John 21:1-14

12/26/10

John 21:1-14

Hudson UMC

It is an interesting thing to jump from the very beginning of the story of the earthly live of Jesus to the very end of it, just after the resurrection and just before the ascension.  We have a chance to see something that we might not have noticed if we had only gone through the book and didn’t look back to see where we had been.  What we notice is that while we could just sit back and watch the events in the first few chapters of John without necessarily putting ourselves into the action, as it were, we really can’t do that with the last passages in the gospel.  Indeed, each of the gospels gets more challenging and more uncomfortable the closer we get to the end of them, but nowhere is this more true than in John.

As a brief recap, let’s take a moment and recall what has just been happening.  Jesus was betrayed by Judas and crucified by the authorities.  On the third day, he rose again from the dead and he appeared to various people.  First to Mary Magdalene, then to all the disciples but Thomas, then to all the disciples including Thomas.  There have been several encounters with the risen Christ and it is important to remember this when we look at this text today.

The passage begins with the words, “After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias.”  If John’s point was only to say that Jesus actually met with the disciples again, he could have stopped here, but the story is very important so he goes on.  “Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.”  All of these people are people who have seen the risen Lord, even Thomas, who did not see Christ until later, had seen Christ.  “Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’  They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’”

This doesn’t seem like it is that significant.  After all, what’s wrong with going fishing?  People go fishing all the time, Jesus supported the fishing trade, even using it as his model to talk about reaching out to people, saying that his disciples would fish for people.  On top of all this, we know that at least Peter, his brother Andrew, James and John were all fishermen before Christ called them.  Ah.  That is the point.  When Peter says to the other disciples, “I am going fishing,” it does not simply mean that he is going to get into a boat and try to get something to eat.  It means that he going back to his life before he ever met Christ, as if Christ made no difference to him.  There is something going on in Peter’s head that pushes him to go back to the life that he had left behind.  By saying, “We will go with you,” the others show that they share this desire.

Why would these people, who had seen the Lord, whose lives had been forever changed by the ministry of Jesus, turn their backs on all that had happened in the last three years and go back to how things were before?  It really isn’t all that hard of a question, because we can see that human beings are simply wired this way.  Jesus had called the disciples into a life that they had never known before, a life of sacrifice and service, a life dedicated to others that was so far from earning their thanks that it earned their scorn.  If they went back to fishing, it would mean that they no longer had to live their lives as people who were associated with Jesus, they could look back on those years as an interesting experience, but one that they are glad to leave in the past and not to repeat it.

To go back to fishing is to prefer the old to the new, the way things have always been over this radical and new lifestyle presented by Jesus.  The whole change reminds me of a moment early in the Lord of the Rings where the hobbit, Frodo Baggins tells the wizard, Gandalf that, before he came along, the Bagginses were very well thought of…never had any adventures or did anything unexpected.  It seems that in spite of all the time that the disciples invested in this new life, in spite of the experiences they had and in spite of the fact that the one they followed was shown to be victorious even over death, they decided they wanted the quiet life, the life without the unexpected and without the adventures.  Fishing was something that they knew, something they could count on, something stable in their lives.

That makes a certain amount of sense, but what do we read?  “They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.”  It was easy for the disciples to think of their old lives as simple and predictable when compared to the radical uncertainty that marked some moments in their life with Jesus.  However, the moment they went back to their old ways, they had no choice but to come face-to-face with the fact that those old ways were not necessarily any more stable than the one they turned their back on.  After all, no amount of experience can ensure that you will catch fish just like it cannot guarantee that your farm will produce a good crop or that your business will turn a profit.  Even if you do everything right, something can still come out of left field and mess everything up, like the events that brought about this recession.

And yet, in spite of the fact that the disciples turned their back on their life with Christ, Jesus comes to meet with them nonetheless.  But how does Jesus come to them, people who by their actions if not by their words, have said, “Even though we have seen you risen from the dead, we would rather live like we did before, we would rather not have to live with the uncertainty you offer?”  He just stood on the beach so that they did not even know it was him, and he “said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’  They answered him, ‘No.’”  You see, he already knew that they had not caught anything.  He is the Lord of the universe, the one who created the fish that the disciples were not catching.

So Jesus does something amazing.  “He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’”  Now, I am not a fisherman, but it seems to me that this is extremely specific advice.  When I think about fishing advice I have heard people give to one another, it is usually pretty general, “Go to this place,” “Use this kind of lure,” and things like that.  To say to someone, “You who are an experienced fisherman, who have tried all night but have caught nothing, don’t move, just cast your net on the other side of the boat, and you will find some,” seems preposterous, and yet this is exactly what Jesus does.

This command might seem somewhat familiar to you.  The reason is because there is an event that is recorded by Luke, though not by John, where Jesus, when he called Simon Peter in the first place, tells him to cast his nets into the deep water.  Peter’s response was, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”  Immediately, the nets were full and they needed extra help to bring in the fish.  However, Peter was so overwhelmed by this that he fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  However, as we all know, Jesus did not go away from Peter, but called him to join him in ministry.

This is so similar to our story here.  We read, “So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.”  All of a sudden, it seems that the disciples were overcome with a sense of déjà vu.  The disciple whom Jesus loved, who was probably John, the narrator of this book, who was a witness to the other miracle, said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”  What Jesus had done is so distinctive that the disciples realized that nobody but he could have done it.

What does Peter do here?  He does not cry for Jesus to get away from him, but does something that might seem to be even more foolish.  Peter goes and puts clothes on, for he was naked, and swam to Jesus.  When the boat with the fish came up, he single-handedly dragged the net with one hundred and fifty-three large fish across the beach to Jesus.  Jesus, after meeting with his disciples, invites them to breakfast and joins them in their meal of fish and bread.

What I love is that, after Jesus invites them to come and eat, we read that, “none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord.”  Remember, this is the same Jesus that they did not recognize, even when he was speaking to them.  The resurrected Jesus is a mystery because he does not seem to fit into our ordinary way of understanding things.  There is a sense in which he does not look like he used to, because we read in the gospels that people repeatedly do not know him when he comes to them.  And yet, he still has wounds in his hands and side for Thomas to touch.  He has remarkable access to locked rooms, as if he were able to walk though walls, and yet here we have him eating fish and bread.

The point is that Jesus is not always recognizable to the eyes.  Sometimes, Jesus can be standing right in front of us and we can completely miss him.  Sometimes, even, we can be like the disciples and be in a position where we might not want to see him, either because it would be inconvenient, or because we have made up our minds ahead of time what Jesus will look like and be about and we don’t want who Jesus really is to challenge that.  Sometimes, we just aren’t looking for God and yet he shows up anyway.

