Living Words

Ash Wednesday: When You Fast

Joel 2:12-17 & St. Matthew 6:16-21

by William Klock

Our Epistle today from Joel gives us a unique opportunity to view not only the day’s Gospel, but the entire season of Lent from the perspective of Israel’s story.  Joel’s ministry as a prophet probably took place at some point after the exile and the contents of his book call Judah to repentance at a time when the nation faced the devastation of a horrible plague of locusts.  We get a sense of the severity of the plague in the first chapter, where we read that the locusts have consumed even the vines and stripped the fig trees of their bark.  These are not normal locust food.  They’re what locusts would turn to once everything else had been consumed.  The vine and the fig tree were symbols of peace and prosperity and their consumption by locusts speaks to the desperate situation of the nation.  As 1:13 notes, the priests lamented before the altar for there was neither grain nor drink left in the land to offer to the Lord.

Repeatedly the prophet speaks of the Day of the Lord, a day to which Israel looked with eager anticipation.  One day the Lord would arise from his throne, he who had tamed chaos to create an ordered cosmos, and he would do the same again.  The Lord would arise to bring justice to his people and to set all to rights.  Israel’s perennial problem was that she always saw herself as the innocent victim.  On the Day of the Lord her enemies would be vanquished and she would be vindicated.  It occurred to few in Israel that the Day of the Lord might turn out to be a judgement on Israel’s own sins.  This gets at the heart of Joel’s prophecy.  The Day of Lord has come and his own people have found themselves the focus of his judgement.

The book is a call to repentance.  Judah stands condemned for having offered the outward sacrifices of grain, wine, and oil, while the people had not truly dedicated their hearts to the Lord.  But Joel reminds the people that this is not the end.  The purpose of the Lord’s discipline is to bring repentance and with repentance will come restoration.  “Even now,” declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart…Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster” (vv. 12-13).

Now, this does not mean that the outward trapping of religion and of repentance are unnecessary.  Through the prophet the Lord summons his people to fast, to weep, to mourn—but to do so from the heart and as evidence of true repentance.  Lest they are tempted to make a show of rending their garments, the Lord declares it is more important that they first rend their hearts.

The need for corporate repentance is highlighted too.  The priests are to take their place “between the vestibule and the altar” to weep and cry out for mercy while the entire nation joins them: the elders and the children—even the bride and bridegroom are to suspend their honeymoon so that the whole nation can take part in this corporate act of repentance.

In response to the honest repentance of the nation, the Lord promises restoration—even that one day he will solve Israel’s heart problem by pouring out his Spirit.  In that day he will establish his people forever and put an end to their enemies.  Here our Epistle, even as we enter our Lenten fast, sets our eyes on Easter and on the age to come that burst forth from the empty tomb.  Even as we’re reminded by the old Israel of the importance of penitence, both as individuals and corporately as the Church, we’re also reminded that we are not the old Israel; we are the new Israel, we are the people who live on the other side of the Lord’s promise to pour out his Spirit.

And if we turn over to today’s Gospel we see Jesus addressing the same old problem.  Many in Israel continued to put on a show of outward piety, while their hearts were far from the Lord.  Jesus warns that those who put on a show for others have received all they will ever receive for their efforts.  They may receive respect and honour from those around them, but it has not moved God.  Think again of the Day of the Lord, that day when the people of Israel anticipated the Lord coming to defeat their enemies, to set all to rights, and to reign forever.  Many people fasted and made public acts of repentance in anticipation of that day.  Jesus’ warning in light of that should have been frightening.  As the Messiah, he was setting in motion the events that would culminate in the Day of the Lord and here he warns that those who have made an insincere show of repentance will have no share in that day—or, to be more specific, they will, but they will have a share in the Lord’s judgement, not his deliverance.  Instead, it’s be those who, to use the language of Joel, have rent their hearts rather than their garments, whom the Father will see and reward—they are the ones who will know the age to come.

Let your investment be in the age to come, Jesus exhorts the people.  Investment in the things of this age will not last.  Moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal.  More importantly, our investments in the values and systems of the present evil age are foolish in light of the inauguration of the age to come by Jesus.  We’re reminded of the this past Sunday’s Epistle from 1 Corinthians 13.  If even the good, God-given gifts of tongues and prophecy will one day cease to have a purpose when the age to come as been consummated, how much more ought we to hold lightly to the praises of others and to investment in the values, systems, and institutions of the age that is passing away.  Instead, Jesus encourages his people to lay up treasures in heaven.  As we listen to Jesus here, it’s important to remember that Jews did not understand “heaven” the way many Christians often do, as referring to “up there” or “the next life”.  In Jewish thought—as it should be in Christian thought—heaven is God’s realm as earth is ours and Jesus has accomplished the work to heal the breach between them caused by human sin and rebellion.  One day heaven and earth will be rejoined.  One day, as the Jews had always hoped, all will be set to rights and evil wiped from the face of the earth.  Redeemed humanity will live in the presence of God.  It is that dawning age into which we ought to be investing, knowing that what we do out of love for God and love for each other in this age is what will last into the age to come.

Israel struggled with repentance and so did the people surrounding Jesus.  They lived in anticipation of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promise to pour out his Spirit and to set right the hearts of his people.  There is, then, a definite and distinct difference between our season of penitence and theirs.  We live on the fulfilment side of the Lord’s promise.  We are the people redeemed by Jesus at the cross and in whom the Spirit of God dwells—and that has changed everything.  Nevertheless, we too live in anticipation of the day when all will finally be set to rights and so it is just as important for us to set our eyes on Jesus and to commit ourselves to investing in the thing of his kingdom.

Brothers and Sisters, this is the purpose of our Lenten fast.  Each year the Church calls us to slow down, to take a break, and to fast so that we can, for at least these few weeks, invest some time that we wouldn’t normally invest in considering God’s word, in considering the gospel, in considering what Jesus has done for us by his death and resurrection, to think on God’s love for us revealed in Jesus, and to make a point of being deliberate about our love for each other and, especially for the poor and needy, so that as we approach Easter, we will have our eyes more firmly set on Jesus and the new life and the new creation that lie before us.

Let’s pray: Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made, and you forgive the sins of all who are penitent: create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Quinquagesima: Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

by William Klock

Have you ever thought of the Bible as a symphony?  A symphony is made up of many different instruments.  Not only do they all make different sounds, but they also play different parts—different bits of music.  And it’s often that cast that all on their own, those individual bits of music don’t sound very nice.  Veronica plays piano for the symphony and the pieces I listen to her practising are sometimes, well, not terribly pleasant, but then I go to the concert and hear her playing with the other musicians and the parts she’s been practising suddenly make sense and all those parts come together into something truly beautiful.  The Bible is very much like that.  There are all sorts of themes and sometimes we put all our attention on just one and it ruins the music.  But the better we know and understand the Bible and the big story of God and his people, the better able we are to hear all of those themes, each playing at the right time, each balanced with the others, so that we’re able to hear the grand music that God has—not only for us to hear, but for us to participate in.

And if I were telling parable the way Jesus did, I might say, “The kingdom of God is like…a symphony.”  When Jesus came he introduced a new piece of music to his people.  The thing was that it wasn’t really new; it’s that everyone had forgotten it.  The Lord had taught it long before to Adam and to Eve.  When their children lost the tune the Lord came and taught it again to Abraham and then to Moses and to the Israelites.  It wasn’t an easy tune—mostly because sinful human beings lacked the full ability to play it.  And so the tune God taught Abraham and Moses was a bit like a simple melody line played on the piano with one hand.  But it was still true to the original.  But even as simple as it was, Israel struggled to play it.  And then when Jesus came he amazed everyone by sitting down at the piano and playing the full harmony with both hands.  The music took on new life.  It was fuller and richer and more beautiful than anything anyone had heard since Adam’s day.  Some people didn’t like it.  Some people flat-out refused to learn it or even listen to it.  But Jesus taught it to a few and each of them taught it to a few and each of those to a few and pretty soon thousands were playing and the music was spreading all over the world.  At some point someone taught it to each of us and now you and I are playing it.

And yet, even still, we know—or at least we should know—that there’s more yet to come.  What Jesus has taught us to play isn’t the full piece of music.  It’s like the piano solo leading into the great orchestral piece.  It gives a taste of what’s to come, but to hear the full symphony we have to wait for Jesus to return—for Jesus to come back from heaven, bringing the kingdom with him in all its majesty and eternal glory.  In the meantime, we play the piece he’s taught us, the piece he’s specially equipped us to play.  And as we see in our Epistle this morning from First Corinthians, at the heart of this music Jesus has taught us—the melody of it that holds it all together and that will lead into something so much greater one day—the heart, the theme of that music is love.

We’ll be looking this morning at 1 Corinthians 13.  It’s a passage of Scripture that we’re very prone to understanding out of context, because we so often hear it out of context.  We hear it read it at weddings as if what it’s talking about is romantic love between husband and wife.  Or we see little bits of it painted or stitched on home decor.  The result is that we miss the point of the passage.  What Paul says here about love comes in the middle of a discussion about the Church, about living together as the body of Christ, about spiritual gifts, and about worship.  So, yes, what he describes here is about the love of husband and wife, but only because it is first and foremost about love amongst Christian brothers and sisters, love in the Church, that spills over into every aspect of life and into every relationship in light of Jesus and what he’s accomplished.

During Epiphanytide we were reading in Romans where Paul describes the Church as being like a body, everyone gifted and equipped for a certain task, not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole Church and our kingdom mission.  And at the beginning of the season, we were reading about the Church as a temple, each of us a stone, shaped and carved and cut very carefully by the Lord and all purposefully fitted together as the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.  Last Sunday we read Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.  They were boasting to each other about their gifts and achievements and they’d started following teachers who boasted in their achievements—boasting as Greeks and Romans typically boasted.  It was how people climbed to the top of the heap and demanded respect and honour.  But in contrast Paul describes his own accomplishments: he’d been arrested, beaten, whipped, scourged, shipwrecked, cold, hungry, naked, shamed and run out of town in dishonour—all for the sake of his brothers and sisters, the very ones, in fact, who rejected him.  And we think: How is this all possible?  How do we live for the sake of others?  How do we die to self for the sake of others?  How do we sacrifice for the sake of others?  The last two Sundays pointed us toward discipline and humility.  Today the lessons point us to love.  Love is the theme that ties the whole symphony of the kingdom together.  And so after describing the way the Church acts as a body with each using his or her gifts for the sake of others and, ultimately, for the sake of Jesus and his kingdom Paul writes:

I will show you a still more excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 12:31b-13:4)

It’s not just about having and using gifts or about doing things in the Church.  The Corinthian Church had no lack of gifts.  It had no lack of activity.  It had no lack of people wanting to contribute money to this cause or that cause.  (One of the reasons Paul wrote to them was to raise money to support the struggling Christians in Jerusalem.)  The problem in Corinth was a lack of love.  Without love all the amazing things they were doing might as well have been nothing.

Back in Chapter 3 Paul used the illustration of building a temple.  Like the temple in Jerusalem, it was built of carefully hewn wood, cut stones, gold, and precious jewels.  Jesus is the foundation and others, like Paul and the Corinthians, were building on that foundation, but not everyone was building with stone or with gems and precious metals.  Some were building with hay and straw.  At the end, he says, it’ll all be tested with fire.  The hay and straw will go up in smoke.  This is an image here that gives us a sense of what lies in store.  Other passages talk of the old heaven and earth passing away and a new world being ushered in.  I’m sure much of the language is figurative—the reality is at this point beyond our understanding.  However it happens, though, that which is unworthy, that which is the product of sinfulness and selfishness, that which does not honour God will be consumed and will pass away, leaving a new world in which the holy and the God-honouring remains.  Only the work in which people truly invested—the stone, the gold, the silver, the precious jewels—will remain.  Some will make a good show of building, but if love is not their motive, it’s not going to last—it will be exposed and consumed by God’s judgement.  If love isn’t the motive, when Jesus comes and draws our music into his own great symphony, those who have been playing their own tune will have nothing to contribute.

Paul goes on in verses 5-7:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 

This is what will be left.  This is the melody that Jesus will take up into his great symphony.  And it stands in stark contrast with the ways and values of the present age, but it stands in contrast, too, with the ways and values of many people in the Church.  What Paul does is to hold up Jesus as our model for love.

Jesus is patient and kind.  Remember, he came to condemned sinners, not to heap up more condemnation, but to redeem.  We have dishonoured God and made a mess of this creation he so lovingly created.  He would be within his rights to simply hit control+alt+smite and reboot everything—to wipe us out and start over from the beginning.  God has every right to leave us dead in our sins, but because he loves us, he is patient and has given himself—the life of his Son—to restore us to life and to his presence.  To make us his people once again.  Again, love is patient and kind.

And, Paul writes, love is not envious or boastful.  Think again of Jesus.  He who is God humbled himself in the incarnation—again, for our sake—becoming one of us.  And he came not as a great king or warrior, but as the son of a humble girl and her very ordinary husband, raised in a poor backwater, and finally dying—for our sake—the humiliating and painful death of a criminal—a death we deserve, but that he did not.  He had more right to boast than anyone who has ever lived, but as they pressed the crown of thorns on his head and beat him, mocking his sovereignty, he chose not to revile them in return.  Instead, as he was dying he prayed for the very men who were standing there gloating and jeering at him.

Love is not irritable or resentful.  Again, God is patient and long-suffering.  Rather than resenting us for our sins, the Lord has given himself to redeem us from them.  Love does not rejoice at wrongs.  Just the opposite.  The angels in heaven rejoice with the Lord whenever a sinner repents.  Again, think of Jesus: Love bears all things…believes all things…hopes all things…endures all things.  Has anyone borne more or endured more than Jesus?

And with that image in our heads we need to think of ourselves.  Are we patient and kind?  And we need to be honest.  It’s easy to be patient and kind some of the time and with the people we like, but what about the people we don’t like?  What about those difficult situations we find ourselves in?  Are we really patient and kind?  Are we envious and boastful or, like Jesus, are we humble and willing to give up our honour for the sake of others—even for the sake of people who hurt us and wrong us.  Are we willing to admit when we are wrong and when we have sinned?  Are we irritable and resentful?  These are sins that Christians can be very tolerant of.  Sometimes we even turn irritability and resentment into virtues when the right people and situations come our way.  What’s my reaction when Mormon missionaries knock on my door or when a telemarketer calls?  I can be pretty irritable and most people would say that that’s just fine when it comes to telemarketers and cult members.  I was convicted myself this week.  Somehow I remained calm and polite when bit by a dog, but Telus called three times in a row with their auto-dialler and I was pretty irritable to the woman on the other end.  And Christians can often be downright curmudgeonly when it comes to sinners and to non-Christians—and many times we even see it as a virtue.  People of Jesus’ day were often like that when it came to tax collectors and prostitutes and gentiles, but Jesus instead forgave these people, made them new, and welcomed them into his family.

Again, where and how do we fall short of Jesus’ model of love?  In our families?  In our workplaces?  In our schools?  In our church?  And imagine the difference it would make around us if love were the driving force, the motive behind everything we do.  Imagine what it would be like if we gave of ourselves, our rights, our honour, our glory the way that Jesus did.

And it sounds good, but I know it also sounds impossible.  How can we ever give of ourselves the way Jesus did?  Sometimes it’s hard enough giving this way to people we love.  What about people who aren’t close to us, people who have hurt us, people who are our enemies?  This is why we need to have the example of Jesus always before us.  We need to remember that we were his enemies.  We need to remember that he owed us nothing but judgement, and yet he became incarnate and died for us.  We need to think and meditate on the depth of love that God manifested towards us in Jesus.  Brothers and Sisters, the love of God in Jesus should motivate and transform us.

