Bergen Family gathering
OT Reading: Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm: Psalm 103:8-14
NT Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Homily – Isaiah 58:1-12
Isaiah’s words will be our focus this evening. They may seem, at first glace, simple or one-dimensional: God isn’t listening because Israel isn’t getting it right. However, if we listen closely, I believe we will hear greater complexity (multi-dimensionality) than we have previously assumed. His words are given to us today, Ash Wednesday, to reveal something about the connection between dust/ash and our human identity. Let us listen.
Why do we fast, but you do not see?The people are questioning God. Why don’t you hear us? We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing – why aren’t you doing what you’re supposed to be doing?
Why humble ourselves, and you don’t even notice? (3a, NRSV)
But they also complain,
Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice? (3a, Message)
God responds.
Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways
So far so good
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake theEugene Peterson’s translation, The Message, puts it this way:
ordinance of their God. They ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw
near to God. (2, NRSV)
They’re busy, busy, busy at worship, and love studying all about me. To allWorship. Studying. Seeking. Delighting in God’s ways. These sounds like the desired characteristics of God’s people. Yet God thinks they are not a nation practicing righteousness; God thinks they are forsaking his ordinances. They may look like they are living right; however, God seems to think otherwise.
appearances they’re a nation of right-living people – law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, “What’s the right thing to do?” and love having me on their side.
(2, Message)
When trying to understand this situation, two scenarios might enter our imagination.
I work as a substitute teacher. There are some very challenging days in my line of work. Imagine with me. I am in a forth grade classroom. They are trying to get away with as much as they can because I am not their regular teacher. I am supposed to teach them a new math concept. I explain. I show them several examples on the board. I answer a few questions the students have. I summarize. Then I assign a number of problems for them to do on their own. Inevitably I get one or both of the following questions: “What are we supposed to be doing?” “I don’t get it; how do you do it?” Nine times out of ten the kids who are asking these questions are the kids who were not paying attention when I was teaching the lesson. At this point I try to contain my frustration. I am impatient. I am thinking, “You weren’t paying attention, why should I help you?” Or, in my most stressed out moments, I think, “You haven’t got it by now? You’re hopeless.” I don’t say these things, but I do think them at times. Most of the time, our schedule forces me to leave some students behind.
Is this how we imagine God is with us? Impatiently tapping his foot? Feeling his blood boil? Trying to restrain his anger or frustration? Thinking we’re hopeless? Reading to leave us behind and move to those who are more successful? At his wits end?
Remember our Psalm for today; the psalmist seems to think this is not an accurate picture of God: God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (103:8).
Another scenario we might imagine is this: A child tries to get her daddy’s attention. “Look at me. See what I can do?” Underneath those pleas for attention she is thinking: “Affirm me. Tell me I am valuable. Tell me I’m worth something. Tell me you love me. Notice, daddy; please notice.” Dad ignores her or shrugs her off or tells her to go play with her brother or talk to her mother. He’s too busy – watching TV, reading the paper, working in the garage.
Is this how we imagine God? Ignoring us because we’re not worth his time or attention? Is he telling us that we are at the core worthless? Do we have to work harder to impress him so that he’ll notice and give us what we need – his attention, his affirmation, his love? Might our performance win him over?
These two scenarios might play themselves out in our imaginations; however, the images of God they suggest are not the image the text reveals.
What is really going on then?
Israel is trying to measure up in order to sway God. If we do this, God will do this. This line of thinking presupposes that God needs convincing to be on our side. In this case, worship is a payment. What we do is mean to manipulate God, cause God to act the way we want him to. Our “worship” becomes a transaction or leverage with which to bribe or bargain with God. This line of thinking also presupposes that it is what we do that makes us the people of God. We think that our relationship with God, the covenant, is held up by our initiative. This kind of relationship is concerned with status, not relation. If we follow the rules, our relationship with God will be in right-standing; if we break the rules our relationship is in jeopardy. God will be put off or angry and we’ll have to make up for that. This is not covenant; this is contract. If someone breaks a contract, the other party is free to, and in our culture expected to, disregard or break the contract as well. This is not so with God. He is faithful no matter what.
In this passage we see Israel trying to get the law to pay out rewards, and in so doing she resists right relationship with God. Israel is interested in religion, not relationship; she wants self-determined status, not revelation – God’s self-disclosure. This is called autonomy: a law (nomos) unto one’s self (autos), self as the determiner of reality. Autonomy says humans must get to God, get him to act based on human action. Autonomy tries to set up fixed rules, human-made boundaries, instead of entering an ongoing relationship of trusting interaction with God. Essentially the autonomous human being acts as if he is in charge and needs nothing because he can manipulate everything, even God. Living in this way gives us a sense of security rooted in ourselves. If we want God to act, we know the proper words to say and behaviors to act out. If we don’t want God, we do nothing and he stays up in heaven. He comes when he’s called to act according to our wishes.
This is not right relationship; in fact this is not relationship at all. Isaiah’s words show God revealing right relationship, covenant relationship. That relationship is rooted in God being Creator and us being his creation.
God is the Creator of all that is. He is faithful in relationship to his creation. His faithfulness comes out of who he is, not out of any external factor – for example, human behavior. God, the Creator, made human beings and invited them into relationship. Humans were created to be in faithful relationship with God. Part of what this means is that humans must recognize that they are creatures, not Creator. As creatures, faithful relationship with God includes trust, dependence and humility. Trust is ongoing; we walk with God day by day trusting in his live, provision, protection, and so on. Dependence is part of that trust: we depend on God to be the Creator and sustainer of his creation, including us. Humility is the recognition of our identity as creatures and God’s identity as Creator. We do not attempt to be the Creator or try to treat God like a creature.