What can we take from this?  First, we can see that even people who have been so very close to Jesus can turn their backs on him.  It doesn’t seem to make any sense and we can make no rational account of it.  Somehow, in spite of the magnificent grace and mercy that God has shown people in Christ and through the Holy Spirit, we still have this desire to do things our own way, to go back and do what we did before, when we could control what we did and how we did it and didn’t have to always be listening for the voice of the Lord to speak into our situation.

However, we learn more than this.  We also learn that, in spite of our tendency to turn our back on God, it is not as if God just as quickly turns his back on us.  On the contrary, God meets us where we are, even when we haven’t been looking for him, even when we may not want to see him at all, and presents himself to us in such a way that we can know he is present, even if we have turned a blind eye to him.  Jesus does not respond with harshness to the disciples who have returned to their old ways but blesses them abundantly and calls them again like he did in the first place.

What we also learn from this passage is that, when Jesus reunites with his disciples, when they get together in reconciliation, what do they do?  They share a meal together.  Now, we are not joining together in Holy Communion today, but we will be next week.  We will also be participating in a covenant renewal service that comes down to us from John Wesley and the early Methodists.  Sometimes, when we get to times where we are given the opportunity to renew our covenant with God, we get nervous.  We remember quite vividly that we have not upheld all the parts of the covenant and that we aren’t sure that we will be able to do it in the future.  It is because the Bible contains passages like this one that I encourage you to come and participate anyway, sealing that covenant with the Lord’s Supper.

The Bible has a tendency to expose humanity’s greatest weaknesses at the exact same time as it reveals the greatness of the grace, compassion and mercy of God in spite of that weakness.  This is exactly what we see here.  We see Christ meeting with people who seem to have forgotten about him and gone the other way, still holding out his hands, still calling for them to come.  When we remember, in this Christmas season, that God came among us, not when we got our act together, but when we were in the height of sin, and that God came to us individually in the same way, let us cling to that God who has loved us more than we have loved ourselves, for he is the one that can be trusted and who will stop at nothing for us.  Let us pray.

AMEN

John 21:1-14

12/26/10

John 21:1-14

Hudson UMC

It is an interesting thing to jump from the very beginning of the story of the earthly live of Jesus to the very end of it, just after the resurrection and just before the ascension.  We have a chance to see something that we might not have noticed if we had only gone through the book and didn’t look back to see where we had been.  What we notice is that while we could just sit back and watch the events in the first few chapters of John without necessarily putting ourselves into the action, as it were, we really can’t do that with the last passages in the gospel.  Indeed, each of the gospels gets more challenging and more uncomfortable the closer we get to the end of them, but nowhere is this more true than in John.

As a brief recap, let’s take a moment and recall what has just been happening.  Jesus was betrayed by Judas and crucified by the authorities.  On the third day, he rose again from the dead and he appeared to various people.  First to Mary Magdalene, then to all the disciples but Thomas, then to all the disciples including Thomas.  There have been several encounters with the risen Christ and it is important to remember this when we look at this text today.

The passage begins with the words, “After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias.”  If John’s point was only to say that Jesus actually met with the disciples again, he could have stopped here, but the story is very important so he goes on.  “Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.”  All of these people are people who have seen the risen Lord, even Thomas, who did not see Christ until later, had seen Christ.  “Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’  They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’”

This doesn’t seem like it is that significant.  After all, what’s wrong with going fishing?  People go fishing all the time, Jesus supported the fishing trade, even using it as his model to talk about reaching out to people, saying that his disciples would fish for people.  On top of all this, we know that at least Peter, his brother Andrew, James and John were all fishermen before Christ called them.  Ah.  That is the point.  When Peter says to the other disciples, “I am going fishing,” it does not simply mean that he is going to get into a boat and try to get something to eat.  It means that he going back to his life before he ever met Christ, as if Christ made no difference to him.  There is something going on in Peter’s head that pushes him to go back to the life that he had left behind.  By saying, “We will go with you,” the others show that they share this desire.

Why would these people, who had seen the Lord, whose lives had been forever changed by the ministry of Jesus, turn their backs on all that had happened in the last three years and go back to how things were before?  It really isn’t all that hard of a question, because we can see that human beings are simply wired this way.  Jesus had called the disciples into a life that they had never known before, a life of sacrifice and service, a life dedicated to others that was so far from earning their thanks that it earned their scorn.  If they went back to fishing, it would mean that they no longer had to live their lives as people who were associated with Jesus, they could look back on those years as an interesting experience, but one that they are glad to leave in the past and not to repeat it.

To go back to fishing is to prefer the old to the new, the way things have always been over this radical and new lifestyle presented by Jesus.  The whole change reminds me of a moment early in the Lord of the Rings where the hobbit, Frodo Baggins tells the wizard, Gandalf that, before he came along, the Bagginses were very well thought of…never had any adventures or did anything unexpected.  It seems that in spite of all the time that the disciples invested in this new life, in spite of the experiences they had and in spite of the fact that the one they followed was shown to be victorious even over death, they decided they wanted the quiet life, the life without the unexpected and without the adventures.  Fishing was something that they knew, something they could count on, something stable in their lives.

That makes a certain amount of sense, but what do we read?  “They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.”  It was easy for the disciples to think of their old lives as simple and predictable when compared to the radical uncertainty that marked some moments in their life with Jesus.  However, the moment they went back to their old ways, they had no choice but to come face-to-face with the fact that those old ways were not necessarily any more stable than the one they turned their back on.  After all, no amount of experience can ensure that you will catch fish just like it cannot guarantee that your farm will produce a good crop or that your business will turn a profit.  Even if you do everything right, something can still come out of left field and mess everything up, like the events that brought about this recession.

And yet, in spite of the fact that the disciples turned their back on their life with Christ, Jesus comes to meet with them nonetheless.  But how does Jesus come to them, people who by their actions if not by their words, have said, “Even though we have seen you risen from the dead, we would rather live like we did before, we would rather not have to live with the uncertainty you offer?”  He just stood on the beach so that they did not even know it was him, and he “said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’  They answered him, ‘No.’”  You see, he already knew that they had not caught anything.  He is the Lord of the universe, the one who created the fish that the disciples were not catching.

So Jesus does something amazing.  “He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’”  Now, I am not a fisherman, but it seems to me that this is extremely specific advice.  When I think about fishing advice I have heard people give to one another, it is usually pretty general, “Go to this place,” “Use this kind of lure,” and things like that.  To say to someone, “You who are an experienced fisherman, who have tried all night but have caught nothing, don’t move, just cast your net on the other side of the boat, and you will find some,” seems preposterous, and yet this is exactly what Jesus does.

This command might seem somewhat familiar to you.  The reason is because there is an event that is recorded by Luke, though not by John, where Jesus, when he called Simon Peter in the first place, tells him to cast his nets into the deep water.  Peter’s response was, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.  Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”  Immediately, the nets were full and they needed extra help to bring in the fish.  However, Peter was so overwhelmed by this that he fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  However, as we all know, Jesus did not go away from Peter, but called him to join him in ministry.