But that’s not all.  Love is impossible, but Jesus has done more than give us an example.  He’s washed us of our sin and he’s given us God’s own Spirit.  Think back to John the Baptist.  He told the people, “I’ve plunged you into the water, but one is coming who will plunge you into the Holy Spirit.”  Jesus doesn’t forgive our sins and leave us in some kind of neutral state.  He forgives our sins and then pours his own life into us.  Remember: The Lord didn’t rescue the Israelites from slavery in Egypt just to leave them wandering in the wilderness.  No.  He freed them from Egypt, he made them his people, and he took up his dwelling in their midst as he led them into a new home and new way of life.  And just so with Jesus, but on an even grander scale.  Jesus rescues us and frees us from sin and death, he makes us his people—more specifically, Paul talks about Jesus making us his own body—and he comes and dwells, not just in our midst, but actually inside us.  He makes us his temple as he pours his Spirit into us.  But his ultimate plan isn’t just to save us, but to redeem his entire creation—to set us back on the track that Adam and Eve abandoned when they sinned, to make us his stewards, his priests.  And so as Israel’s destination was the promised land, our destination is the New Jerusalem, the kingdom that Jesus has promised to bring in all its fullness.  That’s the future, but in Jesus that future has burst into our present.  In the Holy Spirit Jesus gives us a foretaste of what is to come.  He invites us to play the music of the kingdom and the music of the kingdom is love.

Again: If it’s not driven by love, it won’t last.  And Paul drives this point home in the rest of the passage.  It’s not just that the things we do without love will go up in smoke when the kingdom finally comes in all its fullness, but even many of the good things Jesus calls us to do will be overwhelmed by the great theme of love.  Look at verses 8-13:

Love never ends.  As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

 

First Corinthians gives us the distinct sense that the church in that city was fixated on certain miraculous gifts, especially prophecy and tongues, not only elevating those who had these gifts above others, but emphasizing to everyone that these gifts were sort of the end-all-be-all of Christianity.  Forget everything else—put it all aside—and pursue prophecy and tongues!  But Paul is warning them and saying, “No.  These gifts are great and they’re useful, but there’s something far more important: cultivate love.  Real love.  The kind of love manifest by Jesus at the cross.  If you want to build the kingdom, don’t pursue gifts.  If you’ve got them, use them—lovingly—but pursue love above all else.  When the kingdom is here and we’re all living in God’s presence, there will no longer be any need of prophecy, but there will be a need for love.  The same goes for tongues.  Who needs tongues when the curse of Babel is done away with?  But we’ll still need love.

Paul describes it in terms of growing from a child into an adult.  I had a Big Wheel when I was a little kid, but now I ride a real bicycle.  The Big Wheel taught me how to pedal and steer and not run people over.  At one point I had training wheels on my bike that kept me from falling over.  But they did their work and now I’m a grown-up and I don’t need those childish things.  In the present age our view of God is dim.  Paul describes it in terms of an ancient mirror made of polished metal.  The reflection was imperfect and dark.  And so is our view of God.  Even as redeemed men and women, there’s a veil, a gulf between us and God.  Our sin has split apart heaven and earth, but Jesus has begun the work of bringing us back together.  One day we will stand before God face to face.  We’ll know him not only through the mediating words of Scripture or through the mediating work of the Holy Spirit, but we’ll stand before him and know him face-to-face.

And it’s on that day that our music will be taken up into God’s great symphony and all that will remain is love.  Faith, hope, and love remain, he says—they’re essential to our life as the Church, as the people of God today—but above all we need to learn to love.  It’s not that faith and hope aren’t important.  They’re vital, but without love they’ll be out of tune with God’s symphony.  We live by faith.  We take hold of Jesus, the forgiveness of sin and the promise of life, and we take hold of him by faith as we trust in him.  We submit to his lordship by faith.  And we live in hope—living for a kingdom and a world for which we have only a down payment.  But on the great day when Jesus returns and the kingdom is consummated, faith will vanish into sight, hope will be fulfilled, but love will only intensify, growing greater and more profound as we see our Lord face to face and the weight of sin and death is finally and fully lifted from us—as the blurry image of the mirror is replaced by the real thing—as our simple one-handed song of love on the piano is taken up as part of the Lord’s grand symphony of love.

Brothers and Sisters, think of the words of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  We pray these words so often and know them so well that we easily forget what they really mean.  This is a prayer that looks forward in faith and hope to the day when we will see him face to face; this is a prayer that looks forward to the day when we have grown from little children into adults; this is a prayer that looks forward to that day when love becomes Creation’s all-consuming theme.  The Lord’s Prayer looks forward to that day in hope and faith, but what it asks for is that this theme of love be manifested here today.  It asks in faith for love to be made known today in the midst of sin and of fear and of hate and of death.  And, Brothers and Sisters, that means that it’s a prayer for our own hearts and minds to be transformed by the Holy Spirit, because if anyone is to manifest love in this present age, it is us, the only people in this world who know first-hand the love of Jesus.  So pray, “thy will be done, on earth as in heaven” and pray those words in hope of the coming kingdom and pray those words in faith, trusting and seeking for the Lord to give you his loving heart so that you can show his love in your church, in your family, in your workplace, in your school, in your community, and in your world.

Let us pray: O Lord, you have taught us that whatever we do without love is worth nothing: send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the true bond of peace and of all virtues; without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.  Grant this for the sake of your only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Septuagesima: Boasting in Weakness

1 Corinthians 11:19-31 & St. Luke 8:4-15

by William Klock

 

Last week we read from Matthew.  Speaking to his disciples, Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” and then he told them a story about men working hard under the hot sun harvesting grapes.  Last Sunday’s lessons reminded us of the grace of God, but they also reminded us that to follow Jesus—to be his disciples—is to actively and purposefully pursue the discipline of grace.  The Lord pours out his grace freely on his people, but we must put our hands out to receive it.  He graciously provides the manna for today, but we must gather it.  He offers us his grace at his Table, but we must put out our hands and take the bread, we must open our mouths and drink the wine.  And of course, there’s a mystery there, too, because even the discipline we put into pursuing God’s grace is itself a gift of grace.

Now today, as we continue to prepare for the season of Lent, we hear Jesus tell another story.  “The kingdom of heaven is like…”  Except today we’re listening to St. Luke and that’s not how he introduces Jesus’ parables.  That’s St. Matthew’s “thing”.  But Jesus could very well have launched into his story that way.  Like last week’s parable, today’s parable is a story about Israel.  And so Luke says that a great crowd had gathered, people coming from all the surrounding towns and villages, and Jesus spoke.  “A sower went out to sow his seed.”  And immediately these people, who knew the Old Testament inside and out, backwards and forwards, so much better than us, they knew right away what this was about.  The “seed” is the remnant, the faithful and true Israel.  As Jesus began his story people would have been thinking about passages from the Prophets like Isaiah 55:10-13.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

         and do not return there but water the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

         giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

         it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

         and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

“For you shall go out in joy

         and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you

         shall break forth into singing,

         and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;

         instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall make a name for the Lord,

         an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

 

The Lord would sow his word and instead of thorns and briers, cypress and myrtles would sprout and thrive and his people would rejoice.  Even the mountains and the hills would sing his praises.  This is a song of God’s new creation breaking into the dark sadness of the world, breaking into its sin and idolatry. And, most importantly, all of this, Isaiah wrote, “shall make a name for the Lord.”  People will hear and see and know the faithfulness of the God of Israel and believe.  So everyone listening to Jesus knew all about sin and idolatry and darkness and sadness.  They lived it every day.  Their ancestors had been unfaithful to the Lord, so he disciplined them and let them be taken into exile.  And even though the exile was technically over, it wasn’t, not really.  They’d rebuilt the temple five centuries before, but the Lord’s presence had never returned.  And the Lord’s voice had been silent all that time, too.  And they were ruled by pagan Gentiles, first Greeks and then Romans.  Theirs was a world of thorns and briers and they cried out to the Lord to hear and to deliver them as their ancestors had done from their slavery in Egypt.  That’s what Jesus’ story is about.  A sower—the Sower—went out to sow his seed.  “And,” Jesus says, “as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it.  And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture.  And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it.”

It's Israel’s story in a nutshell—or a basket of seed.  But Israel’s story was never meant to end in exile.  Everyone knew—and Isaiah had proclaimed—that the Lord’s word does not return empty, that it accomplishes what he means for it to accomplish.  One day the knowledge of the glory of the Lord would fill the earth.  So there has to be more than his word being eaten by birds or burning up under the hot sun.  The Lord would surely set things—including his own people—to rights just as he had always promised.  Someday the thorns and briers and the sad darkness had to come to an end.  And so Jesus’ story goes on.  He said, “But some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold.”  And, Luke says, Jesus called out to the people, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

So much of the story made sense to them.  They knew the players and the imagery.  They heard the hope in the story.  The Lord would do what he said and fix this broken world and fix his broken people.  But how was Jesus saying anything that Isaiah hadn’t said already?  How did this relate to him.  Even the disciples had to ask what it meant.  And so Jesus explained, beginning at verse 11:

“Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.”  I think they all knew this.  They knew the prophets too well to miss it.  The seed is the word of God, but the seed is also the people of God and the two were always inextricably linked, because they knew that God’s word creates God’s people.

Jesus went on, “The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.  And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy.  But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.  And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.”

Think of Israel’s history.  The Lord spoke, he called his people to repentance and faith.  In many cases his word fell on deaf ears.  Some people, despite all the past faithfulness of the Lord, simply had no interest in him.  Some heard the word of the Lord, repented, and believed, but when hard times came, their faith shrivelled up like rootless seedlings on a hot day.  Instead of trusting in the Lord, they put their trust in horses and chariots, in foreign kings, and in false gods.  Others heard, but were simply too concerned with the concerns of today to care about tomorrow.  There were rich people so intent on holding onto their wealth and powerful people so intent on holding onto their power, that they simply couldn’t be bothered with the Lord.  And there were others who had fought their way to the top all on their own, life was good, they didn’t care about anyone else, and they heard the Lord speak and thought, “Oh, that’s nice,” but saw no need to take it to heart.  Many were just too invested in the systems of the present age to have any interest in the age to come.  In fact, some were downright frightened by the thought.  It was as source of hope to many, but to everyone sitting on the top of the world in the present age, it meant upset and loss and judgement.  King Herod was willing to murder the infants of Bethlehem to keep it from happening.  The Sadducees were willing to hand Jesus over to the Romans if it meant stopping this revolution of the word.

And that points to another of Jesus’ tellings of this story.  This wasn’t the only time Jesus told this story and this wasn’t the only way he told it.  If we turn over to Luke 20:9-18 we read another version of the same story.

And he began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while.  When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed.  And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed.  And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out.  Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’  But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’  And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?  He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” When they heard this, they said, “Surely not!”  But he looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected

         has become the cornerstone’?

  Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”

 

Notice that three times the man sent a servant to claim what belonged to him and three times he was rejected—like the hard-packed path, the rocks, and the thorny ground on which the seed was sown.  But the word of the Lord does not return void.  And so the man sent his own son.  And even though the wicked tenants threw him out and killed him, this is how the Lord finally accomplishes his purpose, this is the key to those words “The Kingdom of heaven is like…”  The son will be rejected, and here Jesus quotes Psalm 118, which everyone would have known just as well as they knew Isaiah 55, the rejected son is that stone rejected by the builders that ends up becoming the cornerstone—that ends up becoming the centre, the basis, the foundation of everything—of God’s new age and God’s new creation.  And that imagery from Daniel.  That stone will remake everyone who falls on it—will give them new life—but will crush—will fall in judgement on those who reject it.

The word of the Lord will not return void.  And so, back to today’s Gospel, Jesus says in verse 15, “As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.”

This is the remnant, the faithful and true Israel.  These are they who fell on the stone rather than the stone falling on them.  These are they who embraced the son when others killed him.  And remember what Jesus said about them in the parable itself, back in verse 8: “And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold.”

When the disciples finally understood this, it had to have been an immense source of comfort.  As in Israel’s past, so in their own day they saw Jesus—the word himself come to set Israel to rights—they saw him preaching and ministering the kingdom and the word fell on hard-packed earth where the birds snatched it away; and they saw it fall on rocky soil where it took root for a little while, but died once push came to shove; and they saw people like the rich young ruler eagerly coming to Jesus, but going away empty-handed because they just couldn’t bring themselves to let go of their wealth or their power.  How could the kingdom of God possibly amount to anything in this world, in the midst of all the sad darkness and the thorns and briers, when hardly anyone would listen and even fewer would actually take Jesus to heart?  Even they lost faith and hope when Jesus was crucified.  They spent that first Good Friday and Holy Saturday holed up in fear that the authorities would come for them next.  That was it.  Hope crushed.  And then the empty tomb and then Jesus, risen and made new himself, appeared to them and hope came flooding back.  The word took root in them.  They were surely the seed, even though they were so few.  How it would happen, they didn’t know.  And so after Jesus’ ascension they went back to Jerusalem and they waited and they prayed and on Pentecost the Lord poured his Spirit into them and it all made sense.  The stone that the builders rejected really was the cornerstone of this new creation and its new temple.  And it made sense now that God’s word would not return void, because the word himself had come, not only to proclaim the kingdom, but to die and rise again to defeat the old powers of sin and death, and then he sent God’s own Spirit to indwell this new people, to give them this gift of faith, to fill them with love, and to turn their hearts to God.  This is how God’s word would accomplish what he purposed.  In fulfilment of his promises, he backed it up with his own power.  And on Pentecost that little group of disciples saw the seed take root.  Luke writes in Acts 2 that about three thousand were added to their number that day and that the trend continued day by day.  As Jesus said in another parable: The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.  The smallest of seeds, but it grows into a great tree and the birds make their nests in it.  God’s grace at work through the humility of his son and the humility of his people.

Brothers and Sisters, that’s the lesson the Church reminds us of with today’s lessons.  Last Sunday we were reminded that grace is a discipline.  Today we’re reminded to stand humbly before the grace of God.  And not just to stand humbly, but to stand in hope-filled faith.  The Epistle gives us St. Paul’s example.  He was one of the greatest of the Pharisees and a member of Sanhedrin, but when he was met by the risen Jesus on the Road to Damascus, he gave up everything to be part of this renewed people of God—something he thought was the height of foolishness—and blasphemous—only the day before.

And things, at least by worldly terms, did not go well for Paul.  He poured himself into kingdom ministry with the hope of God’s future before him.  Paul’s ministry was to the gentiles, to the pagan world of the Greek and Romans and if the disciples were overwhelmed by their seeming smallness and insignificance in Judea, imagine how overwhelmed Paul must have felt as he went off for the first time as a missionary to the wide world, to declare the glories and the faithfulness of the God of Israel made manifest in Jesus to people and nations who had never heard of Jesus and who would question how the god of a conquered people could possible be worth anything.  But off he went.  One tiny, tiny point of light into the great darkness and wherever he went he preached the word and the Spirit worked and little churches full of new believers began popping up to challenge the darkness.  Brothers and Sisters, take note: That’s how it works.

