only they would remain faithful to God.

The writer of the psalm woke up to find himself living in a strange world full of people who didn’t believe in grace. He saw that his own people did not live together in grace and peace.

Lies and fighting came far too easily in his world, because people believed in themselves more than they believed in grace. Their lives were all about themselves; so, in their hearts and in their relationships, they were people of war instead of people of peace.

The lands of Meshech and Kedar were not the real home of the writer of the psalm. If you lived in Meshech and Kedar you would have to live in two completely different places at the same time, because Meshech was many hundreds of miles north from the land of Israel. And Kedar was south of them, on the Arabian Peninsula.

Meshech and Kedar were a state of mind; a life of the soul. The writer of the psalm names them because they were famous for being treacherous and warlike; and because he felt, in his heart, so far away from where the Lord wanted him to be. He felt anywhere but home, even though he was at home.

The psalm writer was writing from the land of his birth. He was writing about his own people (God’s own people), but he felt like a stranger among them. They were people who were living a lie. He himself had been living and believing a lie without knowing it; believing in himself more than he had believed in the grace and the peace of God.

No one really lived by the grace of God. They lived by their wits, and by their strengths. They lived by manipulation. They lived by maneuvering themselves into control. They lived by putting others in their place. They lived lives where lies and conflict could be a very helpful way of life.

The writer of the psalm woke up to find his heart in a different place, or yearning for a different place; as if he were an alien in his own home.

This is the beginning of repentance. Repentance requires a new heart that wants to go on a journey in a new direction.

They say that if you put a frog in hot water, it will sense this and jump right out. But, if you put it in a pot of lukewarm water, and put the pot on a stove, and bring the temperature up slowly, the frog will not notice the heat until it is dead.

We are created in God’s image, but the change in our nature that comes from our separation from God is like a slowly heating pot of water. The whole human race is like a pot of frogs on a slowly heating burner, but the grace of God gives us a very un-frog-like notion of where we are and where we should be.

Then we see Jesus and we set our hearts “on things that are above”. We see God’s compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience in Jesus. We see forgiveness revealed to us on the cross where Jesus died for our sins to give us a new life.

We see that here is something different. We see that, in Jesus there is something that (if we surrendered to it and embraced it) would make us different people. We would be our true, God-given selves.

Lies and conflict would have no place in us. We would be people of peace because the peace of Christ would rule in our hearts. We would be peace, just as Jesus is peace.

Christians are people on a journey. We wake up to the world as it is because the Lord wakes us up. He sets us on pilgrimage to a life of freedom and peace.

The destination of this journey is beyond this world; but we know what it is, and we can see it clearly ahead, and we start to live as if we were already there, when we look at Jesus.

Jesus Started It: Exposing the Shadow Kingdom

Preached on Sunday, June 9, 2013.

Scripture readings: Acts 13:4-12; Ephesians 6:10-20

Paul and Barnabas were honored to be invited into the presence of the Roman governor of Cyprus to tell him the message about Jesus. They found that he was, in so many ways, the perfect audience for the good news.



Photos Taken around the Church & Manse In Washtucna WA

He was intelligent; which didn’t mean that he was merely very smart. Being merely smart can cause so much trouble. Intelligence meant that he could understand, and sort things out, and see what was really there, and come to the right conclusion. And this intelligent audience had a wizard, a sorcerer, right by his side.

We can’t be sure that Barnabas and Paul knew about the sorcerer from the start. There was some shifting in what they knew. There was some shifting in what they knew they had to do about it.

There was a kind of inspiration involved on Paul’s part. We read that he was, “filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas (the wizard)” and spoke judgment upon him. (Acts 13:9)

While Barnabas and Paul were trying to share their faith and lead the governor to faith in Jesus, the sorcerer “opposed them and tried to turn the governor from the faith.” There was this growing conflict until the Holy Spirit opened the eyes of Paul to who this man named Elymas was, and what he stood for. The conflict was an outbreak of what has been called “spiritual warfare.”