This is so similar to our story here.  We read, “So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.”  All of a sudden, it seems that the disciples were overcome with a sense of déjà vu.  The disciple whom Jesus loved, who was probably John, the narrator of this book, who was a witness to the other miracle, said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”  What Jesus had done is so distinctive that the disciples realized that nobody but he could have done it.

What does Peter do here?  He does not cry for Jesus to get away from him, but does something that might seem to be even more foolish.  Peter goes and puts clothes on, for he was naked, and swam to Jesus.  When the boat with the fish came up, he single-handedly dragged the net with one hundred and fifty-three large fish across the beach to Jesus.  Jesus, after meeting with his disciples, invites them to breakfast and joins them in their meal of fish and bread.

What I love is that, after Jesus invites them to come and eat, we read that, “none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord.”  Remember, this is the same Jesus that they did not recognize, even when he was speaking to them.  The resurrected Jesus is a mystery because he does not seem to fit into our ordinary way of understanding things.  There is a sense in which he does not look like he used to, because we read in the gospels that people repeatedly do not know him when he comes to them.  And yet, he still has wounds in his hands and side for Thomas to touch.  He has remarkable access to locked rooms, as if he were able to walk though walls, and yet here we have him eating fish and bread.

The point is that Jesus is not always recognizable to the eyes.  Sometimes, Jesus can be standing right in front of us and we can completely miss him.  Sometimes, even, we can be like the disciples and be in a position where we might not want to see him, either because it would be inconvenient, or because we have made up our minds ahead of time what Jesus will look like and be about and we don’t want who Jesus really is to challenge that.  Sometimes, we just aren’t looking for God and yet he shows up anyway.

What can we take from this?  First, we can see that even people who have been so very close to Jesus can turn their backs on him.  It doesn’t seem to make any sense and we can make no rational account of it.  Somehow, in spite of the magnificent grace and mercy that God has shown people in Christ and through the Holy Spirit, we still have this desire to do things our own way, to go back and do what we did before, when we could control what we did and how we did it and didn’t have to always be listening for the voice of the Lord to speak into our situation.

However, we learn more than this.  We also learn that, in spite of our tendency to turn our back on God, it is not as if God just as quickly turns his back on us.  On the contrary, God meets us where we are, even when we haven’t been looking for him, even when we may not want to see him at all, and presents himself to us in such a way that we can know he is present, even if we have turned a blind eye to him.  Jesus does not respond with harshness to the disciples who have returned to their old ways but blesses them abundantly and calls them again like he did in the first place.

What we also learn from this passage is that, when Jesus reunites with his disciples, when they get together in reconciliation, what do they do?  They share a meal together.  Now, we are not joining together in Holy Communion today, but we will be next week.  We will also be participating in a covenant renewal service that comes down to us from John Wesley and the early Methodists.  Sometimes, when we get to times where we are given the opportunity to renew our covenant with God, we get nervous.  We remember quite vividly that we have not upheld all the parts of the covenant and that we aren’t sure that we will be able to do it in the future.  It is because the Bible contains passages like this one that I encourage you to come and participate anyway, sealing that covenant with the Lord’s Supper.

The Bible has a tendency to expose humanity’s greatest weaknesses at the exact same time as it reveals the greatness of the grace, compassion and mercy of God in spite of that weakness.  This is exactly what we see here.  We see Christ meeting with people who seem to have forgotten about him and gone the other way, still holding out his hands, still calling for them to come.  When we remember, in this Christmas season, that God came among us, not when we got our act together, but when we were in the height of sin, and that God came to us individually in the same way, let us cling to that God who has loved us more than we have loved ourselves, for he is the one that can be trusted and who will stop at nothing for us.  Let us pray.

AMEN

Christmas Eve 2010 (Galatians 4:1-7)

12/24/10

Christmas Eve 2010

Hudson UMC

As Americans, we live in a culture that is increasingly secular, pluralistic, and even pagan.  We, as a whole society, don’t really like the central claims of the Christian faith:  that there is a God, that this God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that this God created the universe which is, in turn, dependent on him.  We don’t like those claims because, at the end of the day, it means that there are certain things that are what they are and not something else, which means we can’t make them mean anything we want to.  If the basic Gospel message is true, then we are not the lords of our own lives, but are subject to a God whose word is always final.

What is interesting is that, in spite of the secularity of our culture, we still really like Christmas.  We love the idea of gathering together with friends and family, to show our love in a tangible way by giving gifts to those who mean the most to us, and to do all of this while our days are short, dark, and cold, almost as a kind of protest against the weather.  But when we separate the celebration of Christmas from the events that gave rise to that celebration in the first place, it becomes transformed from rejoicing over the compassion and self-giving of God to the strained financial giving of human beings; the beautiful symbolism and love that was inherent in the gifts the wise men gave to the child Jesus gets flattened out into gadgets and gift cards.

Even our music seems to suffer from this general secularizing trend.  I, thankfully, have not had to spend too much time in stores this holiday season, but already I am completely sick of “Winter Wonderland,” one of the only songs that the secular marketplace can play during this time of year that reminds us of Christmas, but without the offense of actually talking about Jesus.  To think that the season that has inspired so many songs that capture the essence of the Christian faith has been collapsed into “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow,” or “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” is something of a depressing prospect.

In light of the fact that our culture is really good at celebrating on December 25, but not necessary good at celebrating Christmas, my challenge as a Christian pastor is not to get people excited about shopping or the spirit of giving, or anything like that.  My challenge is to take a moment in the midst of this hectic time, and bring a reminder of just how significant the event we celebrate at Christmas really is because, in spite of the fact that it might seem that our festivities have been blown out of proportion, the truth of the matter is that we don’t celebrate nearly enough, when we compare it to what God has done by coming among us as one of us and one with us.

Let us consider the words of Paul in his letter to the Galatian Christians.  “My point is this:  heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property; but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father.  So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world.  But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.  And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba!  Father!’  So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”

Paul describes the birth of Christ as being, in a sense, the coming of age of humanity, the time when we were able to stop being like slaves and little children and be mature adults, full participants in the inheritance of God.  Now, we who are part of Western culture like to talk about coming to maturity; we love to think about shedding the authorities we used to be bound to and going out on our own to make a name for ourselves.  However, this is not at all what Paul is saying.  Paul is not saying that the birth of Christ merely signaled the maturity of humanity, as if we would have reached maturity anyway.  Rather, the birth of Christ brought about that maturity and did so, not primarily in us, but in Christ, where we reach our own maturity.  It is not on our own maturity, as if sheer individualism was a goal in itself; our maturity is to be found only in Christ.

