Living Words

A Sermon for the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist

Ephesians 4:7-16 & St. John 15:1-11

by William Klock

Today the Church remembers St. Mark, according to tradition, the author of the second Gospel—although fairly widely agreed to be the earliest of the four.  Mark travelled with Peter for two or three years as he made his way through Asia Minor and eventually to Rome.  The early Church historian Eusebius says that along the way Mark recorded Peter’s sermons and that these became the basis for his Gospel.  And yet, today, the Scripture passages we read say nothing of St. Mark.  Instead they continue the Easter theme of life in the risen Jesus.  It makes sense.  Mark wouldn’t have wanted us to focus on him today; he’d have wanted us to keep our attention on Jesus—which is why he wrote his Gospel.  And so, in our Epistle, St. Paul urges us to grow into maturity in Christ.  In our Gospel today, Jesus urges his disciples to abide in him.  The weather today isn’t great, so I’ll try to keep thing short and focus on just today’s Gospel.

To make his point, Jesus draws on the imagery of God’s people as a vine.  He says:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

This imagery of the vine and the vinedresser was well-established in the Old Testament.  Israel is the vine.  The Lord is the vinedresser.  Psalm 80, for example, portrays Israel as a vine delivered from Egypt and planted in land cleared by the Lord.  While the vine flourished for a time, the wall that once protected it fell.  Passers-by plucked away the fruit, while boars and other animals ravaged it.  The psalmist pleads with the Lord to look on the vine and to restore Israel: “Give us life and we will call upon your name” (v. 18).  In other places, like Isaiah 5, Israel is condemned.  The Lord planted her and cultivated her, but despite his efforts, she grew only wild grapes.

In our Gospel Jesus draws on this imagery to make the point that he is the new Israel and that membership in the people of God is based not on ethnicity or the marks of distinction created by the law, but by abiding in him.  Jesus uses this image to warn of coming judgement: as he has always done, the Father will prune away dead wood from the living vine.  Already this work has begun.  Jesus uses the unusual verb kathairo to describe the Father’s pruning and contrasts it with the “cleanness”—katharos—of the disciples.  They are part of those who have already submitted themselves to the vinedresser and been pruned.  They have heard the word of Jesus and believed with the result that they are bearing fruit, although this does not mean that more pruning will not be necessary.  It’s an ongoing process.

The key here is abiding in Jesus.  He is the solution to Israel’s problem, the age-old failure to bear fruit.  In verses 8-11 Jesus moves from fruit, to love, to obedience, to joy.  If fruit is the evidence of abiding in Jesus, we must know what it looks like.  To abide in Jesus is an act of love in return for the love he has already shown.  As the Father loves him, Jesus also loves us.  We see this in the humility of his incarnation, but supremely in his death on the cross.  We love him because he first loved us.  Next we see the relationship between love and obedience.  To love Jesus is to keep his commandments and lest this seem harsh, Jesus compares it to the way in which he abides in his Father’s love by keeping his commandments.  The commandments of Jesus are good, the law of the Spirit gives life and we ought to submit to it in happy gratitude.  Finally, Jesus explains that it is through this abiding in love manifested in obedience that we will know joy.

This is the life that Adam was meant to have, living in, abiding in the presence of God in the garden.  This is the life that Israel was meant to have as she lived with the Lord’s abode in her midst.  This is the life that witnesses God to the world, making known his love and manifesting new creation.

I want to close with a modern-day—or close to modern-day—illustration about vines and branches.  In the early 1860s a certain species of aphids made its way from the New Word to Europe.  These little aphids fed on the roots of grape vines.  New Word stock had evolved resistance to these pests, but the vines of Europe had not and the aphids began to quickly kill them off.  The damage was enormous.  It cost the French economy something in the neighbourhood of 10 billion francs.  Grape-growers tried everything, from chemicals to letting their chickens run through the vineyards to eat the aphids, some even placing frogs at the base of each vine.  Nothing worked and the blight spread.  But they did find a solution.  Cuttings of a grape variety native to Texas, resistant to the aphids and accustomed to the same sort of soils found in France, were planted and the French vines grafted onto this New Word root stock.  The vines began to thrive again, receiving new life when grafted into those new roots.  It is, I think, a remarkable image of abiding in Jesus.  Sin has struck at our roots and because of that we die.  There’s nothing we can do to fix it.  Even in Israel, the law was powerless to address the root of the problem and to restore life.  And so the vineyard was pruned and from it the Lord raised up a new vine in Jesus.  Sin and death did their worst to him—kind of like those aphids had done their worst to that Texas stock—and he came out the other side alive.  Sin and death have no hold over him.  And as the Spirit grafts us into this new vine that is Jesus, Brothers and Sisters, his life restores us and makes us new.  It is the only solution.  It is the only source of life.  It is the only means to know triumph over sin.  Friends, abide in Jesus.  Hold closely to him.  Remember your baptism.  Come to his Table.  And steep yourself in his word that you might know and be transformed by the good news.

Let’s pray: Almighty God, who through the heavenly teaching of Saint Mark the evangelist instructed your Church; Give us grace that we may not be carried away with every wind of false teaching, but may be established in the truth of your holy  Gospel, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

A Sermon for the First Sunday after Easter

St. John 20:10-23

by William Klock

In the Easter acclamation we announce, “He is risen!”  That’s good news, but what does it mean for us?  What’s the application?  What does it have to do with who we are as Christians?  How does it change things for us?  What do we do with it?  Our Gospel today has something to say about all this in that odd scene where Jesus breathed on his friends.  Look again at John 20:22-23:

[Jesus] breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

What does that mean?  Jesus breathes out the Holy Spirit on his friends—which is kind of an odd thing in itself—and he tells them that if they forgive sins those sins are forgiven and that if they withhold forgiveness, forgiveness is withheld.  Did he actually?  Or was it a symbolic act?  A sacramental act?  What do we do with this?

Some Christians see Jesus imparting a gift of the Spirit specifically to the apostles—a gift that would empower them literally to forgive sins and to pass that gift on to the bishops and the priests who would succeed them.  This was one of the ideas that the Reformers objected to in the 16th Century and our liturgy reflects it.  The Church’s ministers do not give forgiveness.  They announce the forgiveness of sins that God offers through Jesus to those who are repentant and believe.  The Church’s ministers are ministers of grace—God’s grace.  And when I say that about the Church’s ministers, that means all of us, not just the clergy.  Brothers and Sisters, grace belongs to God.  We do not control it.  Forgiveness does not depend on the willingness of a priest to “give” it.

But if this isn’t Jesus giving special powers to his apostles and their successors, what is this about?  To understand that, we need to take a step back in the story.  In verse 19 John says that the disciples were hiding.  They gathered together, locked the doors, and barred the windows.  I expect they were being very quiet lest anyone hear them.  They hoped that if anyone passed by it would look like no one was home.  They hoped that if the authorities came knocking, they’d quickly move on in their search.  Jesus’ friends had been hiding since Friday, since he was crucified.  And they were hiding because, when the Romans crucified a revolutionary or someone who claimed to be the Messiah, they didn’t typically leave it at the leader of the movement.  They usually crucified the other leaders and close followers of whomever they had convicted of treason.  In the great revolt that would take place a generation later, the Romans didn’t just crucify a handful of leaders.  They crucified everyone.  They couldn’t make crosses fast enough and ran out.  So Jesus had been nailed to a cross and his friends thought they were likely to be next.  It’s not hard to imagine how afraid they were.