Our Creator God reveals to us creatures what our creaturely life is to look like; God reveals to us how to be human: he does this in the Law, through the prophets and in wisdom literature; he does this ultimately in Jesus Christ.
In our Isaiah text, God cuts through Israel’s complaints, their attempted manipulation and says:
Look, you serve your own interests on your fast day, and oppress all yourGod gets at the heart of Torah, law that points to what it means to be truly human. Israel tries to do the works of the law in a way that completely disregards the spirit of the law. Israel tries to turn the law into a bargaining tool, a way to get God to do what they want, instead of recognizing what is revealed in the law – a guide to living the creaturely lives they were designed to live. If fasting is meant to humble us, to remind us of our identity as creatures in relationship to our Creator, Israel’s fasting means nothing because it does nothing more than dirty their heads with ashes and their knees from kneeling.
workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked
fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (3b, NRSV)
God’s response shows that part of being in right relationship with the Creator includes being in right relationship with one another. Our creaturely relationships are marked by love and interdependence. We are to care for and take care of one another. We are not to exert power over one another: we are not the Creator; we are all creatures. We’re called to labor with one another and for one another in this human life God has made possible.
Obviously we haven’t “gotten it.” Remember the Psalm again – he is merciful, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He has been for us since the beginning. He is laboring to recreate us – to restore our true humanity and have us live whole lives, lives at peace. He initiates. He pursues. He is faithful, and his faithfulness is not dependent on our faithfulness (Rom 3:3).
God invites us to trust his vision for our humanity and to live as the creatures our Creator intended. God invites us to experience restored humanity by living by faith – in the faithfulness he has extended and asks us to extend to him and to one another.
God is not a Father that cannot be bothered. God is the Father of the prodigal son, who ignored shame and convention to embrace the son whom he loves. God is the woman who searches after her lost coin, sweeping out the entire house if need be. We do not have to secure God’s love for us because he is faithful, and his love endures. We do not have to work to get noticed by God; he is the God who hears his children’s prayers and cries.
God invites us to cease striving to earn what he offers freely. God invites us to trust his love, his faithfulness. God calls us into a relationship that can be counted on, a covenant relationship. And within that relationship, God liberates us to be trusting, loving, faithful people toward him and toward one another.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.When we live truly human lives, we will experience the healing, restoration, and peace God promises; we will experience deliverance from our subhuman existence, and that is salvation indeed.
If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Ashes – We are but dust and to dust we shall return.
Psalm 103:14 God knows how we were made
Genesis 2:1-7 this is how we were created
Genesis 1:31 this is very good
“I Boast No More” Caedmon’s Call
This Lent, let us be honest about the picture of God we imagine, and let us recognize how those images keep us in cycles of bondage – the bondage of striving, working, earning. Let us be honest about the way we take comfort in rules and law instead of trusting the relationship God offers. Let us be honest about the ways we assert our independence and reject our true humanity. During the weeks of Lent, let us repent of our distorted images of God and our distorted images of humanity. Let us immerse ourselves in revelation that will set us free to be human, creature in glorious covenant with our Creator.
1st Sunday in Lent, February 25, 2007
Bergen Family gathering
Play:
I Boast No More
I Want a Broken Heart
Ask someone to pray.
Read:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
Sermon
On Wednesday we used ashes to remind us of the fact that we were made from the dust and to that dust we shall return. Understanding our human identity as “from the ash” or “from the earth” is not to say that we are “lower than dirt” or “merely dust” as if the ground we come from is a symbol of what is worthless or tainted. We listened to Psalm 103 tell us that God remembers that we are dust and followed that to Genesis 1 and 2, the creation accounts and heard: In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens… the LORD God formed ha-adam (human) from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and ha-adam (human) became a living being… God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. The creation, including the human, God deems very good. The fall was just that – a fall. We fell from our “very good” humanness to a sub-humanness, a human identity wrapped up in autonomy, rejection of our limits, our dependence, our need, our inability to generate life for ourselves in our own image for our own ends. Scripture tells us that that life is no life at all. Scripture also tells that God, the faithful Creator, is working to re-create creation – including humanity. He is working to bring into being new creation in all his creatures. And that is what we are: creatures. We are not gods; we are not infinite; we are not self-sufficient. And that is good, very good. Mark Baker writes in his book, Religious No More: “In contrast to individualism, God lovingly invites us to experience our authentic personhood, not by peeling away layers of interconnectedness and interdependence, but by embracing them” (63).
