Colossians 1:1-14

01/30/11

Colossians 1:1-14

Hudson UMC

After finishing up the book of John after two and a half years, it is possible that some of you might be worried that we are diving right into another book of the Bible, that of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, but I want to encourage you not to worry.  Colossians is only four chapters, compared to John’s twenty-one.  It is a much shorter book and will not take nearly as long to get through it and, in addition, we will have a nice break in the middle of it for Lent.  I pray that, just as we have learned much from exploring the life and teaching of Christ himself, we will gain just as much from the insights and practical application that Paul brings to the table.

As we begin to explore this new book, some words of introduction are in order.  Perhaps the most pressing question is, “Why do we care what Paul said to the Christian community in Colossae nearly two thousand years ago?  After all, we live in such a radically different time and place, could this letter really have anything to say to us?”  Of course it does.  Just like the words and actions of Christ are incredibly relevant in spite of the huge cultural difference between us and him, Paul’s words are still helpful, even in modern America.

In fact, Colossians is perhaps one of the very most contemporary books in the entire Bible.  Many of the issues that faced the Colossian church face us today.  The contents of the letter to the Colossians are the product of a deeply compassionate and carefully observant pastor and missionary.  Paul fits neatly into neither the traditional Jewish mold nor the traditional Gentile mold.  In spite of his sometimes fiery style, Paul is not one to run quickly into major topics, giving rash advice that is easily shown to be destructive.  Rather, what Paul has said has remarkably remained incredibly contemporary, showing that he had a profound grasp on the human condition and how the good news of Jesus Christ impacts us.

Our passage today doesn’t seem to be all that exciting.  Paul is more or less following the standard form of letter writing in the ancient Roman Empire.  One might say that Paul spends these first fourteen verses saying the equivalent of our modern, “Dear Colossian Christians.  How are you?  I hope you are well.  I met someone you know and I was glad to hear that you are being successful and that is good.  Isn’t God great?”

I say that one might say that because, though there is a nugget of truth to it, because Paul is indeed following some of the standard form for small talk at the beginning of a letter before he really gets into his point, but that is a really simplistic way to talk about it.  In itself, this passage does not tell us all the much.  It does not contain any deep theological arguments, nor does it give us any concrete advice on how to live more authentically as Christians.  If it stood by itself, there would not be much use in preaching a sermon on it.

However, these first fourteen verses indeed do not stand by themselves.  They are only the very beginning of a full-fledged letter to the Colossian Christians that will affirm, teach and challenge them.  Whenever you read one of Paul’s letters, you should look carefully at the first passage in them.  Those early verses almost always tell you something about what is going to come up later in more developed form.  Since we are just at the beginning of this letter, I am not going to try to go into an overly in-depth discussion of every single thing that Paul says, but I want to highlight a few major themes that he briefly indicates here.

The first thing I want to point out that might not be immediately obvious is that Paul did not plant the church in Colossae, though it is extremely likely that one of his close associates did.  This means that Paul is writing this letter to Christians he has never met.  This might seem insignificant but it is actually quite important.  Paul writes, “In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.”  Paul does not seem to hesitate for a moment to affirm and rejoice in churches that he did not found.  He does not have the same kind of denominationalism that we often have in our world.  He does not say that things have to be done his way if they are to be Christian.  He knows that God’s work is far greater than our own particular way of doing things.

What this means is that Paul has much to teach the modern church about ecumenical activity.  We all know that there are differences between different denominations but there are some groups of Christians who simply will not acknowledge other denominations but insist that they, or they and their friends, are the only true church.  I have seen this be a source of tremendous division within communities, when one church is simply denied legitimacy by another.  Paul will have none of this.  The real question that Paul would ask a church is, “Are you reconciled to God through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit?”  If the answer is “yes,” Paul will be in fellowship with you.

Paul continues on, saying, “For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”  It seems that Paul, though he has not ever met the Colossian Christians, has heard about particular moral looseness that is incompatible with the Gospel.  This really wouldn’t be unusual for him.  His correspondence with the Corinthian church is almost entirely dealing with moral issues and he always spends some time in each of his letter encouraging the people to live lives worthy of God.

The question we need to ask is, “Why does he do this?”  Is it because Paul is, as he is so often portrayed, really a rigid moralist who just wants to make sure that we all live within the narrow confines of what he happens to define as “The Christian Life?”  In spite of the fact that Paul gets talked about this way, as if he had nothing he wanted to do more than tell people what to do and what not to do, it simply isn’t the case.  This is the Paul who was the first Christian leader to really take outreach to the Gentiles seriously.  Every move he made, every church he planted, was under intense scrutiny by both Jews and Gentiles.  If people who claimed to belong to Christ, the Son of God, and empowered by the Holy Spirit and indwelt by the very life of God were immoral people, what would happen?  The Jews would look at it and reject them because they knew the God of their ancestors far too well to acknowledge such immorality as consistent with claims to follow that God.  The Gentiles would look at it and raise the logical question, “You don’t live any differently than the rest of the culture does.  Who cares about your God?”  Paul did not want the behavior of Christians to push people away from Christ.

