When we lived in Lowell, Ohio, just outside of Marietta on the Muskingum River, I planted 50 seedless grape vines. A neighbor plowed a strip of land along the front of my property, and then we put two rows of grapevines down. We planted the vines about 8 feet apart, and strung four wires between posts, drawing the wires tight. As the grapevines grew, they were trained on the wires. During the second winter, I pruned the vines back so they came up out of the ground on a solid stalk and then had a double T shape on the top and the second wires.
I found out that there are certain important things to being successful with grapevines. First is the pruning. All the dead branches are cut off. But even the fruiting branches are pruned. Grapevines need to be heavily pruned every winter, leaving only the stalk and the main horizontal T for best results. All the rest is cut and rolled up to make grapevine wreaths from. This is because the fruit only grows on last year’s wood, not this year’s wood. So it is important to get rid of the extra vines that take up energy and leave only the heavy, main vine. You literally cut out 90% of the vine every year. If your grapevine isn’t producing, it’s probably because you didn’t prune it back enough last winter.
The second thing is to spray the vine twice. Once during the late winter with vegetable oil, because this suffocates the eggs that insects laid during the fall. The second spray is an anti-fungal spray in early May when the tiny flowers are beginning to come out so fungus spores will not take hold and later destroy the fruit.
Acts 8:26-40, Psalm 22:25-31; 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8
Finally, it is important to walk the vines during the summer, removing dying leaves, bad grapes, and even removing extra leaves near the grape clusters to give plenty of ventilation to keep the grapes dry so mold and rot won’t grow on them.
There are also two things you don’t need to do with grapes.
First, you don’t need to fertilize grapes – they have very deep roots and will find all the nutrients they need as those roots go 7 or 10 feet into the ground. As many of you know, it is nearly impossible to kill an established grapevine, short of just the right type of Roundup herbicide or removing the old vine with a backhoe!
But that also means that after the first summer, you won’t need to water grapevines because of those deep roots. And you probably won’t need to water them much even that first summer. Those deep roots keep them going!
We harvested nearly 400 pounds of grapes that first harvest. We ate them at the table and made grape juice by pressing them. Gallons of grape juice.
Our grapes were not wine grapes. Oh, you can make wine from any grape juice – just add some yeast and wait a few months – but the French grapes that most wine is made from have a couple of problems growing around here.
First, we get too cold in the winter. French grapes simply can’t take temperatures below zero, and we get there every couple of years. And so they die.
Second, there is a little bug native to America that burrows into grapevine roots and with those little holes comes a fungus that almost wiped out the European wine industry a couple of hundred years ago. Today, all of the French wine grapes – even in France - are grafted onto North American grape roots, which are resistant to this fungus.
Grafting is an interesting process. You take one plant that has the roots you like and you put a cutting from a plant that has the grapes you like on top. You cut them, slicing them a particular way, and then wrap them up snuggly to give them time to grow together. And the next year, the grapes you wanted grow on top of the roots you wanted. This is absolutely necessary to grow good wine grapes today.
In ancient times, grafting was used for other reasons. Perhaps most importantly was the fact that grapevines live for hundreds and even thousands of years. There are grapevines at Mount Vernon that were planted by George Washington. If you want to change grape varieties, simply graft new vines to the old vine rootstock that's already established. And these old grapevines can be remarkably fruitful when you graft the right vine onto them, because they already have an established root system that gathers plenty of water and nutrients. Remember – in the Middle East, the top few feet of soil can be very dry, so it can be difficult to plant a new grapevine and get it started until it gets deep enough to find water on its own.
Jesus talked about the grapevine.
After the Last Supper, as He and His disciples left the Upper Room, they walked past a grapevine on their way to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was then that He called their attention to the vine and said:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
Jesus calls Himself the “true vine”. He says that God the Father is the gardener. Any part of the body of Christ – the church – that does not bear fruit is cut off. And we have seen this around us – churches that stopped baptizing people twenty years ago are closing all around us. If we don’t bring people to know the Lord, if we don’t bear fruit, we will be cut off by God.
We are being somewhat fruitful here. We have good years and bad years. We have programs, processes, and people who work to bring people to the Lord. Some things we do are very fruitful, like Pioneer Club and REFIT. Other things we do are not very fruitful. It is interesting – people want to be involved with and support fruitful ministries. People don’t want to support ministries that are not fruitful. We have ministries that have slowly declined over the years because they were not fruitful. And when they have died, nobody really noticed. God had pruned them, allowing the energy to flow to those ministries that were fruitful. That’s why our policy toward new ministries has been “Sure, let’s do it! What do you need from us?” For we realize that if God is behind a ministry idea, we’d better do it or God will just start up that ministry at another nearby church. And if God isn’t behind it, it won’t go anywhere, like several ministries we’ve tried in the last few years.
Sometimes a ministry just needs the right people involved – the ministry idea was good, but the team just wasn’t there yet, or there needed to have more Christ in the idea. It’s like getting the right vine grafted onto the right rootstock – and God will not support ministry without the True Vine, Jesus Christ, under the ministry.
Christ told the disciples to remain in Him, as He remained in them. He pointed out that you can’t just take a branch hanging on trellis and expect it to bear fruit by itself – It must be connected to the main vine, to the roots.
This is why many social ministries fail. A food pantry without Christ is just a cheap grocery store, unprofitable, unfruitful, a drain of money. But a food pantry connected to Christ, where Jesus is glorified, where prayers are sent up for people every day, where the love of Christ is demonstrated - that food pantry changes lives. A ministry must bear fruit for the Kingdom or it will be pruned and cut off – or it will just die.
Jesus continued, talking to His followers:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Jesus is telling us that we must remain connected to Christ, and if we will, we will bear much fruit.
How do we stay in Christ and how does Christ stay in us?
Think back to the structure of the vine. In the vine, there is the woody outside that gives strength to the connection, the tubes that are connected inside for water and nutrients to flow within – and there is the flowing water and energy and nutrients themselves.
When we first recognize Christ is the Son of God, worthy to be followed, and we believe and step forward to receive the gift of eternal life from Him, a connection is made. Our heart becomes connected with Jesus’ heart and that missing hole in our heart begins to fill. The graft is made. Yet, more is needed for that life to flow.
As we step forward to receive the baptism of water and the Holy Spirit, a fluid begins to flow through the graft. It is the life-giving fluid that is the Holy Spirit, the Living Water of Christ. Where before we were slowly dying, wilting, dry in our spirit, with baptism the graft that was barely connected with our belief now flows full of that Living Water that will sustain us even though our body physically dies, as the true vine sustains the grafted in parts of the vine even though the leaves may die for a time, for they will spring back anew with the life-giving power of the vine.
As we learn to read the Word of God and listen to the Holy Spirit, we allow that life-giving Living Water to flow throughout our body that is the grafted in vine, and buds form, buds form that turn into flowers and then fruit. Just like the grapevine, Christ does not need to be watered or fertilized Himself, for His roots are deep, beyond even the soil of Creation. Eventually, with support and the light that flows from God the Father, our fruit is ready to be harvested and the cycle is repeated again and again.
But if we stop reading the Word, if we cut off the Holy Spirit from our mind, then we are cutting off the true vine from our graft and we will surely die, falling victim to the rot and decay of the world, eventually pruned and tossed into the fire.
But what is the fruit Jesus is talking about?
The fruit is the rescue of souls from the certain walk into Hell, the falling down into the fire that many people have chosen. But let me be clear – I don’t believe that God throws people into Hell. Instead, God simply gives people what they have asked for all their lives – a chance to be left alone by God, a chance to do their will, not God’s will, a chance to be independent and avoid bowing their head to God. For you see, it is Heaven and the New Jerusalem that is the special place while Hell is the default choice. If we make no choice, we get to avoid God, going to a place where other creatures have gone who wanted to avoid God have gone – creatures like Satan, yes, but other creatures like Adolph Hitler, Mussolini, Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussain, Nero, and others like them, the ordinary people who simply refused to submit to God – God, Our ever polite Creator lets people get what they said they wanted – a world where they make the rules, a land where they can compete with others who wanted the same thing, a playroom with the others who felt they were smarter, stronger, self-reliant enough to demand special treatment.