Today is the first Sunday in Lent. This is the Sunday we hear about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, for this story is the story we live into during Lent. We may choose to follow the Spirit into the wilderness and fast with Jesus. In giving something up we may remind ourselves every time we want that thing of Jesus’ experience of hunger and isolation. In giving something up we may experience the weakness Jesus experienced. In giving something up we may become aware of the ways we rely on the things of the world to sustain us instead of the true Bread of Life, God’s Word, Jesus himself. And isn’t that what we are supposed to realize as we seek to embrace our “authentic personhood,” our true humanity – that one of the ways we keep ourselves in bondage to our sub-human existence is by forgetting where we come from – forgetting the source of our life? Not only did God fashion us from the dust, he breathed life into us from his very self. We often say “I am nothing without God” and I’m afraid we often embrace the connotations of “nothing” when we say this: we think – I am nothing, I am sick, broken, wrong, hopeless. We set God up as this perfect being and we see ourselves as wholly imperfect. We see God as seeing us as disgusting, unable to please him, worthless. Isn’t this the way we feel about ourselves? Our fear? And we project that feeling, that fear onto God. It is like the child who gets dismissed by a father who cannot be bothered: I am worthless, she thinks; I must work harder to be found worthwhile to my daddy. But on Wednesday we heard that this picture is not a picture of our God. Instead, when we say “I am nothing without God” we are trying to confess that God is our source, God gives us life, God sustains our life, without God we have no life. This is what we mean when we say that life is found in Christ. Outside of “in Christ” what we have is not life at all because we have not broken out of our slavery to sub-human existence. So when we give something up, when we participate in a Lenten fast, we start recognizing how we try to create or sustain life apart from God.
This Lent I am going to give up fried food. Why am I doing this? Because when I have a stressful day or week, I am too quick to go to Taco Bell, Carl’s Jr., Generals, Sonic… I am too quick to comfort myself instead of seeking comfort in the true Source of comfort. When I am bored, I am too quick to want to eat something flavorful (and the food that often comes to my mind first when I want something particularly tasty is fried food) instead of seeking the truly nourishing Word of God that fills my days with joy and purpose. When I am lazy, I am too quick to choose fast and convenient (which often means fried) food instead of that which is healthy and energy giving; my laziness gets reinforced instead of challenged, and I am less fit for the path a disciple must walk. I am trying to give up what often threatens to make me forget how I need God, and how my humanity, my creature-identity is connected to him, the Creator, the giver of life. I am trying to submit myself to learning the truth of who God is and who I am and how I am to live out that identity.
I invite you to participate in this Lenten season by following the Spirit out into the wilderness and fasting. Let us take a few minutes to quietly examine what we can choose to give up, something that we might rely on in place of our Source, the Creator God. After allowing yourself a few minutes to prayerfully consider this, spend a few minutes being vulnerable enough with each other to ask, “What do you think I use in this way that I might be able to give up for Lent so that I can position myself to learn the truth about God and myself?” And as we ask each other, let us be discerning and gentle, slow to deal out answers and quick to consider the health and wholeness of the other person.
** 8 minutes **
Play: This World Has Nothing
Turn with me to Romans 10. We have heard this passage a hundred times. It is part of the “Roman Road” or “Steps to Peace with God” approach we imagine when we talk about evangelism. It is the place we turn for assurance that even though we are not perfect, we can know we are saved. We use this passage to convince ourselves that all it takes is “faith” – understood in terms of knowing the right things about Jesus and “confessing” them. If we are Baptist (which is the denomination I belonged to when I “accepted” Christ) we might understand that the right way to do this confessing is by walking down the aisle of a church while a hymn like “Just As I Am” is playing and pray the sinner’s prayer with the pastor. If we are a teenager at a youth convention, we might understand that the right way to do this confessing is by raising our hand after the speaker has asked everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes. I would like us to put aside the images we have and make room in our imaginations to see something else.
"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:8b-13)
Up to this point Paul has been arguing that both Jews and Gentiles are included in Christ as the people of God. His argument has foreseen several objections people, particularly the Jews, might have: one of those objections have to do with the law. How can you, Paul, say that the Gentiles are welcomed into the people of God; they don’t obey the law!? They aren’t circumcised; they eat unclean foods; they do not know anything about the Sabbath. These are the things that define a Jew; these are the things that draw the boundary lines for the people of God. Are you saying the law is evil? Are you saying God is giving up on what he put in place? Is that God a God to be trusted? We often read what Paul writes and assume some of the same things: Paul is saying that salvation no longer comes by way of the law; salvation is now by faith. God is changing tactics: now instead of working for perfection, God gives us a perfect status if we say we believe in Jesus. So we come to our passage and hear: If you believe Jesus is the Son of God and that he died for your sins and that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. Salvation, the way we normally hear it, is largely a matter of knowing the right thing, and it must be so that we can stay as far away as possible from “salvation by works” – we do this by leaving out what we do (the law) from our understanding of salvation. A salvation understood in terms of knowledge is largely a salvation defined in terms of status. “Being saved” has to do with God seeing us as perfect even though we are not; it has to do with our future in heaven, not our time on earth. It seems to be that this notion of salvation leaves things just the way they are. It is God that changes (what he sees, the status he affords us), not we who change.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read Scripture I hear about a gospel that turns the world upside down and inside out. I hear about the Kingdom of God breaking in now. I hear about captives being set free and the blind seeing and the poor being lifted up now. And I hear those things described as salvation. Is this the salvation we understand or experience?
Might there be something else in Romans 10 to hear? In these 5 and a half verses, what do we notice? I will share one thing I notice.
Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible.