What is amazing is that these two concerns have not gone away.  There are many branches of the church who consider the mainline churches, of which the United Methodist Church is one, to be morally reprehensible.  In their eyes, mainline Christians don’t seem to realize that our God is a holy God and that we are called to a life of holiness that characterizes everything we do.  Now, it is entirely possible that such branches are equating the holiness of God with their particular culture’s narrow understanding of morality, but the point is that we cannot even begin to have that conversation because the mainline has not exactly always been as holy as we have claimed to be.  On the other side, I think we are faced with the even stronger critique, one that I think is far more widespread and far more serious as we move into an increasingly secular age.  More and more we have people who are growing up without any involvement in the church, who don’t even know the basic convictions of the Christian faith, who only know Jesus from what they see on television, which I must admit, is not often a good representation of what the great tradition of the church has believed.  They ask, “If so many people who claim to follow Christ do so many hurtful things, why should I be one of them?”  The conclusion is often to try to follow Christ without having anything to do with the church or, what is more often the case, avoid Jesus altogether.

What I want to point out here is that we get to see here a key theme in Pauline ethics.  Our knowledge of God in Christ is never isolated from behavior but must permeate every part of it.  People often make the distinction between knowing things with your head and knowing them with your heart.  I completely agree with the point that they are trying to make.  Knowing information is not the same as feeling it deep in the core of your being.  However, Paul does not make that kind of distinction.  Where many people might say that someone knows something with their head but not their heart, Paul simply would say that they do not really know it at all.  Real knowledge of God challenges us and transforms us.  If what we call knowledge of God does not do that, it is simply not real knowledge at all.  Every single time Paul makes a moral exhortation, it is within the context of a larger theological discussion.  When we get to the point in Colossians where he speaks about things like what wives, husbands, children, masters and slaves should do, we must never think that he is making general statements but we need to always remember that they are deeply rooted in what he has said about God and the Gospel and must be understood in that light.

Another major point to bring up here is that Paul is writing this letter not primarily as an authoritarian teacher or even as a theologian, though he is indeed a great theologian.  He is writing this first and foremost as Paul the pastor.  He says, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.”  Even though Paul is going to challenge the Colossian church and even though there will be points where that challenge comes in a rather pointed manner, his real goal is to build up the body of Christ and glorify God.  He is not the one who founded this church so their success does not point directly back to him.  Paul is, quite simply, passionately concerned about the health of all Christians and Christian communities.

The last few verses of our passage go a long way in giving us a kind of “heads up” to what is coming in the rest of the letter.  “[The Father] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”  What we will find, especially in the first two chapters of the letter, is that the emphasis in Colossians is overwhelmingly on the centrality of Christ.  This centrality is emphasized in a variety of ways:  critiquing hidden cultural assumptions, ethical practices, the arrangement of Christian households, and prayer.  Every part of the letter is rooted in Paul’s unwavering conviction that Jesus is absolutely central to the Christian life and that any time we allow Christ to be pushed out of his central place by something else, anything else, we are missing the point.

Through studying the letter of Paul to the Colossians, we will be brought face to face with many aspects of our own lives that often remain unexamined.  Again, I think one would be hard pressed to find another book of the Bible that so directly applies to our social and cultural situation than Colossians.  So many of the struggles that were taking place in that time and place are happening here now as well.  If we set ourselves to listening carefully to Paul, it will be a challenging time, but, by God’s grace, we will emerge more firmly grounded in Christ our foundation than ever before.  Let us pray.

AMEN

John 21:20-25

01/23/11

John 21:20-25

Hudson UMC

On July twenty-seventh, two thousand eight, we began a journey through the Gospel according to John.  Since that time, except for taking breaks for seasons like Advent and Lent, we have continued on, passage by passage, working our way through the whole of this Gospel, getting a chance to take a careful look at every story, every teaching, and every event in this entire book.  Speaking personally, I can say that my whole approach to preaching, to understanding the Bible, and communicating the truth of Jesus Christ has grown radically.  Not every congregation would have the patience to go with their pastor through such a large chunk of Scripture, so I want to begin this final sermon on John by giving thanks for you who have born with me through this whole time, showing support, even if you were getting sick and tired of John.  There is, perhaps, no greater gift you could give to me as a preacher than to allow me the luxury of two and a half years to learn how to approach the gospel message in a way that arises organically out of the gospel itself.  I can only pray that you have heard the word of God during this time and learned more deeply the love that God has for you.

Indeed, when we look at this last passage of John, we see that it has some remarkable similarities to the very first passage of the book.  The very first thing that John tells us after speaking of the pre-existence of Christ as the word who was with God and who was God is about John the Baptist whose whole ministry and purpose was to point beyond himself to Christ.  Back in chapter one, we read, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

Just a little later in the first chapter, we continue to read about John the Baptist.  “This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’  He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’  And they asked him, ‘What then?  Are you Elijah?’  He said, ‘I am not.’  ‘Are you the prophet?’  He answered, ‘No.’  Then they said to him, ‘Who are you?  Let us have an answer for those who sent us.  What do you say about yourself?’  He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.’ As the prophet Isaiah said.”  Indeed, when asked why he baptized people if he was not any of those people, his response was that someone was coming who was far greater than he was.  The implication is that this coming one is the one who really matters.

The reason why I want to remind you of all that happened in the very first chapter is because the idea is repeated again here in the last verse of the gospel.  “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”  What this is saying is that, in spite of the fact that this book was written, as it even tells us itself, “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name,” it is only a small portion of what Jesus did while he was on earth.  This cannot surprise us because we have three other gospels, which are quite different than John’s.  We know that every time we tell the story of Jesus, it is going to be an abbreviation.  We can only hit the highlights, so to speak.  However, what we must not do is think that Jesus only did things that were completely captured in words on a page.  Jesus is far bigger than that.