I know, from my own experience that such warfare is real and that it is going on all the time. There is the Kingdom of God and there is the Shadow Kingdom of this present darkness. There are armies of these kingdoms fighting some kind of war that we can’t see, but that war involves us and has an affect on us.

At the same time, I want to avoid obsession. C. S. Lewis said, "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them." (C.S. Lewis, “The Screwtape Letters”)

I think our human race can fall into the same pair of opposite errors related to angels: either to disbelieve in them or to have an unhealthy interest in them. Angels almost never make their presence known unless they have a special mission that requires them to communicate with us.

Elymas the wizard probably would never have called his familiar spirits devils. They were just spirits, and maybe even gods to him. Or he thought they were angels at his service. As Paul says, “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Paul, in his thoughts on our struggle against “the spiritual forces of evil”, doesn’t tell us much about either devils or angels. The angels may well be working or fighting all around us but, for Paul, the main point is all about living inside of the spiritual realities that come to us through Jesus: truth, righteousness, the good news of peace, faith, the Spirit and word of God, and prayer. He calls this our armor, or our defense. He calls it our means of standing through it all; standing up in resistance and going forward. (Ephesians 6:11)

I have seen angels, myself, a few times. One summer night, when I was sixteen, I struggled with an invisible devil until I was able to say, “Go away, in Jesus’ name and don’t come back.”

That is one way of being aware of a spiritual warfare but there is no need whatsoever for any kind of experience like that. In fact, if you tried looking for experiences like this it might get you in a lot of trouble. I would solemnly warn you that there are much more important and necessary ways to be aware of such a warfare.

Paul said for us to be aware of it in the form of things like truth, and peace, and faith, and prayer. Our hold on the truth, and the peace that comes from the good news, and a faith and loyalty toward God in our heart, and all kinds of prayer make us part of the warfare.

Seeing these in others is also a way in which we take part. We see the armies of the kingdom of God when people live out the truth, and bring peace to others, and patiently cope by faith and prayer; trusting and communicating with God.

At such times, you see and feel the unseen. You see and feel the power of God living in others and living in you. You see it in the love and integrity of families. You see it in the baptism of babies, and children, and adults. You see it in weddings. You see it in holy funerals.

You see the glory of the armies of the kingdom of light. You see people living out what God is putting into them, but you also see it as a sign of the march of a whole kingdom (a whole new world) on the move; holding out and advancing against the darkness.

On the other side of the war, it is easy to see the sadness and the badness lurking in human nature; but sometimes you see something much worse. You see self-fulfilling fears. You see self-destructive behavior. You see the irresistible and irrational descent into misunderstanding and misinterpretation between people who should be working together; people who should be friends, or who should love each other.

You see something beyond human weakness. Sometimes you hear the cackling laughter of the spiritual forces of darkness.

Paul was aware of something strange in his meeting with the governor. There was this other man. His name was Bar-Jesus (bar-Joshua, son of Joshua, a common name) Elymas (a Jewish and a Greek combination). In this way he was just like Saul who was also Paul (Saulus Paulus, a Jewish and Roman combination). One was a Jew who had turned into a sorcerer. The other was a Jew who had turned into a Christian. They had parted ways. They had been swept apart by the forces of the spiritual warfare.

The Romans were so much about mastery and control, and this Roman governor was being mastered by the sorcerer every time Paul tried to share Jesus with him. The governor was “intelligent”, meaning that he had a gift for putting things and ideas together. He had the skill to see where and how things added up, and he was oddly not able to hold on to anything Paul said.

In the governor’s oddly disabled intelligence Paul saw something more than the work of a man who simply posed as a sorcerer. He saw that Elymas was more than a poser.  He saw that the spiritual forces of evil were at work.

The power and the wisdom of God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, filled Paul. So Paul could speak for God and put his finger on exactly what was going on. Paul saw the hand of God was at work in this moment of time. God himself was there with Paul to face the spiritual forces.

The interesting thing is that, as far as we know, nothing worse happened to the sorcerer than what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus where Paul had met Jesus. Paul, too, had been blinded for a time, and had to be led by the hand, just like Elymas. (Acts 9:8 and 13:11)

Paul’s blindness and having to be led by the hand were the mercy of Jesus. They were part of the story of Paul’s salvation. They could be part of the salvation of Elymas. When it all happened to Paul it was a matter of hope. The salvation and hope that come through Jesus are the power that created the armor of God.