The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart. (vs. 8b; Deut. 30:14)
Turn to Deuteronomy 30. Moses is giving Torah (the law) to the people just before they enter into the promised land. In chapter 29 he warns that some may not “choose life” by following Torah: It may be that there is among you a man or woman, or a family or tribe, whose heart is already turning away from the LORD our God to serve the gods of those nations. It may be that there is among you a root sprouting poisonous and bitter growth. All who hear the words of this oath and bless themselves, thinking in their hearts, "We are safe even though we go our own stubborn ways" (thus bringing disaster on moist and dry alike)-- the LORD will be unwilling to pardon them, for the LORD's anger and passion will smoke against them. All the curses written in this book will descend on them, and the LORD will blot out their names from under heaven. (18-20)
So chapter 30 goes on:
When all these things have happened to you, the blessings and the curses that I have set before you, if you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, and you and your children obey him with all your heart and with all your soul, just as I am commanding you today, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, gathering you again from all the peoples among whom the LORD your God has scattered you. Even if you are exiled to the ends of the world, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you back.
In other words, he will save you.
The LORD your God will bring you into the land that your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it; he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. Moreover, the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live. The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on the adversaries who took advantage of you. Then you shall again obey the LORD, observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, and the LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, when you obey the LORD your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law, because you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?
Paul has just quoted these verses in 10:6-7.
No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Moses is talking about Torah/law; Paul is talking about “the word of faith we proclaim.” Moses says, “It is not too difficult; it is not far away.” Paul says, “That word of faith is so near to you, it is on your lips and in your heart.” Moses connects following Torah with abundant life. Isn’t that what the Jesus Paul is preaching offers us? The end or goal of Torah is life, salvation – being rescued from our waywardness and the death that waywardness produces and being brought back into right relationship with God and one another which produces life. Moses says: Choose life. Paul puts Jesus where Moses put Torah. This is not to say that Paul does away with Torah – in earlier chapters he makes this clear. What Paul understands, however, is that in the same way that Torah produces life, Jesus produces life. After we have gone astray, Jesus saves us from our deathly existence and brings us into life. Jon Isaak, professor at MBBS, in his recently published commentary on Romans, writes: “[Paul] cites Deuteronomy 30:12-14, not to contrast the law, but also to show how the law’s goal is really also about God’s righteous faithfulness: namely, God can be trusted to bring creation to its goal of renewed and true covenantal relations. To do this Paul transforms the text from one concerning Torah commandments to a text concerning the messiah and faith (Johnson 1997:160)” (186).
Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible again:
No one who believes in him will be put to shame. (vs. 11; Isa. 28:16)
Paul draws on the promise in Isaiah 28 that the cornerstone being laid in Zion is to be trusted – that stone will bring salvation. Paul understands that stone to be Jesus. So what is he saying? Those who trust in Jesus to bring about the goal of Torah will not be put to shame, will not be disappointed; Jesus will bring salvation – life. The life Moses told the people in Deuteronomy would be produced by following Torah is the life Jesus makes possible. In an earlier chapter, Paul writes: What the law could not do because of sin, God did in Jesus. The law was kept from doing what it was intended to do because of sin; yet Jesus has defeated sin and death and so can be trusted to bring about the goal of the law: life.
Paul is saying that it isn’t the works of the law, the human initiative and effort, that brings about life (salvation); it is God’s initiative, God’s gracious gifting that works life. Because it is Jesus who is the end/goal of Torah, he offers the life that Moses said would come through Torah. We can trust this.
Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible a third time in this passage:
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. (vs. 13; Joel 2:32)
In the end things will get bad. Sort of like when God came to Noah and told him to build the ark. Things were bad. Humans were out of control. They were leading deathly existences. They were living sub-humanly. In the story with Noah, God flooded the earth, wiping out the mess of human life. But we know God promises never to do that again. In the New Testament, Jesus says we’ve entered the last days, the end times. Israel knows from her tradition that God will only let all evil go so far. These last days will be evil days, and then God will act to wipe out evil. In Joel we hear how this will happen, and we know that Joel’s words are connected to these last days because Luke quotes Joel in Acts just before Pentecost. Joel says:
Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit. I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls. (2:28-32)
Did you hear it? What Paul quotes?
Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.
How will God defeat evil this time? Not by flood, but by Jesus’ faithfulness. Evil is overcome in Christ. Life is restored in Christ. We are saved in Christ. And saved from what? Evil! Sin! Death! Our sub-human lives! Like being brought back from exile, or like being freed from slavery in Egypt – we are saved to live life, to follow the ways of our Creator and live fully and truly human lives. Lives dependent on the Source of life; lives sustained by covenant relationship – faithfulness to God and to one another.
Jon Isaak writes:
“God’s covenant is a function of God’s gracious election, Paul insists; it is not about Israel’s efforts to find God or to find the messiah. No matter “how high” or “how low” Israel looks to attain the goal of the covenant, these efforts have no value since salvation is a gift. This gift is now present; Christ already “came down” from heaven and was “raised” from the dead. Thus, a text that originally proclaimed the law’s nearness now proclaims Christ’s nearness who is the true content (goal) of the law. In other words, since Jesus is the goal of law, Jesus is thus the living law (Torah). Paul’s intertextual reading results in a tightly connected argument as follows: “(a) there is one God for all. He gifts those who call on him. (b) All those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. (c) Those whose hearts have faith that God raised Jesus from the dead call him Lord. (d) Those who have faith in him shall not be put to shame” (Johnson 1997:161)” (186-187).