God does not send people to Hell – God allows people to avoid God. If you do not want to be part of God’s Kingdom, ruled by Christ, then you can argue with all those other souls about who is in charge. Who knows? You might be able to establish your own kingdom and defeat all the other rogues of history. You might be craftier and more ruthless that Hitler, than Nero, that Ghengis Khan, than Saddam Hussain, than Al Capone and all the others that rejected God. You just might be the strongest, the smartest, the most ruthless.
But our job is to bear fruit, helping people avoid that fate and instead live in a New Jerusalem where a just and merciful ruler rules, where the Tree of Life bears a different fruit every month of the year, where God’s presence is seen, where Jesus walks among us and his other followers.
Jesus said:
If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
Remember when you were first grafted into Christ. Remember when you first believed. Some of you don’t remember, it happened when you were so young, you are so blessed. But others can remember exactly what happened – for some it was a sudden realization that the connection was made and for others, it was a slow realization as the connection was gently made and then you looked up one day and realized that you had indeed believed for days, weeks, months, years, even decades.
The Living Water began to flow through you and you became aware that God was paying attention to you, to you in your life as little signs added up, as certain decisions were made, small and large, and you found yourself walking in certain ways, meeting certain people, seeing certain things, experiencing other things, not experiencing other activities, but always there was a hand on your shoulder, guiding you, and perhaps that hand became a voice as you listened and watched ever more carefully for that gentle, soft whisper of the Holy Spirit flowing through your life.
And then, you began to realize that this life was not about you, but it was about what the true vine was leading you to, the people you were encountering, the ones that broke your heart, the hurt that you saw in the world and the Spirit flowing through you was telling you, “Look. Look at these people, these children, these older people and think about what you can do.”
At first you turned away, but then you began to give. You gave some money, you gave some time, you thought about what you might be able to do, you turned away again because it really was a struggle between you, your family, and the hurting ones, but you began to do more. Someone asked you for a donation, someone else asked you for some time. And the Spirit said, “I can help, but I need you to speak and do. I need you to speak and do.”
And some of you began to speak, others began to do, and still others began to both speak and do.
And the more you gave, the more you did, the more you speak, the more you have felt the Living Water flowing through you from the true vine. And flowers have begun to blossom, perhaps even fruit has begun to appear.
Jesus said:
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
And as the graft has taken, as you have grown stronger in the connection with the true vine, you have begun to realize that this is true – now that you know what to ask for, the right things to ask for, the proper goals in this world, whatever you ask for will be done for you. And your vine begins to bend toward the sun, and the fruit begins to show and your life becomes meaningful and fulfilling and joyous and wonderful!
The True Vine spoke and said:
This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
In a fully developed grapevine, the graft is as strong or stronger than the original parts of the vine, just as a good weld is as strong or stronger than the original material.
With Christ, our goal is to become so in tune with God’s will for us as transmitted to us through the Word of God which is both the Bible and the Son, and given to us by the gentle coursing of the Holy Spirit through our minds. We are to be so in tune that there is no conflict between what God asks of us and what we desire to do. In that way, we are like the fully developed grafted grapevine – it is hard to tell where the true vine ends and the graft begins. How hard is it to tell where Christ ends and you begin?
Before Christ, we were dead. We just didn’t know it at the time. Now that we have been grafted into Christ, into Christ’s body, we are alive again. But there is this deep question: Will we accept the Living Water flowing into us, giving us life? Or will we fight against God’s will, against the graft, complaining about what Christ asks us to do, arguing against Beauty because it is difficult, fighting against speaking because it is uncomfortable, debating about paths because our pride would rather win than accept the wisdom of Christ, asking for special treatment because we think we are deserving of it from the God who has led more than a billion souls into eternal life?
If you have not accepted the leadership of Christ in your life, accept Him today in prayer.
If you have not let the Living Water flow through your life and received the Holy Spirit in water baptism, talk to me or your local pastor about being baptized on Mother’s Day, as four other people are planning.
If you continue to argue and drag your heels and fight against the will of Christ for your life, look up in prayer and say, “So be it, Jesus, I will surrender to you and do your will. I will stop fighting You today.”
And if you have done these things, bow in prayer and ask that Jesus, the True Vine, might successfully graft another person or a dozen dying souls onto Him, that they might live eternally in Christ, as you are living in Him.
Monday, April 30, 2018
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
The Holiness of the Resurrection
Earlier this week, I was watching a Midsomer Murders mystery on Netflix. As the climax of the movie arrived, we found that a boy we’d thought dead had not died at all, but came back to life “just like Jesus!” - as the now-grown boy explained. And so, I thought, it might be that because of the emotional power of the Resurrection, so many writers have decided to include a resurrection scene in so many movies and so many books that the Resurrection has lost its holiness.
After all, today almost every superhero movie has the hero or heroine coming back from a state of certain death. Ironman died and came back to life. Superman has come back to life again. Phil Coulson’s miraculous resurrection is the basis of the first couple of seasons of Agents of Shield. Poor Wolverine has been resurrected several times.
In a more evil turn, zombies regularly walk after their death in The Walking Dead. More classic movies such as The Lord of the Rings, Part III have the hobbits essentially killed and spirited off to the heaven of the elves by the eagles, where elven medical care brings them back to life. In the world of cartoons, of course, Daffy Duck must hold the record for resurrections – unless it is Wile E Coyote from the Road Runner cartoons.
Even so-called ordinary tv shows have resurrections – Who can forget Bobby Ewing died on Dallas and came back alive the next season as the writers decided the season was all Pam’s dream? In the new Roseanne, her husband, who died in the last season, is back from the dead. And the ability of soap opera characters to come back from the dead multiple time is legendary.
Acts 3:12-19, Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7, Luke 24:36-48
And as a plot device - how many medical shows have a touching moment when the beloved patient dies on the table – but the skilled doctors bring him or her back? How many times is a good cop or detective shot and killed in a season-ending climatic scene – only to reappear, healed when the show comes back in September? Or, the sidekick we thought was dead shoots dead the villain, who is about to kill the hero, and we see the sidekick bandaged in the final scene?
The most ingenious resurrection twist I ever saw in a television series was a short-lived series from the 1970’s called Nichols, about a town and a man named, appropriately Nichols – played by James Garner. At the end of the first season, with the writers planning a retooling of the low rated show, Frank Nichols is killed off at the beginning of the season-ending episode. His twin brother, Jim Nichols soon arrives to revenge his brother. Jim is also played by James Garner, now wearing a mustache. We kept waiting for Jim to strip off his mustache and reveal himself to be Frank in disguise. But he never did – the hero of the series had truly been killed. But the plan was for the new Nichols to have a different personality for the second season so they could gain better ratings. But the new resurrected Nichols wasn’t enough to resurrect the dead series. It died…and stayed dead.
Yet in our real world, there are people who are truly dying every day. They die – and they don’t come back to life. And the world seems to focus upon this horrible idea of death – nothing is worse than death, we think. Death is the end, we think. We argue about how to "reduce" deaths – and for a minute, we forget that death is something we humans can’t stop – only postpone.
But there is One who truly reduced the number of deaths – because He defeated death upon the cross and was truly Resurrected. There is an important message here – we have been given the gift of defeating death for ourselves – if only we will accept that gift. And we can help others receive that gift - and truly reduce the number of deaths, for those who follow Christ will live forever.
So let’s look at the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and some related ideas:
First of all, let’s distinguish between the Resurrection – and a resuscitation. A resuscitation is when someone’s heart stops and the doctors are able to get it running again with a combination of CPR, those ever-present electric defibrillator paddles, and possibly some appropriate drugs.
Fifty years ago, when these techniques were coming about, there was great debate over whether a person died when their heart stopped beating. Now, brain activity is considered the standard. Death occurs when the brain activity stops.
Our doctors have found that after three or four minutes without good pumping action, the brain begins to die, suffering damage, and is almost surely dead after 8 or 10 minutes. Other parts of the body begin to die even if blood flow is restored after about 15 to 20 minutes, and their death will release poisons into the blood that will cause the dominos to fall over the next few days even with intensive treatment.