If we just read the words that Paul wrote, and we don’t dig deeper into the meaning with which they are loaded, we can miss what he is really saying.  He is saying that, on our own, even when we are in some kind of external relation to God, like the nation of Israel was for so long, we are enslaved to the ways of the world.  Not only that, but we are enslaved by our own will.  Since the very beginning, human beings have chosen the world over God.  The problem is not just that we don’t know any better and so we don’t choose God by mistake; rather, the problem is that we know only too well what choosing God means and so, even though we do know better, we still avoid God.  This is a difficult situation for humanity to be in.  If we are not only enslaved, but enslaved by our own choice, what is God to do?

 Paul tells us that, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”  Why did Jesus come when he did?  Why did he not come hundreds of years earlier?  Why did he not wait until our day and age to come?  We can never know, but what we do know is that, in the eyes of God, Jesus came at the fullness of time, the time when everything was ready, when the conditions were perfect.  We might look at the events in the life of Christ and see that, at the end, he was completely abandoned, even by his closest friends.  When we see that, we might doubt whether the time was really right or not, and yet, we are assured that this was the case and so the burden is thrown back on our shoulders to try and understand it.

Regardless of that, however, when Jesus came, he did not come as some high and exalted king, far away from ordinary folks like you and me.  He did not hold himself aloof, even while coming to meet us.  No, he was made just like us, born of a woman, born under the law, all so he could redeem those who were under the law, that is, you and me.  This is Paul’s way of saying that, when God became a human being, he really came to share in our human experience, to join in the same world of space and time that we live in, to bear the same burdens we bear, because the trials of this life have changed forms but are substantially the same as they were two thousand years ago in ancient Israel.

Can you imagine what that means?  It means that the God of the universe, who created everything we can see and everything that we can’t, from the largest galaxy to the tiniest sub-atomic particle, the one who maintains the staggeringly constant velocity of light throughout all of creation, became a human being to live in that universe.  Compared to the immensity of the cosmos, we are but a speck of dust, less than that, even.  And yet the God whom even the highest heavens cannot contain, chooses to become one of us and live a human life.  Not only that, not only did God choose to come among us as a human being, which must seem incredibly primitive to God, he chose to live under the same law that he created for us.  He lived all of his life, perfectly submitted to his own laws, and then was willing to be condemned by people who did not follow those laws, and be nailed to a cross by those same rebellious people.

And the question we have to ask in light of this fact is “why?”  Why would God do this?  If God were like us, we would have a hard time coming up with an answer.  He did not do it because he had to; after all, God does not have to do anything at all.  He did not do it because he got anything special out of the deal; after all, how could the God who created everything in the first place need anything from that creation?  The gospel assures us that God did all this for one reason and one reason only, to not be God without us, because he loves us and wants us for his own.

But why does God love us?  This is something that has given many people, perhaps even someone here tonight, a really hard time.  There have been many people who have said, “God might love everyone else, but he couldn’t really love me.”  Why do we say that?  Do we really think that we are the worst person ever?  Do we really think that, in spite of all the evil that human beings have ever done that God can forgive, somehow we have done something that God just can’t forgive?  Do we honestly believe that somehow we, finite and weak human beings that we are, have managed to find a way to sin so badly that even the blood of Christ cannot cover it?

Think about the people in the Bible.  Abraham, the one that God chose to be the father of the people of God was a liar.  Moses, who was chosen to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery, was a murderer.  David, the one that God said was “a man after my own heart,” was both a murderer and an adulterer.  Even the disciples of Christ themselves had lots of problems.  James and John were power-hungry, Matthew was a greedy tax collector, Nathanael was a bigot, and Peter, the one that has gone down as the leader of the apostles, denied Jesus three times within hours of pledging his undying loyalty to him.  Even Paul, who perhaps did more to spread Christian faith throughout the world than anyone else at the time, was a persecutor of the church and a murderer of Christians; once he even referred to himself as the chief of sinners.

In spite of this laundry list of sins, both sinful actions and sins of the heart, who can point to any one of these people who was finally rejected by God, who was told, “There is no atonement for you, for you have sinned too much.”  Indeed, it is precisely because these people were such great sinners that the grace of God can be seen to be grace and not something that we earn for ourselves.  Paul even goes so far as to say that sinful people, even the chief of sinners himself, are made, in Christ, the children of God.  Because of what Christ has done, God has sent the Spirit of Christ into our hearts so that we join in Christ’s cry, “Abba!  Father!”  Even though we were born into slavery and even though we continue to choose slavery for ourselves day after day, in Christ, we are no longer slaves but children, and if we are children, we are heirs of God, those who will inherit the boundless kingdom of God.

If people like you and me, ordinary people with nothing special about us, are so transformed that we have become the very heirs of God, not because we did something great but because God did something great, all at tremendous cost to him so that it might cost us nothing, then our celebrations seem so very small in comparison.  How can we possibly rejoice enough to show our gratitude for what God has done and is continuing to do day by day?  Even though it is so far beyond us, let us do our best.  Though everything we have to give is inadequate, let us give it anyway, for God has given us everything.  Let us pray. AMEN

Matthew 2:1-23

12/12/10

Matthew 2:1-23

Hudson UMC

I would imagine that you have not heard too many sermons based on Matthew chapter two, and, those that you have heard focus on the story of the visiting Magi and God’s opening of the doors to Gentiles like you and me.  Though these events are, strictly speaking, not part of Advent, but Epiphany, they deal with events in the aftermath of Christ’s birth, so it is often associated with Advent and Christmas.  The well-known song, “We Three Kings” is based on this text, and I am sure that Al is glad that I didn’t pick that song for today.

However, I want to focus on a part of the text that is read, but seldom ever preached on.  In fact, I was told by a preaching professor that it only comes up once in the daily lectionary and not at all in the Sunday lectionary, which are collections of texts ordered around the Church calendar.  This means that most people never hear this text in church at all.

I want to concentrate on the portion of the text that tells the story of what has come to be known as “the slaying of the innocents,” where Herod, enraged that Jesus has been born, has all the children under the age of two in and around Bethlehem killed.  Before we talk about the theological issues at stake and what it means for us, let us first look at the event itself and try to understand it.

Try to imagine Herod as a classic, power-hungry king.  One day, a bunch of wealthy, well-educated people from a distant land came to his palace to asked him where the newborn king is.  As they were expecting a king, they did the logical thing and went to the palace in Jerusalem.  However, there was not a newborn king there and Herod knew it.  Who could this king be who was born, but not as a son to the current king?  You can imagine that Herod began to get more than a little bit nervous and jealous when he heard this.  He asked his wise men where the Messiah was supposed to be born and was told, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:  ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”

Herod probably wished that they had said any other city but Bethlehem.  In spite of the fact that most people today most closely associate Bethlehem with Jesus, the people of the time would have most closely associated Bethlehem with King David.  To be a king born in Bethlehem is to be compared closely with David, the great king of Israel, who built up the nation, defeating their enemies and bringing prosperity to the land.  David was held up to be the standard by which every other king was judged.  David had been promised that he would always have a descendant on the throne of Israel, and Herod was not a son of David.  Because of the census, if anyone was going to be born as a son of David, it would be in Bethlehem.  If someone born in Bethlehem was to be a king, it meant that they, and not Herod, would have the rightful claim to the throne.