John also tells us that it was the first day of the week.  It was Sunday.  Mary had gone to the tomb just that morning and found it empty.  She had gone to tell the others.  As we read last Sunday, Peter and John went to see the empty tomb for themselves.  But that didn’t mean they weren’t still afraid.  The tomb was empty.  Mary and John insisted Jesus had been raised from the dead.  The others were sceptical.  This wasn’t how resurrection was supposed to happen.  It was supposed to be everyone all at once, not just one person, even if he was the Messiah.  Imagine them arguing in that shut-up dark house.  Voices started to rise.  And then a big “Shhhh!” from one of them.  “Whatever happened to Jesus happened to Jesus, but the Romans or Herod’s soldiers are probably out there right now combing the city and looking for us!  John thinks Jesus rose from the dead, but I’m not ready to test that theory myself!  Keep your voices down!”

But then John says that Jesus suddenly appeared in the room.  The doors were locked, but somehow Jesus got inside and to these men who were already afraid and who were now probably really afraid of this man who suddenly appeared in their midst, Jesus says the one thing they most needed to hear: “Peace be with you!”  There’s something very practical in that.  But it’s full of kingdom reality too.  Jesus came to bring peace—to his friends and to the whole world—and so it’s natural that the very first thing he says to his friends as they sit there cowering in fear and thinking that all the hopes they had put in Jesus had come crashing down on Friday—it’s natural that the first thing he would say to them is “Peace be with you”.  Don’t be afraid.  That was the first Easter message.  But, also, don’t lose hope.  Jesus is saying in those few words, “I’m alive.  You’re hopes weren’t misplaced.  When they killed me they declared that I’m not the Messiah, not the King, but God has overturned their verdict and here I am.  Peace be with you.  I really am the Messiah and I really am making all things new.”

Remember what Jesus was all about.  The Messiah was to set God’s world to rights.  Because it was wrong—because of our rebellion and idolatry—God and human beings had been separated.  In his graciousness, the Lord had established the temple as a place where heaven and earth overlapped and human beings could enter his presence—only, of course, after having purified themselves and offered sacrifices for their sins.  And remember that Jesus had hinted that God was about to do something new and much bigger.  Jesus declared that the temple’s days were over.  He would tear it down and in three days build a new one.  Think about that again.  The temple was the place of God’s presence.  It was the place where humans could meet God.  And it was the place where humans could find forgiveness of sins.  It was the greatest place on earth.  It was a beacon of light in a dark world.  And Jesus was going to tear it down and build something new and better.

And now, on the third day after his crucifixion, the risen Jesus—vindicated by God and declared to truly be the Messiah, to truly be the King—appears to his disciples.  John says they spent some time marvelling as he showed them the wounds in his hands and in his side.  There was no doubting that it was him.  John says they were glad—which is, no doubt, an understatement.  And then Jesus says to them in verse 21:

“Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

 

“Peace be with you,” again.  This time there’s more to it than just, “Don’t be afraid.”  This is a commissioning.  Jesus came to bring peace and now he’s giving his friends a mission to carry his peace to the world.  There’s to be no more hiding.  “As the Father sent me, even so I am sending you.”  Jesus had sent them out to the towns and villages of Galilee to prepare the way for him.  Now he’s sending them out again, but this is an even bigger mission.  But they need more than reassuring words from Jesus.  They need to be equipped.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

 

Brothers and Sisters, when Jesus rose from the grave he set the power of God’s new creation in motion and here, Jesus breathes on them—yet another one of his powerful visual object lessons he was so fond of—to say that because of his resurrection, new creation has now been imparted to them.  In both Hebrew and Greek the words for wind and breath and spirit are all the same.  As God breathed life into Adam, now Jesus, the second Adam, breathes new life into the disciples.  I suspect C. S. Lewis had this scene in mind when, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he wrote about the great lion, Aslan, breathing life back into the people the White Witch had turned to stone.  Aslan, the Christ-figure of Narnia, breathed on these dead stone statues and, like flame licking its way across paper, their colour returned and in moments they were moving again—and soon after they were running through the witch’s palace looking for others so that Aslan could breathe on them and restore them to life.  That’s something of the visual Jesus offers here.  He breathes on the disciples, recalling God’s breathing on Adam, as if to say, “Because of my resurrection, you have received God’s Holy Spirit.  Because of my resurrection, the life of God that Adam rejected has been given back to you.  Now go out to find others, proclaim the good news about me, so that they can share in this gift of life.

People often think that the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to give us some kind of spiritual experience or to make us holy.  The Spirit certainly can and does do those things, but first and foremost, Jesus has given us the Spirit to equip and to empower us to go into the world in the same way that the Father sent Jesus into the world.  Jesus gives us the Spirit—he breathes the very life of God into us—and makes us the new temple, the new place where God meets human beings.  Think on that this week.  We Christians are the place where earth and heaven meet, because God’s spirit indwells us.  We, the Church, are his temple.  And as he gave Adam the task of expanding the garden of Eden, he gives his disciples the task of expanding the temple—of taking it to the world and of inviting the world to become a part of it.

Let us pray: Lord Jesus, as you breathed your Spirit into your friends that first Easter Sunday you have fill us with your Spirit in our baptism.  You have made us whole and you have made us holy.  Now send us out into the world, equipped and empowered by your Spirit, that we might proclaim the good news to others, that they might be made whole and holy by your death for sins and your rising to give life.  Amen.

A Sermon for Easter Day

Colossians 3:1-4 & St. John 20:1-10

by William Klock

There are echoes of John’s prologue in those words telling us that Mary came to the tomb while it was still dark.  In the beginning.  John’s prologue in turn deliberately echoes Genesis.  In the beginning…God spoke into the darkness and called forth light.  John writes, “In the beginning was the word.”  On the sixth day God spoke and called forth man.  John writes that the word became flesh and dwelt among us.  On the sixth day, Pilate presented Jesus to the people and announced, “Behold the man!”  Hanging on the cross, Jesus used his last gasp of breath to declare, “It is finished.”  Again, an echo of Genesis.  Any normal person who counted himself a friend of Jesus would have considered that first Good Friday a very bad day, but that echo from Genesis reverberates through John’s account.  When God had finished the work of creation he declared that it was all very good.  Jesus was laid to rest in the tomb for the sabbath—another echo of Genesis.  Death is not the end, but the beginning of new creation.  As Mary went to the tomb that first Easter morning, the word of God was poised to burst forth in an act of new creation.