They come to us not as a feeling but as a fact. Jesus, and everything he has done for us, almost forces itself upon us in a way that leads us to repent and surrender. We see Jesus, and the cross, and the resurrection. How can we say no to what he shows us? How can we escape?

We see the truth of it; and it is that truth (that factuality) that serves like a belt that holds our lives together: the belt of truth. However much we may struggle, Jesus has made the fact of his love, the truth of his love, just as great a reality as any of our struggles.

There is the “breastplate of righteousness” where everything is set right. Jesus is the righteousness of God and our righteousness too. He is the justice of God who sets us right with himself and with ourselves.

In the cross of Christ we die to ourselves. From the tomb of Jesus we rise as new people who can stand against the devil, because Jesus has made us right before God.

We are still sinners, but Jesus stands up for us against all accusers. The word “devil” means accuser. The spiritual warfare seeks to accuse us and make us give up. The grace of God in Jesus enables us to stand up.

There is “the shoeing of your feet with the gospel of peace”. Paul almost never says anything in a simple way. The gospel means good news. The good news of Jesus gives us peace with God, but it also gives us peace in every way. In Hebrew, the word peace is shalom and it is all about relationships. It doesn’t mean an absence of conflict it means all relationships are healthy and flourishing.

The spiritual warfare attacks us when we are not nurturing our most important relationships. Or the warfare tempts us to mess with our most important relationships. The gospel of peace prepares us to stop and pay attention to people. The peace of Christ teaches us how to nurture our relationships and this protects us, and it protects them, from the spiritual forces of evil.

There is “the shield of faith” and faith is a kind of loyalty and trust in God, in Jesus. Loyalty listens to Jesus instead of listening to our doubts, or despair, or weariness, or weakness, or our strongest desires and temptations.

Loyalty and trust helps us to listen to Jesus who forgives our sins, and so we have another way to defend ourselves than by proving ourselves, or by justifying ourselves, or by pretending we are something other than what we are. True faith saves us from pride as well as from fear.

Then there is the “helmet of salvation”. When I was seventeen I drowned, but I was saved from the lake. I was rescued from the water by Charlie Lucas.

I was rescued, then I was resuscitated, then I was safe and alive. Salvation is our rescue by God in Jesus, and we are safe. Knowing we are safe in Christ is how we stand up to the struggle of the war.

Then there is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”. In Isaiah chapter eleven we can see the power of the Lord working through the Holy Spirit, and through the Messiah. Isaiah wrote like this, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him; the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.” (Isaiah 11:1-4)

This would tell us that the sword of the Spirit is the word that Jesus speaks in healing, mercy, and judgment. In a way, Paul spoke for Jesus to the sorcerer Elymas. The Spirit put his sword on Paul’s hands, or the Spirit put his sword in Paul’s mouth. The Spirit gave him God’s word to speak God’s truth. It sounded like judgment, and yet it had the potential for mercy.

In spiritual warfare, we can see things as they are, and name them for what they are. At the same time, we can also leave the door of mercy open. We know that the sword of the Spirit has been given us with an end in view; to make all things new.

Then there is prayer. Prayer isn’t given a name as a part of the armor of God. Yet, maybe it is also part of the sword of the Spirit. In Romans chapter eight, Paul says, “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26)

In the spiritual struggle we may be too tired, or confused, or frustrated to know how to pray, but God’s own words and thoughts (what we would pray if we were faithful, and loving, and wise) gets said. The word of God gets said I prayer, and that prayer changes things.

What God does for us in Christ is the real armor that we wear. God is our strength. The Lord’s Supper tells us this. Here is the gospel set upon a table. “Eat and be strong,” it says. “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” (Ephesians 6:10) “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

Treading Water, Or Walking on It

Preached on Sunday, June 2, 2013

 

Scripture readings: Psalm 104:24-26; Matthew 14:22-33

Photos from Southern California, June 2012

I love the ocean. My only problem with the ocean is that I know about it the same way I know about most things in life: by reading a lot about it, by looking at it from the shore and by wading in no deeper than my waist. I have never been on the ocean.