However, Israel was not self-governing at this time, but was subject to Roman authority.  For the son of David, the anointed one, to be born, meant that the time was coming when God’s chosen leader would take the throne back, which, because of the political situation, would surely involve open rebellion against Rome.  This is why lots of people followed Jesus; they wanted a leader who would give them their political independence.  It is also the reason why so many people turned their back on Jesus; it became clear that this was precisely the kind of thing that Jesus had no intention of doing.  Once the people could no longer say that Jesus was on their side, they had no more use for him.

So Herod did what any king would have done, tried to have this other king killed. Of course, Herod doesn’t want to seem that he is cold-hearted, which he was, so he made up a story to try to get these wise men from the East to help him with his plan.  First, he asked them when this king’s star appeared, then he said, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”

We can never know whether or not the wise men knew something was not quite right at the time, but we are told that they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they went home by a different way.  However, it was not long before Herod realized that his plan had not worked, so he went to plan “B.”  He never really planned to go and pay homage to Jesus; he was going to have him killed instead.  And yet, he knew that there was another way to get what he wanted.  He did not know exactly who this newborn king was, but he knew enough.  He knew that he was born in Bethlehem and he knew that he was about two years old.  All he needed to do was get rid of all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger.

And, as sad as it is to say, brothers and sisters, this is exactly what Herod did.  The way he figured it, his plan was foolproof.  Nobody could possibly have known what he was going to do, so nobody could warn the people ahead of time.  However, Joseph had a dream where he was warned that they were in danger and he took it so seriously that they left in the night, perhaps that very night and fled to Egypt.

When we think about these events, we usually rejoice because God, by protecting his Son, paved the way for us to be saved.  However, what about all those other children?  What about all the innocent people that died at the hands of Herod?  We don’t often think about them, either because we are deeply troubled by the tragedy, I must admit that I was overcome with emotion several times while preparing this sermon because, as you know, my son is less than two years old, or because we are afraid that God will come off as a villain, saving his own Son while allowing the children of others to die.

But this tragedy does not so much tell us about God as it does about humanity; indeed, it tells us far too much about humanity.  It tells us things we did not want to know and that we wish were not true about human beings, and yet it does not hold back.  We see, reflected back at us in this text, where human allegiances truly lie.  We see that, when forced to choose between following God and joining in his mission to the world or looking out for themselves, human beings tend to take the selfish route.  It is true that not everyone has been selfish, but when we look throughout the history of the world, often the deciding factor as to whether one goes down in history as noble or wicked is how much power they had.  The more power someone has, the more history tells us they will do anything they can to keep it.

Herod was not driven by the desire to do evil for evil’s sake, he was not hoping to be remembered as a wicked king who performed heartless deeds.  He was only trying to protect his crown, and, more nobly, the crowns of his sons.  But at what cost?  His position as a puppet ruler was so dear to him that nothing was sacred anymore.  He was afraid that his power was at risk, that this rival king would put an end to his dynasty.  The sad irony of the situation is that, though Herod was willing to have all the children under two years old in Bethlehem killed to stop Jesus from taking his crown, Jesus never dethroned Herod or his sons.  Even though Herod couldn’t stop Jesus, his fears were never realized.  The killing was absolutely useless and purely tragic.

Though the actual crown of the puppet king of Jerusalem was not at risk in the life of Jesus, Herod’s fears were not completely unfounded.  You see, even if Jesus was not first and foremost trying to start a political revolution, he was indeed attempting to overthrow the power structures of this world.  It seems to me that the exodus of Israel from Egypt shows us this particularly clearly.  The exodus was not political in the sense that Israel did not rise up against their oppressors and violently overthrow them, putting another government in their place.  However, it was political because it had a tremendous impact on Egypt’s power.  No longer did they have slaves, people they could force to do their bidding.  The Egyptian economy was left in shambles.  Their whole situation had changed and what the signs and wonders, culminating in Passover, show us is that Pharaoh could do nothing to stop it.

God’s action in the world at that time was profoundly political.  The power of humanity was laid low, even the greatest rulers of the earth, and God had his way, bringing deliverance out of oppression.  God did not take over management of Egypt, it is true, but God did not want to rule like an earthly king.  He did not want to wield a power that was paranoid of being overthrown, that had to resort to evil to secure itself.  God rules by love, even enduring horrible mistreatment at the hands of human beings, to overcome our supposed strength by his weakness.

This is precisely what happened in the birth of Christ.  Herod was a king, the right hand of Rome in Israel.  Herod saw his own power at risk and, because of that, he saw that Rome’s power was at risk, and so he did something terrible to try and stop it.  However, what he never realized was that his power was much more at risk than he could ever imagine.  Jesus was not out to rule Israel, or even all the Roman empire.  No, God’s kingdom covers the whole earth, leaving absolutely no one out.  God would not satisfy himself by being just one more provincial king, with his own little territory and his own special laws.  Nothing short of all of everyone will satisfy God. 

And how does he do that?  By becoming a weeping and wailing baby.  The almighty God of the universe brings about this kingdom, not by waging war, not by a sheer show of force, but by becoming supremely vulnerable.  Imagine it, that on the night Jesus was born, you could hold the very God of the universe in your hands, that the very Word of God was not able to speak, that the one who has never needed anyone or anything else to be who he is is utterly dependent on weak and broken human beings for everything.  The same Jesus who would one day refuse to turn stones into bread because human beings do not just need food to survive, but every word from the mouth of God, at the beginning of his life, could not go more than a few hours without being fed by his mother.

The God we serve is not a distant god who shouts orders at us and keeps track of our sins and good deeds on a heavenly ledger and just wants to make sure we have more good deeds than sins.  Just like God is not satisfied with only part of the world, or some of the people, he is not satisfied with only part of us.  God wants all of us and has gone to incredible lengths for it.  He has come to be one of us and one with us, to take our brokenness upon himself, has borne our weakness and taken our sins to the cross.  Remember, when we speak of Jesus being born, or Jesus being crucified, we are not just speaking of a man being born or dying, but God.  Martin Luther said that the reason God came to us as a baby and not some other way is because it was the only way we would not have been terrified of him.  And yet, even in this way, even in the weakness of a baby, God provoked power-hungry humanity to sin.

I want to close with a somewhat edited powerful and moving poem by Madeleine L’Engle.

Angel!  Messenger of light and death –

Is it by God’s will that you have come?