Paul knew that it wasn’t he who made this happen.  It was the grace of God working through the word and the Spirit.  He was merely the messenger, the royal herald, called to proclaim the good news that Jesus is Lord.  The Lord himself would do the rest.  When Paul wrote today’s Epistle to the Church at Corinth, they had forgotten this fundamental truth.  They heard the good news about Jesus first from Paul, but since then he’d become persona non grata in their church.  Other preachers had come to them who were better rhetoricians and better looking and who preached a different gospel.  They became tolerant of sin.  They became less disciplined about grace.  They abused the Spirit’s gifts and used them for selfish purposes.  And they’d forgotten that the gospel is empowered not by human means or power, not by gimmicks or flash, but by God’s word and Gods’ Spirit.  And so Paul wrote to them.  This is 2 Corinthians 11:18 and following:

Plenty of people are boasting in human terms, after all, so why shouldn’t I boast as well?  After all, you put up with fools readily enough, since you are so wise yourselves.  You put up with it if someone makes you their slave, or if they eat up your property, or overpower you, or give themselves airs, or slap you in the face.  Whatever anyone else dares to boast about (I’m talking nonsense, remember), I’ll boast as well.  Are they Hebrews?  So am I.  Are they Israelites?  So am I.  Are they the seed of Abraham?  So am I.  Are they servants of the Messiah?—I’m talking like a raving madman—I’m a better one.  I’ve worked harder, been in prison more often, been beaten more times than I can count, and I’ve often been close to death.  Five times I’ve had the Jewish beating, forty lashes less one.  Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; I was adrift in the sea for a night and a day.  I’ve been constantly traveling, facing dangers from rivers, dangers from brigands, dangers from my own people, dangers from foreigners, dangers in the town, dangers in the countryside, dangers at sea, dangers from false believers.  I’ve toiled and labored; I’ve burned the candle at both ends; I’ve been hungry and thirsty; I’ve often gone without food altogether; I’ve been cold and naked.  Quite apart from all that, I have this daily pressure on me, my care for all the churches. (2 Corinthians 11:18-28)

Paul begins with everything he once had—the sorts of things the Corinthians valued.  But then he reminds them that he’s given it all up for the sake of Jesus and the gospel, because the gospel is not empowered by those sorts of things.  And the gospel went forth, not because of how great Paul was, but because he was simply faithful to preach it no matter how much it cost him, and because God’s word and Spirit empowered it and transformed the hearts and minds of the people who heard it and believed.  And so he asks in verse 29, “Who is weak and I am not weak?”  But that’s just it.  This is just the point they needed to get through their heads.  They’ve allowed the values of the present age—love of money, love of status, love of power, love of things—they’ve allowed all this to shape their hearts and minds.  They’ve forgotten the power of the cross.  They’ve forgotten that the Lord reveals his strength when his people are weak, because it’s only then that the watching world will see things happen, not by our might and power, but by his.  Brothers and Sisters, this is the God who revealed himself in all his glory by raising Jesus, his Messiah, from the dead.  It’s never us.  Everything we do should point to and reveal the glory and power of God.  Even Jesus, in all he did, manifested not his own glory, but the glory of his Father.  And so Paul declares:

If I must boast, I will boast of my weaknesses.

 

Brothers and Sisters, do you boast in your weaknesses?  Paul wrote earlier in 2 Corinthians:

For the sake of Christ…I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  (2 Corinthians 12:10)

It’s so easy to be swept up with the values of the world around us and to think, on the one hand, that when things go well for the Church, when our numbers are up, when people are believing and coming for baptism, when the church is sending out missionaries and accomplishing great things in our community, that we’re the ones responsible for it and to become prideful.  To say to the world, “Look what we’ve done!”  And, on the other hand, when things don’t seem to go well, when our numbers are small and we seem to be accomplishing little for the kingdom, it’s easy to become discouraged, even to give up, or to stop trusting in the power of the word and the Spirit and to turn to worldly means to grow the Church.  Brothers and Sisters, Paul reminds us to be humble and to find strength in our weakness, because it is only in our weakness that we encounter the grace of God and that we learn to trust in him to bring gospel fruit.  And when God does act, no one will point to us and say, “Look what they did?”  No, the world will see our smallness, our powerlessness, our weakness and say, “God did that!”  If the Church grows and many trust in Jesus as happened at Pentecost, we will have been privileged to have been used by the Lord, but ultimately we cannot take the credit, because it is his word and Spirit that accomplished the work.  And, on the other hand, if we have been faithful to proclaim his word and to live the life the Spirit has given, and yet we can see little fruit and the Church remains small, we must continue to trust in him, knowing that his word does not return void and, even if we never see the fruit, he will without doubt bring fruit from his word that we proclaim as he did with the prophets, even though they were rejected in their own day.  Brothers and Sisters, whatever happens, whatever fruit we see or do not see, whether our numbers are big or small, we can—we must—trust in him and live in hope and know that our work is not in vain so long as we are faithful stewards of his word and his grace.  As he promised, he will send his word out into the world, it will not return void, he will make a name for himself amongst the nations.  He will be glorified in all the earth.  May we never lose our faith and hope because of weakness, but rather trust all the more in him.

Let’s pray: O Lord God, you know that we cannot put our trust in any thing that we do: Mercifully defend us by your power, we pray, against every adversity; through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Septuagesima: The Discipline of Grace

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 & St. Matthew 20:1-16

by William Klock

 

Jesus said to his disciples that the kingdom of heaven is like…this.  And then he told a story.  “It’s like,” he said, “a vineyard owner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard.”  Jesus draws this imagery straight from the prophets, so he doesn’t have to explain very much.  The vineyard owner is always the Lord.  The vineyard or the people working in it were always Israel.  So as Jesus tells his story, Matthew and John and Peter and the rest can easily imagine themselves getting up that morning, leaving their wives and children, and going to the town square in the hopes someone will have work for them.  Day labourers were pretty much at the bottom of society.  Slaves were often better off than they were, because at least a slave’s owner was obliged to clothe and feed him and his family.  A day labourer lived a meagre hand to mouth existence.  If there was no work, he didn’t eat.  If there was work, he did it, earned just enough to buy food for his family, and got up the next morning already tired, but ready to do it all over again.  If there wasn’t work, he either begged or he and his wife and children went hungry.  So Matthew and John and the others imagine themselves arriving at the town square just before sunrise with their tools in hand and are glad to see this man who offers them a denarius and sends them down the road to harvest his grapes.  A denarius was the going rate for a day’s common labour.  Again, it wasn’t much, but their families would eat tonight and then tomorrow it’d start all over again.

They’d been working hard for a good three hours when mid-morning came.  They saw the vineyard owner talking with his friend who had just returned from the mountains.  “Rain’s on the way,” he said.  “Maybe tonight, definitely tomorrow.”  The harvest had to come in before the rain, so the vineyard owner went back to town.  There were still plenty of men waiting to be hired for the day, so he tapped as many as he thought he needed, promised, “I’ll pay you what’s right,” and sent them to harvest his grapes.

At noon the clouds started rolling in over the mountains.  Rain was coming sooner than expected so off he went to town again.  The sun was hot now.  Matthew and the others could imagine themselves working hard in the vineyard.  Maybe the day Jesus told them the story was a hot one and they could feel the heat pressing in on them.  Thank goodness they were sitting in the shade of a tree, not carrying heavy baskets of grapes out under the hot sun, kicking up dust as they shuffled under heavy loads.  But they could imagine.  They were in the story on that sweltering day.  They were certainly earning their denarius!  Even those men who started at noon would be exhausted when the day was done.  And in the backs of their minds they were thinking, “Okay…the men working so hard, they’re Israel, they’re us. Where is this going?”

By mid-afternoon the wind had picked up and the clouds were closing in.  They were dark.  It was going to rain tonight.  The man hurried back to town.  Still there were men waiting for work.  They were probably expecting to go home empty-handed, going to bed hungry.  Their children would cry.  But if they left the town square they’d miss out on even that small chance that someone might come late in the day with a job.  “Get to my vineyard and pick like the wind,” the man said, “and I’ll pay you what’s right.”  So off they ran, not wasting a moment.  And the work wasn’t so bad now that the clouds had rolled in and a cool wind was blowing.

And a couple of hours later the workers were almost done…but not quite.  It was starting to sprinkle, it was still an hour til sunset, but it was dark.  The man ran back to town and rounded up the last few men left…the ones just about ready to go home empty-handed or maybe ready to beg some bread from someone.  An hour’s pay was better than no pay at all, so off they went to help the others finish.

And finish they did.  And here’s where Jesus gets to the heart of that bit about “The kingdom of God is like…”  As the thunder began and the rain started pouring, the foreman gathered the men in the barn and the man, pulling him aside, said to him, “Pay them their wages, but start with those men who came last and end with the guys who have been here all day.”  Imagine being one of those men who worked only an hour, who, even if they could buy a little food, would still go to bed hungry.  Imagine their reaction as the foreman put a whole denarius in each of their hands.  Again, it wasn’t much, but it was a whole day’s wage.  And imagine the men who had been working since sun-up and mid-morning.  Maybe they’d heard wrong.  They looked at each other.  Some of them said, “No.  A denarius for the day.  That was the deal.  That’s always the deal.”  But if he was paying these guys who’d only worked an hour a whole denarius, maybe they’d get twelve!  Or at least more than one.  But their excitement faded as the foremen went down the line and gave a denarius to everyone: to the men who had worked since mid-afternoon, to the men who’d worked since noon, to the men who’d worked since mid-morning, and even to the men who had been there all day.

They grumbled.  I can just hear impetuous Peter interrupting Jesus: “What a jerk!  That’s not fair!  Jesus, I think you meant to say, ‘The kingdom is not like…’”  So first they men grumbled to each other and finally one of them got worked enough to grumble directly to the vineyard owner.  “What gives, Boss?  Those guys over there only worked an hour and you’ve paid them exactly the same thing that you paid us.  We’ve worn ourselves out working all day…and, man, it was a scorcher today.  You’ve done us wrong!”

The men were angry, but the vineyard owner responded gently.  “Friend, I’ve done you no wrong.  I offered to pay you a denarius for a day’s work and you agreed.  That’s the going rate after all.  I’ve given you exactly what we agreed on.  Take your pay and go home to your family.  Be happy that you can feed them tonight.  And be happy for these other men.  They can go home and feed their families tonight too.  You know what it’s like to go home empty-handed.  How can you be angry that their children will eat tonight?  Don’t be angry at my generosity.”  And then, no longer telling a parable, Jesus says to his disciples, “So the last will be first, and the first last.”

And with that Matthew and John and Peter and all the rest of the twelve scratched their heads and look at Jesus, more than a little confused.  “The last will be first and the first will be last?”  Just four verses later we read that James and John got their mother to put in a good word for them with Jesus.  “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand one at your left, in your kingdom.”  And, of course, when the others heard about this they were angry with James and John, because…of course…they all wanted to sit in those places of honour.  But that was most decidedly not what the kingdom of God is like.  Hardly anyone understood and that’s because almost everyone had forgotten about grace.  James and John were afraid that one of the other disciples might do something extra special and earn greater favour from Jesus.  Imagine the jealousy they had when Peter confessed to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God” and Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah…on this rock I will build my church.”  Uh oh.  Just when John, who could smugly tell people that he was Jesus’ best friend, just when he thought that Jesus was going to make him Pope!  They’re all vying for a special place in the kingdom.  They’re all worried that Jesus is going to give something special to one of the other disciples and not to them.

No one…or almost no one…understood, because almost everyone had forgotten about grace.  The Jewish people, of all people, should have understood the grace of God.  They lived it every day and they had for more than a thousand years.  God’s grace was exemplified by the manna in the wilderness.  It was new every morning.  There was always just enough for the day.  God even miraculously provided a little extra for those days—the sabbaths—when you couldn’t go out and gather it.  But otherwise, if you tried to store it up, if you tried to take more than you needed, if you tried to outdo your neighbours, do you remember what happened to the manna?  It rotted and stank and grew worms.  Brothers and Sisters, God’s grace is always just enough to meet our needs and to see us through today.  I think that’s why Jesus chose to tell his parable about those poor day-labourers.  A denarius was just enough for the day.  After you fed your family there was nothing left to save.  You went back to the town square in the morning and hoped someone would hire you for another day and another denarius.  The only difference being that God’s grace is not a wage that we earn.  It’s not a reward for good service.  It’s not a sign of special status.  It’s simply life in his presence, sustained by his goodness.  And it comes not by negotiating with him.  It comes as we enter into his covenant.  He promises his all for us and in return we promise our all to him.  In his gracious love he has given his Son for us and made us his covenant people.  In loving gratitude we give our all to him and to his kingdom.  We believed in the first place because we saw his goodness and his faithfulness manifest in Jesus and in his death and resurrection, and we continue to believe because, every day we put out our hands and he pours his grace into them, always just what we need for today.  Always what we need to accomplish the work he has set before us.

I think that, too, is a key to the parable.  The men were summoned to work in the vineyard.  The Lord called Abraham for a reason.  He and his children were to be light in the darkness, they were to make the Lord known to a world that had forgotten him.  Israel was to be the people who lived with the living God in her midst that the nations would see and know him.  When she failed in that mission, the Lord gave his Son to die on the cross and to rise from the grave in order to set his people to rights and to establish a new covenant and a new people.  And so we carry on the mission.  We proclaim the good news that Jesus is Lord and we live the life of the Spirit before the eyes of the watching world and they see the faithfulness of God on full display—a faithfulness that none of the gods or kings of this age can compare with—and they come, and they believe, and the Lord pours his grace into their hands just as he has ours and the mission goes on until the earth is filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you.”  That wasn’t a promise of wealth or of power or of a position of privilege at his right hand over and above everyone else.  Brothers and Sisters, it was a promise of his grace—like the manna in the wilderness.  Always enough for today, for life and for work and for ministry and for whatever struggles we face and always enough to share with the people around us.  Always enough to do the kingdom work he has given us to do today.

And that’s where our Epistle today dovetails into the Gospel.  The Gospel speaks of grace, but because we are so prone to forgetting that grace requires discipline, the lectionary today give us this passage from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth.  Let’s look at those four verses again.  1 Corinthians 9:24-27.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?  So run that you may obtain it.  Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.  So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.  But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

If you haven’t read 1 Corinthians in a while, it’s helpful to recall the context.  Paul knew the people there were believers.  They’d stretched out their hands and God had poured out his grace into them.  But they weren’t putting that grace to work for the sake of the kingdom.  They were using their Spirit-given gifts to build themselves up rather than each other and they were abusing God’s grace to justify sins that, Paul writes, even made the pagans blush.  They weren’t seeking first the kingdom.

Brothers and Sisters, the Christian life isn’t aimless.  In calling us to himself, the Lord has given us a mission and a future hope.  St. Paul likens the Christian life to running a race and boxing in a match.  Serious athletes train.  Recently we had a guy join our swim club.  He’s training to be a professional triathlete.  And he’s wearing us out.  Serious athletes discipline themselves.  Paul first uses the illustration of a runner in a footrace.  If he’s willing to discipline himself and put in that effort for a laurel wreath, how much more ought we to discipline ourselves to run this race that ends with the resurrection of the dead and new creation and life in the presence of God?  But how often do we dink around instead?  How much do we invest in things that don’t ultimately matter instead of pursuing Jesus and his kingdom with everything we’ve got?  Paul compares this to a poorly trained boxer throwing punches at the air instead of his opponent.  Aimlessly throwing punches won’t win the prize.  Instead, it’ll probably end with your opponent landing a knockout punch on you.  So Paul stresses the need to discipline ourselves—especially reigning in our sinful appetites.  He even talks about being disqualified in the end because of failure.  What’s that about?  If we’re saved by grace, how can we fail?