Even though the Gospel of John was not written by John the Baptist, there are remarkable similarities about how they see their ministry.  Neither one of them see themselves as the truth, or even the bringer of truth.  Both of them see Jesus as being far greater than they are.  Neither is content with us knowing a lot of information about Jesus but are not satisfied until we look away from them and to Jesus himself, actually encountering the word of God become flesh and living among us.  John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must decrease,” because to focus on him instead of the Christ to whom he bore witness would defeat the whole purpose of his ministry.  John the evangelist, or Gospel writer, says that the whole world could not contain the works and sayings of Christ.  To him, Jesus is far greater than the greatest work of literature, far greater than the most outstanding moral teachings, more life-changing than a book on your shelf.  Jesus is not a doctrine, not story, but a living and active person who, though he was crucified, was resurrected in glory and now sits at the right hand of God the Father, always active in the world through his Holy Spirit.

In a world where Christian faith is increasingly hated and spoken evil against, where the church itself tends to either lapse into a rigid and literalist approach to the Bible or fall away from any kind of rooting in Scripture, these words closing the Gospel of John are so very important.  The Bible was written, not first and foremost as a handbook that will somehow solve every problem you have in your life, but as a witness to the everlasting love, grace and mercy of God.  It is interesting to notice that, when John lays out what he wants us to gain from his work, it is not that we would have a definitive list of what to do and what not to do, it is not to replace our minds and make us all think and speak alike, but so that we might look through the text and come to know the God that the text bears witness to.

I am not one who usually goes out of my way to lift up something that John Calvin said, but he had a very helpful way to think about the Bible.  He spoke of the Scriptures as like a pair of spectacles or glasses.  Those of you who, like me, wear glasses, should understand this image easily.  When you wear glasses, the goal is not to look carefully at the glasses, but to look through them at what lies beyond them.  Similarly, the reason that we read the Bible, at least according to people like John the apostle, is in order to know the Jesus to whom it bears witness.  To focus so intently at the words on the page so that we miss the actual, living Christ would be as foolish as to focus so much on the glasses themselves that we miss the world that we got the glasses to see.

I have been reading a book by a philosopher of science and physician named Michael Polanyi, who makes a distinction between being focally aware of something, where our attention is fully directed to it, and being subsidiarily aware of something, where we know it is there but it is not the focus of our attention.  For example, when we learn to read, we first learn the letters of the alphabet, then we learn individual words, then we learn how sentences and paragraphs work.  However, when we actually sit down to read something, like a letter or a book, we know that we are reading letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, but what we are really concerned with is the meaning that the author is trying to convey.

In a similar way, the Bible is written, so it is made up of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, but we are really concerned with what lies behind the text, the meaning, or what the author is hoping to get across to us.  In the case of John’s Gospel, we read in order to somehow get through the text to the reality it refers to, that is, to actually encounter Christ.  If we were to read with our primary goal being to know the letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs, it would be like focusing on the mechanics of walking, rather than focusing on where we are going.  It leads to self-conscious and awkward behavior.

So, all of this is to say that, if you have learned nothing else during this journey through John, I hope that you have not been content to stop at the text, but to meet with the Jesus to whom the text bears witness.  Since my very first day serving this church, I have hoped to communicate a passion for the Bible but I hope that you have not gotten the idea that I think that we should have a high view of the Bible merely as a book for its own sake.  I fully agree with John the Baptist, that we must decrease and that Christ must increase, for it is Christ, in the end, that matters.  I fully agree with John the apostle, that the Jesus we worship is far greater, far more dynamic than a mere book can capture and that we only succeed in hearing the gospel if we encounter Christ and are lives are changed.  I fully agree with John Calvin that our whole purpose in reading the Bible is not to know words, but to know God.

I do want to touch on the other part of our passage which, in many ways, is a follow-up to our passage from last week.  Peter has just been told that he will suffer and die for his faith, that he will follow in the footsteps of Christ to crucifixion.  What Peter does after that and how Jesus responds is very helpful for us to remember in our own lives of faith.  “Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them…When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’  Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?  Follow me!’”

Peter was just told something very difficult, that his days were numbered and that he would follow his Lord into a very painful death.  He naturally wants to know what will happen to this other close friend of Jesus.  Will he be martyred, too?  As history shows us, John was indeed not killed for his faith, one of only two of the apostles who were not martyrs.  What is interesting is that, because John was not executed, we cannot say that all true followers of Christ will be killed.  However, Jesus does not tell Peter that John would escape the fate that he had just predicted for him.  After all, what difference would it make?  If John was to die like Peter, it would not make Peter’s life any easier.  What Jesus does, though, is say, in so many words, “Peter, it just isn’t any of your business.  What happens to John is between John and myself.  You only need to worry about what will happen to you, and that is all you need to know.”

As we live our lives as disciples of Christ, we need to always remember that Jesus calls each of us to respond and nobody else can respond for us.  Also, when we define “fair” as how we modern Western Americans often define it, God is not particularly “fair,” either.  This is shown in the fact that while Peter and John were both faithful, were both great leaders of the church, one of them met an untimely end and the other did not.  What did Peter do to deserve execution, or, to put it the other way, what did John do to avoid it?  The gospel does not recognize questions like that because it is only a small step from that to, “How can I be a disciple and not have to suffer?”  If we are asking that question, we are not yet given fully to Christ.