What the television shows don’t tell us is that most patients whose heart has stopped for five or six minutes will die within a few days, even if resuscitated to regain consciousness for a few hours. And those few people who are successfully resuscitated, have weeks of hospital and nursing home recovery time ahead of them. In this, the TV shows that have our formerly physically fit heroes mostly recovering from their wounds over the three-month summer break – and still being physically weak when the new season begins - are accurate.
Jesus was dead on the cross for an extended time – at least a half hour and possible a few hours. He had lost significant blood from the beatings he endured, the nail wounds, and after his death from the spear thrust into his lungs and heart. He was not resuscitated. Something else happened.
In addition, we should always remember that the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ Resurrection record a vigorous man who walked miles on that Easter Sunday, a man who had not just survived, but was better than new!
Jesus was not resuscitated. Something more powerful happened.
In the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, we see that both Jesus and the Apostles bring others back from the dead. In the Old Testament, Elijah and Elisha bring people back from the dead. These are rightly portrayed as miracles, for these men did far more than simply give medical care to people. Yet skeptics try to pretend that Jesus, the prophets, and the Apostles simply have some EMT training that the general populace doesn’t have.
Take Lazarus, for instance. First, Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick. Jesus waits for several days. Then, word comes to Jesus that Lazarus has died. It is only then that Jesus decides to take the hundred mile walk to Bethany.
When Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. People are still mourning him – not just his two sisters, but crowds of people. They are so sure of his death, that when Jesus asks for the tomb to be opened, Martha feels the need to remind Jesus that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days and he will be stinking like a dead dear beside the road.
But Jesus does not enter the tomb. He stands in front of the tomb and prays. He then yells for Lazarus to “Come forth!” and Lazarus comes out of the tomb.
Where was the special EMT medicine? Where are the electric paddles. Where is the oxygen?
Nowhere to be seen.
A week later, Lazarus and Jesus are the guests of honor at a banquet.
There is something special about this, just as the other times people were raised from the dead by Jesus, the prophets, or the Apostles.
But there is still something even more special about Jesus’ own Resurrection, something that sets it far above Lazarus, for tradition has it that Lazarus lived a normal life and died as bishop on the island of Cyprus. Lazarus died twice. For Lazarus, this "raising" by Jesus was not the final resurrection. One day Lazarus will be given his final Resurrection. In the meantime, these raisings from the dead are somewhere between a resuscitation – and the final Resurrection.
For there is the Resurrection of Jesus. It is far, far different from these “raisings”.
Jesus was beaten badly. His skin was ripped off his back by the cat-o’nine tails, a multiple part whip with glass and nails and sharp rocks embedded that ripped human flesh like cat’s claws rip. He was beaten about the head and the crown of thorns punctured the skin on his head so it bled. His wrists and ankles were nailed to the cross with nails that were perhaps a foot long or more. And finally, after he was already dead, the spear was stuck into his side and out poured blood and water.
Yet on Resurrection morning, Mary thinks that Jesus is the strong gardener until he turns to her. And then she is joyful. Later that day, Jesus walks to Emmaus – a village about 5 or 6 miles from Jerusalem and looks fine – just different, somehow. That evening, Jesus appears to the ten disciples and eats some fish with them. The next week, he appears to all Eleven including Thomas and shows off his scars. It is clear that he is not a ghost, not a spirit, not just an image but is fully present – mind, body, and soul.
Jesus’ old body has been made new. His old body has been fully repaired, but the scars are still there. The healing process has apparently progressed at a rate a hundred times faster than normal. But he clearly has a body – he is not a spirit being, for he eats and talks and later he even cooks breakfast for a group of disciples. Broiled fish is what He eats. He cooks a breakfast of fish over a wood fire on the beach for his disciples. There is something special about fish.
In Revelation, Jesus is seen as a strong, fit powerful man with white hair, signifying his great wisdom. He is not described as we would describe an old man except for the hair.
And he is still alive, even though nearly 2000 years have passed.
There is something different, something special, something holy about the Resurrection of Jesus. And that is well, for we know that Jesus is holy. But what does it mean to be holy?
The Greek word that is used is hagios. The root meaning of this word is “separate” or “apart”. So holy essentially means to be separate or apart. The word is the root of "against".
God is holy. God is separate.
Items become holy when we place them separate from the regular world. We have holy plates up here to receive offerings. We have holy candles. We have a holy Bible. We have holy communion cups.
They have all been kept separate from the regular world and so they are holy.
The ancient Temple in Jerusalem had degrees of holiness. Outermost was the court of the Gentiles in which anyone could enter. Then, as we moved inward were areas where only Jews could walk, then only Jewish men, then only Levites, then only priests, and finally, the Holy of Holies, where only God and the high priest could be together – and a rope was tied around the high priest’s ankle in case God found that the priest was not holy enough, struck him dead and forced his friends to drag him out. It had happened before! Holiness – separation from the world – is a matter of degree.
As we look at people coming back from the dead, we find something special with those people whose hearts stopped and then were restarted. We find something more special with those who were dead for hours or days and we raised from the dead by Jesus or a prophet or an Apostle. But there was something very unworldly, something different, something holy about Jesus’ Resurrection.
“Be holy, because I am holy.”
God – God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – is holy. God is separate from the world. Jesus inherently came back from the dead because Jesus had remained separate from the world.
It is like walking upon a group of children playing a game of cops and robbers with toy guns. “Bang! You’re dead” says Bobby, one of the children, to his younger brother Johnny, who falls down and then tearfully runs to his mother, crying that “Bobby shot me dead!”
Billy, the oldest, wisest child watches the game. His younger brother Bobby also shoots him with his toy gun. “Bang! You’re dead” Bobby says to the older brother Billy. Brother Billy falls dead. But then, after a minute or two, he stands up and walks over to the adults watching the game.
“I thought you were dead,” his father says.
And Billy replies, “Dad, I know I can’t be harmed by his toy gun. I’m alive.”
And so it is with us. We must step outside the game like Billy does, or we will not realize that our death is only temporary.
Are you in the world’s game that Satan has put people into, beginning with Adam and Eve, fearing death? Or have you chosen to step outside the game, choosing to follow Jesus to the world of the spiritual adults where death is just a transition, not an ending?
Be holy. Separate yourself from the world and follow Jesus along the path of holiness.
But how do we follow Jesus?
The first step is to read the four Gospels. Read cover to cover the four books Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, and discover what Jesus did, what Jesus said, what Jesus commanded us. Start with the Gospel of Mark, then read the other three. John will be very different from the others.
Notice as you read the following key things:
· Have you learned to love all people – and I mean every single person you encounter?
· Are you gentle to broken people, to the struggling, to those who need friends? Do you stand up to the cruel, the strong, the powerful, the arrogant – yet strive to help them also?
· Are you willing to do what God says to do, even if it means spending some time to speak to people about His son?
That last one is the most difficult. We want to serve God on our terms. We signed on to be the cook – we don’t want to greet guests. We signed on to be the trustee – we don’t want to read scripture. We signed on to be a greeter at the front door – we don’t want to deliver a sermon. We signed on to serve on our terms – we don’t want to do what God needs us to do.
It is like we’ve chosen to work a job at Disney World. We want to be Snow White or Mickey Mouse or sell tickets or sweep up trash. We want to maintain the rides, play trombone in the band or load people in the carts on the Mad Hatter ride. We want to sell shirts in an air-conditioned shop because we don't like the mid-Florida heat and humidity, or we want to be the drum major.
But imagine a day when evil attacks the park. What jobs will we do?
After all, today almost every superhero movie has the hero or heroine coming back from a state of certain death. Ironman died and came back to life. Superman has come back to life again. Phil Coulson’s miraculous resurrection is the basis of the first couple of seasons of Agents of Shield. Poor Wolverine has been resurrected several times.
In a more evil turn, zombies regularly walk after their death in The Walking Dead. More classic movies such as The Lord of the Rings, Part III have the hobbits essentially killed and spirited off to the heaven of the elves by the eagles, where elven medical care brings them back to life. In the world of cartoons, of course, Daffy Duck must hold the record for resurrections – unless it is Wile E Coyote from the Road Runner cartoons.