Think of the grand biblical narrative of God and his people.  Too often we reduce things like God’s salvation and his grace to abstract theological terms, but it’s important we remember their place in the big story of God and his people.  Think again of Israel, delivered from Egypt by the Lord.  I mentioned this before, but let’s expand on it.

The people of Israel were slaves to Pharaoh.  They cried out to the Lord and he rescued them.  And yet he didn’t just strike down Pharaoh and his army and set the Israelites free to go do whatever they wanted.  “Love you guys.  I’ll see you in heaven someday.  Now go have fun.”  No, Israel was his people.  He’d called and claimed this people for himself in Abraham.  In delivering Israel from Pharaoh the Lord was claiming back what was rightly his.  And so he declared to Israel: You are my firstborn son.  I will be your God and you will be my people.  He led Israel through the Red Sea and through the wilderness, met them at Mt. Sinai, and there he entered into a covenant with them.  He gave them the law.  For his part, he would be their God with all that entailed.  Their part of the covenant—their obligation—was to fulfil the calling he gave them, to be the people who lived with him in their midst and, in doing that, to be a light in the midst of the nations.  The Lord had work to do.  He’s going to set his fallen creation to rights and his plan all along has been to do that work through his people.  Adam was created to be the high priest and steward of his temple, of Creation.  And when the Lord called Abraham, when he saved Abraham’s children from Egypt, it was to create a holy nation, a nation of priests, a people to once again be his stewards on earth—as Adam once had been.  So the law was the means by which they maintained the holiness necessary to in the Lord’s presence and to be his witnesses.  So notice that the Lord’s calling of Israel and his deliverance of her from Egypt were all of grace, and yet to live as his people meant devotion and discipline.  They had a job to do.  And important one.  God made them stewards of his grace.

And as we read through the Old Testament, Israel repeatedly failed in her disciplined devotion to the Lord and to the covenant he had established with them.  As the Prophets said, it was a heart problem.  And to fix that heart problem, Jesus brought forgiveness to his people—to those who put their faith in him and became part of the renewed people of God, and he gave them God’s own Spirit to fix that heart problem, to turn their hearts towards the Lord.  Brothers and Sisters, we are part of that new covenant community, the people who belong to God through Jesus, the people whom he has redeemed from sin’s bondage that we might be bound to him and to the service of his kingdom.  Jesus does not set us free so that we can go do whatever we want, so that we can serve the Lord half-heartedly, so that we can live with divided loyalties anymore than the Lord delivered Israel from Egypt so that they could worship other gods or serve foreign kings.  Through Jesus, we have been redeemed so that we can be faithful stewards of the Lord in this world, to do what we were created to do in the first place, to be the people who live with the Lord himself in our midst and in that, to be light in the darkness, to be witnesses of God’s grace and goodness and love and to declare the royal summons: Jesus is Lord.  To lift the veil on God’s future, on his new creation so that the people around us can have a taste of what’s to come.

And it’s hard work.  Jesus has given us God’s own Spirit to turn our hearts towards him.  But the world, the flesh, and the devil still compete for our loyalties.  The gods and kings of the present age fight back and oppose us.  Too often we try to live with one foot in the age to come and one still in the present age.  Our loyalties are still often divided between Jesus and the gods of the present age.  And even in the Church, we often put too much of our energy into things that don’t ultimately matter.  Some of us might as well be sitting on the sidelines of the race.  Others of us are like the boxer wildly throwing punches, working up a sweat, but none of them ever landing where they’ll do any good.  Brothers and Sisters, we owe the Lord our all in return for the grace he has poured out on us.

The season of Lent is a time for us to focus on the grace that the Lord has poured out on us in Jesus.  But these three Sunday with the funny Latin names: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima…that means seventieth, sixtieth, and fiftieth as we count down to Easter…these three Sundays of preparation remind us that grace in action must be coupled with discipline, with humility, and with love.  If we are to be faithful stewards of the Lord’s grace, we first need to dedicate ourselves to it.  We have to know it ourselves, before we can share it with others.  Brothers and Sisters, commit yourself to the Lord.  Give him your full allegiance as King.  Get up each morning and renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, then go out to collect the manna for today.  Steep yourselves in the means of grace that he has given.  Be disciplined in immersing yourself in his word and in prayer and do not neglect to meet together, but exhort one another to love and to good works.  And receive the Lord’s invitation to his Supper.  Here at his Table he reminds us of the sacrifice he made at the cross, giving his all…even his life…for our sake, to forgive our sins and to defeat even death itself, to make his enemies his friends.  Don’t decline his invitation.  Put out hour hands and take the bread, open your mouth and drink the wine, God’s grace poured out for you in Jesus.  Be strengthened to work in the Lord’s vineyard and remember that no matter how hard the work, his grace is always enough.

 

Let us pray: Father, in today’s Collect we acknowledge that we who ought to be justly punished for offences have been mercifully delivered by your goodness and for the glory of your name.  We pray that we never forget the reason that you have delivered us and that our priority in all things will be the glory of your name as we share your grace with others and proclaim the good news about your kingdom and about the Lord Jesus.  Teach us to be faithful steward of your grace, O Lord.  Amen.

The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany: His Ministry Manifest

St. Matthew 8:1-13

by William Klock

 

In pre-modern days the most dreaded disease of all was leprosy.  It began with the loss of feeling in your extremities and nodules that would turn into ulcers.  The loss of feeling spread.  The ulcers never healed, they only spread.  Your hair would fall out and your eyes would go blind.  Ulcers would form on your vocal cords, leaving your voice hoarse and rasping.  Gangrene would set in.  Eventually you would lose fingers and toes and sometimes even whole limbs.  Sometimes it led to madness.  Eventually it would lead to death, but not quickly.  Some forms of leprosy would take a decade to run their course and others twenty or thirty years.

But as bad, if not worse than the physical misery was the fact that it was contagious.  That made lepers outcasts.  The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that lepers were treated “as if they were, in effect, dead men”.  When a person was diagnosed with leprosy, they were immediately banished from family and community.  In Leviticus 13:46 the Lord had commanded, “He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.”  People didn’t get better from leprosy.  If a leper ceased to be unclean—and that had to be verified by a priest—it most likely meant that he’d been misdiagnosed in the first place.  In medieval Europe, before he was cast out, a leper was brought to the church one last time so the priest could read the burial service over him.  To be a leper was, for all intents and purposes to be dead.  Not, of course, to yourself, but dead to your family, your friends, and your community.  In Israel lepers were barred from Jerusalem and from any walled town or city.  The law described over sixty types of contact that would render a person unclean and contact with a leper was second only to contact with a dead body.  If a leper so much as poked his head through the door of your house, your house would be rendered unclean.  On rabbi boasted that he threw stones at lepers to keep them at a distance.  Keep that in mind as we look again at today’s Gospel.  Look with me at Matthew 8:1-4.

When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him.  And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”  And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.  And Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”

 

When Jesus came down from the mountain.  That’s a reference to the last three chapters, that part of Matthew’s Gospel we call “The Sermon on the Mount”—the sermon in which Jesus preached about the nature of his kingdom and the people who will be a part of it.  It’s a lot of talk, but what does it look like in practice?  A preacher might preach a lot of good and challenging things, but does he live them out himself?  Or does he just tell other people to do them?  Maybe even more important, it’s easy to hear the sorts of things Jesus said, but what does it actually look like to put them into practice.  Last Sunday we heard St. Paul’s exhortation, “Do not return evil with evil, but overcome evil with good.”  What does that look like?  Do we hear that and then, like the man who asked Jesus, “But who is my neighbour?” do we go off and find excuses not to do what he’s said?  Imagine the crowd that had been listening to him preach, now following Jesus into town and this leper approaches Jesus.  It’s not hard to imagine the crowd—or a lot of people in it—horrified.  “Stupid leper!  Doesn’t he know he shouldn’t be here!  How dare he come so close to a rabbi!”  They’ve just heard Jesus preaching at length about the kingdom, but I expect at least some of them saw the leper and were thinking to themselves that if Jesus were a good rabbi, he would tell this man to take a hike—to obey torah and get out of town—maybe even throw rocks at him.

Imagine their surprise when instead of quoting Leviticus at the man and telling him to get lost, he stops as the man prostrates himself before Jesus.  That says something right there.  When this leper saw Jesus he saw the Messiah.  Jews didn’t prostrate themselves before any old person.  This posture was reserved for the Lord.  In some way, shape, or form he saw in Jesus the God of Israel.  And with his hoarse and damaged voice he rasps out, “Lord, if you desire it, you can make me clean.  Please make me clean.”  And to their horror, Jesus reaches out and touches the man.  The law said that a leper could come no closer to a healthy person than a cubit and Matthew makes a point describing Jesus reaching out, stretching out his arm to its full length across that distance to bridge the gap between himself and the leper, so that he could make contact with him, to touch the untouchable, to draw in the outcast.  And Jesus says to him, “I desire just that.  Be clean.”

Uncleanness should have passed from the leper to Jesus.  That’s not something you could see, but everyone knew that that was the law, ever since the Lord had spoken it through Moses.  Touch a leper and you become unclean.  So imagine their surprise when they did see something happen.  But it wasn’t what they expected.  They saw cleanness pass from Jesus to the leper.  As they watched the man was healed.  His sores healed and disappeared.  His sight cleared.  His voice became whole again.  Maybe fingers and toes even grew back before the watching eyes of the crowd.  The leprosy was gone.  The man was restored.  His death sentence was lifted.

Now, the sermon on the mount wasn’t just an abstract ethical manifesto that Jesus delivered to a group of people who could have been from anywhere or any time.  It was a declaration that the kingdom of God had come in fulfilment of the prophets, a declaration that the Messiah had finally come to set God’s people to rights.  Ever since they had been called in Abraham, ever since they had, as a nation, been adopted by the Lord as his covenant people, they had in one way or another failed him and failed to be the people he had called and delivered them to be.  They gave their hearts to idols.  They gave their hearts to kings.  They put their trust in horses and chariots.  They oppressed the widow and the orphan and took advantage of the poor and the stranger.  Their rabbis threw stones at lepers who dared get too close.  The nation had repeatedly known the Lord’s discipline.  The faithful remnant amongst the people had cried out for centuries to the Lord for help and through the prophets he had promised that he would come, that he would deliver, that he would forgive, that he would put his own Spirit in the hearts of his people and turn them away from sin and self and fill them with love for him and for their neighbours.

And now, here it is.  There’s a reason we read this Gospel during this season in which we recall and celebrate Jesus’ epiphany, his manifestation.  Jesus has just preached about the restoration of fallen Israel, the adulterous bride, to her Lord and the first person he meets as he heads down the mountain and into town is this poor man, cut off from his people, for all intents and purposes dead.  He has lost his covenant status.  He has lost his family—not just his biological family, but his covenant family.  He hasn’t known the temple or the Passover for who knows how many years.  In the Lord’s providence this man is symbolic of Israel.  Israel had not heard the Lord’s voice or known his presence in the temple for almost six hundred years.  She was governed and oppressed by pagans—the same sorts of pagans whose gods and kings she had once cavorted with.  But as he has humbled himself so far as to take on human flesh, to be born of a Jewish woman, to become one of his own rebellious people, to reach out to them, just so Jesus stretches out his hand across the distance between himself and this believing leper and makes him whole.  This lost son who was dead is alive again.

And Jesus doesn’t leave it at that.  He sends this man—in accordance with the law—to see the priest so that the priest can see that he has been healed and so that he can restore him to the covenant family, to the people of God.  There are other times in the Gospels that Jesus bypassed the temple and the priests to make a point, but early here in his ministry he instead sends this man to the priests.  It backs up the message he had just preached when he said that he had come not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them.  And, too, it sent a message to the priests of Israel.  Like I said, people didn’t recover form leprosy.  If they got better and the diagnosis was lifted by a priest, it was probably because it wasn’t leprosy in the first place.  It’s likely the priests had never seen a bona fide healing from real leprosy.  They might talk about Naaman the Syrian, but no one had ever seen such a healing for themselves.  And now this man shows up at the home of the local priest—maybe even the priest who had diagnosed him and declared him unclean—and he served as a message from Jesus: the kingdom is at hand.  Israel was about to be set to rights and restored.  And it was all centred in Jesus the Messiah.  The people—and their priests—had a choice before them: Repent and believe in Jesus or find yourself weeping and gnashing your teeth in the darkness when judgement comes—on the outside of the covenant family as this leper had been for so many years.  Repent and believe that in Jesus the Lord was finally here to visit his people, to answer their prayer, and these lost sons and daughters would be invited into their Father’s great banquet.  Jesus had come to set Israel to rights.

Many of the people in the crowd watched this with joy.  The Messiah really had come.  That great banquet Israel had been waiting for was being prepared.  According to one Jewish apocalyptic tradition the main courses at that meal would be Behemoth, the great mythical land monster, and Leviathan, the great sea monster.  Some in the crowd, having heard Jesus preach and having seen the leper healed could already smell the great beasts roasting in the oven like Thanksgiving turkeys.  And then as they reach Capernaum a Roman centurion approaches Jesus.  If the Lord’s great banquet was being prepared, this man certainly didn’t belong there!

Centurions were the backbone of the Roman army.  There were 6,000 men in a legion and a legion was divided into sixty centuries of a hundred men each.  Each century was commanded by a centurion.  They were Rome’s best—at least militarily speaking.  Matthew doesn’t tell us if this centurion was a kind man or a cruel one or how he used his authority.  None of that really matters.  He could have been the kindest man in the world, but he was still a local representative of Rome and a gentile.  He didn’t belong in that joyful messianic throng.  But down the main street of the town he came, maybe meeting Jesus and his entourage at the city gate.  Look at Matthew 8:5-9.

When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.”  And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.”  But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.  For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

 

The centurion appeals to Jesus.  Matthew’s word choices stress the man’s desperation.  He addresses Jesus as “Lord”.  He’d surely heard the talk about Jesus being the Jewish Messiah—the Lord—but being a Roman he didn’t care about that.  He simply knew that Jesus could heal, that he could fix his desperate situation.  He’d heard the stories.  Maybe he’d even seen the leper, running into town to show himself to the priest.  Exactly who or what Jesus was, that wasn’t really his concern.  He simply saw in Jesus a man with power and authority.  A man who could, as Tolkien once put it, make the sad things of this world come untrue, and such a man, Jewish or not, Messiah or not, was worthy of respect.  “Lord, my…pais…is at home, paralysed, sick, and suffering.”  Pais, that’s the Greek word Matthew uses.  The ESV translates it “servant”, but it can also refer to one’s child, especially a young one, and I think that’s far more likely what Matthew means in this case.  It explains the urgency and the desperation of the Centurion.  As Luke and John tell this story, the young boy was near death.  But if Jesus could heal others, he could heal this man’s son.

And Jesus said, “I will come and heal him.”  At this point everyone—the Centurion, the Jewish crowd following Jesus, everyone—they stopped and gasped.  They shouldn’t have, but I’m sure they did, because that would have been the natural response of anyone when an upright and godly Jews—a rabbi no less—went to the house of a gentile.  The Mishnah declared in no uncertain terms, “The dwelling places of gentiles are unclean,” and even though it came centuries later, we know the Jews of Jesus day thought no differently.  Gentiles were ritually unclean, but everyone present should have known that this wasn’t a problem for Jesus.  Jesus touched the leper and instead of contracting his impurity, passed purity to the leper, restoring him to the community of the people of God.  Jesus could enter the home of a gentile and do pretty much the same thing.