As we finish up the gospel of John, we need to remember the major lessons of the gospel.  Some were made explicitly, some were implied, but all of them are important.  John has taught us that Jesus is the very Son and Word of God made a human being for our sakes, that God condescended to become one of us and one with us, to live a human life, to endure the brokenness of this world, and to die on our behalf and in our place, so that we might have eternal life.  John insists that the way that so many people speak of eternal life, that it is something that we make a decision for now and then we get pie in the sky by and by, is dead wrong, that the mighty acts of God impact us even here and now and have radical implications for how we live our lives.

John reminds us that Jesus is indeed the fullness of God in our midst and that, though Jesus is no longer around for us to see with our eyes and touch with our hands, we have not been left as orphans.  The Holy Spirit, who is every bit as much God as the Father and the Son, has been given to us to continue to unpack everything that Jesus said and did, to take the things of Christ and give them to us, to bind us to Christ like branches on a vine, and to make the blood of Christ pump in our veins.

So, as we say “goodbye” to John and move into a season of considering what Paul has to tell us through his letter to the Colossians, let us take the lessons that we have learned from John and let them penetrate deeply into our hearts and lives, that we might build on them and show that we really have learned from them.  God has called each of us and has called all of each of us.  Let us go forth and worship this Christ who cannot be contained by the words of a book, but who constantly surpasses even our greatest thoughts.  Let us give everything to the God who has given us everything.  Let us pray.

AMEN

John 21:20-25

01/23/11

John 21:20-25

Hudson UMC

On July twenty-seventh, two thousand eight, we began a journey through the Gospel according to John.  Since that time, except for taking breaks for seasons like Advent and Lent, we have continued on, passage by passage, working our way through the whole of this Gospel, getting a chance to take a careful look at every story, every teaching, and every event in this entire book.  Speaking personally, I can say that my whole approach to preaching, to understanding the Bible, and communicating the truth of Jesus Christ has grown radically.  Not every congregation would have the patience to go with their pastor through such a large chunk of Scripture, so I want to begin this final sermon on John by giving thanks for you who have born with me through this whole time, showing support, even if you were getting sick and tired of John.  There is, perhaps, no greater gift you could give to me as a preacher than to allow me the luxury of two and a half years to learn how to approach the gospel message in a way that arises organically out of the gospel itself.  I can only pray that you have heard the word of God during this time and learned more deeply the love that God has for you.

Indeed, when we look at this last passage of John, we see that it has some remarkable similarities to the very first passage of the book.  The very first thing that John tells us after speaking of the pre-existence of Christ as the word who was with God and who was God is about John the Baptist whose whole ministry and purpose was to point beyond himself to Christ.  Back in chapter one, we read, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

Just a little later in the first chapter, we continue to read about John the Baptist.  “This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’  He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’  And they asked him, ‘What then?  Are you Elijah?’  He said, ‘I am not.’  ‘Are you the prophet?’  He answered, ‘No.’  Then they said to him, ‘Who are you?  Let us have an answer for those who sent us.  What do you say about yourself?’  He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.’ As the prophet Isaiah said.”  Indeed, when asked why he baptized people if he was not any of those people, his response was that someone was coming who was far greater than he was.  The implication is that this coming one is the one who really matters.

The reason why I want to remind you of all that happened in the very first chapter is because the idea is repeated again here in the last verse of the gospel.  “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”  What this is saying is that, in spite of the fact that this book was written, as it even tells us itself, “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name,” it is only a small portion of what Jesus did while he was on earth.  This cannot surprise us because we have three other gospels, which are quite different than John’s.  We know that every time we tell the story of Jesus, it is going to be an abbreviation.  We can only hit the highlights, so to speak.  However, what we must not do is think that Jesus only did things that were completely captured in words on a page.  Jesus is far bigger than that.

Even though the Gospel of John was not written by John the Baptist, there are remarkable similarities about how they see their ministry.  Neither one of them see themselves as the truth, or even the bringer of truth.  Both of them see Jesus as being far greater than they are.  Neither is content with us knowing a lot of information about Jesus but are not satisfied until we look away from them and to Jesus himself, actually encountering the word of God become flesh and living among us.  John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must decrease,” because to focus on him instead of the Christ to whom he bore witness would defeat the whole purpose of his ministry.  John the evangelist, or Gospel writer, says that the whole world could not contain the works and sayings of Christ.  To him, Jesus is far greater than the greatest work of literature, far greater than the most outstanding moral teachings, more life-changing than a book on your shelf.  Jesus is not a doctrine, not story, but a living and active person who, though he was crucified, was resurrected in glory and now sits at the right hand of God the Father, always active in the world through his Holy Spirit.

In a world where Christian faith is increasingly hated and spoken evil against, where the church itself tends to either lapse into a rigid and literalist approach to the Bible or fall away from any kind of rooting in Scripture, these words closing the Gospel of John are so very important.  The Bible was written, not first and foremost as a handbook that will somehow solve every problem you have in your life, but as a witness to the everlasting love, grace and mercy of God.  It is interesting to notice that, when John lays out what he wants us to gain from his work, it is not that we would have a definitive list of what to do and what not to do, it is not to replace our minds and make us all think and speak alike, but so that we might look through the text and come to know the God that the text bears witness to.