Even so-called ordinary tv shows have resurrections – Who can forget Bobby Ewing died on Dallas and came back alive the next season as the writers decided the season was all Pam’s dream? In the new Roseanne, her husband, who died in the last season, is back from the dead. And the ability of soap opera characters to come back from the dead multiple time is legendary.
Acts 3:12-19, Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7, Luke 24:36-48
And as a plot device - how many medical shows have a touching moment when the beloved patient dies on the table – but the skilled doctors bring him or her back? How many times is a good cop or detective shot and killed in a season-ending climatic scene – only to reappear, healed when the show comes back in September? Or, the sidekick we thought was dead shoots dead the villain, who is about to kill the hero, and we see the sidekick bandaged in the final scene?
The most ingenious resurrection twist I ever saw in a television series was a short-lived series from the 1970’s called Nichols, about a town and a man named, appropriately Nichols – played by James Garner. At the end of the first season, with the writers planning a retooling of the low rated show, Frank Nichols is killed off at the beginning of the season-ending episode. His twin brother, Jim Nichols soon arrives to revenge his brother. Jim is also played by James Garner, now wearing a mustache. We kept waiting for Jim to strip off his mustache and reveal himself to be Frank in disguise. But he never did – the hero of the series had truly been killed. But the plan was for the new Nichols to have a different personality for the second season so they could gain better ratings. But the new resurrected Nichols wasn’t enough to resurrect the dead series. It died…and stayed dead.
Yet in our real world, there are people who are truly dying every day. They die – and they don’t come back to life. And the world seems to focus upon this horrible idea of death – nothing is worse than death, we think. Death is the end, we think. We argue about how to "reduce" deaths – and for a minute, we forget that death is something we humans can’t stop – only postpone.
But there is One who truly reduced the number of deaths – because He defeated death upon the cross and was truly Resurrected. There is an important message here – we have been given the gift of defeating death for ourselves – if only we will accept that gift. And we can help others receive that gift - and truly reduce the number of deaths, for those who follow Christ will live forever.
So let’s look at the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and some related ideas:
First of all, let’s distinguish between the Resurrection – and a resuscitation. A resuscitation is when someone’s heart stops and the doctors are able to get it running again with a combination of CPR, those ever-present electric defibrillator paddles, and possibly some appropriate drugs.
Fifty years ago, when these techniques were coming about, there was great debate over whether a person died when their heart stopped beating. Now, brain activity is considered the standard. Death occurs when the brain activity stops.
Our doctors have found that after three or four minutes without good pumping action, the brain begins to die, suffering damage, and is almost surely dead after 8 or 10 minutes. Other parts of the body begin to die even if blood flow is restored after about 15 to 20 minutes, and their death will release poisons into the blood that will cause the dominos to fall over the next few days even with intensive treatment.
What the television shows don’t tell us is that most patients whose heart has stopped for five or six minutes will die within a few days, even if resuscitated to regain consciousness for a few hours. And those few people who are successfully resuscitated, have weeks of hospital and nursing home recovery time ahead of them. In this, the TV shows that have our formerly physically fit heroes mostly recovering from their wounds over the three-month summer break – and still being physically weak when the new season begins - are accurate.
Jesus was dead on the cross for an extended time – at least a half hour and possible a few hours. He had lost significant blood from the beatings he endured, the nail wounds, and after his death from the spear thrust into his lungs and heart. He was not resuscitated. Something else happened.
In addition, we should always remember that the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ Resurrection record a vigorous man who walked miles on that Easter Sunday, a man who had not just survived, but was better than new!
Jesus was not resuscitated. Something more powerful happened.
In the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, we see that both Jesus and the Apostles bring others back from the dead. In the Old Testament, Elijah and Elisha bring people back from the dead. These are rightly portrayed as miracles, for these men did far more than simply give medical care to people. Yet skeptics try to pretend that Jesus, the prophets, and the Apostles simply have some EMT training that the general populace doesn’t have.
Take Lazarus, for instance. First, Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick. Jesus waits for several days. Then, word comes to Jesus that Lazarus has died. It is only then that Jesus decides to take the hundred mile walk to Bethany.
When Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. People are still mourning him – not just his two sisters, but crowds of people. They are so sure of his death, that when Jesus asks for the tomb to be opened, Martha feels the need to remind Jesus that Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days and he will be stinking like a dead dear beside the road.
But Jesus does not enter the tomb. He stands in front of the tomb and prays. He then yells for Lazarus to “Come forth!” and Lazarus comes out of the tomb.
Where was the special EMT medicine? Where are the electric paddles. Where is the oxygen?
Nowhere to be seen.
A week later, Lazarus and Jesus are the guests of honor at a banquet.
There is something special about this, just as the other times people were raised from the dead by Jesus, the prophets, or the Apostles.
But there is still something even more special about Jesus’ own Resurrection, something that sets it far above Lazarus, for tradition has it that Lazarus lived a normal life and died as bishop on the island of Cyprus. Lazarus died twice. For Lazarus, this "raising" by Jesus was not the final resurrection. One day Lazarus will be given his final Resurrection. In the meantime, these raisings from the dead are somewhere between a resuscitation – and the final Resurrection.
For there is the Resurrection of Jesus. It is far, far different from these “raisings”.
Jesus was beaten badly. His skin was ripped off his back by the cat-o’nine tails, a multiple part whip with glass and nails and sharp rocks embedded that ripped human flesh like cat’s claws rip. He was beaten about the head and the crown of thorns punctured the skin on his head so it bled. His wrists and ankles were nailed to the cross with nails that were perhaps a foot long or more. And finally, after he was already dead, the spear was stuck into his side and out poured blood and water.
Yet on Resurrection morning, Mary thinks that Jesus is the strong gardener until he turns to her. And then she is joyful. Later that day, Jesus walks to Emmaus – a village about 5 or 6 miles from Jerusalem and looks fine – just different, somehow. That evening, Jesus appears to the ten disciples and eats some fish with them. The next week, he appears to all Eleven including Thomas and shows off his scars. It is clear that he is not a ghost, not a spirit, not just an image but is fully present – mind, body, and soul.
Jesus’ old body has been made new. His old body has been fully repaired, but the scars are still there. The healing process has apparently progressed at a rate a hundred times faster than normal. But he clearly has a body – he is not a spirit being, for he eats and talks and later he even cooks breakfast for a group of disciples. Broiled fish is what He eats. He cooks a breakfast of fish over a wood fire on the beach for his disciples. There is something special about fish.
In Revelation, Jesus is seen as a strong, fit powerful man with white hair, signifying his great wisdom. He is not described as we would describe an old man except for the hair.
And he is still alive, even though nearly 2000 years have passed.
There is something different, something special, something holy about the Resurrection of Jesus. And that is well, for we know that Jesus is holy. But what does it mean to be holy?
The Greek word that is used is hagios. The root meaning of this word is “separate” or “apart”. So holy essentially means to be separate or apart. The word is the root of "against".
God is holy. God is separate.
Items become holy when we place them separate from the regular world. We have holy plates up here to receive offerings. We have holy candles. We have a holy Bible. We have holy communion cups.
They have all been kept separate from the regular world and so they are holy.
The ancient Temple in Jerusalem had degrees of holiness. Outermost was the court of the Gentiles in which anyone could enter. Then, as we moved inward were areas where only Jews could walk, then only Jewish men, then only Levites, then only priests, and finally, the Holy of Holies, where only God and the high priest could be together – and a rope was tied around the high priest’s ankle in case God found that the priest was not holy enough, struck him dead and forced his friends to drag him out. It had happened before! Holiness – separation from the world – is a matter of degree.
As we look at people coming back from the dead, we find something special with those people whose hearts stopped and then were restarted. We find something more special with those who were dead for hours or days and we raised from the dead by Jesus or a prophet or an Apostle. But there was something very unworldly, something different, something holy about Jesus’ Resurrection.
- Perhaps it was the fact that he predicted his death and Resurrection.
- Perhaps it was the fact that his body was so completely injured and yet He arose.
- Perhaps it was the fact that no one was there with Him – no one of this earth, that is. Perhaps it was the fact that God alone was with Jesus and therefore it was God’s will that lifted Jesus from death that makes his Resurrection so holy.
“Be holy, because I am holy.”
God – God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – is holy. God is separate from the world. Jesus inherently came back from the dead because Jesus had remained separate from the world.