I expect the Centurion was shocked by Jesus’ offer to come to his house.  He refuses with those words so often misused in celebrations of the Lord’s Supper: “No.  Don’t come to my house.  I’m not worthy that you should come under my roof.”  It’s not that the Centurion thought he was personally unworthy, but that he knew the Jewish customs.  His job was to maintain order and the last thing he wanted was a ruckus resulting from a popular rabbi entering his house.  People would probably think he’d forced Jesus and then people would get angry and stuff would happen and…well…that was the last thing he wanted.  And so he says to Jesus, “You don’t need to come to my house.  You and I are alike.  We both have authority.  I know how it works.  I have authority over the men in my command.  I send orders for this man to come and he comes.  I send orders for this man to go and he goes.  If you truly have the authority over sickness and demons that I think you have, then you can do the same.  If you order this disease to go, it will go.  If you order that demon to come, it will come.  Give the orders and my little boy will be healed.”

Now it was Jesus’ turn to be surprised.  Matthew says he marvelled.  He was amazed by what he’d just heard.  Look at verse 10:

When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.  I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

 

Notice how Jesus turns to the crowd, to his fellow Jews.  Here they are, following Jesus down the mountain, ready for him to lead them into the age to come when everything is set to rights, ready to sit in his presence at that great banquet and feast on behemoth and leviathan.  And the parade is stopped by this dog of a gentile who has no place in that feast.  When the day comes, they’re thinking, the Lord will take care of men like him.  He may strut around Capernaum, in charge of the place today, but one day he would be out in the darkness, weeping and gnashing his teeth.  Some probably thought—maybe even expected—Jesus to give him a little foretaste of that right now.  But instead, Jesus turns and commends the man’s faith to everyone.  (This is why people didn’t like Jesus!)  He contrasts the faith of this gentile—of a man they thought of as the enemy—Jesus uses it to expose the lack of faith he has seen in Israel.  And he quotes from the Old Testament.  Psalm 107:3 and Isaiah 43:5 (and Baruch 4:37) all speak of the Lord’s promises to restore scattered Israel, bringing her lost sons and daughters from east and west.  But here Jesus puts a twist on those prophecies and promises.  “When Israel is restored,” he’s saying, “When you sit at the Lord’s great feast with your fathers, with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and feast on behemoth and leviathan and celebrate your restoration and the great faithfulness of the Lord, your brothers and sisters from east and west will be there, and this man represents them.  Yes, the Lord will bring Jews from east and west, but he will bring others and they, too, will have a share in the Lord’s new covenant and in the age to come.  And many of those who think that by birth alone they have a right to be in that banquet…well…they will find themselves out in the dark, weeping and gnashing their teeth.”

Jesus knew that it wasn’t yet the time for gentiles to come flooding into the kingdom, taking hold of the robes of Jews, as Zechariah had prophesied, and saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”  But in this centurion he saw a foretaste of that day not so far off.  It was a promise most of his fellow Jews had forgotten—or deliberately ignored—in favour of the promises of the great banquet, the setting things to rights, the restoration of Israel.  But this was the reason for Israel’s existence as a people, even if few remembered it.  Simeon was one of those who remembered and having met the infant Jesus at his presentation in the temple he sang those familiar words:

Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.

Which thou has prepared before the face of all people;

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel.  (Luke 2:29-32)

Jesus would be the glory of Israel in that he would fulfil their mission to be a light to the nations—bringing them to the God of Israel.  In that he would fulfil the law and the prophets and manifest the faithfulness of God.  Again that great theme of epiphany.

Jesus commended the centurion’s faith and sent him home to his healed little boy, the firstfruits—after a fashion at any rate—of the nations who would see the faithfulness of the God of Israel manifest in Jesus, come to him in faith to give him glory, and would themselves not only be healed and set to rights, but incorporated into this covenant family as sons and daughters of God, seated at the great banquet to feast on behemoth and leviathan.

So, Brothers and Sisters, come to the Lord’s Table this morning.  In the bread and wine we recall and participate in the great exodus that Jesus wrought at the cross, here we remember and are assured that we belong to him.  Here we take hold of his blood-stained robe and say, “Take us with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”  And here the veil is lifted on the age to come as Jesus gives us a foretaste of the great banquet that awaits us on the day when he will, finally and once and for all, set us and all of his creation to rights.  In the meantime, Friends, take the grace you have found at his Table out into the world and live it for all to see.  Take the good news of Jesus, crucified and risen, with you and proclaim it to all.  As sons and daughters of God, you are stewards of the gospel.  Let every day be Epiphany.  Make the Gospel, make the life of Jesus and the Spirit manifest in what you do and what you say so that the people around you will say, “Take us with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”

Let’s pray: O God, you know us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright: grant to us such strength and protection as may support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

The Third Sunday after Epiphany: Overcome Evil with Good

Romans 12:16-21

by William Klock

 

The theme of the Epiphany season is “manifestation”.  In the Gospel lessons we read of Jesus the Messiah, made manifest to those gentile magi from the East; made manifest as the son of God, the representative of Israel, at his baptism; his mission made manifest in miracles: turning water into wine, calming the storm, casting out demons, healing the sick.  Sunday after Sunday we see Jesus manifest as Lord and as Saviour and we see his kingdom, the kingdom he came to inaugurate, new creation, we see it manifest too: God’s new world breaking into the present age.  But we can’t forget the Epistles we read on these Sundays, all taken from Paul’s letter to the Romans, from the twelfth and thirteenth chapters.  They’ve been part of the lectionary for a millennium and a half and they, too, carry this theme of manifestation.  But here it’s the Church, the people of God, who manifest Jesus and his kingdom as we live the life of the Spirit and of God’s kingdom in this overlap of the ages.

Think on that.  In his death and resurrection, Jesus has inaugurated a new age, a new world, and he’s given his people and the world hope.  He will make all things new.  But making all things new and setting God’s Creation to rights also means that one day there will be a judgement and everything that opposes God and his new world will be wiped away.  We see his graciousness and his patience on display in the fact that he sent his Son, not to bring an end to the story by destroying and wiping away ungodliness, but by sending him into the middle of the story, to die for the sake of his enemies, in order to make a means of redemption.  That judgement, that cleansing, that final annihilation of evil and rebellion, it will one day come.  But Jesus first offers a way into his new world and a way out of the coming judgement.  We saw a foretaste of it in our study of Revelation as judgement fell on Jerusalem.  One day the same will happen on a cosmic scale.  But in the meantime Jesus graciously offers an opportunity to be part of his new creation.  We need only kneel in faith before him in acknowledgement that he is Creation’s true Lord.  In return, he makes us his people and, in that, he forgives us and he makes us new.  In our baptism he plunges us into his own Spirit and his Spirit then converts ungodly hearts set on rebellion, and places in them a love for God and a love for each other.  He makes us heralds of his new creation and sends us out with his royal summons, to call men and women to repentance and to faith so that they, too, can have a share in his new world.

But the people and the powers and the institutions invested in the old age don’t like that.  Jesus warned his friends: “A disciple is not greater than his master.  If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”  Persecution is bound to happen whenever and wherever the old age and the new age meet.  Paul knew this from personal experience.  In fact, Paul had found himself on both sides of the clash.  He knew what it was to be the persecutor and he knew what it was to be the persecuted.  He knew that it was in this meeting of the ages, this place where the world and the kingdom come up against each other, that Jesus’ people find one of our greatest opportunities to be the people the Spirit has made us.  This clash is the place where Christians have profound opportunity to live the gospel and to be and to manifest God’s new creation here and now.

As Western Christians we don’t know much about persecution.  Not first-hand.  We’ve read stories of brothers and sisters martyred in the days of the early Church or in modern times in China or the Soviet Union or the Middle East or of missionaries like Jim Elliot, but we haven’t experienced real persecution ourselves.  We sometimes face opposition and hostility.  The older I get the more I think that an awful lot of the “opposition” we face here in North America isn’t so much for being Christians; it’s for being jerks, which is just the opposite of what God’s grace should be making us.  But that highlights what Paul is getting at in our Epistle today, in Romans 12:16-21.  We’re continuing in this passage that began with Paul telling us to present ourselves as living sacrifices to God.  To do that, he writes, is to worship the one who has saved us.  He went on to explain what that looks like in practical terms.  It begins with love and last Sunday we looked at his description of love at work in the Church.  How we live with and treat each other is a profound witness to the world.  In the Third Century, Tertullian wrote about the influence the Church had on the pagans around it.  The pagans didn’t comment so much on what the Church taught or said, but on how the Church lived.  In a world where mercy and grace were almost unheard of, the pagans saw Christians and were astounded, saying, “Look how they love each other!”  Here in the Church we are a microcosm of God’s new creation.  But Jesus doesn’t intend for us to keep it to ourselves.  Just as God’s love spills out of us to each other, it then spills out of the Church to the world—and it often has its most profound impact when it comes up against opposition, hostility, and persecution.  In these verses, Paul now carries this theme of love as he leads us out of the doors of the church and back to our neighbourhoods, workplaces, governments, and communities.

Paul knew first-hand the impact the love of Jesus can have when it comes up against the world.  What he writes here is not what he grew up with.  What he writes here is the opposite of what characterised the Jewish world he knew.  The Seventh Chapter of 2 Maccabees gives us an idea of the mindset that Paul was raised with.  We don’t have time to read the whole thing this morning, but the story takes place about 160 years before Jesus was born.  A group of Jews under the leadership of Mattathias Maccabeus and his son, Judas, rose up against their Greek rulers.  The Greeks tried to supress the faith of the Jews.  In 2 Maccabees 7 we read about a woman and her seven sons who were threatened with torture in an effort to force them to eat pork.  They refused and, one by one, the sons were brutally tortured and killed for their refusal to compromise.  Each, in turn, as he was tortured called down curses on those Greek soldiers and on Antiochus Epiphanes, the Greek king.  They became national heroes, not just for refusing to compromise and eat pork, but mostly for having the courage to curse the soldiers as they were dying.  The men who rose up to violently overthrow the Greeks in the revolt that came were national heroes and still are to this day.  The Maccabees were the spiritual fathers of the Pharisees.  They were heroes to Paul and Paul saw his opposition to the Church as being faithful to that heritage.

But something changed.  It might have begun as Paul stood by while Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned.  Stephen preached Jesus and the Jews killed him for it.  Paul held coats so that those throwing stones wouldn’t be encumbered.  And he heard Stephen with his dying breath cry out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).  Just like Jesus, who was crucified, but did not curse or revile in return, but prayed, “Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing,” Stephen prayed for his enemies.  This was unheard of.  But, years later, here’s what Paul wrote in Romans 12—the end of our Epistle last week:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

 

Someone reviles you for your faith in Jesus.  Bless them.  Someone has your church’s tax-exempt status revoked because of your witness for Jesus.  Bless them.  You’re fined for refusing to compromise your faith as it relates to your business practices.  Bless them.  You’re arrested and put in jail for proclaiming the good news about Jesus.  Bless them.  Bless them.  Bless them.  Bless them.  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Is that a hard thing to do?  Of course it is.  But do it anyway.  Stephen knew that it was only by the grace of God he was different from those who killed him.  He knew they needed that grace as much as he did.  If Stephen used his last breath to pray for the people who were stoning him, so can you.  And Stephen’s story reminds us of the key here.  Stephen had his sight fixed on Jesus and the Cross.  Brothers and Sisters, you can’t revile, curse, and fight back when you have your eyes fixed on the one who gave himself up as a sacrifice for the sins of his enemies and who preached, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).  Epiphany reminds us of the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah, as Lord, as Saviour.  You and I have experienced that manifestation and it changes everything.

And it’s not just blessing the people who would persecute us for our faith.  We’re going to face hostility everywhere we turn in the world.  The old age is filled with sin and corruption.  Our interactions are tainted with it every day.  But instead of seeing this as an opportunity to get back or get even, as people of God’s new creation, we should look at our life in the midst of the world as a means of lifting the veil on the new creation that is our hope—and that Jesus and the Spirit have made us a part of already.  Look at verses 15-16:

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.   Never be wise in your own sight.

 

That means: Don’t be a crank.  When something good happens to your pagan neighbour, be happy for him.  When he throws a party to celebrate something, go and celebrate with him.  When Veronica’s brother got married it was by a druid priestess with a druid-Wiccan ceremony.  We could have been grumps—and we weren’t happy about the pagan stuff—but the fact is that marriage was instituted by God.  Marriage is a good thing—even when the pagans do it.  It’s what men and women are supposed to do.  It’s a joyful time.  We went.  We politely declined the smudging and stood outside the “sacred circle” drawn by the priestess and didn’t take part in the pagan rituals, but we could still rejoice with them in their marriage.

The flip side of this is that we ought to weep with our neighbours or with the world when it weeps.  Some Christians are really, really good at Schadenfreude.  They sit and smirk every time something bad happens to unbelievers.  Brothers and Sisters, don’t be like that.  It’s self-righteous to be like that.  Bad things happen because we—all of us, every human being who has ever lived—have sinned and contributed to the corruption of our world.  Sometimes we suffer as the consequence of our own personal sins.  Much of the time we suffer the cumulative consequences of thousands and thousands of years of sins committed corporately by the entire human race.  The problems of this world can be laid at our feet as much as anyone else’s.  We’ve all contributed and none of us has any business gloating at the misfortune of a fellow human being.  But remember, too, that you and I are privileged to be stewards of the answer to human suffering.  In Jesus and the Spirit, we’ve caught a glimpse of the world set to rights.  God, in his grace and mercy, saw fit to reach each of us with the good news about Jesus.  We ought to show that same grace and mercy to others who suffer.  Instead of gloating, we ought to take the good news about Jesus to them.

In fact, even though the world around us is hostile to the good news, Paul says “live in harmony with one another.”  The Greek literally says, “thinking the same thing towards one another”.  The sense is that Paul is calling us to live alongside our neighbours, sharing life with them.  We Christians are prone to withdrawing from our neighbours.  We may not go off and form literal ghettos where we all live in the same place apart from everyone else, although there have been some groups who have done that.  Our failure is that we tend to minimize our association with non-Christians.  That’s particularly true of those of us who have been raised in the Church.  We tend to form all of our close relationship with fellow Christians.  And then we wonder where all the opportunities for evangelism have gone!  It’s good to ask yourself—particularly if you’ve been a Christian for a long time—if you’ve isolated yourself from non-Christians.

And Paul goes on and says not to be snobs, but to associate with the lowly.  We see this lived out very dramatically in the Church of Paul’s day as slaves and free people lived alongside each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Paul, no doubt, had in mind the tensions between Jewish and Gentile Christians in the Roman churches.  Those may not be the sorts of division we’re prone to being snobbish about today, but they make the point that the love of Jesus that has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit crosses boundaries of every kind.

Now look at verses 17 and 18:

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.  If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

 

Responding in kind is the way of the fallen human heart.  It’s our most natural response.  But the Christian is different.  Again, the Spirit has removed our hearts of stone and in their places filled us with love for God and love for our neighbours.  This is the most basic and fundamental characteristic of the Christian, which is why Paul beats this drum so often—he says almost exactly the same thing in 1Thessalonians 5.  Love does not seek revenge.  Love seeks the best, even for our enemies.  If you struggle with this—and we all do—remember, again, the cross.  We rejected God.  We sinned.  We sundered heaven and earth.  We corrupted God’s creation.  But instead of repaying our evil with more evil, God sent his Son to forgive, to reconcile, and to restore. Why?  Because he loves us.  Think on the cross.  Meditate on the cross.  Keep the cross always at the centre of your vision and love will become easier and more natural.