I am not one who usually goes out of my way to lift up something that John Calvin said, but he had a very helpful way to think about the Bible.  He spoke of the Scriptures as like a pair of spectacles or glasses.  Those of you who, like me, wear glasses, should understand this image easily.  When you wear glasses, the goal is not to look carefully at the glasses, but to look through them at what lies beyond them.  Similarly, the reason that we read the Bible, at least according to people like John the apostle, is in order to know the Jesus to whom it bears witness.  To focus so intently at the words on the page so that we miss the actual, living Christ would be as foolish as to focus so much on the glasses themselves that we miss the world that we got the glasses to see.

I have been reading a book by a philosopher of science and physician named Michael Polanyi, who makes a distinction between being focally aware of something, where our attention is fully directed to it, and being subsidiarily aware of something, where we know it is there but it is not the focus of our attention.  For example, when we learn to read, we first learn the letters of the alphabet, then we learn individual words, then we learn how sentences and paragraphs work.  However, when we actually sit down to read something, like a letter or a book, we know that we are reading letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, but what we are really concerned with is the meaning that the author is trying to convey.

In a similar way, the Bible is written, so it is made up of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, but we are really concerned with what lies behind the text, the meaning, or what the author is hoping to get across to us.  In the case of John’s Gospel, we read in order to somehow get through the text to the reality it refers to, that is, to actually encounter Christ.  If we were to read with our primary goal being to know the letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs, it would be like focusing on the mechanics of walking, rather than focusing on where we are going.  It leads to self-conscious and awkward behavior.

So, all of this is to say that, if you have learned nothing else during this journey through John, I hope that you have not been content to stop at the text, but to meet with the Jesus to whom the text bears witness.  Since my very first day serving this church, I have hoped to communicate a passion for the Bible but I hope that you have not gotten the idea that I think that we should have a high view of the Bible merely as a book for its own sake.  I fully agree with John the Baptist, that we must decrease and that Christ must increase, for it is Christ, in the end, that matters.  I fully agree with John the apostle, that the Jesus we worship is far greater, far more dynamic than a mere book can capture and that we only succeed in hearing the gospel if we encounter Christ and are lives are changed.  I fully agree with John Calvin that our whole purpose in reading the Bible is not to know words, but to know God.

I do want to touch on the other part of our passage which, in many ways, is a follow-up to our passage from last week.  Peter has just been told that he will suffer and die for his faith, that he will follow in the footsteps of Christ to crucifixion.  What Peter does after that and how Jesus responds is very helpful for us to remember in our own lives of faith.  “Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them…When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’  Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?  Follow me!’”

Peter was just told something very difficult, that his days were numbered and that he would follow his Lord into a very painful death.  He naturally wants to know what will happen to this other close friend of Jesus.  Will he be martyred, too?  As history shows us, John was indeed not killed for his faith, one of only two of the apostles who were not martyrs.  What is interesting is that, because John was not executed, we cannot say that all true followers of Christ will be killed.  However, Jesus does not tell Peter that John would escape the fate that he had just predicted for him.  After all, what difference would it make?  If John was to die like Peter, it would not make Peter’s life any easier.  What Jesus does, though, is say, in so many words, “Peter, it just isn’t any of your business.  What happens to John is between John and myself.  You only need to worry about what will happen to you, and that is all you need to know.”

As we live our lives as disciples of Christ, we need to always remember that Jesus calls each of us to respond and nobody else can respond for us.  Also, when we define “fair” as how we modern Western Americans often define it, God is not particularly “fair,” either.  This is shown in the fact that while Peter and John were both faithful, were both great leaders of the church, one of them met an untimely end and the other did not.  What did Peter do to deserve execution, or, to put it the other way, what did John do to avoid it?  The gospel does not recognize questions like that because it is only a small step from that to, “How can I be a disciple and not have to suffer?”  If we are asking that question, we are not yet given fully to Christ.

As we finish up the gospel of John, we need to remember the major lessons of the gospel.  Some were made explicitly, some were implied, but all of them are important.  John has taught us that Jesus is the very Son and Word of God made a human being for our sakes, that God condescended to become one of us and one with us, to live a human life, to endure the brokenness of this world, and to die on our behalf and in our place, so that we might have eternal life.  John insists that the way that so many people speak of eternal life, that it is something that we make a decision for now and then we get pie in the sky by and by, is dead wrong, that the mighty acts of God impact us even here and now and have radical implications for how we live our lives.

John reminds us that Jesus is indeed the fullness of God in our midst and that, though Jesus is no longer around for us to see with our eyes and touch with our hands, we have not been left as orphans.  The Holy Spirit, who is every bit as much God as the Father and the Son, has been given to us to continue to unpack everything that Jesus said and did, to take the things of Christ and give them to us, to bind us to Christ like branches on a vine, and to make the blood of Christ pump in our veins.

So, as we say “goodbye” to John and move into a season of considering what Paul has to tell us through his letter to the Colossians, let us take the lessons that we have learned from John and let them penetrate deeply into our hearts and lives, that we might build on them and show that we really have learned from them.  God has called each of us and has called all of each of us.  Let us go forth and worship this Christ who cannot be contained by the words of a book, but who constantly surpasses even our greatest thoughts.  Let us give everything to the God who has given us everything.  Let us pray.