At the time no one understood any of this.  Mary went to the tomb expecting that, like every other person in history who has died, Jesus would still be there, stone cold and lifeless.  She went to mourn and to meet her friends to finish the work of anointing Jesus’ body.  She found the tomb was open, the great stone door rolled away.  It was dark, so there was no point poking inside for a look.  The open tomb meant only one thing: Jesus’ body was gone.  John doesn’t reveal Mary’s thoughts, but resurrection would have been the last thing on her mind.  No, the open tomb meant someone had taken the body, maybe grave robbers, maybe Roman soldiers playing a joke on some silly Jews, adding insult to injury.  So she ran.  She ran to Peter’s hiding place in the city and he came running with John.  He’s the one who describes himself as the one whom Jesus loved.

John tells us that he outran Peter and got to the tomb first.  The sun is rising and as he peers into the tomb he sees the linen strips that had wrapped Jesus’ body.  That’s an odd thing.  Mary, John, and Peter can think of any number of reasons why someone might have taken Jesus’ body, but that they would first unwrap him is inexplicable.  Peter arrives and heads straight into the tomb.  If Jesus’ tomb was like others that have been found, his body was likely placed on a shelf to one side of the small, low entrance.  If his head had been oriented towards the door, it would have been difficult to see without at least putting head and shoulders into the tomb as Peter did.  And what a curious thing they find.  Not only was the body gone with the wrappings left behind, but the wrappings appeared to be undisturbed, as if Jesus has simply passed right through them.  And the cloth that had been on his head, probably a piece of linen tied around the head to keep the jaw closed, it had been moved and neatly placed nearby.

It hadn’t been that long before that Jesus had raised Lazarus from death.  The disciples had watched as Lazarus stumbled out of his tomb, still tightly wrapped in linen, probably not unlike a Hollywood mummy.  His friends scrambled to tear the linen cloths away, making a mess in the process.  In contrast, everything about Jesus’ tomb spoke of calm and order, even the face covering neatly set aside.

John tells us that at this point he squeezed into the tomb beside Peter.  He saw and believed, he writes.  But believed what?  John goes on to tell us in the next verse that “as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”  They did not yet understand, but he believed.  Some argue that John merely believed Mary’s report of the missing body, but this seems like a pretty trite detail in amongst everything else John has told us here.  Peter and Mary believed Jesus’ body was really gone, too.  No, what would seem to make the best sense of this passage is to understand that John is here saying that this was the moment when he realised that Jesus had been raised from death.  He said nothing to Peter or to Mary.  He and Peter returned home.  Mary remained at the tomb weeping.  They, the others, didn’t know what to make of the missing body, because they did not yet understand the implication of either Jesus’ claims or the of the scriptures.  We can hardly blame John for not saying anything.  He, himself, must have been struggling to put it all together.  But there it was.  Suddenly all the things Jesus had said, things like his statement that he would tear down the temple and rebuild it in three day, it all made sense and his brain started reaching back into the scriptures and he began to understand.  I think that, again, the contrast with Lazarus must have stood out.  John had seen a sort of resurrection before, but Lazarus was resurrected to a life still subject to death and decay and emerged from the tomb still wrapped in his graveclothes.  Something different had happened to Jesus.  The undisturbed graveclothes spoke of something greater.  Resurrection—something God’s people longed for—had happened, but not as expected.  But that meant that Jesus really was the Messiah and that somehow this meant that God really was going to set everything to rights.  New creation had begun that morning, but it would take some time—and a meeting with the risen Jesus—before John would be able to sort out for himself what it all meant.

But if new creation was born that morning, it also had to have implications not only for Jesus, but for his people too.  John doesn’t let us in on how much of this—if any—he understood.  The wheels in his head were just starting to turn, after all.  But that’s where St. Paul and our Epistle come in, written decades later after he and so many other had had the time to think it through and work it out.  Let me read those four verses from Colossians again.

 

  If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

 

What are the implications of the resurrection of Jesus for his people?  St. Paul wrote Colossians, at least in part, to address what seems to have been a common problem in the New Testament churches: legalism.  Jewish Christians struggled with the place of the law in the new covenant and many gentile believers were told that they needed first to embrace a form of Judaism before they could really be followers of Jesus.  In 2:20-23 Paul asks such people why they continue to live as if they were still enslaved by that old way of life.  Sure, the law has “an appearance of wisdom” in helping a person to attain an outward appearance of piety, but that’s just it: it’s an outward appearance, an outward conformity to holiness.  It’s not that this is necessarily a bad thing in itself, but that true holiness is something that wells up out of the heart—or, at least, it should.  It’s not hard to hear Paul’s frustration in these words.  Jewish converts should know better.  This had been Israel’s struggle since the beginning and Jesus, in his death and resurrection, had finally fixed it.  But as every Christian knows, we often struggle with a new problem.  New life is the starting point when it comes to defeating sin, but all too often we forget and start thinking that new lift is the result of first having tackled sin ourselves.  Paul knew all too well that’s not how the gospel works.

Jesus has led us in an exodus from sin and death.  In his resurrection he has given us new life.  We are no longer slaves.  This is the basic truth of the Christian life and if we don’t get it right, we’ll get everything else wrong.  As the Lord led the Israelites out of Egypt through the sea and freed them from their bondage to Pharaoh, Jesus sets us free from sin’s bondage when we pass through the waters of baptism.  It’s a truth.  A fact.  A done deal.  We have been redeemed.  Even if we don’t feel it, Jesus and the Spirit have transformed us: we were slaves to sin and death and now we are free; we were in bondage to the world and are now citizens of the kingdom of heaven.  This is what we mean when we speak of “regeneration”.  This is what Paul gets at in our Epistle.  He writes in 2:20 that we have died with the Messiah and now he writes in 3:1 that we have also been raised with the Messiah.  Again, we may not feel it, but if we have truly taken hold of Jesus in faith, he has carried us through death and out the other side into a new kind of life.  Of course we have to be careful to understand that what Paul is saying here is one of those “already-but-no-yet” truths.  Jesus has been raised to the sort of real life and true humanity that we lost through our sin.  We look forward in faith and hope to the day when we will be raised as he was, but in the meantime we have God’s own Spirit living in us as an earnest on that day.  We await the resurrection, but even today the Spirit makes that future resurrection a reality for us.  Maybe this is what makes life in Jesus a struggle.  If we could appear in locked rooms and never know sickness or decay again—as is true of Jesus—it would be easier to remember who and what we are.  Instead, we are called today to live by faith, not by sight.  One day the promise will be fulfilled.  One day the things of the present age will be gone for good and God’s new age will come in all its fulness, heaven will descend to earth and man will live with God.

And so we begin with first principles: If we have died with the Messiah, we have been raised with the Messiah.  We need to get this truth into our heads and when we do, we’ll remember that our life and everything about it that matters, is in the heavenlies where Jesus sits at the right hand of God.  Our true lives are hidden there with Jesus, Paul says.  It’s a kind of mystery, this “already-but-not-yet” life we have in the Messiah.  But even though it’s stored away in the heavenlies along with the rest of the age to come and God’s new world, Paul wants us to understand that it’s still very much who and what we are right now.  The new age dawned that first Easter morning when Jesus rose triumphant over death and if we are in him by faith, we really are part of that new age.  It may be hidden from the world around us, but it’s not hidden from us, because Jesus and the Spirit have made it our reality.  And as difficult as it may be some days to live this reality, Paul urges us to do so in faith-filled hope, knowing that Jesus, who is our life, will return to finish what he has started.  On that day we will know glory in all its fullness.  Our hope is not merely that Jesus will return, but also that when he returns he will reveal who we really are in him.  Resurrection will vindicate and reveal the faithfulness of God’s people, just as Jesus was vindicated and glorified in his resurrection.  As we struggle against sin and as we labour for God’s kingdom we may feel inadequate or insignificant, but the resurrection of Jesus ought to be a source of encouragement to live the truth of who we are in Jesus even as some aspects of it are still hidden with him.  Brothers and Sisters, glory awaits.