And because of love and our desire to live out the good news and to manifest God’s new age in the midst of the world, we’ll always be thinking about how to do good.  Paul knew that sometimes doing good and manifesting the kingdom will bring the scorn of the world.  It took Jesus to the cross.  But he also knew that it’s possible to live at peace with our neighbours.  There are times when our integrity and refusal to compromise may lose us friends or get us fired from our jobs, but we can still rejoice with our joyful neighbours and weep with our weeping neighbours.

What comes to my mind as I read these words is that Paul understands that we will face the opposition of the world, but we should respond to that by being squeaky-clean.  We should be living in such a way that when we do face opposition or persecution, it should truly be for the sake of Jesus and only for the sake of Jesus.  I think this is something we modern Christians need desperately to hear.  We can be self-righteous jerks sometimes, all in the name of Jesus.  We can be horrible snobs in the name of Jesus.  We can be terrible cranks in the name of Jesus.  We often gloat at the sufferings of unbelievers—particularly those who actively oppose us—and we gloat in the name of Jesus.  We can be horrible, self-righteous hypocrites in the name of Jesus.  And we too often seek our own welfare—often doing so in the name of Jesus—through associations with ungodliness and ungodly people.  Politics, materialism, and consumerism have corrupted our gospel perspective and compromised our witness.  We grasp for power.  We grasp for things.  We live for ourselves, forgetting our Lord, as Paul writes in Philippians, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

People call us haters and bigots because we refuse to bow to the sinful sexual ethics of the day and the identity politics of Postmodernism.  Brothers and Sisters, our refusal to compromise will bring opposition, but we need to be sure that the opposition is truly for the sake of our commitment to Jesus and to the real love that Paul describes here.  If the world is going to call us haters, we need to be squeaky-clean.  We need to be the most loving people on the planet—as we should be—even if the world doesn’t fully understand true love.  The people who are going to call us bigots for forsaking their false gods, need to see us rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep.  They should never see us thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought.  To the contrary, they should see us seeking out the lowly.  They should know, even if they’ve suppressed it in the backs of their minds and seared their own consciences, that their accusations are utterly false.  This was the witness of the first Christians, many of whom were martyred for standing up to the gods and kings of the age, but who, by their loving, giving, and humble witness turned the Roman empire to Jesus.

Brothers and Sisters, Paul gives us a sombre warning in verse 19:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

 

This isn’t always an easy thing to do, but, again, look to the cross.  God’s people are loved by him.  That God would give his Son for our sake is the proof.  We’re Christians because we trust in God—in his goodness and his wisdom seen first and foremost in his provision for forgiveness and renewal through Jesus.  Brothers and Sisters, we know that God is good.  We know that God takes care of us.  We know that God will set all things to rights in the end and that his justice will prevail.  We don’t need to take justice into our own hands by seeking vengeance.  To do that is to perpetuate the very cycle of evil that Jesus died to end.  Have you ever considered that your faith is witnessed to others when you choose to trust in God to deal with your enemies?  Think on that the next time you’re tempted to repay evil with evil.

Then in verses 20-21 Paul writes,

 

To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

 

Instead of cursing our enemies, we need to devote ourselves, as Jesus said, to praying for them and seeking out ways to do good to those who persecute us.  Paul quotes Proverbs 25:21-22.  Don’t just leave it at not taking vengeance on your enemy.  Look for ways to actively do good to him or to her.  This goes along with being squeaky-clean.  Manifest the love of God to your enemy.  There’s some disagreement about exactly what Paul means by heaping coals on his head, but Paul’s point seems to be this:  First, doing good to your enemies is the right thing to do, because it models the gracious love that God has shown us in Jesus.  Never forget that we were once God’s enemies.  Second, vengeance is God’s prerogative and we need to trust in him in these situations.  And, finally third, Paul’s thinking that—even if it’s a long-shot—loving our enemies may bring them to repentance.  That may seem a stretch, but Paul knew this first-hand.  Remember Stephen.  Paul stood there holding coats for the stone-throwers.  He heard Stephen’s prayers for his enemies.  Paul didn’t change his mind about Jesus that day, but Stephen’s witness stayed with him and was part of a long sequence of events that would eventually bring Paul to Jesus.

Paul really knew how evil is overcome, not with more evil, but with good.  He’d seen it in his own experience.  But he understood it, first and foremost, because of the cross of Jesus.  Paul understood the way in which violence compounds violence and evil compounds evil, just as we do.  Someone hits you so you hit back harder and the violence spirals.  It’s in our fallen nature and has been from the beginning.  In Genesis 4 we’re told of Lamech who boasted that a man hit him, so he retaliated by murdering the man.  The world has been spiralling into greater violence ever since.  Evil only begets more evil.

Brothers and Sisters, Jesus stepped into history to break that cycle.  Evil concentrated itself in one place, rose up to its full height, and did its worst at the cross.  Peter drew his sword, but Jesus knew that evil begets evil, that those who live by the sword die by the sword.  Jesus told Peter to put his sword away and then allowed himself to be led to the cross.  Jesus let evil do its worst and in doing so, he broke the cycle.  He returned death with life and evil with love.  And now he’s filled us with that same love and calls us to break the cycle wherever we find ourselves in it.  It’s not a question of if, but when.  The spiral of evil and violence finds us every day, even if only in small ways.  How do we respond?  Brothers and Sisters, think on that.  Focus your eyes on Jesus and his cross and meditate on his love.

Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities; and in all our dangers and necessities stretch out your right hand to help and defend us, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany

Romans 12:6-16 & St. Mark 1:1-11

by William Klock

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

 

That’s how Mark’s launches into the story of Jesus.  He uses that word “gospel” that we use so often that we sometimes forget what it really means.  “Gospel” means “good news”.  In the Jewish mind it was the word that described the news that the runners brought back from the battlefield when the king’s army had defeated the enemy: “Good News!  We’ve been victorious!”  In the Roman mind it described the “good news” that was sent out across the empire by official heralds that a new Caesar, a new emperor, had ascended to the throne, also usually having vanquished his foes.

And Mark says that this good news is about Jesus, the Son of God.  Again, sometimes we miss the intended significance of this.  When we hear “Son of God” we tend to think of the virgin birth and Jesus as the incarnate Word of God, born of Mary in human flesh.  And we’re not wrong in that, but long before Jesus was ever born this title “son of God” was what the Lord had called his people when he’d met them on Mount Sinai.  Eventually it took on messianic significance.  The Messiah would, when he came, take up the identity of his people and through him the Lord would set his people and the whole world to rights.

And so here at the beginning of the story, Mark sets out that what he’s going to tell us in this book he’s written is the good news that in Jesus the long-promised and long-awaited Messiah of Israel has come, that he has won a great victory over his enemies, and that he has inaugurated a new kingdom—and that Jesus is Lord.  What Mark’s going to tell us about Jesus and what we’ll hear Jesus telling us himself isn’t just good advice—as if we might want to try on Jesus for size and see if he fits or that he’s introduced a new way of doing things and we might give it a try and see if we like it or if it works for us.  No.  This is a proclamation that Jesus is King.  It’s not good advice; it’s good news—and that means we have no choice but to do something about it.

Mark then launches into the story by telling us about Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist.  The prophets Malachi and Isaiah had prophesied as we read in verses 2 and 3 that the Lord would send a messenger to prepare the way for the Messiah—to prepare Israel to receive him.  He described his work in terms of paving a highway in the wilderness, which brings up images of the Exodus and God leading his people to the promised land.  And then Mark tells us about John calling the people out into the wilderness and baptizing them with a baptism of repentance.

In Luke’s Gospel we’re told that John’s message was “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand”.  In the Messiah the Lord was coming to visit and to rescue his people, but if the Lord was coming—the Holy one of Israel—that meant that people needed to prepare themselves.  Think of all the ways the Law—the torah—had taught the people to keep themselves ritually pure and how to purify themselves should they become unclean, all so that they could live as part of the community of God’s people.  They were to be a holy people.  And now the Lord himself was coming in the Messiah—they really needed to prepare themselves; they really needed to purify themselves.  And this is what John invited them to do in his baptism.  He called them to turn aside, not just from sin in a general sense, although that was certainly part of it, but also to call them to set aside every form of hypocrisy and corruption, to get back to the business of holiness and of righteousness and of justice in every area of life.

And when John did this, when he called people out into the wilderness to baptise them in the Jordan River, what they understood him to be saying was that another Exodus was going to take place.  Just as the Lord had rescued Israel from Egypt, he was going to rescue her again.  But John makes it clear that this time is going to be different.  In the old Exodus, God had certainly heard and visited his people.  He came and lived in their midst in a pillar of cloud in the tabernacle.  But John says that his baptism isn’t all there is.  Israel had gone through water before and, while it saved her from Egypt, it didn’t save her from sin and death.  No, John says that he’s only preparing the way for another—for the one Mark calls the Son of God—who will baptise them with the Holy Spirit.

I like the way The Kingdom New Testament paraphrases John’s words here: “I’ve plunged you in the water,” John says, “he’s going to plunge you in the Holy Spirit.”  That, Brothers and Sisters, changes everything.  Instead of God living in our midst, but living over there in the tabernacle—and, more particularly, in the holy of holies where none of us can actually go because, no matter how many sacrifices we make and how often we purify ourselves, we’re still unholy sinners—instead of that, God is now coming to live not just in our midst, but inside us.  As we read on The Epiphany, he’s building a new temple for himself and we ourselves are the blocks of stone he’s carefully cut and carefully fitted together.  In the first Exodus, the Lord took his people through the water, he gave them a law written on stone tablets, and he gave them priests to tell them to do it.  And most of the time they weren’t particularly good at living out that law.  But in this new exodus, Jesus leads us not only through the water, but in doing so he plunges us into his own Holy Spirit.  Instead of giving us the law on tablets of stone the Spirit writes Jesus’ law on our hearts so that it’s not only internal, but that we’ll actually be in love with it and motivated by it and seek to do it—that’s the significance of it being written on our hearts.  And so we don’t anymore need priests urging us to do it, because we’ll have the Lord’s Spirit himself in us, making his desires our desires as we feed ourselves on his Word.

Mark then goes on to tell us about Jesus’ baptism by John.  In verse 9 Jesus steps into the story.  Mark doesn’t tell us about his birth; he starts with his baptism.  As much as Jesus was the one for whom the people were being prepared by John, he doesn’t hesitate to identify himself with them in baptism.  But Jesus’ experience is unique—of course, because he is the Messiah.  As he comes out of the river, Mark says in verse 10-11:

Immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

 

For Jesus this was divine confirmation of his identity.  He grew up being told about the amazing circumstances of his birth, the things the angels had said to Zechariah and to Mary and to Joseph, about the way he was greeted as a baby by Simeon and Anna.  His family had those precious and kingly gifts from the wise men.  Last week’s Gospel told of that time he’d stayed behind in the temple when he was twelve, because he knew that he had to be about his Father’s—his real Father’s—business.  And yet we’re still given a pretty clear sense that Jesus had to sort out his calling and his ministry himself as he studied the Scriptures and saw himself in them.  His baptism by John, and specifically the Spirit appearing and the Father speaking, were confirmation that he’d got it right.  He really was the Messiah.  He really was the one who had been sent to represent Israel and to set her to rights.

Mark says that the heavens were torn open.  Jesus had a glimpse into heaven.  And that doesn’t mean that he was looking up and seeing a baroque painting: flying little fat babies in the clouds with harps.  The sense is that he was given a glimpse into the realm of God much as St. John saw in Revelation.  He was given a glimpse of the kingdom that is to come—the kingdom he was sent to inaugurate.  It was either confirmation of what he’d already come to understand of God’s kingdom and its ways or it gave him, in that glimpse, an understanding of what he was to proclaim.  Jesus grew up surrounded by the darkness of the world, but as the heavens were opened for that short time, he had a glimpse into the new reality that God has been preparing—like a child getting a glimpse of all the presents being hidden away in the closet in anticipation of Christmas.

This ties in with our Epistle from Romans in the sense that each of us, in our baptism, have been given a similar glimpse of the kingdom.  We’ve trusted in Jesus because someone else at some point, whether our parents or a friend or our minister—someone has given a glimpse into the kingdom that Jesus has inaugurated, has given us a glimpse of a life of forgiveness and grace, and a glimpse of resurrection and recreation and we’ve taken hold of it in faith.  And now we—you and I—are called to continue giving the world glimpses of that kingdom.  We’re called to proclaim the good news.  And, along with that proclamation, we’re also called to live by the ways and values of the kingdom, so that the world can see Jesus and can see what the future has in store as it looks at us, as it looks at the Church.  Our calling is to show the world what it looks like to have been plunged into the Holy Spirit.

Last Sunday we read the lessons for the Epiphany, but if we’d read the the lessons for the Sunday after the Epiphany, we would have heard that familiar part of Romans where Paul exhorts us to present our bodies as living sacrifices.  To give ourselves is the only reasonable response to Jesus having giving himself as a sacrifice for us.  It’s the only response that makes sense when we think on the Incarnation, on the cross, and on the empty tomb.  Jesus gave everything for us; in gratitude we should give our everything back to him.  And Paul contrasts this mindset with the mindset that’s all around us in the world.  He warns in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this present age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”  Yes, the world, the flesh, and the devil tempt us.  It’s hard to follow Jesus and sometimes we fail, but Paul reminds us that in our baptism we’ve been transformed.  John plunged people into the water.  Jesus does more.  He plunges us into the water and as he does so he plunges us into the Holy Spirit.  In doing that he’s transformed our hearts and he’s renewed our minds.  Because of the Holy Spirit the desires of our hearts are different now.  Because of the Holy Spirit the fog that once clouded our thinking has been lifted.  What used to seem foolish when we heard about Jesus and about sacrifice and about dying in order to live now makes perfect sense.  The Spirit has taken the things and the thinking and the values and the priorities of the age to come and brought them into our hearts and minds.  The world—this present evil age—competes for our loyalty, so we must never forget what the Spirit has done in us.

Paul stresses that we need to live this life of sacrifice by showing humility to each other.  This in itself runs contrary to the grain of the world’s thinking of every man for himself.  In last week’s lesson, in Romans 12:4-5, Paul gives us the image of a body.

For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

 

And with this he switches gears a bit.  In last week’s Epistle Paul was focused on the idea of sacrifice and of humility.  In this week’s Epistle, which begins at the next verse, Romans 12:6, Paul shows us how this works out in practise.  Keep Paul’s image of a body in mind—a body made up of all sorts of different organs and limbs—as we go on.  He writes:

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:6-8)

The Holy Spirit doesn’t just change our hearts and minds, he also equips us to serve the kingdom.  In some cases he gives us gifts that we don’t have by nature, some more mundane and some spectacular.  In some cases the Spirit simply transforms the personality traits and the natural gifts we already have so that we can use them for the kingdom.  The New Testament is full of lists of gifts and each list is a little different, which ought to tell us that there’s no exhaustive list.  People sometimes get hung up thinking that they have to have one of the gifts specifically mentioned in these lists and when they can’t find it they become discouraged.  Brothers and Sisters, the Spirit works with and gifts each person differently and according to the place in the body he has for us.  People, times, and places differ and the Spirit will equip us for who we are, where we are, and when we are.  Think again of Paul’s analogy of the temple being built by Jesus, each of us is a stone carefully and specifically cut to fit a certain place.  Don’t ever think that the Spirit hasn’t equipped you in some way just because nothing in these lists is an exact fit.  Jesus has work for everyone and he’s plunged us all into his transforming Spirit.  What Paul does here is give some examples so that we can see how we’re called to work together and to serve the kingdom so that the world will see Jesus in his Church.