That being said; I love the ocean. I lived about a mile from it for over five years during the time I served my first church on the south coast of Oregon. But I don’t seem to manage to get to the ocean any more than once a year, or once every two years.

If I love the ocean so much, why haven’t I been on the ocean? It’s almost embarrassing. I don’t think it is because I am afraid. It is because I have either been too poor, or too cheap to go. And (just as truthfully) I have not gone out on the ocean because I have been too busy, too preoccupied, too distracted with other things.

The sea that the people of the Bible liked the best was the Sea of Galilee. That is probably because it is not an ocean at all, it’s only a great big lake. The people of Israel were awestruck by the real ocean. It was majestic. It was huge, and it reminded them of the power of God. But they were afraid of it.

It meant danger. It represented chaos and death, and all the uncontrollable and the undependable in life. The ocean was the place where you could lose everything, including yourself.

The ocean means a lot to me. It’s one of the most serene and restful places to be. And then, I have stood on the shore of the ocean in times of storm and seen the trunks of huge trees tossed in the air by the raging surf. I have seen waves break on the cliffs and send plumes of spray over a hundred feet up and over the tops of those cliffs.

I once spent hours in an emergency shelter in my small, coastal town, waiting for news of an approaching tsunami. The emergency point where everyone was waiting was, as we all knew, only ten feet above sea level. We waited there as we were told, but we felt strangely vulnerable.

So I have watched the ocean and had some experience of its majesty, its power, and its fearsomeness.

I have never counted them, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that half the mentions of the ocean, in the Bible, are negative ones, fearful ones. They are full of the notions of all the things that could go wrong.

The people of the Bible knew that God made the ocean. They knew that God rules the ocean. They accepted the fact (technically) God should be able to take care of them out on the ocean. But it gave them the shivers and they didn’t want to go there.

Very few of the people of the Bible would have been capable of putting the ocean in a song of wonder and delight like the Psalm we read. Very few could write words like the psalm we heard, which I am going to read in a paraphrased version, “O, look --- the deep, wide sea, brimming with fish past counting, sardines and sharks and salmon. Ships plow those waters, and Leviathan, your pet dragon, romps in them.” (Psalm 104:25-26, “The Message” by Eugene Peterson)

The difference with this writer was attitude. You could call it mental attitude, but the writer says that it comes from God; and that makes the attitude spiritual. It’s a thing called faith.

There was a high school kid named Ralph Asher who wrote about his experience in track. He wrote, “Running is a mental sport. You have to be insane to do it.”

He wrote how, in just a few months he trained to run in a half-Marathon. He grew from barely being able to run three miles to making the 13.1 miles of a half-Marathon. He said that there were some words by the apostle Paul that meant a lot to him in his running. Paul wrote: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race: I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7) (Ralph J. Asher, in “Devo-zine, Sept.-Oct. 2003, p. 53)

It isn’t just running that is mental, or spiritual. If life out there is like an ocean, what does that mean to you? Is life out there about joy, and beauty, and even fear?

The matter of making the ocean a thing of joy and beauty is partly mental but (much more than that) it is spiritual. It is a matter of faith. Life as an ocean is not just a mental problem. It is a gift: a matter of faith. This is how it is with life. This is how it is with the future. It is a matter of the confidence we call faith.

When Peter stepped out on the water of the stormy Sea of Galilee, in the middle of the night, to walk with Jesus, and Jesus said to him, “O, you of little faith,” I think Jesus was joking. Peter had dared to do a daring thing because Jesus said, “Come!” He did it for Jesus. He wouldn’t do it for anyone else.

The Sea of Galilee had always been Peter’s life. But he would never dream of walking on it, without Jesus, so he dared to do a daring thing, and it looked a lot like faith.

There are a lot of things about Peter, and about this part of the story, that loving parents would not want their kids to imitate. It does seem that Peter is a person who is reckless and takes unnecessary risks. Just like his walking on the water, on more than one occasion Peter got in way over his head. Parents don’t want their kids to imitate that.