It is like walking upon a group of children playing a game of cops and robbers with toy guns. “Bang! You’re dead” says Bobby, one of the children, to his younger brother Johnny, who falls down and then tearfully runs to his mother, crying that “Bobby shot me dead!”
Billy, the oldest, wisest child watches the game. His younger brother Bobby also shoots him with his toy gun. “Bang! You’re dead” Bobby says to the older brother Billy. Brother Billy falls dead. But then, after a minute or two, he stands up and walks over to the adults watching the game.
“I thought you were dead,” his father says.
And Billy replies, “Dad, I know I can’t be harmed by his toy gun. I’m alive.”
And so it is with us. We must step outside the game like Billy does, or we will not realize that our death is only temporary.
Are you in the world’s game that Satan has put people into, beginning with Adam and Eve, fearing death? Or have you chosen to step outside the game, choosing to follow Jesus to the world of the spiritual adults where death is just a transition, not an ending?
Be holy. Separate yourself from the world and follow Jesus along the path of holiness.
But how do we follow Jesus?
The first step is to read the four Gospels. Read cover to cover the four books Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, and discover what Jesus did, what Jesus said, what Jesus commanded us. Start with the Gospel of Mark, then read the other three. John will be very different from the others.
Notice as you read the following key things:
- God loves everyone and expect us to learn to love everyone.
- Jesus is gentle to the broken and stands up to the haughty, the strong, the powerful.
- Jesus is absolutely willing to do what God says – even when it is unpopular and painful for him personally.
· Have you learned to love all people – and I mean every single person you encounter?
· Are you gentle to broken people, to the struggling, to those who need friends? Do you stand up to the cruel, the strong, the powerful, the arrogant – yet strive to help them also?
· Are you willing to do what God says to do, even if it means spending some time to speak to people about His son?
That last one is the most difficult. We want to serve God on our terms. We signed on to be the cook – we don’t want to greet guests. We signed on to be the trustee – we don’t want to read scripture. We signed on to be a greeter at the front door – we don’t want to deliver a sermon. We signed on to serve on our terms – we don’t want to do what God needs us to do.
It is like we’ve chosen to work a job at Disney World. We want to be Snow White or Mickey Mouse or sell tickets or sweep up trash. We want to maintain the rides, play trombone in the band or load people in the carts on the Mad Hatter ride. We want to sell shirts in an air-conditioned shop because we don't like the mid-Florida heat and humidity, or we want to be the drum major.
But imagine a day when evil attacks the park. What jobs will we do?
On the day when evil attacks the park, everyone is called upon to give first aid, to get people to safety, to help everyone get home safe and sound. The park employees are in the park, but they are not guests of the park.
And that is what God asks of us to be holy. We are in the world but not of the world.
For every day, evil is attacking this world. Everyday, people need spiritual first aid. Every day, there are people who are headed into evil who need to be shown the safe way out of this world. Everyday, we are called by God to get everyone home to God, safe and sound. And it doesn’t matter what we wanted to do that day. Everything is different when eternal life hangs in the balance.
Service is a key to becoming holy. Following Jesus can not be limited to a part time job, a specialty calling, a service where we only serve certain people. Following Jesus is something we must do every waking minute, for people are falling dead out there every minute. And we hold the keys to safety - a holy Resurrection. We are the spiritual adults who know the toy guns and game deaths are not final.
And you? If you follow Jesus, you will also be resurrected one day – not resuscitated, not just raised from the dead, but fully and completely resurrected, with a new resurrected body in New Jerusalem, a magical kingdom, the land where the spiritual adults live, the land where God and Christ rule directly.
And that is what God asks of us to be holy. We are in the world but not of the world.
For every day, evil is attacking this world. Everyday, people need spiritual first aid. Every day, there are people who are headed into evil who need to be shown the safe way out of this world. Everyday, we are called by God to get everyone home to God, safe and sound. And it doesn’t matter what we wanted to do that day. Everything is different when eternal life hangs in the balance.
Service is a key to becoming holy. Following Jesus can not be limited to a part time job, a specialty calling, a service where we only serve certain people. Following Jesus is something we must do every waking minute, for people are falling dead out there every minute. And we hold the keys to safety - a holy Resurrection. We are the spiritual adults who know the toy guns and game deaths are not final.
And you? If you follow Jesus, you will also be resurrected one day – not resuscitated, not just raised from the dead, but fully and completely resurrected, with a new resurrected body in New Jerusalem, a magical kingdom, the land where the spiritual adults live, the land where God and Christ rule directly.
So join me in giving thanks to the One who stepped forward, stood up to the evil attacking the world, and through His sacrifice allowed us to become eligible for that holy resurrection. Give thanks to Jesus the Christ!
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
The Hole in the Heart
It is great to be back after Holy Week and Easter. Last week, we started Thursday night with the Last Supper and walked out to the Garden of Gethsemane. Friday, we picked up in the Garden, had Jesus arrested, tried, beaten, and dead on the cross. We saw the centurion verify Jesus was dead by taking his spear and stabbing him through his side into his heart…we saw the blood and water come gushing out. We saw Jesus buried and the Tomb sealed.
And then on Easter morning, we saw the women go to the tomb to clean and wrap the body in spices, but the stone was missing and they were greeted by a man who told them that Jesus had risen. And Mary Magdalene hung around the tomb and then saw Jesus risen! And all the earth rejoiced!
Our first reading today is from the Acts of the Apostles. It is a wonderful description of the early church a few months later.
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
It is a description of a wonderful community, a community of believers who understood what was important…and what was not important. They understood that spreading the Gospel had eternal consequences…and that owning extra land and houses did not.
Acts 4:32-35, Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2, John 20:19-31
The early believers understood that personal wealth – the extra land and houses they owned, the barns full of wheat, the extra items they had – it was all a form of misplaced security. We put money into our 401k plan so we can live securely in our old age, we hold onto that old lawnmower so we can fix it someday if our good lawnmower breaks down, we hold onto those extra acres so we can keep people at a distance and perhaps sell the property to raise cash if we need to someday.
In extreme cases, we hold onto boxes and bags of old clothing, boxes of old appliances, spare beds, extra furniture, old shoes, broken chairs, random pieces of fabric and metal because somewhere, a long time ago, we were taught that all these items might become useful and valuable again some day. And they might. We hold onto all these things – money, property, and goods – because we have a terrible fear that we will need something someday and we’ll never be able to get back what we give away. We become hoarders and misers.
But all these things that might be valuable and useful for us someday - they would be valuable or useful to someone else today. Our fear keeps us from being generous. Our fear keeps us from helping others. Our fear keeps us from spreading the Good News of Christ.
Our churches have had superb leadership in the past who understood that God loves us. Our two churches are highly unusual, I’ve found out. For we keep our doors unlocked. We trust in the Lord to protect our buildings. We trust in our neighbors and welcome them all. We trust that our generosity will protect us. But most of all, we rely upon the Lord to handle anything that might happen.
Other churches don’t have this trust. They lock their doors – even during the daylight. They install alarm systems. They worry about their neighbors – they don’t trust their neighbors. And so they build up a mutual distrust in their neighborhoods. The people around the don’t feel welcome, the people around see the glances of mistrust, the neighbors feel shut out from God’s house. And all because these Christians don’t believe God will protect their buildings – instead, they trust in their locks and their alarms. I would rather trust in the power of God.
The early believers recognized that they had nothing to fear. They recognized that even if they were killed, Jesus would just raise them from the dead one day. And so they became generous, particularly within their community, and that mutual generosity, that mutual sharing of possessions, gave each member a security which allowed them to put aside their fear and speak to other people about the love of God and the Resurrection of Christ.
It wasn’t limited to the New Testament church. That feeling of community was found at times in the Old Testament. Look at our Psalm 133, which is a Psalm of ascents, a song sung as the people walked up the mountain out of the Jordan Valley to Jerusalem:
How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
A good way to do this is through tithing. Increase your giving – pay God first – and see what happens. Some people feel that if they were to give their money to God first, their entire budget might collapse. Try it this month and see what happens. It builds your trust in God and that has great benefits.