AMEN

John 21:15-19

01/16/11

John 21:15-19

Hudson UMC

As we come down to the second to last passage in the entire Gospel of John, we find an incredible text that has so many layers to it.  We have Jesus having a conversation with one of his disciples, Simon Peter, the one who becomes one of the most dynamic and powerful leaders of all of Christian history.  What we overhear in this text is powerful, often surprising, but truly good news.

Jesus asks Peter if he loves him three times, each time getting the response that Peter does, indeed, love him.  The interesting thing is that these questions were asked one right after the other, in quick succession.  Not only does Jesus do this odd thing, we read that Peter felt quite uncomfortable.  When he was asked the third time, we read, “Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’  And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’”

It seems that there is a very strong connection between these three times that Jesus asks Peter if he loves him and the three times that Peter had rejected him when he was betrayed.  Many have pointed out throughout the years that Peter’s threefold denial was effectively “undone” by this threefold confession.  Once he had said that he did not even know Christ three times in a short period of time; now, he has confessed that he loves Christ three times in an even shorter period of time.  However, in spite of his repeated declaration of faith, Peter was hurt when he was asked the third time.  It seems that, when he was asked this third time, when he realized that Jesus was making a connection with the three times that he had denied Christ only a few days before, he was saddened.  After all, it was not long ago when Peter pledged his undying loyalty to Jesus only to turn around and reject him in a matter of hours.  Even recently, Peter had rejected his life with Christ to return to fishing.  His sadness at being asked a third time might just be related to the fact that his recent actions have not exactly backed up his claim to love Jesus.

And yet, in spite of all the feelings of hypocrisy that Peter might have at this point, we do not get, even for a moment, that Jesus’ asking of this question is meant to condemn him. Jesus has come in compassion, to undo Peter’s guilt.  I cannot imagine that there is anything but compassion behind his actions.  And yet Peter still ends up feeling hurt.  In many ways, this is what we saw throughout the season of Advent.  When God draws close to human beings, there is sometimes pain or discomfort, but this is healing and not punishment, thought it can feel like punishment at times.  Given our basic experience, it seems odd that we could believe that the healing of our lives could truly be painless.  So many forms of medical healing involve discomfort to one degree or another.  Surgery is painful for many days, the setting of a broken limb can be quite painful, at least without pain medicine, chemotherapy is remarkably uncomfortable, and we could list many others.  Peter’s guilt is being undone, yet his feelings are hurt.  It seems to me that, if even Jesus could not bring healing without discomfort, sometimes, we are just going to have to deal with the fact that healing might be unpleasant, but it is indeed healing and it is better to be healed and uncomfortable for a time than to remain broken and feel terrible forever.

When we turn to the actual question that Jesus asked Peter, we are left with some interesting reflections.  Jesus asks Peter if he loves him “more than these.”  The question is what, exactly, are “these?”  There are a few options, and we will look at two of them.  It could be that, since Jesus and the disciples have just finished up a breakfast of bread and fish and that there was an enormous catch of fish sitting right in front of them, that Jesus wants to know if Peter loves him more than fish and the whole fishing lifestyle.  Effectively, Jesus would be asking if he was more important to Peter than his livelihood and his entire old way of life.

This is a very serious question, not least because the beginning of this chapter certainly implied that Peter might very well not love Christ more than fishing.  After all, after seeing the risen Lord and witnessing the miracle of the resurrection, he turned around and went right back out to the way things were before, the way things have always been.  In the context of the entire Gospel of John, to somehow choose fish over the living Lord who gives us the Holy Spirit and unites us to himself so that we might know the Father and have eternal life would be a completely ridiculous and irrational choice.  And yet, this question, whether we would, at the end of the day, be willing to choose Christ over our comfortable way of living and our job, at least when taken out of the story of Peter and put into our lives, is not such an easy and obvious decision.  And yet, this decision is precisely what Jesus is asking Peter to make.  Unlike many of us, who will go our whole lives without being forced to choose between our job and Christ, Peter had to do exactly that.  This is not simply a question of priorities that we may or may not actually follow through on, but a call to absolutely radical obedience.

Another layer of meaning is that it is entirely possible that Jesus is asking Peter if he loves him more than the other disciples that are sitting around the charcoal fire with them.  This would mean that Jesus is asking Peter, “Do you love me more than these people, your brothers?”  This might very well surprise us.  After all, shouldn’t we love one another?  Indeed we should, but Jesus insists here that he be loved above anything else and for his own sake.

It almost seems like something that we read in the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus had just told a parable where a rich man had invited people to come to a banquet.  When the time came for the dinner, he sent for his guests but each and every one of them refused him, making excuse after excuse.  In response, the man became angry and filled his hall with the poor and crippled and blind and lame.  After that, Jesus told the crowd, “If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”  Just like Jesus insists on coming before even our jobs and our livelihood, he insists on coming before even our family and friends.

However, though I do not wish to do what so many others have done and explain away the strong language that Jesus uses, I am convinced that we cannot stop reading here or else we will misunderstand what Jesus is really saying to us.  This whole passage is about Jesus asking Peter if he loves him.  Each time he is asked, Peter says that he does, indeed, love Jesus.  Jesus’ response every time is that, because Peter loves him, he must feed his sheep, which is to say, he must take care of Jesus’ people, to love and serve the church.