Just being a fisherman could be (and still is) dangerous. You kids! We don’t want you to do dangerous things, not unless they are great, good things, and not unless you believe that these great, good things are the very things that you are really and truly called to do.

One thing you can say for Peter is that he was always willing to stretch. He was always making mistakes, and he was always learning from them (although it took some time for that learning to show). Sometimes it might seem that he had little faith, but he was always growing in faith.

Parents might want me to point out that Peter made a mistake when he thought that he would be in no danger at all if he went out on the water with Jesus. He seemed to think that there would be no risk to his risky behavior if Jesus was with him.

Peter found, by experience, that this was not true. Going with Jesus was often risky behavior. Faith could mean taking a risk that was a real risk.

In Jesus we see the behavior of a God who did the daring and dangerous deed of going from heaven, to earth, to hell (to hell, at least for a visit, after his crucifixion). He did this daring and dangerous deed for the world he loved, and for each one of us. In Jesus, God did not make safety or comfort his priority. He did not take his own glory seriously.

Although he was God, he became human in Jesus. He became a servant who died for the sins of the world. He died as a daring deed to win you and give you life: live abundant and everlasting. So what would it mean to follow him? What does it mean to have faith in a God like that?

You might follow Jesus and sink. But again, I believe, that although you may sink with Jesus, with Jesus you will never be sunk. That’s how it went with Peter. That makes the difference. Faith means knowing that (with Jesus), whatever happens, you are not sunk.

Something worth doing has been done and, from that point, there is always a next thing that can be done. Faith has a clear head to assess what that next thing is, that you will do with Jesus.

Peter grew as a result of his adventure. His growth went two ways. He understood himself better; that is, he had a clearer idea, now, of what he was made of. And, secondly, Peter knew Jesus much better.

Self confidence is very helpful, but self confidence can sometimes make you forget yourself. Peter grew, and his life ripened, when he discovered his own limitations. He knew what he could do and what he probably couldn’t do, and he dared to do a thing worth doing anyway. In this way he grew in his confidence in the Lord. Peter grew in that gift called faith.

There is a self confidence that comes when you begin to learn (as Peter was only beginning to learn) that his life was a miracle and he could live in the joy of what Jesus gave him to do. That was something he could have confidence in.

Peter, I think, wanted his life to be a miracle. It was the very thing Jesus offered when he told Peter, “Come, follow me.” Peter wanted to be extraordinary. And I hope you do too.

We see, from the story, that the ambition of being extraordinary is a scary ambition. Some people have handled it far worse than Peter. This is often because they don’t understand that life is a miracle. There is a book by Wendell

Some people seem to never know this. Sometimes the curse of growing up is losing the ability to see that you are a miracle in the making, and that everyone else is too.

People get bogged down, and stressed out, and burdened. They misunderstand the purpose for which God has made them. People lose their sense of wonder and the lights go out. This is a horrible mistake. It is a thing that God does not intend for human life; for the lights to go out.

Peter was often foolish, and reckless. He often wildly overestimated himself, and overestimated his faith; but, on the waves of the Sea of Galilee, Peter did something that no other human being has ever done. Having so little faith, he did walk on water with Jesus. And Peter went on to make many other mistakes and learn from them, too. Maybe that is what made him a miracle.

The Bible does not tell us to be optimists or pessimists. It tells us to be people of faith. Just as true athletes know that sports is not just physical but mental, some actually know that sports can be spiritual.

So it is with life. Nine people out of ten may see no wonder out there, or in themselves. They might accomplish a lot of things. They might make a lot out of themselves, but they are doing this with the lights out. They are still only dog paddling, staying afloat, treading water in the ocean of God; in the ocean of faith.

What I hope and pray for you is this: that you know for yourself that the world is God’s ocean and you are God’s child called to launch out on the waves, or walk on them. Don’t just tread water. Have faith, and keep walking, and maybe you’ll wind up walking on water. Someday, I believe, that you will look back and see that this is exactly what you have done.