Another way is to step forward and do something that terrifies you. Offer to read scripture on a Sunday morning. Offer to help in Children’s church or co-teach a Sunday School class. Sing in the choir. Play the piano. Offer to maintain some landscaping for the church this year. Talk to someone new. Talk to someone you’ve held a grudge against for months or years.
OK, you’ve done those things, but now you need to really trust God. Take the Lay Servant’s course. Start a new program or meeting or outreach at the church. Take on a foster child. Commit to talking to twelve people a week about Christ. Start a business. Do something you know you can't do by yourself, but do something you know God wants you to do. Ask for God's help and step forward.
Stepping on the tightrope builds our trust in God – and in God working with us through the Body of Christ, the Church. Our security level goes up as we realize that God is with us, supporting us each day. And as more and more of us do these sorts of things, our community becomes even more attractive to others.
Take Thomas the Apostle, Doubting Thomas as he is called. Thomas did not trust the other Apostles, the men he had walked with for three years. Why? Perhaps they had teased him too many times. Perhaps he had been too gullible for their April Fools jokes over the years. Perhaps he was skeptical of wild claims. Perhaps he felt his friends were the ones who were too gullible, too easily tricked into believing wishful thinking. Whatever it was, Thomas did not believe his friends when they told him that Jesus was alive. He did not trust them.
Thomas demanded proof. Thomas said he would not believe unless he saw the nail marks on Jesus’ wrists and feet and put his hand in the hole in his side where the spear had stabbed Jesus to his heart and the blood and water had gushed out.
And so Jesus steps in and shows Thomas the truth. And Thomas believes.
Peace comes when we know the Truth.
Sometimes we need God’s help in understanding things, things we can will ourselves to accept by faith, but something about us still needs proof. And so I’ll tell you a way to recognize truth – if you are a baptized believer and have received the Holy Spirit.
Blaise Pascal, the mathematician and theologian, once wrote something in his book “Pensees” – the French word means “Thoughts” - about a hole in our heart that can only be filled with God. Here is the complete quote from the Penguin edition of Pensees.
"What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself" (148/428).
When this hole in our heart, this empty footprint is filled with God and God’s Holy Spirit, we can recognize Truth. Until this footprint is filled, like someone trying to make pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit, we will try to make everything false and temporary in this life fit the print – but nothing has the footprint of God except God. And until that print has been filled by God, we will have a hole in our heart that sucks air and creates pain and unease and suffering and torment.
But once we have God’s foot back in that print, the hole is gone. And then we can look at the world around us with peace and security, trusting in God, and we will know what is false and what is true. For the hole in our heart is gone, the leak of blood and water is plugged, we are no longer dying – instead, we are living forever! Peace comes when we recognize Truth.
And with that peace comes the ability to love others instead of the desire to use others. A community filled with people who have had their heart holes plugged is a community that can turn their attention to people who are bleeding out, who are dying, who are desperately trying to fill that footprint of God with everything and anything – money, ambition, power, chemicals, lust, worry.
The Apostle John equated God with light and sin with darkness. Since we know that God is truth and sin is a lie, part of our reading from I John makes since to us.
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
John does not claim that one who knows God is sinless. Unlike some people, John doesn’t claim that a Christian automatically becomes sinless. John wants us to avoid sin, but recognizes that we will still sin – in fact, claiming to be without sin is a lie. But Jesus will speak to the Father when we sin and our sins will be forgiven.
Let this be a sign to you. When you fear, when you worry, when you hurt another because of your fears and worries – you have not yet allowed God’s foot to completely fill the print that is in your heart. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, you have allowed the hole in your heart to become unplugged. You have believed in lies instead of Truth.
And so, the solution to fear, the solution to worry, the solution to those times when we hurt others is to call once again to Jesus and ask Him to bring us closer to God, for God to forgive our sins, and to remember once more that God has this covered, that God loves us, that God will make all things work out well in the end – maybe not today, maybe not even next year, maybe not even in this life, but in the end. Peace comes when we know the Truth.
It is the same way that those who followed Jesus to Golgotha and the cross thought all was lost when the centurion stuck the spear into Jesus’ side and made a hole in Jesus’ heart, allowing the blood and water to spill out just because the centurion wanted to be sure Jesus was dead. His fear led him away from the Truth. The disciples' fears led them away from the Truth.
Yet, by the end of the weekend, their grief had turned to joy, for they had found the Truth in that Sunday evening meeting when Jesus arrived. A week later, even Thomas was on his face worshiping Jesus as God walking upon the earth. He had found the Truth and the hole in his heart was plugged.
When God is involved – and God is always involved when people worship God’s Son Jesus – things always turn out great in the end.
If you need to ask Jesus to repair the hole in your heart, to bring God’s foot back into the print that is in your heart, if you need to ask for help for yourself or another, it is as simple as asking Christ to fill your heart with God, to listen to the words of the Holy Spirit speaking to you, to recognize that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and worthy to be followed.
And then on Easter morning, we saw the women go to the tomb to clean and wrap the body in spices, but the stone was missing and they were greeted by a man who told them that Jesus had risen. And Mary Magdalene hung around the tomb and then saw Jesus risen! And all the earth rejoiced!
Our first reading today is from the Acts of the Apostles. It is a wonderful description of the early church a few months later.
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
It is a description of a wonderful community, a community of believers who understood what was important…and what was not important. They understood that spreading the Gospel had eternal consequences…and that owning extra land and houses did not.
Acts 4:32-35, Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2, John 20:19-31
The early believers understood that personal wealth – the extra land and houses they owned, the barns full of wheat, the extra items they had – it was all a form of misplaced security. We put money into our 401k plan so we can live securely in our old age, we hold onto that old lawnmower so we can fix it someday if our good lawnmower breaks down, we hold onto those extra acres so we can keep people at a distance and perhaps sell the property to raise cash if we need to someday.
In extreme cases, we hold onto boxes and bags of old clothing, boxes of old appliances, spare beds, extra furniture, old shoes, broken chairs, random pieces of fabric and metal because somewhere, a long time ago, we were taught that all these items might become useful and valuable again some day. And they might. We hold onto all these things – money, property, and goods – because we have a terrible fear that we will need something someday and we’ll never be able to get back what we give away. We become hoarders and misers.
But all these things that might be valuable and useful for us someday - they would be valuable or useful to someone else today. Our fear keeps us from being generous. Our fear keeps us from helping others. Our fear keeps us from spreading the Good News of Christ.
Our churches have had superb leadership in the past who understood that God loves us. Our two churches are highly unusual, I’ve found out. For we keep our doors unlocked. We trust in the Lord to protect our buildings. We trust in our neighbors and welcome them all. We trust that our generosity will protect us. But most of all, we rely upon the Lord to handle anything that might happen.
Other churches don’t have this trust. They lock their doors – even during the daylight. They install alarm systems. They worry about their neighbors – they don’t trust their neighbors. And so they build up a mutual distrust in their neighborhoods. The people around the don’t feel welcome, the people around see the glances of mistrust, the neighbors feel shut out from God’s house. And all because these Christians don’t believe God will protect their buildings – instead, they trust in their locks and their alarms. I would rather trust in the power of God.
The early believers recognized that they had nothing to fear. They recognized that even if they were killed, Jesus would just raise them from the dead one day. And so they became generous, particularly within their community, and that mutual generosity, that mutual sharing of possessions, gave each member a security which allowed them to put aside their fear and speak to other people about the love of God and the Resurrection of Christ.
It wasn’t limited to the New Testament church. That feeling of community was found at times in the Old Testament. Look at our Psalm 133, which is a Psalm of ascents, a song sung as the people walked up the mountain out of the Jordan Valley to Jerusalem:
How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.
The dew of Hermon – Mount Hermon was and is the great mountain north of Galilee, snow-topped, the mountain where Jesus and three of his disciples climbed for the Transfiguration. Hermon was known for its clean life-giving water, put on the mountain through rain and fog and dew and snow, water that flows down into the freshwater Sea of Galilee, and then down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea of salt. Even today, Mount Hermon provides much of the water for the Galilee region.
And the oil on Aaron’s head and beard – a symbol of abundance in a land where olive oil meant food and lamp oil and healing oil. Who could afford to waste oil such that it ran down the beard onto the robe except a secure, generous, wealthy person?