Each year I gave thanks and rejoiced

That the blood of the lamb was on the lintel

And you passed over the homes of Israel,

God’s children, and did not put your cold hand

Upon our fist born babes.  It was only the Egyptians,

the babes of those who worshipped foreign gods –

or no gods at all – that you struck down.

I did not even notice

The mourning of those Egyptian mothers.

Was not this God’s doing, and for our sakes,

That our people might go free of bondage?

Our mothers held their living infants

To their breasts; perhaps they laughed with joy.

Our God had once more saved his Chosen People.

God!

Was not my baby chosen, too?

Who is this child whose stabled birth

Caused Herod’s panic and revenge?  Lord!

Every Hebrew manchild under two.

Who was your angel, then?  Angel of light and death –

Was it God’s sword that flashed against our babes?

How can I ever again rejoice at Passover,

When other women’s babes, innocent of all guile,

Were slaughtered by your angel?

Passover – and where’s my child –

My Herod-hated, babe?

Your ways are not our ways, O God of love.

I do not understand the evil angels sent

Among Egyptians, nor the mothers,

Bereaved as Rachel, weeping for their dead.

I hold the body of my babe and curse you

That you did not stay the cruel sword.

Is this your love, that all these die

That one star-heralded man-child should live?

And what will be his end, O Lord?  How will he die?

How will you show this one saved child your love?

Let us pray.

AMEN

Isaiah 6:1-13

12/05/10

Isaiah 6:1-13

Hudson UMC

Our primary passage for this morning from the prophet Isaiah is a paradox of sorts.  It seems tremendously familiar and yet strangely foreign.  We begin by hearing words we have heard, and even sung, before and we end by hearing words that, perhaps, we might rather not hear.  It is such a curious text.  The first half is well known and often preached, while the second half is almost totally ignored in the church, in spite of it being quoted in each of the four gospels.

The well-known and well-liked first part of Isaiah, chapter 6, speaks of the calling that Isaiah had to become a prophet.  We have a man who, in a vision, comes into the presence of God.  Eventually, the voice of the Lord asks who will go and be a messenger for God and Isaiah so confidently says, “Here am I; send me.”  We like this.  We like to think about God commissioning human beings to speak His message.  Sometimes, we even see ourselves as participating in that mission, in one way or another.  There have been many individuals and churches whom have used Isaiah’s response as the pattern after which they follow for Christian leadership.

And yet, in spite of our great desire to identify with Isaiah’s call to divine service, we tend to stop reading right at the point where his mission is spelled out.  I think that this is very telling.  Most of us like to know what we are signing up for before we volunteer to be involved in something.  Very rarely will we volunteer ourselves unconditionally to be sent wherever and to do whatever, and yet this is precisely what Isaiah does, and it is a very good thing that he does because, if he had waited to say he would go until he heard what his mission was, he very well may not have gone.

Listen to what God told Isaiah to do.  “Go and say to this people:  ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’  Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.”  When Isaiah asked how long he would have to have this difficult assignment, the answer is, to use figurative language, until everything you know has changed.

This is, as you might imagine, a difficult task.  Isaiah is being sent out to deliver God’s message to the people and, not only is he told ahead of time that nobody will listen to him, he is told that his message, which is sent by God, will actually be the reason that people will not listen to him.  That is something of a depressing prospect for anyone, but in Isaiah’s case, the situation is even more dire.  He goes off and follows his instructions, speaking the word of the Lord into the lives of the Israelites, but particularly to kings Ahaz and Hezekiah.  Isaiah tells Ahaz not to worry about the armies coming to Jerusalem, that God would not allow His city to fall.  Ahaz does not listen, but God moves anyway.  Years later, when Israel is again being invaded, Isaiah tells Hezekiah not to worry because God is greater than all the armies of the earth.  Hezekiah listens here, but later shows that his trust is not as great as it appeared.  To make matters worse, according to tradition, Isaiah was so disliked that the people killed him by sawing him in half.  It doesn’t sound like a happy ending.

And yet, passages like this one from Isaiah help to show us what happens to human beings when God draws close.  It is so easy for us to think that, at the simple hearing of the word of the Lord, our chains fall off, we are liberated and everything is smiles and rainbows for the rest of our lives.  The commission of Isaiah to proclaim God’s message shows us that, at least sometimes, God’s message seems to drive people away.

However, when we think about what happens when God draws close to human beings, it seems that the first part of this chapter, the part that is so well-known, is more helpful for our understanding than the second.  When Isaiah comes into the presence of God, what happens to him?  Does he shout with praise, does he sing a hymn, does he feel self-affirmed and recharged for the days ahead?  No.  Instead he cries out in despair.  “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”  Isaiah, who probably wasn’t that bad of a person by society’s eyes felt mortal fear at being brought face to face with God.  This is the same Isaiah who, after a long ministry and a life devoted to God, spoke of God moving among the people.  “You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers your ways.  Behold, you were angry, for we sinned, we continued in them a long time; and shall we be saved?  For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”  Isaiah was so overwhelmed by the righteousness of God that he said, “The best that I have ever done is like a filthy garment.”

What is God’s response to this outcry?  “Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.  The seraph touched my mouth with it and said:  ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’”  God’s response is to have an angel apply a burning coal to Isaiah’s lips; a coal that even the angel dared not touch was pressed against a very tender part of Isaiah’s face.  We do not read that Isaiah cried out in pain or felt any discomfort, but we hardly need to be told that touching a burning coal to our lips is a painful experience.  When Isaiah meets with God, the first things that happen are not what we would normally call joyful, but it is incredibly important that we do not stop here, or else we will misunderstand all of what God has done.

Sometimes, if we put a text under the microscope, so to speak, we can come to conclusions that, if we were to take a step back and look at a larger portion of Scripture, we can see are simply out of line or at least need to be understood within that larger context.  This happens all the time.  People attend protests with bold proclamations on the signs they bring that simply don’t hold up within the entire biblical witness.  We even saw this was the case last week when we focused on Paul’s defense of the law.  The closer we read the text, the more we realized that the law was given to provoke and expose the sin of Israel, the same sin that lurks in every nation, with the effect that the Israelites were more outwardly wicked than they would have been without the law.  It might seem, in light of this realization, that God must be malicious and twisted, just setting people up for failure and then punishing them for it.  And yet, though we realize that, because God gave the law to Israel, not at the end of their covenant relation but at the beginning of it, God did not consider Israel’s failure to keep the law to be grounds upon which to end the relationship, but stuck with them even more ferociously, binding them ever more closely to Himself.

This is important because, if we only look at this chapter, we might get an inadequate understanding of Isaiah’s experience.  Isaiah met with God and his response was terror.  He shook in his boots and was sure that he was going to die.  Indeed, he did not die, but had his lips touched with a burning coal, something that sounds so unpleasant, it actually seems more like torture.  And yet, in spite of this intense and painful encounter with God, it would be a mistake to conclude that meeting with God is a bad thing.  After all, once again, this experience did not come at the end of Isaiah’s prophetic ministry, but at its beginning.  Isaiah spent many years proclaiming the word of the Lord, being willing to surrender himself to the scorn and laughter of the people and finally dying a painful death.  What happened?