Paul is showing how both Jews and Gentiles can be a part of the people of God. He is showing how legalistic observance of the law that seeks to be the source of one’s own righteousness is not the way of Torah. Torah sought to bring about faithful relationship between Creator and creature because that relationship is the source of salvation and life. The Jews have missed the point about Torah. In Christ, however, we have Jesus as the “living Torah.” He brings about righteousness – right and faithful relationship between Creator and creature. That righteousness is God’s gift – meaning, God was faithful when we were not by coming down on his own initiative in the person of Jesus Christ. He did this because he loved us. And Jesus, as a man, showed us faithful relationship with God. He trusted him, followed him, did what humanity was created to do. He reveals true humanity. And he asks us to have faith in him – not just to know the right answer about who he is, but to be faithful in the way that he is faithful. Because as we live out the humanity God called “very good,” we will have life indeed. We will be saved from the deathliness we are slaves to in our sub-human ways of living; we will be freed to be human in faithful and life-giving relationship with our Creator, our God.
After following Paul into the Hebrew Bible, how might we hear anew our Romans text?
"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:8b-13)
Our Gospel text, the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, the narrative context of our Lenten season, reveals Jesus showing us how to be truly human. As a human dependent on the Creator for life and health, he refuses to choose another way. He refuses to try fulfilling his mission another way, Satan’s way. He refuses to trust that there is another way to bring about salvation and life. He trusts God. He leans on God. He understands his identity out of what God reveals not out of what Satan tempts him with. Jesus, in his weakness and neediness, trusts God’s way. It may not make sense (does life by way of death make sense to us?). It may not be the way the world works. But it is God’s way and that way can be trusted. In fact, it is the only way to life.
As we enter into this wilderness story with Jesus by way of fasting, we may become aware of the following: the ways we reject drawing our identity from God; how we fail to see our dependence as part of the goodness of our humanity; our lack of trust in God’s way in the face of so many other options. Let us repent and choose life by seeing how near Jesus is to us – and by following in trust (walking by faith) the way he reveals.
Play: To Trust You; Walk By Faith
3rd Sunday in Lent, March 11, 2007
Bergen Family gathering
Play:
Be Thou My Vision, Ginny Owens
Pray.
Our Lenten texts seem to be leading us on a journey of imagining God and our human identity anew. This morning we will continue this journey.
Read:
Exodus 3:1-15
Play:
I Am, Bebo Norman
Read:
Psalm 63:1-8
Play:
I Will Lift My Eyes, Bebo Norman
Silent Prayer.
Read:
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Read:
Luke 13:1-9
Sermon
I’m calling today’s sermon “Presence & Seeing” because there are two threads I’ve followed in our Exodus passage: 11 times in our passage (and at least 5 more times in the section this passage belongs to) we hear words having to do with seeing; no less than 8 times (and at least 8 more times in the larger section) we hear language of being, presence. I’ll read it again, this time from Everett Fox’s translation; as I do, listen with these questions in mind: Who is seeing what? and Who is present and what is that presence like?
Read Everett Fox’s translation, Exodus 3:1-15
First, Moses is present in the wilderness. He has fled from Egypt after killing an Egyptian taskmaster, and now he is tending his father-in-law’s flock. Present in this place in this way, Moses sees God’s messenger. So, God’s messenger is present; his presence is manifested in a bush on fire. Moses looks closer: he sees this bush is not burning up. Moses turns to see this sight. Now, God sees that Moses has turned to see. At first Moses was just there, but now he has drawn near; Moses has made himself present to this presence he has seen.
God, manifested in the burning bush, but also somehow looking on, calls out to Moses. Moses responds: Here I am. Here I am; I am present. God says: Do not come near. Moses has turned aside to see, but God instructs Moses to keep some distance. Our text gives us the reason “for this is holy ground.” God’s being there orders the way Moses is there.
Next, God reveals himself: I am the God of your father. Moses hides his face. He shields himself from looking upon God. This is interesting. God’s presence entices Moses to draw nearer and to look; yet God makes sure Moses doesn’t come too close and when Moses understands that it is God who is there, he is compelled to avert his gaze.
Then God speaks: I have seen. I have seen my people suffering in Egypt. And I have come down. I have come to save my people. God’s seeing influences God’s showing up.
We have Moses. Then we have God’s messenger or God himself. Now we have Israel, God’s people. And listen to how God describes the situation in verse 9: So now, here, the cry of the Children of Israel has come to me… Who or what else is present? The cries of Israel. Israel’s cries of suffering have made their presence known – they have become visible - up where God is and now God has come down. Much like Moses turned aside to see the bush on fire, God came down to see the cause of these cries. What God sees moves him to act.
And how does God act? He sends. Moses, you go; I am sending you. God wants Moses to be present in Egypt. And what kind of presence is asked of Moses? Delivering presence. Moses is to be in that place in a saving way.
Of course, we know this story well. Moses argues a bit. Are you sure, God? You want me? Who am I? What can my being there do? How can my presence make any difference? I really don’t see how I can help. Pharaoh is there. (Ah, we have another character now). His presence controls what happens, not mine. Don’t you see that?
And how does God respond? Oh yes, Moses. You’re right. I guess I didn’t look hard enough, assess the situation well enough. Pharaoh is there. And his presence does rule. That is clear to anyone looking on. Right? Wrong. God says: I will be-there with you. There is another presence. Oh, and Moses, just in case you’re not sure, I’ll even give you something you can see that will remind you I’m there. This sign I have sent to be with you. But of course the sign God gives is a sign that is supposed to happen after Moses delivers Israel.