 

Let’s pray: Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant us by your grace to set our minds on things above; that by your continual help our lives may be transformed; through the same, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

A Sermon for Maundy Thursday

2 Samuel 9:1-13 & St. John 13:1-15

by William Klock

In 2 Samuel 9 we read a story about a young man named Mephibosheth.  Mephibosheth was the grandson of King Saul and the son of Jonathan.  Saul saw David as a rival and sought to have him killed more than once, but Jonathan was David’s best friend.  Even when it came to Saul, David treated him with respect and honour.  He could have killed Saul on more than one occasion, but he refused to do so.  For all his faults, Saul was the King.  He’d been anointed for that office by the Lord.  And so David grieved at the fall of Saul and the death of Jonathan.  We read a few chapters earlier about the defeat of Saul by the Philistines.  And that’s where we’re first introduced to Mephibosheth, in a brief note.  When Saul’s capital, Gibeah, fell to the Philistines, one of the palace servants fled, carrying little Mephibosheth.  As she ran, she tripped, fell, and dropped the little boy.  We’re not given the details as to how he was injured.  He may have had compound fractures in both legs or he may have suffered a spinal injury, but whatever it was, he was left “lame in both legs”.

Years later, after he’d defeated his rivals and enemies and cemented his kingship over Israel, David summoned a man named Ziba.  Ziba had been one of Saul’s servants.  And David asked him, “Is there anyone remaining of the house of Saul to whom I may show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” (2 Samuel 9:1).  Saul’s family was gone.  Jonathan was dead.  It was common in the Ancient Near East that when a king was defeated, the victor hunted down any claimants to the throne and had them murdered.  Israel was supposed to be different, but even in Israel we see Baasha doing just this, murdering the family of King Jeroboam after he took the throne.  This is probably why the servant woman fled with Mephibosheth, hoping to save his life.  This is why, after all these years, David has heard nothing of any survivors.  He has to summon one of Saul’s servants.  And this servant tells him, “There remains a son of Jonathan; he is crippled in his feet” (2 Samuel 9:3).

David sent for Mephibosheth.  Every indication is that David only wanted to show kindness to his best friend’s son.  But Mephibosheth trembled in fear as he came before the King.  “Mephibosheth son of Jonathan son of Saul came to David, and fell on his face and did obeisance” (2 Samuel 9:6).  Imagine his fear.  It’s not hard to imagine that he’d been raised to fear David.  He’d been raised in hiding.  He knew the common practises of the day.  He may have had no aspiration to the throne, but David wouldn’t have known that.  And so he came before the King.  This was it.  He was going to die.  And David roars out, “Mephibosheth!”  And I imagine this young crippled man trembling all the more.  His voice shook as he lowered his head to the floor and pleaded as humbly as he could, “I am your servant.”  But then the unexpected happened.  Suddenly he realises that David’s roar, was not a roar of victory over the last of his enemies, over this poor, lame man who posed no threat, but a roar of happiness as he met, for the first time, this son of his long-dead best friend.  Imagine a grin spreading over David’s face.  “Do not be afraid,” he said to Mephibosheth, “for I will show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan; I will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul, and you yourself shall eat at my table always” (2 Samuel 9:7).

Imagine Mephibosheth’s shock.  Even he couldn’t quite believe it.  It didn’t make any sense.  He responds, “What is your servant, that you should look upon a dead dog such as I?” (2 Samuel 9:8)  But David proceeds to instruct his people to return everything that belonged to Saul: his estates, their produce, his wealth—all of it—to be restored to Mephibosheth.  And we’re told, “Mephibosheth ate at David’s table, like one of the king’s sons….[he] lived in Jerusalem, for he always ate at the king’s table” (2 Samuel 9:11, 13).

What is it about being invited to another’s table.  What is it about sharing a meal?  David didn’t have to do that.  He wanted to show kindness to Mephibosheth.  He could have restored Saul’s estates and their revenues to him and sent him on his way.  But that wasn’t enough.  Mephibosheth was a prince and David honoured him by welcoming him into the royal household and to the royal table.

On Sunday, as we read about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we were also reminded that our King is unlike the world’s kings.  Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar…their kingdoms came by violence and the sword.  They came riding into town on great war horses or in chariots with armies of armed men at their backs.  They put their enemies to the sword.  But Jesus rides into Jerusalem, humbly on the back of a donkey and surrounded by women, children, and the common folk.  He is the king who became one of his own that he might die for the sake of his people.  This Lord is just the opposite of every other lord the world has known.

In our Epistle and Gospel today we read about the Last Supper.  Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples.  He’d been talking for some time about going to his death.  They didn’t understand.  And so this last night, before he was arrested, he did two things to help them understand just what was going to happen at the Cross and why it had to happen.  He washed their feet and he gave them a meal.  It’s fascinating to me.  As someone who loves a good theology book, it’s amazing to me that when Jesus wanted to explain what the Cross meant, he didn’t give a sermon; he didn’t give a lecture on theology and theories of atonement.  No.  He washed their feet.  And he gave them a meal.  And now he’s given us that same meal.

Brothers and Sisters, if you want to understand the Cross, come to the Table.  Jesus is the Son of David.  David summoned to his Table the son of his enemy and a man who could easily have been a rival and a thorn in his side.  David made himself vulnerable.  And he did so to show kindness to the man.  In fact, if you go back and look at 2 Samuel 9, when he asked his court who might know if any of Saul’s family lived, he said that he wanted to show kindness on behalf of Jonathan.  But when he asked Ziba, Saul’s servant, he said—more specifically—that it was because he wanted to show God’s kindness.  God had made David king and David wanted that kindness to exemplify his reign.  The Hebrew word is one you might have heard before.  It’s the word chesed.  The King James translated it as “lovingkindness”.  Chesed is a deep kindness, like that between a parent and child, that shows love and loyalty and grace.  It never fails.  And now the Son of David summons us to his Table.  Tomorrow we remember his death and on Maundy Thursday we remember that meal in which the King shows us his humility and his servant character.  Today we remember the meal that explains his death.