You see, in spite of the pain, in spite of the discomfort, in spite of all the things that are hardly considered “good” by our world that he endured, Isaiah had encountered the living God of grace and was dramatically empowered by Him.  The pain was real and it was intense, but it was not the final word.  The discomfort was the pain of a sinful human being coming into contact with the pure holiness of God.  Within the context of this vision, Isaiah had the sin literally burned out of him.  Isaiah’s brokenness as a human being was real and had to be taken seriously.  God could not have said, “Isaiah, go deliver my word to the people” without first preparing him for it, and he could not be prepared without being changed and cleansed.

So long as God stays far away from us, we can believe that we really aren’t that bad.  We look around and realize that we are not flagrant lawbreakers, we don’t do anything really bad and we certainly aren’t any worse than our neighbors, or, even if we are, we could probably point to someone else somewhere who is worse than we are and feel better because we aren’t as bad as them.  Even if we use as our standard the best of all human beings, we can hide behind the old standby phrase, “Nobody’s perfect.”  We imagine that some people are born to be great moral leaders and we conclude that we haven’t been, either because we have already shown that we are not as moral as a Ghandi or a Mother Theresa, or because, when it gets down to it, we don’t really want to be.

But when God draws near, our perception begins to change.  When God makes his law known and says, first and foremost, not a word against adultery, murder or stealing, but against allowing anything at all to come before Him, we start realizing that, maybe, just maybe, we don’t really want God to be first.  We like the laws later in the Ten Commandments because it means that people shouldn’t kill or steal from us.  But when we really consider what it means to live totally free of every form of idolatry, without projecting any of our own likes and dislikes into God and letting God be who He really is, it isn’t so pleasant.  When God met with Isaiah, this righteous man, this one who was to be the great prophet of God, the encounter nearly killed him and nothing short of having a burning coal pressed against his lips could deal with his uncleanness.

And yet, think about how empowering this is.  When the main point of our life is to go, like Isaiah, where we are sent by God and do what we are sent to do, we don’t need to worry so much about ourselves.  We don’t need to worry about how we are perceived by others because the only thing that matters is that we are being faithful to our God.  We do not need to worry if someone doesn’t like us because our lives are so bound up with the mission and message of God that, it really isn’t us that they don’t like, but God’s message.

There is more to say about what happens with God draws close to human beings, but what I want to highlight and not have you leave without being certain of, is that, once we get past the initial shock, we are made free in God.  It hurts because part of us is being removed, but it is the sinful part, which we are better off without.  It was only after Israel received the law that they really began to live as God’s covenant people.  It was only after Isaiah had his lips burned that he stepped into his role as one of the most significant prophets in history.  It is only once we have experienced the grace and love of God that burns like a coal that we begin to understand what we have received.

So, brothers and sisters, be encouraged.  Know in your hearts that we are not the people of God because we have done something special, but because God has chosen to meet with us in His grace and mercy.  Know that we follow God’s ways because we have already received grace and acceptance, not in order to gain that acceptance.  Know that we engage in a faithful life, not because we hope by doing so to make God happy, but because God has already smiled at us and made us his own in such a way that nothing can separate us from His love.  Know that we are nearer to the consummation of God’s plans than we were when we first believed.  Do not be discouraged when you have a painful experience, for God may be there in the midst of it, even in the midst of real tragedy, meeting with you, and walking with you for all your days.  Let us pray.

AMEN

Romans 7:7-13

11/28/10

Romans 7:7-13

Hudson UMC

Today is the first Sunday in the season of Advent.  The word “Advent” literally means “arrival,” and the church has celebrated this season for a very long time in a twofold way.  First, we remember the fact that God has come among us in and as the man Jesus.  That is to say, Advent celebrates the arrival of God among us in human flesh, both one of us and one with us.  The second thing that we remember and celebrate during Advent is that, though Jesus, after His death and resurrection, was ascended to heaven and we can no longer see Him in a physical way, He promised His followers that He would come back some day.  It is important that, as we get ever nearer to Christmas, the end of Advent, we remember that we are not just remembering the waiting and groaning of the world before Jesus was born, but to identify with it because we find that, once again, the world is waiting and groaning, this time for Jesus to return and bring final deliverance to the world.

You may find that the theme for the sermons during this season of Advent are somewhat different than you might expect.  Traditionally, throughout the four Sunday’s of Advent, the story of the Virgin Birth is told, sometimes four different times, or else one account will be stretched over the four weeks.  As helpful as that approach can be, and as comforting as it might be to dedicate Advent to such a deliberate remembrance, I have felt led to take a different approach and focus on a particularly interesting, and particularly neglected theological theme of Advent.

I want to focus on what happens to human beings when God draws close to them.  This is important because, in Christ, we have an amazing drawing near of God to us, coming among us in a unique, powerful and personal way.  The thing is that, as Christians, as people who find ourselves in the church, whether we have spent our entire lives in the church, as I know many of you have, or if you, like me, are much more of a convert to Christianity rather than having been raised in it, can find ourselves focusing on some things to the exclusion of others.  I think that, unfortunately, we have done this when we think about God coming among us.

You see, our tendency is to say true things without always realizing the fullness of what they mean.  For example, we say, “God drawing near to us is good,” and we are right to say so.  However, it is very common to flatten that out so that we mean, “God drawing near is always and everywhere good for everyone in every sense of the word.”  When we examine the Biblical witness, we find that this is simply not true.  I believe that God drawing near is good for everyone, but it definitely has some implications that we might find are in conflict with some of our culture’s understanding of “good.”

It does not take much effort to find, throughout the Old Testament, but particularly in the first five books and the books that focus on the history of Israel, examples of people who consider a negative side to their encounter with God.  Over and over again, when people encounter God, or even an angel or a vision of God, their response is that of terror.  They walk away from the encounter rejoicing that they have seen the Lord but utterly amazed because they have not been consumed.  One time I was in a group discussion about a text where Moses goes to meet with God in the Tent of Meeting but everyone else stood at the entrances to their tents, not daring to follow.  One person said, “Why wouldn’t they want to go meet with God, too?”  The simple fact is that they did not want to die.  It is easy to take for granted the fact that Jesus has broken down the barrier between us and God, but the ancient people of God always remembered that God told Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live!”

The reason why people could not see God and live is not because God was more angry than compassionate.  It has to do with the fundamental difference between God and human beings.  To meet with God is an intense experience.  Even people who have been Christians for a very long time will tell you that to really meet with God is very powerful.  Even when God’s presence is gentle, it can still be draining.  And this is all for people on this side of Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension, not to mention Pentecost.