So Moses responds: Um, God, if I go – I’m not saying I will – but if I do, do you have a name I can pass along? Now, we don’t quite understand the significance of this request in our culture. Everett Fox includes commentary on this for us: “When Moses asks God for his name… he asks for more than a title… in the context of Egyptian magic, knowing the true name of a person or a god meant that one could coerce him, or at the very least understand his true essence. [Moses] foresees that the slaves will want to be able to call on this power that has promised to deliver them” (268, 270). If Moses could get God’s name, Moses could control God’s presence, when and how he is there.
God answers with the answer that is not an answer; he gives a name that is not a name. EHYEH ASHER EHYEH. What does this mean? What do your bibles say?
KJV – I am that I am
NKJV, NIV, NASB, NRSV – I am who I am
NJB – I am he who is
Everett Fox renders the name: I will be-there howsoever I will be-there. Why?
God’s answer is one of the most enigmatic and widely debated statements in the Hebrew Bible… What does ehyeh asher ehyeh mean? One’s suspicions are aroused from the outset, for the answer is alliterative and hence already not easy to pin down; the poetics of the phrase indicate both importance and vagueness or mystery. There is some scholarly consensus that the name may mean “He who causes (things) to be” or perhaps “He who is.” Buber and Rosenzweig, taking an entirely different tack (of which one occasionally finds echoes in the scholarly literature), interpret the verb hayoh as signifying presence, “being-there,” and hence see God’s words as a real answer to the Israelites’ imagined question – an assurance of his presence. The B-R interpretation has been retained here [in Fox’s translation], out of a desire to follow them on at least this significant point of theology, and out of my feeling that it also fits the smaller context. For of the several times that [Moses] tries to wriggle out of his mission, God answers him all but once with the same verb, in the same meaning: “I will be-there with you” (270).
Beyond our small passage into the rest of the section our piece belongs to, God keeps assuring Moses that God will indeed be-there. He says it again: EHYEH, I-WILL-BE-THERE sends me to you. And then he gives Moses the identification he has already given him when Moses first turned aside to see. “The God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” (15 & 6). It is with this that the lectionary ends our passage for this day. Is it significant that God has identified himself in this way twice? Why repeat himself? Could it be that God is recalling the way he has been-there before in the history of his people so that they can remember who this God is and trust that he will be-there for them again?
You may be making connections and playing out implications of this reading already. I’d like to make two observations. First, presence precedes seeing. Israel’s cry became present before God and then God saw Israel’s oppression. God came down, becoming present in the burning bush and then Moses saw. Moses turned, directed his presence, and God saw. God revealed himself, identifying his presence, and Moses hides his eyes (though we can say that he “sees” because he understands whose presence he is in and responds accordingly). God is sending Moses to be present for Israel and they will see that God has also been there by the sign that God gives. Second observation: God’s presence orders our presence. In one sense of the word, God’s showing up demands our turning to see even if only because we’re curious as to what is going on. In another sense of the word, God’s being-there shapes where and how we will be. Moses takes off his shoes. Moses cannot control God’s presence. Moses is sent. Israel will be delivered (even if Pharaoh seems to be the dominating presence).
What do you hear in all this in light of our journey of seeing anew God and our human identity?
I will leave you with one more thought before I send you off to ponder this story on your own. One of my favorite Old Testament theologians, Walter Brueggemann, has shaped this thought in me. He suggests that before we can live a new reality, we have to be able to imagine it. So, before you and I can be present in any transformed or transforming way, before we can put on the new, before we can live into the kingdom, we have to see it. Yet, that which we are given to see is much like the sign God gives Moses – something we see after the promised is fulfilled. We live in a unique time, however, because we are in between that which was given and that which is to come. The ultimate revelation of God’s presence has already come. God-with-us, Jesus the Christ, the one we seek during this Lenten season, has been-there already. And yet, he is to come again. We still await deliverance from this oppression we suffer. And as we look forward to Easter, as we long for the darkness of Lent to end, we follow the way of Jesus. We enter into history and walk his story, anticipating the end we have been promised is coming. God sent Moses. Jesus has sent his disciples. That includes us. We are to be-there. We are to be present in liberating ways. Because God-(is)-with-us. Because we’ve turned and seen. Because our presence brings God’s presence to a people awaiting salvation. That is what we were made for, why our being was made present at all. Out of the earth our Creator shaped us and we became present (alive) when he became present (breathed his spirit) in us. In order for us to live fully human lives, the lives God created us for, we must see. Using Brueggemann’s language – we must imagine. And imagination is hopeful seeing, seeing that which has not yet happened. Imagination is stretching out in trust, seeing that which God promises. In the face of what we may see with our eyes, in the face of what may appear one way, we must imagine according to the promising presence of God. Unless a new reality is opened to us through the door of imagination, unless we dare to see that which defies all that appears to be, we won’t step into and be present in that world, in that kingdom. God reminded Moses of how he has been-there so that he would trust how he will be-there. These stories are reminders for us as we seek to imagine how God might be-there for and in us as he seeks to respond to a world crying out for liberation. Can we imagine? Will we see? Will we exercise trust in the way our psalmist last week and today does? Praising God for that which he will do as if he has already done it? Let us sing a prayer, asking God to help us see that we might be faithfully.
Sing:
Be Thou My Vision
Pray.
4th Sunday in Lent, March 18, 2007
Bergen family gathering
Ask someone to pray.