The Son of David invites us to share in his meal.  Logistically it’s not possible for us to gather in person today, but we will do so on Sunday as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.  As the lamb, the bread, and the wine of the Passover reminded the Israelites of their deliverance from Egypt, so the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper are for us the body and blood of King Jesus, the lamb of God who has given his life for us, to deliver us from sin and death.  And we come, like Mephibosheth.  He knew he was the enemy of the king.  He knew he was unworthy of the meal.  We pray, “We do not presume to come to your Table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies.  We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.  But you are the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy.”  The Lord’s Table reminds us of the death of God for sinners, the death of God for his enemies.  And so we come, both like and unlike Mephibosheth.  He cowered in fear.  He knew nothing of David’s mercy.  But we come to the Lord’s Table in light of the Cross.  We know the Lord’s mercy and his lovingkindness.  As we read on Sunday from Philippians: He did not grasp at his divinity.  He did not exploit his position as God for his own gain.  Instead, he emptied himself, took the form of slave, was born in our likeness, and became obedient to the point of death on a cross.  If we will come, resting on his mercy and trusting in his death, we can also pray, “Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.”

Let us pray: Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Sermon for Palm Sunday

Philippians 2:5-11

by William Klock

Our Epistle today, the lesson from the second chapter of Philippians, is the lens through which we read the Gospel.  What’s remarkable to me is that what took Matthew two long chapters to tell—we only read the second of those two chapters this morning—what took Matthew two long chapters to tell, St. Paul summarises in a mere thirty-six Greek words as he tells us about the servant-king.  Most scholars think that verses 6-11 were an early Christian hymn, perhaps even written by St. Paul himself.  Whatever the case, this poem brilliantly and succinctly sums up who Jesus is as it draws on both Israel’s story and the story of the whole fallen human race.

What comes to mind when you think of a king?  Today we might think of some of the modern kings of the world—or queens.  Today they’re figureheads and public servants.  A few years ago, when our own Queen turned ninety, the Bible Society published a commemorative book titled “The Servant Queen and the King She Serves”, in which she spoke of her faith.  But the title highlights the role we expect of modern monarchs.  When there’s a war, modern kings stay home and work to bolster the morale of their people.  Politicians make declarations of war, generals plan strategy, and soldiers go off to fight.  But ancient kings—kings in Paul’s day were very different.  Alexander went off at the head of an army and conquered most of the known world.  The Emperor Augustus headed an army that ended the Roman civil war and brought peace to the empire.  Alexander and Augustus did great things—and because of what they’d accomplished, both believed they had a right to divinity.  Because they had taken charge, destroyed their enemies, and wrestled whole empires into peace with the threat of further violence.  Why was Rome at peace under Augustus?  Because he’d destroyed his enemies once and any would-be future enemies knew he could probably do it again.  Kings and emperors grasped at divinity, men like Pharaoh and Alexander and Caesar.  Even many of Israel’s own leaders in the Old Testament, in Jesus’ day, and in Paul’s grasped for power.  Now Jewish leaders knew better than to claim divinity as so many of the pagan rulers did, but they grasped at the same power that Caesar held and sought to control the reigns of empire in the hopes of one day climbing to the top of the heap.

And yet this was not just the problem of kings or would-be kings.  Brothers and Sisters, this is the problem of the whole human race.  Ever since Adam believed the serpent’s lie and grasped at divinity for himself, we humans have been doing the same in one way or another.  We fight, we kill, we steal, we cheat, we do whatever we can get away with to look out for ourselves, to get what we want, to climb to the top of the heap.  The Lord’s solution to humanity’s problem was to call forth a people for himself, a people who lived in his presence for the life of the whole world, a nation of servants.  Long before Isaiah’s song of the Suffering Servant was claimed by Jesus, Israel understood this to be her role.

Of course, Israel suffered from the same problem as the rest of humanity and Paul uses this hymn to show us the solution.

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.  (Philippians 2:6-8)

God humbled himself.  Jesus, who the hymn says was in the form of God, who was in some way God himself, emptied himself to take on Adam’s flesh and Israel’s servant role.  Paul is clear that this doesn’t mean that Jesus ceased to be God or that he gave up his divinity in some way.  Just the opposite.  Jesus actually shows us what true divinity looks like.  It doesn’t look at all like Adam’s grasping or Pharaoh’s grasping or Alexander’s grasping or Caesar’s grasping at power, authority, or divine prerogative.  Rather, true divinity is revealed as God humbles himself for the sake of his rebellious people and offers himself as a sacrifice for their sins.

Jesus was rejected.  Almost no one could accept that this is what divinity looks like, that this is what God would do.  When he rode into Jerusalem, the people may have thought it weird that he rode a humble donkey, but they expected him to finally start an uprising—to bash some Roman and Herodian heads and to set things right.  When later that day he flipped the tables in the temple and drove out the merchants, people were sure that this was it.  Jesus was ready to clean house.  But then it didn’t happen.  He got the people’s hopes up.  Here, finally as the Messiah.  But—apparently—not.  Jesus’ own people, in anger, cried out for his crucifixion.  As far as they were concerned, he was a blasphemous impostor.  Even the servant people themselves could not understand the serving God.  But, of course, God knew this and so the hymn turns on verse 9.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  (Philippians 2:9-11)

The people crucified Jesus as a false messiah and God overturned their verdict against him.  Precisely because Jesus had humbled himself and taken on the role of the suffering servant for the sake of his people, God raised him from the grave and exalted him to his right hand—God declared Jesus to be the world’s true King so that in time every knee will bow and every tongue confess—that one day everyone will acknowledge that Jesus is creation’s Lord—and that in this God will be supremely glorified.  This how God sets creation to rights, this is how God sets fallen humanity to rights: Not by charging in with a sword, but by submitting himself to the cross—by allowing evil and death to do their worst, by dying himself, so that he can pass through to the other side and leave them powerless over him—and powerless over all those with him.  This is the new exodus and leads, not through the Red Sea, but through death itself to the life of God.

Now, back to verse 5.  Paul doesn’t simply tell us this so that we better understand who Jesus is and what he’s done.  That’s important, but Paul has a very practical reason for writing this to the Philippian Christians.  He writes:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…

Jesus’ people are to “have this mind yourselves”.  That’s why he’s done what he’s done, to solve the problem that began when Adam grasped at divinity for himself.  As we identify with Jesus, we become a part of the renewed servant people of God.  We are forgiven our past grasping, our past selfishness, and are filled with God’s own Spirit.  As the Spirit turns out hearts and minds to the self-giving God, we become a people whose chief characteristic is self-giving humility.  As we pass through death to ourselves we come out the other side alive to God.  The Spirit works a miracle in our hearts, he purges us of selfishness, of that powerful desire to grasp at whatever we can for our own benefit, and places in us a desire for God, a desire to please God, a desire to do the things that please God.  In Jesus and the Spirit we finally become that servant people.

What does that look like?  Well, it looks like the fruit of the Spirit.  We’re the people characterised by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.  We need this fruit now more than ever.  As I’ve spoken with people over the last year—and particularly this week as we resume services—most of us are in some fearful or angry or impatient or fed-up or anxious.  Everyone’s handling things differently.  But notice that none of these things are the fruit of the Spirit.  They don’t serve others; they turn us inward and have a powerful tendency to turn us against each other when we are confronted by our differences.  Brothers and Sisters, Paul wrote these words as an exhortation to the Philippians to be that servant people God has created for the life of the world.  We can’t be that people for the world when we aren’t the people for each other in the Church.