He begins with prophecy.  Prophecy is the gift whereby the Spirit equips us to apply the Word of God to life and to specific situations.  Pauls says that if that’s how you’ve graciously been equipped, then get on with prophesying.  If you’ve been equipped especially to serve, then get on with serving.  If you’ve been equipped to teach, get on with teaching.  And so it goes for those equipped to exhort and to give and to lead and to show acts of mercy.  If you’ve been gifted in these ways, get on with using those gifts.  Don’t short-change the Church by squandering them.  And Paul starts out, in mentioning prophecy, saying that, as the ESV puts it, we do this “in proportion to our faith”.

What does that mean?  Well, it helps to go back to verse 3, where Paul warns us to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith God has assigned.  He is not saying that we are given different measures of faith.  That would mean, in verse 3, that some would think less soberly than others and that some are called to be more humble than others.  No, what Paul is saying is that we do all these things in accordance with the faith, referring to the content of what we believe: that Jesus is Lord, that he has died, and that he has risen from the dead.  We treat each other humbly because that is what we see in Jesus, who humbly gave his life for us.  So with our gifts: we use them not for ourselves and we use them not willy-nilly for whatever reason might seem good at the time.  No, we use them in accordance with the faith, with the Good News we’ve been given.

The one who prophesies has not been equipped so that he can spout off anything that pops into his head.  No, he must speak in accordance with the faith we have been given—what he says must be in harmony with the message of the cross and the empty tomb, it must be in harmony with the rest of Scripture, and it must work to build up the body, not the speaker.  And this principle applies across the board with all the gifts and all the ways we serve.  Does the one who teaches teach in accordance with the faith and with the Scriptures?  Does he teach to build up the body, or is he tearing it apart or building up himself?  Does the one who exhorts or the one who shows mercy do so in a way that reinforces the Good News, or is there no thought for that?

A few years ago I was reading an article written by a woman who gave up Christianity for paganism and considers herself a witch.  She and some of her fellow witches visited a healing ministry run by a wildly popular church in northern California.  One of the things she wrote about were the prophecies and exhortations spoken over them while they were there.  Everything that was said affirmed them in their pursuit of paganism and told them that God was pleased with them and that they were on the right spiritual path.  They were given words of peace, despite being on a path away from and at odds with the Prince of Peace.  The people working in that church were obviously well-meaning and I’m skeptical about the legitimacy of the gifts they claim to have, but the reason I bring them up is that they’re misusing the gifts of prophecy and exhortation and mercy.  They’re proclaiming “Peace!  Peace!” where there is no peace.  God’s gifts must be used in accordance with the faith he has given us.  They’ve been given to us to give the world a glimpse of the kingdom and to declare, “Repent, for the kingdom God has come!”  If, instead, we’re using our gifts to affirm people in their unrepentance and in their rejection of the kingdom, then we’re abusing those gifts.  We need to use the Spirit’s gifts with discernment and with discipline.

 

I think it’s also worth noting that Paul stresses at the end that the one who “does acts of mercy” do so with cheerfulness.  As the discernment and discipline he connects with prophecy apply all the way down the list, this cheerfulness applies all the way back up.  We may not always feel like doing these things, but we need to remember that in God’s economy, in biblical thinking, love is not so much about feeling as it is about doing.  The world tells us that you should do what feels right, but God tells us to do what we know is right and that right feelings will follow.  Again, we too often allow ourselves to be conformed to the present age rather than surrendering to the transforming work of the Spirit in us.

After giving these specifics in terms of gifts, Paul then goes on to write in more general terms about the gospel principles at work here.  Look at verses 9-16.  There’s a long list here.  I noticed that my Bible happens to give this section the heading, “Marks of the True Christian”.  Think about that and notice that it starts with love at the top.

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.  Love one another with brotherly affection.  Outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.

 

We don’t have time to cover each of these in detail, but think of them in terms of giving the world a glimpse of Jesus and the kingdom.  We’ve seen real love in Jesus.  In him we’ve seen what it looks like to abhor evil and hold fast to good.  In him we get a sense of what it looks like to show honour to others rather than grabbing it all for ourselves.  We see in him what humility and lowliness toward others looks like.  We—especially Gentile believers—have seen what Jesus’ hospitality looks like as he welcomes us in to Abraham’s family.  In Jesus we’ve seen the greatest example ever of what it looks like to bless those who persecute us.  And Paul ends this list in verse 21, writing, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Brothers and Sisters, this is what it looks like to be faithful stewards of the grace of God.  This is what it looks like to live the life Jesus has given us.  This is what it looks like to be people who have been plunged into the Holy Spirit.  This is what it looks like to be the new Israel, rescued from our bondage to sin and death and given hope for a new life.  We love each other as Jesus has loved us and as he specially equipped us to love, and as we do so we show our love for him, because in loving each other we are loving the people whom Jesus loves.  But it’s not just the Church we love.  Jesus was sent to redeem because “God so loved the world”.  We witness what love looks like as we love each other, but we also witness the love of God as we give ourselves for the sake of the world, as we give ourselves to be light in the darkness—even when the darkness is hostile and seeks to snuff us out.  In Jesus, God overcame evil with good and we are called to be his witnesses by doing the same.  And so let us proclaim the message of John and Jesus: Repent, for the kingdom of God has come.  But let us also live in such a way that in our lives and the life of the Church, the heavens are opened to give all those around us a glimpse of the life and the kingdom that await all those who will trust in Jesus.

Let us pray: Heavenly Father, in the baptism of Jesus you revealed him to be your Son and you anointed him with the Holy Spirit.  May we who are born again of that same water and Spirit, we ask, be faithful to our calling as your children by grace, living and manifesting in our lives the love and mercy you have shown to us as we proclaim your kingdom.  We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

The Epiphany: Manifest to the Gentiles

Ephesians 3:1-12 & St. Matthew 2:1-12

by William Klock

“Epiphany” is a Greek word that means “manifestation”.  In the earliest days the observance of Epiphany was centred on Jesus’ baptism, because it was in his baptism that the Spirit descended upon Jesus and the voice from heaven announced, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.”  In the Eastern Church this celebration is known as Theophania, the day on which God revealed himself in Jesus.  The feast celebrated not only Jesus’ baptism, but his birth, the visitation of the magi, and his first miracle at Cana.  All of these events were epiphanies or manifestations, of our Lord, his divinity, and his ministry.  As the Church calendar developed, the feast of the Epiphany was decompressed and Jesus’ baptism and his manifestation at Cana were assigned to the Sundays that followed and the Epiphany itself became a commemoration specifically of the visitation of the magi and, thus as the Prayer Book calls it, “the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles”.

And so we hear Paul in our Epistle, this passage we read a few minutes ago from Ephesians 3, we hear Paul say—or we hear his pen scratch on parchment as he writes to his brothers and sisters in Ephesus:

 

  For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles…

 

Ephesus was a predominantly gentile church that Paul had started when he visited the city on his second missionary journey.  He was imprisoned for his proclamation of the good news about Jesus and it’s from his imprisonment that he writes them.  He goes on:

 

—assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.  This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

 

This was, as we say, Pauls “thing”.  This was for him the great mystery—not “mystery” like Sherlock Holmes or Scooby-doo, but mystery in the sense of a great, earth-shattering revelation that changes everything.  We might say an “epiphany”.  For Paul the great mystery was first the revelation that Jesus really was the Messiah, but then when he’d had the chance to work through all the implications of that great truth he was confronted with this one: “that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Jesus the Messiah through the gospel.”  Most people would have thought this was a thoroughly un-Jewish thing to say.  Even that it was blasphemy that gentiles—unclean dogs!—were coheirs with the people of God.  A few of them, sure, but only after they’d been purified and circumcised and committed to observing torah.  And then they weren’t really gentiles anymore.  But Paul’s realised that, in fact, once you get the story of God and Israel straight, it would be hard to come up with anything more Jewish than this conclusion that the gentiles are, in Jesus, fellow heirs, members of the same body, and part of Abraham’s family.  This is what the story was working towards all along, even though hardly anyone realised it anymore.  As he says as he continues, ministering this truth was his calling:

  Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

 

The Jews of Paul’s day had got their own story wrong and no longer had any sense that “salvation is for the Gentiles”.  As far as they were concerned, they were God’s people, God cared about them, God would deliver them from their oppressors and put them on top, and one day he would rain down destruction on all the unclean people of the word.  Salvation was for the Jews, the might have said.  Even those first Jewish Christians were still thinking in this vein.  Jesus was their Messiah.  There were a few gentiles who believed, but they had to first become Jews.  And there were the Samaritans who believed.  That was a challenge to this kind of thinking, but until Paul, no one seemed to have this vision of the deliverance, of the salvation of the Gentiles—at least not on a large scale.

The irony is that today we’ve made the opposite mistake.  We’ve so dehistoricised, flattened out, and universalised the story that we’ve all but forgotten that “Salvation is of the Jews.”  I’ve been reviewing the first-year Greek course I took almost thirty years ago and in the “homework” last week this phrase jumped out at me from the page.  “Salvation is from the Jews.”  Jesus spoke these words to the Samaritan woman and they ought to be a rebuke for so much of the Church today that has forgotten our own story.  St. Paul writes in today’s Epistle to explain his unique apostolic ministry to proclaim the good news about Jesus to the Gentiles.  It has been my experience that many Christians have never stopped to consider just how odd Paul’s ministry would have seemed at the time.  They’ve never stop to think, because we have largely removed the gospel from its narrative and historical context and unnecessarily flattened it to communicate its universal nature.  Occasionally we need to recall that, even though “God so loved the world,” it is also true that “salvation is of the Jews”.  Out of a world that had lost all knowledge of him, the Lord chose and called Abraham and from him created a people whom he made holy and in whose midst he lived.  He gave this people his law and his presence and made them unique amongst the nations.  Jesus was born a Jew.  He was the Jewish Messiah.  He fulfilled the Jewish law and the words of the Jewish prophets.  He proclaimed good news about a coming kingdom and a coming judgement to Jews and for Jews.  While gentiles were welcomed when they came to him, he made it clear that his ministry was to his own people.  The evangelists lay the blame for Jesus’ death with Jews.  Even in his death by crucifixion, Jesus foreshadows the means of execution that the unrepentant Jewish rebels would face when judgement came a generation later.  Jesus literally took the death of his people on himself in that sense.  It cannot be stressed enough that Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, lived and died for the sake of the Jews and to bring their story to its climax.

We can’t jump over this to get to John’s announcement that God so loved the world that he gave his Son, because when we do that, we short-circuit the story, we leave out most or all of the bits that show us how God, in Jesus, has been faithful to his promises made under the old covenant.  And in that, we cast a veil over his glory.  It was necessary for Jesus to fulfil the story of his own people, because only then would the Gentiles see the faithfulness of Israel’s God, be drawn to what they saw, give him glory, and in the process be incorporated into the new people of God by faith.  In this, too, we see that the means by which the Gentiles are incorporated into the new Israel fulfils the message of Israel’s prophets and glorifies the Lord.  While it is certainly true that a dehistoricised and flattened gospel has brought millions to the Lord Jesus, it is also true that communicating the gospel within its context communicates the faithfulness of God as the basis for our own faith with far greater depth and builds upon a firm foundation whereas so much that passes today for evangelism and Christian faith is merely subjective.  Again, Christians today need to understand just how weird Paul’s ministry would have seemed in his day—even, at first, to the other apostles.  Again, most believed that the good news about the Jewish Messiah was for other Jews, and of little interest (or even relevance) to Gentiles.  Jesus radically changed what it meant to be the people of God, but in many respects, it was not until St. Paul emerged from his wilderness sojourn that this dramatic change was really grasped by the fledgling Church.

Of course, Israel’s ministry to the Gentiles was there all along.  The Lord set Israel apart before the watching nations.  She was to be his witness.  Through her he would restore and reconcile humanity to himself.  But as Paul points out in our Epistle, this “mystery” was largely lost on Israel—on previous generations.  And yet there it was from the beginning, all the way back in Abraham’s day—if anyone was paying really close attention—that the Lord’s intent was to one day bring the Gentiles into his family and to make them fellow heirs with those who were children by birth rather than adoption.  This truth had been revealed by the Spirit to the prophets of old and, in the same way, had been revealed to the apostles—who took some time to parse it out—and to Paul it was a personal commission: to proclaim the good news about Jesus to the Gentiles.  Paul adds here that this mission is not simply to ordinary people, nor is it a matter of personal piety.  As Gentile believers come into their inheritance in the Messiah, the Church becomes both a witness and a challenge to the rulers of the Gentile world.  This diverse body of Jews and Gentiles of every sort, living in unity the inheritance given them by Jesus, announces that he is Lord and that a new age is breaking in.  Just as was the case with Israel, the lords of the earth can submit in faith to the lordship of Jesus or face the judgement to come.

Now we turn over to today’s Gospel, Matthew 2:1-12, which dovetails with what Paul has written in the Epistle.  Here’s the truth that Paul writes, manifest in the story of Jesus.  Matthew writes:

 

  Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:

         “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

                  are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

          for from you shall come a ruler

                  who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

  Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

 

While St. Luke recalls the events of the night Jesus was born and shows us the shepherds visiting one of their own, one who will follow in the footsteps of David as both king and shepherd, St. Matthew tells of Jesus’ birth in passing and puts all the emphasis on Jesus as King.  Magi, astrologers from an eastern land, most likely Persia, have seen a heavenly sign that heralds the birth of a king in Israel.  They desire to pay him homage and to give him gifts.  This in itself would seem to indicate that even these foreigners understood that this was no ordinary king.  There had been no star heralding Herod’s birth.

Naturally, they look for the King of Israel in Jerusalem.  Herod knows nothing of the birth of a king, but was politically astute enough to recognise the political nature of the magi’s claim and paranoid enough to take action.  Matthew makes it clear that if Jesus is indeed the King, then Herod is not.  Again, Matthew emphasises the kingship of Jesus in the report of the priests to Herod.  Citing Micah 5:2—and it’s not clear if this is their paraphrase or Matthew’s—they point Herod to Bethlehem.  And yet, in the paraphrase we see again an important bit of narrative-historical context that cannot be passed over too quickly.  Micah speaks, not of a universal king per se, but of one who will be king over Israel.  This king will shepherd the Lord’s flock—a bit from verse 4 that the priests add to their paraphrase of verse 2.  The Messiah is the King of Israel.  It is only once Micah has established that the Messiah will be King over Israel that he goes on to tell us that this King “shall be great to the ends of the earth” (5:4).  Both the Magi and the priests highlight Jesus’ kingship specifically over Israel.  Again, “salvation is of the Jews”.  It is because Jesus is King of Israel, in fulfilment of the Lord’s promises through the prophets, that the good news about him goes out to the Gentiles.  The magi are the first, who foreshadow the future.  Matthew bookends his Gospel with Gentiles.  Here the magi come at Jesus’ birth, Gentiles come to worship a very uniquely Jewish king and to give him glory.  And at the end of the Gospel, Matthew records the commissioning of the disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations”.  The good news is only good news to the Gentiles because it reveals that the God of Israel is unlike the gods of the nations: he does what he says he will do and he fulfils his promises to his own.  Think to our study of Revelation and how the nations there, the nations that worshiped the beast and frolicked with the great prostitute, discovered in the downfall of the beast that the kings and gods of this world can’t hold a candle to the God of Israel revealed in Jesus, to his power and might, and most importantly, to his faithfulness.  Specifically, he fulfils his promises to his people in Jesus.  It is this faithfulness just as much as the amazing report of Jesus risen from the dead and the defeat of his enemies that draws the Gentiles to give glory to the God of Israel and to submit in faith to Jesus, the King of the Jews.  Of course, this carries the same ramifications for Caesar and the other rulers and gods of this age as it did for Herod.  This is what Paul stresses in the final verses of our Epistle.  Their days are numbered, for as the royal summons to the King goes out, Jesus “shall be great to the ends of the earth”.