Read:
AUDREY HINDES: I'm missing my pizza: a mid-Lent pep talk (Fresno Bee)
Read:
Joshua 5:9-12
The LORD said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt." And so that place is called Gilgal to this day. While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho. On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.
Psalm 32
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you. Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the LORD. Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." So he told them this parable:
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe-- the best one-- and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate. "Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"
Sermon
In the class I taught this weekend, we looked at the life and world of Jesus by centering on the question – Who is Jesus? Our textual lens was the passage in Matthew where Jesus asks his disciples – Who do people say that I am? – and then turns the question into an opportunity for confession – Who do you say that I am? We saw that the way that question is answered is shaped by what was going on in Jesus’ world, the expectations of the people, and what Jesus did and said. We also explored how one’s answer to the question – Who do I say Jesus is? – usually contains the answer to the question – What did Jesus come to do and how is that mission to be fulfilled? Think about these answers to the question – Who is Jesus? – Messiah, Savior, Lord, Friend.
Last week we spent some time with the identification God gave Moses. God’s name – asher ehyey asher – told the Hebrew people something about what God had come down to do, and how he would do it. I will be-there. Indeed, thousands of years later, God was-there in a way that ultimately revealed how he accomplishes his mission: he was-there as God-with-us, Emmanuel, Jesus.
This evening, our texts urge me to continue the thread we’ve been following from week to week. Who is God? That is, what is our image of God? How do we understand him? And how does that shape how we live with him, how we do relationship with him? And, who are we? We take are cue from God. Our image of God shapes the image we have of ourselves. What is humanity in God’s mind? How did he create us? How are we to live that out? Ash Wednesday set the agenda for us in exploring these questions: God is creator; we are created. God is Source and Sustainer; we are from the earth, given life by his breath, and dependent at every moment. And that is very good.
Where might our texts be inviting us now? What might they have to say about these questions we’ve been pursuing?
Let’s start with our gospel text. What does this parable that Jesus tells say about God? What image might we claim for our imaginations from this story?
This is a God that is overwhelmingly in love with his children.
This is a God that takes seriously our freedom.
This is a God that responds to our unfaithfulness by receiving and restoring us.
This is not a God interested in settling accounts or exacting payment.
This God is a generous giver because he is a generous lover.
We love this parable. And we often hope that this picture really portrays the God we serve. But is this the God we live with, the God we relate to? Take a moment and think about how this image of God might penetrate and take residence in your imagination and heart even more deeply and richly. What images of God and consequent ways of relating with God might be broken down or discarded when we take seriously this image? How might we be called to repent of the distorted images of God we hold?
Now let’s move to our Joshua text.
Yes, God has liberated the people from Egyptian bondage. But that is not what caught my attention. Look at verses 11 and 12 again. They ate the produce of the land for the first time. The manna was no longer given.
It might be obvious to us that manna was a gift from God while the Hebrew people trekked through the wilderness. They might not always have seen it as such a generous gift; they grumbled and wished they were back in Egypt to eat the food they were given as slaves. But we listen to this story and are amazed: God miraculously provided them with sustenance while they were led out of slavery and toward the Promised Land. I won’t ask us to consider what gifts from God we might grumble against because they seem monotonous, they seem pale in comparison with what our former places of bondage provided us. That is not our focus today. What I will ask of us is to see the connection between the manna ceasing and the people being able to eat from the produce of the land.
At first glance, and definitely at first glance from within our modern worldview, we think the story goes like this: God provided for the people in the wilderness. And then when they got to the land, they ate what they provided for themselves. Someone else grew that produce. Someone else’s work bore that fruit. So once they get to the land, God’s gifts cease to make way for the people to provide for themselves.
This is not what I noticed. After a few weeks of trying to hear the voices of the texts arranged in the Lectionary, the voice I heard speaking from this text sounds like this: The liberated people, in a feast celebrating their liberation, tasted the first fruits of the land and put aside the manna that sustained them in the wilderness. This change signals a shift, but not a shift from God as provider for the people to people as providers for themselves. This change shows God’s gift changing. He goes from God the giver of manna to God the giver of the fruit of the land. Both are gifts. Both are equally dependent on God giving. The land bears fruit because God the Lover is also generous Giver. The people remain dependent on him even when they enter the land. Even when the fruit of the land is in abundance, they remain receivers of God’s sustenance.
God’s will is that we might partake of the bounty of the land. He desires that we enjoy the nourishment and tasty pleasure the land bears. After the people inhabit the land, we often get prophets crying out for the people to remember that God is the giver and that we do not provide for ourselves. There is a correlation between getting fat off the land and forgetting that it is God who is the Source, the Sustainer, the generous Giver. There is a chance that God’s gift from the land will lead to our forgetting God, but God so wants what is rich and good for us that he takes that chance.
Accepting God’s gifts does not have to mean we forget him, however. We determine how we respond to these gifts, and if we recognize them as such. We are free to forget God and pretend as if we provide for ourselves. We are free to draw our security in our own ability and industriousness. We are free to exploit others in that process as they threaten what we’ve worked so hard to possess for ourselves. We are free to treat even our friends as competition in this great American dream of the self-made man, to forget that we are dependent on one another in the web of interdependence God created and affirmed for humanity. We are free to go to war to protect our interests. We are free to do all that.