What this means is that it is because we love Jesus above and beyond anyone else that we obey his command to love those other people.  This is something that I think pastors especially need to remember every day.  I must admit that I am not always particularly good at loving people.  Like many pastors, I am very much introverted.  It is hard for me to go out of my way to show love to others.  And yet, as a Christian, and even more, as a Christian pastor, I can never sit content because, since I love Jesus, I am called to love his people.  Because I love Christ, I am also called to love the church, the body of Christ.  To claim to love Jesus and then not love his people is pure hypocrisy.  The church is often called the bride of Christ.  To say I love Christ but hate the church is like saying to someone, “I think you are great, but I simply cannot stand your wife.”  A love like that cannot possibly be what Jesus wants.

However, though this call to feed Christ’s sheep is something that demands our obedience, it is not merely a duty, for we are not just called to serve others or to take care of others, but to love them, which means that our whole hearts and lives must be changed.  Love is not something that you can fake; it is not something that you can just wake up one day and make a decision to do.  In many ways, to love others is something that is quite out of our power because, if we do it, it is the most natural thing in the world, and if we don’t do it, no amount of willpower can make it happen.  And yet, Jesus demands it of us nonetheless.  It is a call that depends entirely on the one who gives it.  The only way we can love God’s people like we are called to love them is if we can somehow share in Christ’s own love for his people.  This is why we need the Holy Spirit.  Without the Spirit, any love we manage to have for other people is just a human emotion.  With the Spirit, we are taken to share in the love and life of Christ so that our heart begins to beat for the things that make Christ’s heart beat, our hearts are broken by what breaks God’s heart, and we are truly made to be part of Christ’s body.

I want to draw attention to the last words of this passage, so near to the end of the whole book.  Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished.  But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.  (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.)  After this he said to him, Follow me.”

It is crucial to notice that Jesus does not leave Peter with a rosy conclusion, as if he were to say, “Follow me and you will have easy and happy times from here on out.”  Rather, Jesus reveals that Peter was going to be killed for his faith.  Indeed, John tells us that, at the time of his writing, this has already happened.  For those who do not already know, Peter did indeed die for his faith, he did indeed die and his death glorified God.  Peter was taken by the authorities and sentenced to crucifixion.  Peter, however, did not consider himself to be worthy to die the same was as Jesus his Lord did, so he was crucified upside-down.  However, don’t get the idea that Peter went weeping and in despair to his death.  He faced it fearlessly, being concerned, not to die, but only to die in the same was as Jesus did.

We cannot say to Jesus, “I love you,” and then put conditions on what he may demand of us.  To say, “I will follow you, so long as you do not call me to do anything particularly difficult,” is to say that we, in fact, do not love Jesus more than these,  However, Jesus, even in the seriousness of this conversation, does not only speak a word of warning.  He invites Peter to follow him.  He informs Peter that he is not calling him to anything other than what he himself has suffered and endured.  To follow Jesus may indeed mean that we will follow him into death, but it also means that we will follow him into resurrection and life everlasting.

That is the amazing part of Jesus’ words, “follow me.”  When Jesus calls us to follow him, he does not usually tell us what will happen in our life of obedience, and it is a good thing that he doesn’t.  Most likely, we would either think that God’s plans for us are too mundane and get depressed that we don’t get the glory that we want, or else we would be so overwhelmed by the majesty of our calling that we would become arrogant.  Indeed, if we were told what Peter was told, we might even recoil in fear, being told that we would not die naturally, but be executed for our faith and devotion.  When Jesus says, “follow me,” there is no promise of earthly prosperity, that somehow everything will go right, neither is there a promise of earthly hardship, that somehow everything will go wrong.  Jesus calls us with no conditions, no limitations.  It is as we remembered in our celebration of Wesley’s covenant renewal service two weeks ago.

“Commit yourselves to Christ as his servants.  Give yourselves to him, that you may belong to him.  Christ has many services to be done.  Some are more easy and honorable, others are more difficult and disgraceful.  Some are suitable to our inclinations and interests, others are contrary to both.  In some we may please Christ and please ourselves.  But then there are other works where we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves.”

We have baptized an infant today.  We all, as a congregation, have reaffirmed our devotion and love to God, a love that compels us to renounce the evil ways of the world and to give ourselves to Christ completely.  We also celebrate that, long before Gabriel was born, he was called by God.  We do not know what lies in the future for him, or indeed for any of us.  It may be that we are called to follow Peter in following Christ.  It may be that our life may be marked with sorrow.  It may be that we will be like John as we will see next week, and live long in the Lord, being an example for all.  We do not know.  What we do know, however, is that each of us, including Gabriel, are bound to Christ with a love that will not let us go and that the God who loved us and gave himself for us will never abandon us, but will walk with us every single day.  Let us pray.

AMEN

Covenant Renewal Service Sermon

01/02/11

Covenant Renewal Service

Hudson UMC

As we gather together this morning to renew our covenant with God, it might be an appropriate time to consider a question that is very much relevant to our gathering.  What exactly is a covenant?  In its most basic sense, a covenant is an agreement worked out between two parties.  Although throughout history, covenants have most often been worked out between a greater power and a lesser power, they are intended to be much more mutual than, for example, a contract would imply.

Before we think about how God’s covenant with his people functions, I think it might be best if, by way of contrast, we spend some time thinking about how covenants work among human beings.  It could be said that, among human beings, covenants act as a kind of formal declaration that, “You scratch my back and I will scratch yours.”  This is not done in a threatening kind of way, recognizing that it takes both parties to make the agreement work, but is rather a way to agree to work together for the greater good of both parties involved.