Here’s how he put it to the Ephesians:

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  (Ephesians 4:1-3)

When you’re tempted to act out of fear or anxiety or anger, think of our King riding on the donkey, our King mocked and scourged, our King on the cross—for our sake.  There we see humility and gentleness and patience as he bore with his sinful people out of love, eagre to establish new body united in the Spirit and in that we see God glorified as never before or since.

Let’s pray: Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for mankind you sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility:  Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; 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 Fifth Sunday in Lent

Hebrews 9:11-15 & St. John 8:46-57

by William Klock

Today, the Fifth Sunday in Lent we enter a sort of “sub-season” within the larger season of Lent.  Historically the Church called it “Passiontide”.  During Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday, we recount the passion of Jesus as we prepare for Easter and the celebration of his resurrection.  But today the lessons prepare us for.  Whenever the Church gives us a major feast day, it often gives us a Sunday that explains why the events that feast commemorates are important.  Usually it’s after the feast day, but for Palm Sunday and Holy Week the explanation comes first.  That’s what our lessons are about today—they tell us the theological and the narrative importance of Jesus’ suffering and death.

Some of you know that this year I’ve been working on a project, writing some commentary on the Epistles and Gospels, to help fellow preachers to think through them from what’s called a narrative-historical perspective—basically to preach on the Scripture lessons as parts of the big story of God and his people.  As part of that project I’ve also been doing historical study on how the lessons each week were selected and why.  A lot of interesting and helpful stuff can come out of that.  This week the old Latin name for this Sunday struck me.  Before it was called Passion Sunday, it was known as Iudica.  I’d seen this in some older Lutheran commentaries—until the 70s they often used the old Latin names—but I’d never given it much thought.  I discovered this week that it comes from the old introit—Anglicans stopped using those in the 1550s—but the old introit was from Psalm 43:

Give sentence with me, O God, and defend my cause against the ungodly people:

         O deliver me from the deceitful and wicked man, for thou art the God of my strength.

 

The Psalmist pleads with God: Give sentence with me.  In Latin it’s Iudica me.  Judge me—or more appropriately, vindicate me.  It was once the prayer of the Psalmist against his enemies but it now becomes the prayer of Jesus as he faces the final rejection of his own people and goes to the cross.  So far in the Lenten Gospels we have walked with Jesus as he made his final trip to Jerusalem.  Now, in today’s Gospel, St. John recounts one of his final disputes with the Jews.  The lesson picks up the theme of last Sunday’s Epistle as Jesus makes clear what it means to be the children of Abraham and inheritors of the Lord’s promise to him.  The passage ends with an attempt by the Jews to stone him, foreshadowing the Palm Sunday Gospel and the events of Holy Week.  The Epistle prepares us theologically for Jesus’ Passion as it holds him up, our high priest, as the fulfilment of the old covenant and its promises.  And this cry that has become today’s theme, “Vindicate me, O God” runs all through the lessons.

It's probably most obvious in the Gospel.  Look at John 8, beginning at verse 46:

 

Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

  The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

 

Why would the people accuse Jesus of being a Samaritan and of having a demon?  It helps to backup a bit.  Our Gospel today is taken from the middle of a longer confrontation between Jesus and the Jews.  Some hear his words and believe, but others continue to oppose him and we can hear the voices getting louder and angrier as we make our way through the chapter.  The chapter ends with Jesus narrowly escaping an attempted stoning.  The conversation has involved talk of Abraham and of who his true descendants are—are they those carrying Abraham’s genes or are they those who have acknowledged that Jesus is the Messiah and are following him?  In verses 37 and 38 Jesus acknowledges that the Jews are Abraham’s children by birth, but hints that their true father might be someone else, seeing that in opposing Jesus, they’ve rejected the Father and the covenant he established with Abraham.  They protest, but Jesus continues, shifting from Abraham to God, ““If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God” (v. 42).  The devil is a murderer, Jesus says, and your murderous rage aimed at me shows who your real “father” is.  You’re children of the devil and this is why you refuse to listen to me.

Now we see how these folks throw the accusation back at him.  They’ve already hinted at the issue of his parentage (which strongly suggests that the unique situation of Mary’s pregnancy was public knowledge) and now they accuse him of being a Samaritan (a cheap shot, accusing him of not being a real Jew), and of having a demon.  “No, I don’t have a demon,” Jesus responds, “but, at any rate, call me what you will.  I’m not out for my own glory.  I’m here to glorify the Father and he will be my judge, not you.”  And Jesus goes on pleading with them.  The message of the Father is one of deliverance: “If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

One might think that the Pharisees would have an “Ah-ha!” moment here, but just the opposite happens:

The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

The irony is that the Pharisees were actually staunch believers that one day God would resurrect the dead to life, but they’re so furious with Jesus that they miss his point.  No, they see this as clinching proof that Jesus really is possessed by a demon.  It’s the only explanation for his crazy-talk.  Abraham died.  The Prophets died.  If they were the greatest in Israel and they died, who does Jesus think he is making such claims about never dying?  Yes, they believed that God would one day raise the faithful in Israel, but that vindication of the faithful hinged, they thought, on faithfulness to torah.  What’s got them so worked up is that Jesus is now saying that God’s future vindication of his people will hinge not on faithfulness to torah, but on faithfulness of Jesus.  That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with torah, but that it’s not the defining mark of the people of God that they think it is.  Jesus points back to Abraham to make his point.  Abraham’s hope wasn’t in torah.  It couldn’t have been.  He lived hundreds of years before it was ever given, but he hoped in the promises of God anyway.  Abraham looked forward in hope to the day when the Lord’s promises would be fulfilled and Jesus is saying: “That day has now come and it’s happening through me.”  This is the point of that line, cryptic to us, but that was ever so clear to those angry Pharisees: “Before Abraham was, I am.”  Jesus identifies himself with the promises of God—with God’s word.  “I am” is the meaning behind the divine name, Yahweh.  John must have had this in mind when he penned the words of his prologue, “The word become flesh”.  This is why Jesus can claim not only such a close association with the Father, but that to obey and follow him as Messiah is the criteria for inheriting the promises of God and, therefore, of being his true people, his true Israel.

The iudica theme of the day, the call for God’s vindication, runs like a thread through the Gospel.  Already, the Jews are issuing a false judgement against Jesus, foreshadowing the events of Passiontide.  But Jesus points them to the Father.  He is the only judge who matters.  He will vindicate his son and overturn the false verdict of the Jews.  And this is how the Lord’s deliverance will come to Israel.  As the Father vindicates Jesus and raises him to life, so he will vindicate the people who keep Jesus’ word (to use the language of verse 52).  As death has no hold over him, neither will death have a hold over his people.

Now today’s Epistle.  The book of Hebrews was written anonymously and debate over who its author may have been is not likely to be settled any time soon.  There are good reasons to believe it wasn’t St. Paul, but there are also reasons to think it could have been.  The book was written to Jewish believers and explains the good news about Jesus in light of the old covenant.  That old covenant was familiar territory and many of the first Jewish Christians struggled to understand it in light of Jesus.  After his conversion, Paul spent a good bit of time in solitude, working through these issues and came back having worked these matters out for himself and ready to help the rest of the Church to do the same.  In many ways, Hebrews seems to work through what must have been Paul’s thought process or something very much like it.