And so it is when a community – not just a church, but an entire community comes together in unity and trust. I have a rototiller – you have extra seeds. Let’s both have a good garden this year. I have a box of children’s books – you have children – we both benefit when your children love to read. You have a healthy teenager who is bored, I have a yard that needs mowing and can afford a few dollars a week.
But all of this requires two things – security and trust.
How can we have security?
When we take what we know in our heads about Jesus Christ and move it into our hearts.
We know that we will be resurrected. We know that God will take care of us. We know that God considers us more valuable than sparrows, yet God feeds the sparrows. Why aren’t we secure? Why are we anxious? Why do we need pills for our anxiety?
It is because we still haven’t taken this head knowledge about Jesus and God and moved it into our heart.
But how do we make that knowledge move?
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.
The dew of Hermon – Mount Hermon was and is the great mountain north of Galilee, snow-topped, the mountain where Jesus and three of his disciples climbed for the Transfiguration. Hermon was known for its clean life-giving water, put on the mountain through rain and fog and dew and snow, water that flows down into the freshwater Sea of Galilee, and then down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea of salt. Even today, Mount Hermon provides much of the water for the Galilee region.
And the oil on Aaron’s head and beard – a symbol of abundance in a land where olive oil meant food and lamp oil and healing oil. Who could afford to waste oil such that it ran down the beard onto the robe except a secure, generous, wealthy person?
And so it is when a community – not just a church, but an entire community comes together in unity and trust. I have a rototiller – you have extra seeds. Let’s both have a good garden this year. I have a box of children’s books – you have children – we both benefit when your children love to read. You have a healthy teenager who is bored, I have a yard that needs mowing and can afford a few dollars a week.
But all of this requires two things – security and trust.
How can we have security?
When we take what we know in our heads about Jesus Christ and move it into our hearts.
We know that we will be resurrected. We know that God will take care of us. We know that God considers us more valuable than sparrows, yet God feeds the sparrows. Why aren’t we secure? Why are we anxious? Why do we need pills for our anxiety?
It is because we still haven’t taken this head knowledge about Jesus and God and moved it into our heart.
But how do we make that knowledge move?
We have to take a chance, we have to practice our faith, we have to step on the tightrope and trust that God will protect us.
A good way to do this is through tithing. Increase your giving – pay God first – and see what happens. Some people feel that if they were to give their money to God first, their entire budget might collapse. Try it this month and see what happens. It builds your trust in God and that has great benefits.
Another way is to step forward and do something that terrifies you. Offer to read scripture on a Sunday morning. Offer to help in Children’s church or co-teach a Sunday School class. Sing in the choir. Play the piano. Offer to maintain some landscaping for the church this year. Talk to someone new. Talk to someone you’ve held a grudge against for months or years.
OK, you’ve done those things, but now you need to really trust God. Take the Lay Servant’s course. Start a new program or meeting or outreach at the church. Take on a foster child. Commit to talking to twelve people a week about Christ. Start a business. Do something you know you can't do by yourself, but do something you know God wants you to do. Ask for God's help and step forward.
Stepping on the tightrope builds our trust in God – and in God working with us through the Body of Christ, the Church. Our security level goes up as we realize that God is with us, supporting us each day. And as more and more of us do these sorts of things, our community becomes even more attractive to others.
Take Thomas the Apostle, Doubting Thomas as he is called. Thomas did not trust the other Apostles, the men he had walked with for three years. Why? Perhaps they had teased him too many times. Perhaps he had been too gullible for their April Fools jokes over the years. Perhaps he was skeptical of wild claims. Perhaps he felt his friends were the ones who were too gullible, too easily tricked into believing wishful thinking. Whatever it was, Thomas did not believe his friends when they told him that Jesus was alive. He did not trust them.
Thomas demanded proof. Thomas said he would not believe unless he saw the nail marks on Jesus’ wrists and feet and put his hand in the hole in his side where the spear had stabbed Jesus to his heart and the blood and water had gushed out.
And so Jesus steps in and shows Thomas the truth. And Thomas believes.
Peace comes when we know the Truth.
Sometimes we need God’s help in understanding things, things we can will ourselves to accept by faith, but something about us still needs proof. And so I’ll tell you a way to recognize truth – if you are a baptized believer and have received the Holy Spirit.
Blaise Pascal, the mathematician and theologian, once wrote something in his book “Pensees” – the French word means “Thoughts” - about a hole in our heart that can only be filled with God. Here is the complete quote from the Penguin edition of Pensees.
"What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself" (148/428).
When this hole in our heart, this empty footprint is filled with God and God’s Holy Spirit, we can recognize Truth. Until this footprint is filled, like someone trying to make pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit, we will try to make everything false and temporary in this life fit the print – but nothing has the footprint of God except God. And until that print has been filled by God, we will have a hole in our heart that sucks air and creates pain and unease and suffering and torment.
But once we have God’s foot back in that print, the hole is gone. And then we can look at the world around us with peace and security, trusting in God, and we will know what is false and what is true. For the hole in our heart is gone, the leak of blood and water is plugged, we are no longer dying – instead, we are living forever! Peace comes when we recognize Truth.
And with that peace comes the ability to love others instead of the desire to use others. A community filled with people who have had their heart holes plugged is a community that can turn their attention to people who are bleeding out, who are dying, who are desperately trying to fill that footprint of God with everything and anything – money, ambition, power, chemicals, lust, worry.
The Apostle John equated God with light and sin with darkness. Since we know that God is truth and sin is a lie, part of our reading from I John makes since to us.
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
John does not claim that one who knows God is sinless. Unlike some people, John doesn’t claim that a Christian automatically becomes sinless. John wants us to avoid sin, but recognizes that we will still sin – in fact, claiming to be without sin is a lie. But Jesus will speak to the Father when we sin and our sins will be forgiven.
Let this be a sign to you. When you fear, when you worry, when you hurt another because of your fears and worries – you have not yet allowed God’s foot to completely fill the print that is in your heart. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, you have allowed the hole in your heart to become unplugged. You have believed in lies instead of Truth.
And so, the solution to fear, the solution to worry, the solution to those times when we hurt others is to call once again to Jesus and ask Him to bring us closer to God, for God to forgive our sins, and to remember once more that God has this covered, that God loves us, that God will make all things work out well in the end – maybe not today, maybe not even next year, maybe not even in this life, but in the end. Peace comes when we know the Truth.
It is the same way that those who followed Jesus to Golgotha and the cross thought all was lost when the centurion stuck the spear into Jesus’ side and made a hole in Jesus’ heart, allowing the blood and water to spill out just because the centurion wanted to be sure Jesus was dead. His fear led him away from the Truth. The disciples' fears led them away from the Truth.
Yet, by the end of the weekend, their grief had turned to joy, for they had found the Truth in that Sunday evening meeting when Jesus arrived. A week later, even Thomas was on his face worshiping Jesus as God walking upon the earth. He had found the Truth and the hole in his heart was plugged.
When God is involved – and God is always involved when people worship God’s Son Jesus – things always turn out great in the end.
If you need to ask Jesus to repair the hole in your heart, to bring God’s foot back into the print that is in your heart, if you need to ask for help for yourself or another, it is as simple as asking Christ to fill your heart with God, to listen to the words of the Holy Spirit speaking to you, to recognize that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and worthy to be followed.
Monday, April 2, 2018
Welcome to the New World
As Saundra, our Shih Tzu puppy Brownie, and I are preparing to move, we’ve had some serious sorting and packing to do. Our new parsonage is nice, with a bit more living space than this one, but it has considerably less storage space. So we have been giving away books to the Lost Creek Library, giving Andy spare furniture, selling some items, donating a lot of stuff to the mission and Helping Hands House, and filling up multiple trash bags. Our dog Brownie has been very upset with the activities.
Did I say I’m sore and my back hurts?
In addition, there are other ways we have to get ready for the move. We’ve cut back on grocery purchases so we can reduce the amount of food we move. I’ve been in contact both with Brian Plum at my new churches and Nathan Weaver, your incoming pastor, to make sure the transitions are smooth. And then, there’s Brownie.