One of the single most formative moments in Israel’s history is the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, after God had dramatically delivered them from Egyptian oppression.  It was at this point that God more completely fulfilled the promises that He had made to Abraham, that he would be a father of great nations.  By giving the people a law, God truly defined them as a nation, by binding up the people’s national identity and ethnic identity with their religious identity, God made them more than a nation, but also made them a people, a people set apart in every way.

We could say that, in the giving of the law to Israel, God was drawing close to that particular nation in a way that He hadn’t with any other group of people.  No other nation in the Ancient Near East, or even in the entire world, was as completely defined by God as Israel was.  There are two main implications of the giving of the Law to Israel that I want to lift up here.

The first of these is what happened in the actual lawgiving.  The Israelites had just been delivered from Egypt with mighty miracles.  They owed their freedom and their lives to this God.  After only about fifty days, Moses went up Mount Saini to meet with God and, ultimately, to bring that law down to the people so they might know what God wanted them to do.  While Moses was up on the mountain, the people got very antsy, begging Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them some gods to worship.  The result was the infamous “golden calf.”  Imagine that; less than two months after you had your entire life, both as an individual and as a community, radically transformed by the power of this one God of your ancestors whom had never allowed images to be made of him, you were to say, “Enough of this, let’s make our own gods.”  It seems astonishing.  At the very moment when Moses is receiving the law that is going to set the Israelites apart from the other nations, the people are doing exactly the opposite, insisting that they be just like the other nations, even though their God had just overcome those other nations.

The other implication of the law brings us, finally, to the text from Romans for this morning.  The Jewish law is full of commands, many of them expressed in the well-known formula, “Thou shalt not.”  Paul had just been spending a fair amount of time showing how the law was not effective at bringing about our salvation and emphasizing how God has done what the law was not able to do.  Paul pointed out that, so far from liberating us from sin, it seemed that the law actually increased the sinfulness of the people.  Paul says, “If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.  I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’  But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.  Apart from the law sin lies dead.  I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.”

It needs to be made as clear as possible that Paul is saying that, if it were not for the law, we would not be as outwardly bad as we are.  I remember reading, in high school, a book that suggested that it would have been better if the Ten Commandments were written in positive, rather than negative, language.  For example, instead of saying, “Thou shalt not commit murder,” it should have said, “Thou shalt affirm and support life.”  To put the commands in a negative way, it was argued, is to set the people up for failure because nothing makes us want to do something more than being told not to do it.  A poem by Carl Sandburg asks, “Why did the children put beans in their ears when the one thing we told the children they must not do was put beans in their ears?  Why did the children pour molasses on the cat when the one thing we told the children they must not do was pour molasses on the cat?”

However, we must also be equally clear that Paul does not pin the blame for this evil behavior on the law, but on sin.  “What then should we say?  That the law is sin?  By no means!”  “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.  Did what is good, then, bring death to me?  By no means!  It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.”  What Paul is saying here is that the law is good, but has been twisted by sin, sin that was lying dormant until the law came along and provoked it to show itself.  The law did not create sin but exposed it for what it is.

So, in response to the concerns that the law makes people more sinful, Paul would respond that people are already sinful; the law just showed us that this was so.  In fact, part of the purpose of the law in the first place was to unmask our secret sinful desires.  Maybe its true that saying, “Thou shalt not…” makes us want to do evil.  But perhaps we must think about it as a way to expose that, while the law is good, we are not always good.  After all, who will say that keeping God first in our lives, allowing ourselves to rest regularly, honoring our parents, and avoiding things like killing, adultery, stealing, lying, and jealousy, are bad things, even if we don’t always do them?  Maybe the big problem we have to deal with is not with the law, but with ourselves.

The point that I really want to make is that God drawing near to us is a good thing, the very best of all things, in fact.  If God did not draw near to us, we would remain untouched by grace, we would not know what it means to be forgiven, to have the very life of God implanted into us.  If God never drew near to us, we would be hard-pressed to really say or believe that God loves us.  After all, who loves us and yet insists on remaining far away?  God’s drawing near is the one thing that will truly transform our lives and break the power of evil in this world of ours.

However, it is also true that this drawing near to us of God is also something that can be very uncomfortable.  When God first moved to free the Israelites from Pharaoh, the immediate response was for the workload, that was already too heavy for the people to bear, was increased.  God setting His people apart and giving them a good law by which to govern their lives resulted in their continual rebellion, doing precisely what the law said they shouldn’t do.  When God drew close to the Israelites by sending His word to them through the prophets, as we will consider next week, calling the people back to the Lord, the people responded by being even more like their pagan neighbors and by treating those prophets badly, often having them killed.  When God came among us in His most personal way yet, in the Incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus of Nazareth, it had catastrophic implications; so much so that the New Testament often uses words reserved for earthquakes and other natural disasters to describe portions of the life of Christ, ultimately provoking the sinfulness of humanity to its highest pitch.

It is tempting to think of the giving of the Law to Israel, if we understand it this way, as the act of a vindictive God who wants to set people up for failure and then punish them for it.  However, the very history of Israel shows us that this is not at all the case.  Remember, the giving of the Law that provokes Israel to sin is not given at the end of the Old Testament but at the beginning.  Moses was not the last great leader of the nation of Israel but the first.  The very fact that we have hundreds of years of Jewish history, where God is continually interacting with the people, both warning and bringing comfort to them, never giving up on them, even in their sin, shows us that the failure of Israel to keep God’s law was not grounds for God abandoning them.  On the contrary, we can see that God stuck to Israel all the more ferociously, not even allowing them to abandon Him.

This is amplified for us as Christians because we can see that God was so far from rejecting sinful people that He chose to come among us personally to accomplish the forgiveness and salvation that the law could not bring.  The Law shows us many things.  It shows us that God and His commands are good, it shows us that we are not particularly good at following them, and, proving that God really isn’t like spiteful and vindictive human beings, it shows us that, though God knows everything that is wrong with us, He still refuses to let us go.

That is why the world was waiting for Christ to come, that is why our God is worth following, and that is why we are waiting for Christ to return and finish healing the world of all its brokenness.  The harshness of God is actually more tender than we can even imagine.  God is good and though His coming often brings us a certain amount of pain, it is never pain for pain’s sake, but always to bind us all the more closely to Him, to redeem and renew us and to heal us from our own self-destructive tendencies.  It is something like the work of a surgeon, who cuts into the flesh, inflicting pain, but so that healing might take place.

As we continue to gather together in anticipation of our celebrating Christ’s birth, let us trust, not in ourselves, but in the mighty power of God to transform both our lives and the world in which we live.  Our God is a God who draws near to us and makes His life our own, not just for our sake, but for the sake of our community and the sake of our world.  Let us pray.

AMEN