In ancient political covenants between different kingdoms, we can see that the terms of the covenant were tailored to the abilities of each party.  For example, the more powerful nation did not insist that the weaker nation do the bulk of the military protection.  Rather, the smaller and weaker party did what it could do, most often, pay taxes, in return for the defense that the larger, more militarily powerful party could provide.  This way, both parties got something they wanted or needed out of the agreement.

What is important to keep in mind, however, is that this mutuality within the covenanted relationship meant that the power to cancel the covenant did not lie in the hands of only one party.  If the weaker nation stopped paying taxes, the stronger nation could cancel the covenant and would likely retaliate with force upon the weaker nation.  If the stronger party did not uphold its commitment to defend the weaker party, the weaker party was within its rights to cancel the covenant and find other means of protection.

If we keep all this in mind, it only stands to reason that you would not want to establish a covenant with someone who was not going to be able to fulfill the terms of that covenant.  If you had serious doubts about their ability to hold their end up, you might think twice about ratifying such a covenant.  If you knew with absolute certainty that the other party would not, indeed could not fulfill the terms of the covenant, you would almost certainly not establish one in the first place.

All of this reflection about how human beings go about making and breaking covenants is not so much to show us how God treats his covenant with us as it is to show us how unlike us God is, because when we look at God’s covenant with humanity, we see something very different indeed.

First, we see that, when God makes a covenant, he does not do so with people who are well equipped to fulfill the terms of the covenant.  After all, God said to the Israelites, “Be perfect, for I am perfect;” something of a daunting task.  Not only this, but, lest we should think that God cut it back for us, Jesus repeated it to his disciples, upholding it in all its fullness.  So, God made his covenant, not with perfect people, but with imperfect people, not with sinless people but with sinful people.

Why did God do this?  Well, if for no other reason, if God were to make a covenant with any people at all, they would have to be sinful people.  Where would God find sinless people to make a covenant with?  They are simply not to be found.  The only people that exist are people who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, as Paul put it in his letter to the Romans.  So, if God wanted to covenant with humanity, it would have to be with sinful people like you and me, simply because there are not any sinless people around.

However, it would be problematic if we were to think that the only reason that God made a covenant with sinful people is because he did not have any other options.  Any time we think that God does something because his hands were tied and that he quite literally had no other options, we should be careful, or else we may find that we are projecting our own weaknesses into God.  When we read the Bible carefully, we see that the first group of people that God made his covenant with were the Israelites.  Now, we can look throughout Israel’s history and see all kinds of times when they seem to have completely fallen on their faces, failing to uphold their part of the covenant.  But do we have no other choice other than to say that that was the best that God had to work with?  Not at all.  Indeed, in the life and teaching of Jesus, we hear these surprising words. 

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you Bethsaida,” both of which were Jewish cities, “For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon,” which were pagan cities, “which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.  Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.  And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you?  You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.  Nevertheless I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you”

We are left with the impression that, when God chose the Israelites, he was not choosing the best and most righteous of all people, but the worst of all people, for if God had done his miracles in pagan cities like Tyre, Sidon and Sodom, they would have repented, while Israel remained rebellious.  I want to make it absolutely clear, however, that this is not meant to be a word against the Jews.  Rather, it is meant to demonstrate the amazing compassion of God.  You see, God did not enter into his covenant with the Israelites blindly so that he was surprised when they failed.  No.  Instead, it shows us that, even when God is dealing with the worst of all humanity, he does not run away, does not shrink back from our sin, but confronts it with all his almighty power and molds and shapes entire communities, so that they might be utterly transformed.

 When the Israelites sinned, they broke the terms of their covenant with the Lord God.  However, when human beings violate the covenant, it is God, and not the humans, who get to choose whether or not to continue in covenant.  Through their sin, the Israelites said to God, over and over, “We do not really want to live by your rules.  We wish we could be like the other nations and do what we want.  We want to be free from you.”  In spite of that constant rejection, God simply said, over and over, in reply, “I love you and you are mine.  I will not let you go that easily, for this whole process is to mold you into the people you were meant to be.”

So, when we come before God to renew our covenant with him, we do not do so because we are somehow forcing God to take us back.  When we come before God to renew our covenant with him, we do not do so as people who are going to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps so that this time, by golly, we are going to get our act together.  When we come before God to renew our covenant with him, we do so, not as people who are somehow outside of the covenant, but people who are already embraced by the covenant before we even dreamed of accepting it for ourselves.  When we come before God to renew our covenant with him, we do so, not as sinless people who never make mistakes, but as broken people who yearn for God to bring his promises to completion in us.  We come because we have been bound to God by God.

From the very beginning, the covenant of God has always been a matter of grace.  We do not always like the idea of grace because we are afraid that it means that we are receiving charity, that we are somehow taking something that we have not earned.  Indeed, that is the case.  There is perhaps not a single more counter-cultural service that we have in the year than this one.  Though we pledge our fidelity to God and we promise to uphold the terms of the covenant, we do so as people who are accepted by God before we even take those words upon our lips.  Our promises, our faith, and our godly lifestyle are all done within the covenant, never as preconditions on which the covenant is based.  Today we declare, “I receive what I do not deserve because of the almighty grace of God.  I renounce my own worthiness and cling to the worthiness of Christ alone.”  Let us depend on Christ for Christ is not only a human being like we are, he is truly God of God and is able to do what he has promised.  Let us pray.

AMEN