Brothers and Sisters, the gospel about Jesus is good news, because it reveals the faithfulness of God.  He does what he says he will do.  He fulfils his promises.  He does so like no other.  And that’s reason for us to trust him, to give him our allegiance, to worship him and to give him glory.  And to proclaim his good news to the world.

I want to close with the Collect for today, because it offers a wonderful comparison between the magi and ourselves.  They were drawn to Jesus by sight and we by faith, and so we look forward in hope to the day on which we, too, will see his majesty on full display.  It’s the prayer of Gentiles who have seen the glory of the God of Israel revealed in the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.  It is a thanksgiving for what God has done in Jesus, creating a new Israel in which the Gentiles are fellow heirs, and it looks forward in hope to the day in which Jesus will set the cosmos to rights and be revealed in all his glory as both King and God.

 

Let’s pray: O GOD, who by the leading of a star manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: mercifully grant that we, who know you now by faith, may at last behold your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Christmas Day: The King has Come

Titus 2:11-15 & St. Luke 2:1-14

by William Klock

The Gospel this morning tells the familiar Christmas Story: Joseph and Mary, Bethlehem, an inn and a manger, angels and shepherds.  And yet if St. Luke saw our creche, I wonder what he would make of it.  And I wonder what he would make of the way we’ve come to tell the story and to preach it.  A friend this week shared a sermon he’d heard.  It was a whole sermon about the innkeeper.  (I saw, myself, someone else I know preached a whole sermon last week on the innkeeper’s son.)  I never meant to start an argument; I just casually commented that there is no innkeeper in Luke’s account (let alone an innkeeper’s son).  It started a discussion about various—I’m not sure what to call them other than—Christmas urban legends.  Fictional historical information about mangers or swaddling, shepherds and stables that somehow end up the focal point of sermons.  I got piled on by a couple of women who accused me of not believing the Bible, despite none of this being in the Bible.  Sometimes we really just need to get back to the text of Scripture. We need to ask what was important to Luke in telling this story?  And then we need to focus our attention on that.

So, first, the setting.  Caesar Augustus had decreed a census.  The lord of the world, the lord who had brought the Pax Romana, wanted to know just how many people he ruled—and to ensure they knew it was he who ruled them.  This would have stuck in the craw of every devout Jew.  They belonged to the Lord.  They no more belonged to Caesar than they had once belonged to Pharaoh.  And so they waited in hopeful expectation of a deliverer: a prophet like Elijah, who would call down fire from heaven on their enemies; a prophet like Moses, who would lead them into freedom; a king like David, who would crush their enemies.  A king like David.  That’s the first key to Luke’s story here.  That Mary and Joseph were headed to Bethlehem, the city of David, on the orders of Caesar Augustus, that’s a hint to his readers of who Jesus is and what he’s eventually going to do.

And so, off to Bethlehem.  And our popular telling has Joseph and Mary arriving in Bethlehem at a First Century Holiday Inn with no vacancy.  The innkeeper graciously—or perhaps ungraciously—points them to the barn.  In solitude, except for the animals, Mary gives birth to a baby who—at least according to one of our most popular carols—does not cry and places him in a manger.

Now, how much of that is actually in Luke’s story and how does it square with what he does tell us?  Well, there was no inn—not in the sense we think of an inn.  There’s a Greek word for such a place and Luke uses it elsewhere—the Good Samaritan takes his charge to that kind of inn.  But here Luke uses a word that more commonly means a guest room.  (It’s the same word translated “upper room”, where Jesus shared his last Passover with the disciples.)  Travellers like Joseph and Mary stayed with relatives when going to their hometown.  Because of the census many members of the extended family would have taken advantage of family hospitality and this house would have been bursting at the seams with cousins and aunts and uncles.  Important members of the family—a grandfather and grandmother, maybe—would have been given the guest room.  And so Mary and Joseph wound up spending the night in the lower part of the house where the animals were stabled at night.  And they were certainly not alone.  A proper nativity set should have a few dozen figurines representing all those extended family members.  And all the women would have been gathered around Mary as she gave birth, because that’s what happened before hospitals and maternity wards.  The feeding trough, while highlighting the humbleness of Jesus in his Incarnation, is only mentioned by Luke because it is the sign by which the shepherds will find the family.  And those shepherds would have arrived at a house full of people and bursting with excitement over a newborn baby.  The whole neighbourhood would have been abuzz with the news.  If Joseph’s family was anything like Mary’s, that excitement would have been all the greater in light of the knowledge of who this baby was.

And the shepherds.  There couldn’t have been a more fitting group of men to come and worship the Messiah at his birth.  Somehow we got the idea that the shepherds were social outcasts—maybe from later rabbinic literature—but when we read the Bible we see that shepherds have an overwhelmingly positive position in the Old Testament.  The Patriarchs were noble shepherds.  David himself was a shepherd before he was King.  The Lord, particularly in the Psalms, is repeatedly addressed as the good and loving shepherd who watches over the flock of Israel.  The prophets repeatedly speak of the Lord sending a shepherd to rescue Israel from her trouble.  Through Ezekiel the Lord promised, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God…And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (Ezekiel 34:15, 23).  As St. John writes of Jesus as the word made flesh to announce that God has come to his people, Luke associates the newborn Jesus with the long tradition of faithful shepherds, of shepherd kings, and of the Lord as shepherd and it’s appropriate.  Jesus is worshipped for the first time by his own, the Shepherd King worshipped by shepherds.

Heavenly messengers appeared to the shepherds and sent them into town, not unlike young David summoned to his anointing.  By all accounts Mary and Joseph knew who the baby was, but imagine their surprise when a group of shepherds comes to town looking for him.  Again, I doubt the shepherds had any trouble finding him.  People would have been talking about a newborn baby no matter who he was.  But image Mary and Joseph’s surprise when they’re told, “Angels came to us in the field and told us that the Messiah has come!”  The shepherds knew.  Like everyone in Israel, they knew the messianic hopes of the nation and they could recognise in the angels’ announcement the messianic language of the prophets.  So Luke highlights Jesus identity for us.  Right at the moment when Caesar, the most powerful man in the world, was flexing his muscles and everyone in Israel was grudgingly on the move to obey, the real King was born.  Everything, from the timing to the place to the message of the angels to the visit by the shepherds hails Jesus as the fulfilment of God’s promises to his people.  Here is the King, born of David’s line, born in David’s city…even like David, associated with shepherds.  And yet different at the same time.  His humble birth to humble parents and a visit by humble shepherds just as mighty Caesar flexes his muscles.  God’s kingdom is at hand, the kingdom that will displace Caesar’s kingdom, but here Luke reminds us: It’s not going to happen the way most people thought.

And then we have to ask ourselves: What does it mean?  What are we to do in light of the coming of this humble King?  To answer that we have St. Paul’s words to Titus.  I’ll read them again.

 

  For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

  Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.  (Titus 2:11-15)

 

Martin Luther is famously to have said, “Jesus is coming, plant a tree!”—or something roughly like that, at any rate.  The point is that since God’s new creation has been inaugurated by Jesus, Christians ought to live their lives in light of the knowledge that we are already part of that new creation.  St. Paul makes the same point in our Epistle.

This is the Epistle appointed for the Epiphany in the Eastern churches.  Verse 11 says that the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation and verse 13 speaks of our blessed hope, which is the appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus the Messiah.  In both cases the Greek word used is literally “epiphany”.  Jesus’ first advent has brought salvation as Luke has told us in the Gospel.  Now we wait in hopeful expectation of Jesus’ second advent when he will complete what he has inaugurated.  Jesus, in other words, is King and has begun to set the world to rights already.  The rider on the white horse, the gospel proceeding from his mouth like a sword, and with his church with him, he’s riding out into the world, the light charging into the darkness.  And the good news is doing its work.  The life of the Spirit is infiltrating the world through the lives and actions and proclamation of Jesus’ people.  In the Church we catch a glimpse of what the world set to rights will one day look like.  Paul contrasts the ungodliness and worldly lusts of the old age that is passing away and exhorts us to live as people who have a sure and certain hope of the age to come: live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.  It’s not always easy to do that, but Paul reminds us of the great cost at which we have been saved.  The Messiah himself gave his own life to redeem us from lawlessness and to purify for himself a people zealous for good works.  Brothers and Sisters, the greatest motivation to committing ourselves to the King and his Kingdom is to reflect on just what it cost him and on his great love for us revealed in his humiliation.  For our sake and out of love, he humbled himself and took on our flesh and then he allowed that flesh to be nailed to the cross.  New Creation has come and to live in light of that truth, to live in light of the love it reveals, to live in hope of its future consummation, that is to be a truly Christmas people.

Let’s pray: O God, you make us glad by the yearly remembrance of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Christmas Eve: The Glory of God

Hebrew 1:1-12

by William Klock

In our Gospel St. John writes those familiar words about the light who came into the darkness.  There’s something about Advent, with the days growing shorter and the nights growing longer, the sombre tone—and yet the anticipation of coming joy—Advent reminds us of the darkness the world was in, humanity in bondage to sin and to death, evil powers in control of everything, but Advent has also reminded us of the promises of God.  He will not leave this world broken and in darkness forever.  And then those words:

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9)

 

Now we respond, singing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.”  But as the Advent lessons have shown us, most of the people in Israel knew nothing of that joy.  Jesus was not the Messiah they were expecting.  They wanted a warrior like David, but he rode into Jerusalem on a humble donkey.  They wanted someone who would make Israel great again, but instead he walked into the temple, the very centre of Jewish identity, and disrupted the sacrifices, announcing its days were numbered.  They wanted a king who would crush the Romans and put Israel at the top of the heap, but Jesus instead allowed himself to be crucified.  As John writes in the next verses:

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.  He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.  (John 1:10-11)

Saul of Tarsus was one of those who did not receive him.  Two days after Christmas the Church commemorates the martyrdom of St. Stephen.  He preached the good news about Jesus and was stoned to death for it.  Saul—or as we more commonly know him, St. Paul—stood by and held their coats.  Paul hated Jesus and everything to do with him.  He hated Jesus’ people and did his part to round them up and to make sure they were put on trial before the Jewish elders, the Sanhedrin.  He was on his way to do just that, travelling to Damascus, when he met the risen Jesus.  The light very literally burst into Paul’s world, knocked him off his horse, and left him temporarily blind.  And as Jesus changed everything when he came into the world, he changed everything for Paul when he came into Paul’s world.  Paul thought he had it all figured out.  He was a rabbi and a scholar of the Hebrew Scriptures.  But being confronted by the light, by Jesus, he was forced to admit the stories told about the resurrection were true.  The Lord had raised him from death and overturned the verdict of the people that he was a false messiah.  Jesus really was the Messiah everyone had been waiting for.  And so Paul left Damascus and retreated into Arabia, he says in Galatians, for three years.  He needed time to work this revelation through.

Arabia, he writes.  That didn’t mean then quite what it means today.  But if we read between the lines a little, it’s not hard too hard to figure out that Arabia meant Mt. Sinai.  Mt. Sinai was where it had all started, where Israel was born as God’s son, where the law was given, where the covenant was established.  And just as Elijah had gone back to the beginning to sort through his calling and ministry, so did Paul.  And from the beginning he worked through the history of Israel, he worked through the law, he worked through the promises of God in light of Jesus.  And then he came back, ready to preach to his fellow Jews in Damascus and ready to travel to Jerusalem to meet the other apostles.  And I say all this because our lesson from Hebrews makes me think of Paul, emerging from the desert, coming back from Sinai.  The book of Hebrews is anonymous.  We don’t really know who wrote it.  But long-standing tradition attributes it to Paul.  If he didn’t write it, he could have.  But Hebrews, to me, looks very much like the sort of thing Paul would have written to his fellow Jews on his return from those years of thinking on the old covenant, on the torah, on the promises of the God of Israel now fulfilled in Jesus.  It’s the sort of thing he would have written to those people St. John writes about in the Gospel: those people, Jesus’ people, who refused to receive him.  Imagine Paul at Mt. Sinai, at the place where it all started, working through the story of Israel in light of the risen Jesus.  And now he writes:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.  He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

For to which of the angels did God ever say,

“You are my Son,

         today I have begotten you”?

Or again,

“I will be to him a father,

         and he shall be to me a son”? (Hebrews 1:1-5)

Long ago, in the wilderness, God created a people for himself—a people to carry his light into the darkness.  And at many times and in many ways God spoke to them.  But they refused to listen.  Jesus told a parable about the owner of a vineyard who had to travel to a far country.  He left the vineyard in the care of tenants, who claimed it for their own.  He sent messenger after messenger to set them straight, but they only harassed, abused, and beat those messengers.  They would not listen.  So the man finally sent his own son.  Surely they would listen to him.  But this time they killed the messenger, the man’s beloved son.  And yet, through that death, the vineyard owner reclaimed and renewed what was his in a way no one had ever expected.  Certainly not Paul, not until he met that son, alive again on the road to Damascus.

At Christmas we remember that Jesus came into the word in fulfilment of the message and the promise of all those prophets, rejected, harassed, and abused by God’s own people.  Jesus, says our Epistle, is the radiance of God’s glory.  As St. John writes, “We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  He is the exact imprint.  That’s the language of striking coins—the carefully carved imprint of the king stamped on precious metal.  He is the word, who was there in the beginning, through whom all things were made.  And now he’s come into the world to make all things new again—to fix what we’ve broken and corrupted.  And he’s done it through his death. The owner of the vineyard knew when he sent his son to the wicked tenants that they would kill him, but he also knew that this was the way to reclaim his precious vineyard.  On the cross, Jesus paid the penalty for the sins of his rebellious people, for the very people who refused and rejected him.  Even for people like Paul, who viciously went after his followers.  He died the death they deserved and was raised from death and seated on his throne at the right hand of God.  The people declared him a false king, but God has enthroned him to rule over all and has received him as his own Son.

Brothers and Sisters, Jesus is the one who fulfils the promises of God.  He is the light who has come to drive away the darkness that lies over the world.  Because of that he is the one—as our Advent wreath reminds us—who brings us hope for a world set to rights, he gives us peace with the God whom we have wronged, he restores our joy even as we walk through a broken and fallen world, and he is himself the great manifestation of the love of God.  In him the vineyard owner has sent his own Son to set everything to rights—including us—even though he knew it would mean his death.  Dear Friends, let go everything else, and trust in this one who humbled himself for our sake and, in doing so, has revealed the absolute faithfulness of God.  No one and no thing is more worthy of our faith than this God who, to fulfil his promises, has humbled himself to take on our flesh, to die in our place, and has given us a promise of joy and peace in the age to come.

Let’s pray: Almighty God, you have given your only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and to be born of a pure virgin: Grant that we, who have been born again and made your children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit; through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with you and the same Spirit be honour and glory, now and for ever.  Amen.