Brownie has gotten a bit scruffy over the winter. Her hair has grown long – I wish I could say it is sleek, but it isn’t. It’s tangled and matted and even after repeated washings, it’s dirty. Her nails have grown long because they haven’t been trimmed since last year. I’d like to say to her, “Clean yourself up!”, but she isn’t a cat, she can’t trim her claws, she can’t cut her hair, and she can’t comb it out.
Since I’ll need to walk Brownie around the new neighborhood on a leash – there isn’t any nice big, safe yard for her like there is here – I figure she’ll need to be cute. Nothing like walking a cute dog in the neighborhood to meet people. So we’ve begun to trim off hair, grooming her.
But Brownie doesn’t like being groomed. Brownie is extremely good in setting boundaries. You can trim some hair off her back, a bit around the eyes, but you are not to do anything near her tail or feet or tummy – and she is very clear about that. So the other day, I gently pinned her down, holding her tightly and talking quietly to her while Saundra attempted to use the clippers on her.
Isaiah 25:6-9, Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Mark 16:1-8
It didn’t work. First of all, Brownie began with a low rumble. Then a more open mouthed growl. Then she jerked and snapped – and my finger was the target! So we decided she could look grungy for a while longer...
Folks, when we live in this life, left to ourselves, we start out all cute and fairly clean. But as the rough times of life come, we begin to look scruffy. Our souls become tangled and matted and dirty. We are more likely to scratch others with the claws that have developed on our souls.
We need to be groomed. We need to be cleaned up. We need trimmed.
But what soul can clean itself?
We need someone who is ready and willing to groom and bath us. We need someone who is gentle and kind and yet firm and strong who can remove the tangled, dirty mats that have found their way into our souls.
And so God sent part of Himself to earth as Jesus Christ, the Babe of Bethlehem.
Jesus grew in wisdom and statue over the next thirty years. And then, He began to conduct His mission.
He taught us a different way. He taught us that God was not a gruff, hateful God who wanted to destroy us. He taught us that God is a loving Father who wants a good, close, pleasant, gentle, relationship with each of us. In fact, Jesus used the same word a Jewish child uses in talking to His Father – On the night Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed to his “Abba”, his Daddy.
And throughout His teaching, Jesus repeatedly told the people around him that He was the same as God. Sometimes it was subtle, like the days he forgave people their sins against God. Other times, it was a bit stronger, like when he would say, “I am”, which was short for “I am that I am”, the holy name that God had answered Moses with when Moses asked the talking, burning bush His name. And sometimes it was very blatant, like in John 10:30, when Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”
Most of the time, the people weren’t happy. They’d pick up stones to stone him or try to grab him and push him off a cliff. They understood exactly what he was claiming and considered it blasphemous. And so, when he was arrested and told the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jewish council, that they would see him sitting at the right hand of God, they took him to the Roman governor to be sentenced to death. And eventually he was executed on the cross on Passover Friday for the crime of claiming to be God. He died around 3 pm and his body was taken down in a hurry and placed in a tomb before sundown, for Jewish Law required this. A two-thousand pound disk-shaped stone was rolled down into a trench in front of the tomb to block the entrance, while Pilate’s wax seal was placed on the stone and a 16 man guard was established.
The next day, the Jewish Sabbath, was uneventful. His followers laid low.
And the next morning early, as our reading as well as sections of the other Gospels tells us, the women went to the tomb. In the rush to put Jesus in the tomb on Friday evening, certain things had not been done. So these women went to the tomb, intending on unwrapping the linen mummy wrap around him, washing his body, coating him with embalming spices, and rewrapping his body. It was a grim task, but the task of the loved ones. But they were worried that they wouldn’t be able to open the tomb because of the heavy stone. “Who will roll away the stone?” they asked each other.
When they arrived, things were not as they expected. The stone was rolled away. Mark tells us his account:
As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
The Apostle John adds in his account that Mary Magdalene stayed in the cemetery garden weeping. She ran into the man she thought was the gardener and asked him where they had taken Jesus’ body. The gardener turned to her and said one simple word. “Mary”.
Such a simple word. The most common woman’s name at the time. Just a couple of syllables. Just the most basic way to address someone. But it instantly told her something.
It told her that this man knew her. Of the hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem that weekend, this man knew her name. Of the hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem that weekend, this gardener that she thought she’d never met before knew who she was. Of the hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem that weekend, that voice and that single word told Mary that a new world had begun, that everything was turned upside down, that her grief instantly became joy because the gardener was Jesus walking around!
Mary grabbed Jesus and looked into His face. She yelled “Teacher!” And Jesus told her to tell Peter and the rest of the disciples that he was still with them.
And she did.
Later that day, a couple of disciples met Jesus walking along a road. Still later, most of the disciples were visited by Jesus. The next week, even Thomas, the one who had doubted the first stories, was met by Jesus. Later on, others met Jesus – five hundred people saw the risen Jesus. In eleven separate appearances to different people at different times and in different places, over five hundred people saw the risen Jesus. They saw him, talked with him, saw him eat some fish, and even had breakfast cooked by him.
And they told people. The disciples saw Jesus ascend to Heaven. They replaced Judas the traitor. And Seven weeks after Easter, on the festival day of Pentecost, miracles happened and the assembled twelve disciples testified as a body to the people of Jerusalem what they had seen, and over three thousand people believed and were baptized.
After that, the movement grew and grew. There were persecutions, a believer named Stephen was killed while a man named Saul looked on. Saul later encountered Jesus, changed his name to Paul, and began to preach and teach and establish congregations across Turkey and Greece and Cyprus. Paul spoke of the gospel, the good news, about Jesus Christ. Paul wrote letters, one of which, in part reads this way:
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried,
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried,
that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures
(Paul was counting Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday)
and that he appeared to Cephas (the Aramaic name we translate as Peter),
and then to the Twelve.
After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
(How much more sinful can you be than to persecute and kill people simply because they are Christians? Look how what we've done pales in comparison to Paul's sin!)
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
(He’s saying that God changed him for the better.)
Whether, then, it is I or they (the apostles), this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
And this is what most Christians have believed throughout history and today.
We have found that our souls are scruffy because we are trying to stay clean ourselves. But we can’t clean our souls by ourselves – we need a Groomer.
And because of Jesus’ words and deeds, we know that God is a gentle Groomer who wants to clean our souls, to allow us to live in this new neighborhood in which we find ourselves, in this new world.
Everyone here walked in with scruffy, dirty, matted and tangled souls. We all needed our claws trimmed back. We all had a tendency to bark and growl and bite at those who were just trying to help us – even the gentle Groomer, God. Most of us are still being groomed. It takes decades to properly groom a soul.
Whether, then, it is I or they (the apostles), this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
And this is what most Christians have believed throughout history and today.
- Jesus died as the payment for our sins.
- He was buried and came back to life, proving He was indeed God as He had claimed.
- Hundreds of people saw Jesus, multiple, credible witnesses who were willing to die before changing their story.
We have found that our souls are scruffy because we are trying to stay clean ourselves. But we can’t clean our souls by ourselves – we need a Groomer.
And because of Jesus’ words and deeds, we know that God is a gentle Groomer who wants to clean our souls, to allow us to live in this new neighborhood in which we find ourselves, in this new world.
Everyone here walked in with scruffy, dirty, matted and tangled souls. We all needed our claws trimmed back. We all had a tendency to bark and growl and bite at those who were just trying to help us – even the gentle Groomer, God. Most of us are still being groomed. It takes decades to properly groom a soul.
- But by coming to church every week, we learn to hear God’s voice.
- By coming to church every week, we learn to know what God wants of us.
- By coming to church every week, we find out that God wants us to have peace, sunshine, and joy in our lives – and we find out how to get to that new world of peace, sunshine and joy.
- Is your soul looking and feeling a bit frazzled?
- Have you been scratching those who love you a bit too often, a bit too much?
- Are there those around you who would love to give you a gentle petting, but you are so irritable, so angry at the world that you growl and bark and even bite back?
- Are your children beginning to lose their cuteness and become a bit scruffy?
And in all that flying fur as it is clipped off, that snipping of claws, that soaping and bathing and removal of dirt from our souls, we hope you’ll find new friends here, as we look with worship to our great Groomer.
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