In any case, the Church puts this selection from Hebrew before us this Sunday so that we will better understand the Passion of Jesus as it unfolds over the next two weeks.  Specifically, the writer of Hebrews explains what the death of Jesus has done for his people in light of the sacrifices of the old covenant.  Let’s read our text again, Hebrews 9:11-15.

  But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

  Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

The sacrificial system was at the centre of Jewish life under the old covenant and, particularly, the idea of atonement for sins by blood.  Of course, the difficulty for many people was that the sacrificial system seemed to work just fine as it was.  Yes, you had to make sacrifices repeatedly because sin still happened, but they just accepted that this is how things were and how they always would be and the Lord be praised for providing a means of redemption.  Apart from that well-known passage, Isaiah 53:10, which speaks of the sacrificial death of God’s “suffering servant”, no one ever considered that this system might one day be superseded by something better, let alone that this might happen through the self-sacrificial offering of one of the priests, or even by God himself.  Jesus seems to be the first person to have come to this conclusion and even his own disciples struggled to grasp it conceptually.  And yet once it happened, there it was.  But people still struggled to understand it.  Jesus walked his friends through the Old Testament scriptures that first Easter as they travelled the Road to Emmaus and they understood.  Paul met the risen Jesus and understood as well, although it took working through the implications of accepting that Jesus really was the Messiah for it to become plain as day.  But this realisation that the old covenant sacrifices were preparing Israel for Jesus and for the cross is one of those things that once you see it, you just can’t unsee it.  Hebrews was written so that all God’s people would finally see it for good.

Perhaps the difficulty began with the Jewish understanding of the tabernacle and later the temple.  The tabernacle was the greatest place on earth, because it was the one place on earth that wasn’t simply “earth”.  The tabernacle was the one place where earth and heaven intersected, where human beings could go to encounter the presence of God.  How could anything top that?  And yet the writer of Hebrews tells us, going back to Chapter 8, that the tabernacle was really only a temporary stand-in for the heavenly sanctuary, for the actual dwelling of God, so holy no human could ever approach.  But we can draw near, as the Israelites discovered, through the work of priestly mediators who entered first bearing the sacrifices of the people.  Similarly, it was difficult for Jewish people to comprehend a better sacrifice, but that’s just what Hebrews tells us Jesus is.  He entered, not into the earthly tabernacle, but into the heavenly—directly into the presence of God—and he went in on our behalf, not bearing the blood of bulls or goats, but bearing his own blood.

Even if no one saw it coming, the old covenant was preparing God’s people for all of this.  We see this preparatory role in the old covenant sacrifices as well.  The sacrifices taught God’s people that sin and redemption from it are serious business.  It costs the sacrifice of something valuable.  The blood poured out from those animals reminded the people that the “wages of sin is death”, but that God mercifully accepts the death of another on our behalf.  That the Lord ordained the sacrificial system was also a powerful reminder that God desires his people to live in his presence and wants us to be forgiven, cleansed, and made holy.  Again, no one saw it coming, but once Jesus had died and been raised from death, it became impossible not to see that those sacrifices were preparing Gods’ people for Jesus.  He took up Israel’s role and identity himself and offered himself as a once-for-all and perfect sacrifice for their sins filling the role of both priest and victim.

Finally, Jesus and the old covenant are contrasted in terms of the efficacy of the sacrifice.  The old covenant sacrifices purified the flesh, but the underlying problem of the sinful heart remained.  This simple predicament should have had Israel looking for a better sacrifice from the beginning, but again, it actually took that better sacrifice taking place before anyone understood.  Throughout her story, the faithful of Israel lamented the nation’s predicament.  No amount of sacrifices ever set Israel’s heart right.  The people longed for the day that the prophets foretold, a day when the Lord would pour out his Spirit to set the hearts of Israel right once and for all.  In Jesus it finally happened: a perfect sacrifice that purifies not only the flesh, but that also purifies the hearts of his people and makes them holy.  Our passage here speaks of Jesus offering himself a sacrifice “through the eternal Spirit”—likely a reference to Isaiah 42:1 and to the anointing of the Spirit that took place at Jesus’ baptism—but it is difficult to read of Jesus’ Spirit-empowered ministry and not see the way in which, through him, the same Spirit has been poured into the hearts of his people.  In this way, Jesus has purified our consciences—purified us where it really matters so as to transform our affections—that we might set aside “dead works” to serve the living God.

“Dead works” likely refers to those old covenant sacrifices and purity codes that, while good and God-given, could never fully deal with the problem of sin and death.  The phrase may also include the old pagan practises of gentile converts, although the emphasis is clearly on the sacrificial system of the old covenant.  The point isn’t that the old covenant was bad.  It was astoundingly good.  Those “dead works” maintained Israel’s communion with the Lord.  The point here is to contrast the old and the new.  A few years ago when I preached on this passage, I had two of my lanterns with me: an old one my family used to use that I had always thought was plenty bright, and another more recent one that is retina-scorthingly bright.  The old was good, but it now seems so dim in light of the newer, brighter one.  So the writer here uses “dead works” to contrast with “living God”.  In Jesus, God’s people have finally been freed from the bondage of sin and death to live in the presence of God and as stewards of his life.  Our vocation is the vocation that God gave to Abraham and his descendants, but now made possible as never before as Jesus and the Spirit have purified us from the inside out.

I want to bring this back to that old introit from Psalm 43.  The Psalmist prayed, “Give sentence with me, O God.”  Judge me.  That’s a dangerous thing for a human being to pray.  God judges sin and sinners and we’re sinners and our lives are full of sin.  We deserve death.  But thanks be to God that by our union with Jesus, we can cry out in faith with the Psalmist: “Judge me.” And we can be sure that through the merits of Jesus our Lord God’s judgement will be our vindication.

Let’s pray:

O Almighty God, Who hast sent Thy Son Jesus Christ to be an High Priest of good things to come, and by His own Blood to enter in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us; mercifully look upon Thy people, that by the same Blood of our Saviour, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot unto Thee, our consciences may be purged from dead works, to serve Thee, the living God, that we may receive the promise of eternal inheritance, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Galatians 4:21-31 & St. John 6:1-14

by William Klock

As we walk through the season of Lent and read the lessons set out for us each Sunday, it’s helpful to remember why these specific passages from the Epistle and Gospels were chosen.  Their history goes back about a millennium and a half and sometimes even further than that.  They go back to the days when Lent was a time set aside for preparing new converts for their baptism at Easter.  Committing oneself to Jesus and to the Church was no small thing.  For many the cost was great.  Jewish converts were often kicked out of the synagogues and shunned by their fellow Jews.  Gentile converts were accused of being disloyal and subversive—even of being atheists, because in a world full of gods, to limit your worship to only one might as well have been atheism.  Persecution was not uncommon and when it came, more than a few converts denied their faith in Jesus to save their reputation or status or to save them from martyrdom.  And so this time was set aside to make sure new converts knew what it really meant to be a Christian, that they knew it was a costly commitment, and that they knew it had to be a commitment without compromise—even in the face of death.