We are also free to live dependently. We are free to understand that God is-there as Giver. We are free to live each day in response to that generous God. We are free to receive instead of grasp and take. We are free to trust God and rest assured in his generosity. And in light of our 2 Corinthians passage, we are free to be givers in response to God’s gift. We are free to share what we have because we understand we are receivers of a gift that was meant to bless others. We are free to lift up those who have been kicked down by those who forget God in their great rat race to secure a piece of the pie for themselves. We are free to spend all we have – our very selves on behalf of one another. We are free, in other words, to image God in his generosity.
We are free. The choice is ours. Not just now, but that choice has been continually ours all our lives. How have we chosen in the past? How have we lived out our freedom?
I think it is safe to say that in moments of our lives, however short or long, we have chosen in our freedom to forget that God is-there as Giver, that we do not provide for ourselves, and that we do in fact need others. In our moments of forgetfulness, we have related with God unfaithfully, and we have related with our brothers and sisters out of that unfaithfulness. We have caused God pain. We have caused others pain. We have caused ourselves pain. We have wounded.
Now is when we listen to the words of David in Psalm 32.
We can resist admitting our forgetfulness and our unfaithfulness. We can resist admitting the pain we’ve caused and the wounds we’ve inflicted. We might do so out of fear. We might do so because the truth hurts too much. We might do so because we can’t see how things can be made right. Yet, David tells us that confession is the way to be released toward healing. Holding in our sin makes us waste away. Releasing it in confession gives it up to the one who – like in the parable of the prodigal son – embraces us in his generous love and restores us. Blessed are those who have been forgiven, whose sins have been covered.
We cannot jump to being givers if we do not learn to receive from God. And one of the gifts we are dependent on is forgiveness. We cannot be, as Paul says, ministers of reconciliation if we have not experienced reconciliation. Receiving from God is the result of understanding God our Lover and generous Giver. Do we understand him here-with-us as Giver? Is that the God we imagine? Let us dare to infuse our imaginations with God as Giver. Let us, in that transformed imagining, learn to be in relationship with God and each other in more faithful ways.
Ask someone to pray.
5th Sunday in Lent, March 25, 2007
Bergen family gathering
Play: Don’t Get Comfortable, Brandon Heath
Pray.
Read:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
Psalm 126
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them." The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
Sermon/Reflection
As Christians with the luxury of hindsight, we have picked up on the thread in Scripture we call “God doing something new.” We are most aware that in Jesus, God was doing something new. The old is passing away and the new has broken in. We understand ourselves to be living in the era of “something new.”
We are nearing the end of Lent, the end of traveling with Jesus into the wilderness, where in our weakness we learn that God is our Source, that we are dependent on him for life. We’ve learned that we are creatures belonging to this Creator God. As creatures we are dependent. And that is good. We exist because of the generosity of God the Giver. We are sustained from his hand.
In the wilderness we’ve been offered an alternative to God’s provision, an alternative to living as finite and dependent creatures. We’ve been offered something much like what Adam and Eve were offered – a way to reject our creatureliness, our humanness, and to grasp at being gods, creators, makers of our own destiny, providers for ourselves. We have been tempted. And we have become aware that this temptation has been ours many times before. We’ve had the freedom to choose.
And now, our texts today speak of God doing something new. Can we imagine it? Can we dream it? For imagining, dreaming is the doorway into that newness. And in dreaming we trust so fiercely that we praise as if our imagining was reality now. We sing a new song.
We are not deluded, however. We look around and recognize that the old still clings for life and power. We can look at ourselves and see that death grip at work. We have not yet reached the goal. And what is our response? Hopefully it is akin to the apostle Paul’s: I press on, I strain ahead, I shed all that has no place in this new thing God is accomplishing. I die with Christ that I might also rise with him.
In order to die Christ’s death we must live Christ’s life. We must follow his way. The way we saw him choose in the wilderness when he was tempted. The way he pursued throughout his ministry as he brought good news to the poor, proclaimed release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free, and proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor (Lk. 4:18-19). The way that led to Jerusalem and to the cross. This is the way that leads through Lent, through the anticipation and agony of Holy Week and finally to the joy of Easter. We stand on the brink of the darkest part of Lent, Holy Week with its Good Friday. We do not have to enter into that week. We can bypass following Jesus there. We can take the alternative routes offered to us. But Paul tells us that he follows Jesus into Holy Week, to the cross, because that is the only way to resurrection.
We’ve tried to see new images of God over the last several weeks. Hopefully, just as we’ve begun to understand what being creatures, being human looks like, we’ve also begun to understand what the Creator, what God looks like. How he is-there with us. How he might be-there with us in the days, weeks, years ahead. This God is trustworthy. This God is loving and giving. This God wants our restoration, our redemption, our reconciliation. He spares nothing, not even himself, to pursue that end on our behalf. Will we, as we stare into the dark days of Lent ahead, trust this God? Will we go where he leads?
Let us spend some time in prayer. As we sit and wait and listen for God to speak, or as we speak honestly with God, or as we continue to reflect on what we have been learning, music will be playing that may assist us in focusing our thoughts, recognizing our need, or finding words to offer to God. Should you need to ask someone to pray with you or for you during this time, feel free to move and do that. Use this time to search your thoughts and hearts, to ponder how you might respond to what we have been learning.
Meditation/Prayer
Play:
Belong, Chris Rice
So Afraid, Bebo Norman
I Know Now, Bebo Norman
If You Want Me To, Ginny Owens
Live, Nichole Nordeman
Stand & Play/Sing/Pray:
Nothing Without You, Bebo Norman