Today the lessons remind us that Jesus has set us free from our bondage to sin and death.  It’s easy to take that freedom for granted.  Maybe we’ve been Christians our whole lives and just don’t have the experience of knowing what it’s like to be in that kind of bondage.  Others may have become Christians later in life, btu it’s been long enough they’ve forgotten.  Galatians—the context of our Epistle today—was written by Paul to a group of Christians who were being told they needed to go back to living under the Jewish law if they were going truly be faithful to Jesus—to abandon faith as the marker of the people of God and instead to find assurance in circumcision, diet, and Sabbath observance.  Whatever the reasons, however it manifests itself, it’s to take for granted the freedom Jesus has given us.  It’s like the Israelites during the Exodus.  Every time life in the wilderness was difficult, they complained and grumbled against the Lord and started talking about how they’d had it better back in Egypt when they were slaves.  They forsook their salvation.  So today’s lessons remind us that Jesus has set us free and warn us against taking our salvation for granted and against going back to the life we left behind.

So let’s begin with our Gospel from the sixth chapter of John:

After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.  And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.  Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples.  Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.  (St. John 6:1-4)

This chapter is dominated by the theme of Passover and of the Passover bread.  John notes that these events took place at the time of Passover.  Jesus will go on to speak of the “bread from heaven” beginning at verse 22.  John means for us to recall the events of the Exodus, particularly the Lord’s provision of manna for the Israelites in the wilderness.  Look at verse 5:

Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”

So it’s Passover time and they’re in the wilderness.  And there’s nothing to eat.  This should all sound very familiar to people whose identity was steeped in the Exodus story.  John makes a point of stressing the lack of food.

Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.”  One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?”  (St. John 6:7-8)

As far as the disciples can tell, the situation is hopeless.  Two hundred denarii was a significant chunk of change.  One commentator calculates that it would have bought about 2000 half-pound loaves of bread—enough for about a small handful of bread per man.  But it wasn’t just the men.  There were women and children there, too.  John’s point is that even such a large sum of money would have barely provided crumbs for the crowd.  And if two hundred denarii wouldn’t cut it, what’s Jesus going to do with five loaves and two fish?  That wouldn’t even feed the disciples.  It’s Israel, hungry in the wilderness, all over again.  And, or course, anyone who knows the story of Israel in the wilderness should know to expect Jesus to do something amazing at this point.  That’s just what he does.  John goes on:

Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place.  So the men sat down, about five thousand in number.  Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.  So also the fish, as much as they wanted.  (St. John 6:10-11)

Jesus asks them sit and he takes that little bit of food, gives thanks—nothing spectacular, just a typical, simple meal blessing acknowledging the Lord’s provision—and he begins to divide the bread and fish as the disciples distribute it.  And the Lord provides—and then some.  Look at verses 12-14:

And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.”  So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.  When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”

The Lord exceeds what he provided to the Israelites in the wilderness.  Remember that when he provided manna there were no leftovers, but here there are twelve baskets remaining.  The miracle points to the nature of Jesus ministry as a new exodus, but in exceeding the miracle of the manna, it also highlights that this new exodus will exceed the old in its scope.  Similarly, while the miracle puts Jesus in the role of Moses, it also points to the fact that in this role he will exceed the greatness of Moses.

The Gospel climaxes with the acclamation of the people: “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world.”  This is a reference to Deuteronomy 18 and the promise that another would come, like Moses, to set Israel to rights, to lead the people from slavery to freedom.  Today’s Gospel might seem to end prematurely, leaving out verse 15.  In the conclusion of John’s telling of the event, the people draw the clear connection between “Prophet” and “Messiah”.  They attempt to seize Jesus so that they can usher him straight to his throne as King.  But the omission of verse 15 from the Gospel is deliberate and ensures that we are left on a clear messianic note with Jesus acknowledged as filling the shoes of Moses.  The new exodus is about to take place and we are reminded of Jesus’ exhortation in last Sunday’s Gospel.  Acclamation is not enough.  To have a share in this exodus and in the age to come, we must be willing to submit to Jesus in obedience.

Now, let’s look at our Epistle from Galatians.  We start with the exodus that our Gospel points towards and the truth that Jesus has set us free.  He has led us in an exodus from our bondage to sin and death.  And like the Exodus from Egypt, we’re going to spend some time in the wilderness.  Jesus doesn’t lead us straight to the promised land.  But life in the wilderness isn’t easy.  It might be free, but it’s not easy.  Like the Israelites, we take for granted what God has done and we long for the fleshpots of Egypt.  It’s stupid, but we do it—one reason Jesus describes us so often as sheep.  Sheep aren’t very smart.  They need a shepherd to keep them in line.  Anyway, there were some false shepherd in the Galatian churches and they were leading the sheep astray.  We call them the “Judaisers”—they may have been missionaries from Jerusalem.

Paul had taught these gentile converts that, through their union by faith with Jesus, they had become children of Abraham and heirs of God’s promises to Israel.  But now a group of missionaries had got the ear of these churches and they claimed that Paul hadn’t given them the full gospel.  (Always beware those who claim to have the “full gospel”.)  No, they claimed, for gentiles to become children of Abraham, they had to follow the law.  In particular, they made a point of insisting on circumcision, the physical sign in the flesh that marked out a Jew.  Of course, they claimed to have the law on their side.

Paul counters by going to the law himself, specifically to the story of Sarah and Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac recorded in Genesis 16 and 21.  In Genesis 15 the Lord had promised a son to Abraham.  Seeing that she was barren, his wife Sarah suggested to him that he sire a son by her slavegirl, Hagar.  This was a common custom of the time, but it was not the Lord’s plan.  It backfired badly on Abraham and on his whole family.  When she became pregnant, Hagar lorded it over her barren mistress.  This prompted Sarah to mistreat Hagar, who ran away, but returned and bore a son, Ishmael.  In time Sarah bore her own son, Isaac, and eventually insisted that Hagar and Ishmael be banished from the camp.  Ishmael became the father of the Arab tribes and Isaac the father of Jacob and Esau.

It seems likely that the Judaisers were using this story to make their argument, claiming that the gentile Christians were akin to Ishmael and, therefore, outsiders.  In order to become part of the the true and free family of God, these Jewish converts needed to be circumcised and to commit to living according to the law.  Paul now turns the argument around and uses it against the Judaisers.  Look at what he writes to them in verses 21-24:

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?  For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman.  But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise.  Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants.

So there are, indeed, two families, but the Judaisers have it the wrong way around who is the slave and who is the free.  One of these families was born of the flesh and the other of God’s promise.  Isaac was the child born of God’s promise.  Ishmael was the child born of the flesh, the child produced when Abraham tried to take matters into his own hands instead of waiting on the Lord.

So far the Judaisers would have been in agreement with Paul.  But now, he writes, let’s look at these two families after an allegorical fashion and we’ll follow the promise.  These families correspond to two covenants.  It would be easy at this point to understand Paul to be referring to the old covenant and the new here, Judaism versus Christianity, so to speak.  But that’s not quite it.  Instead, he’s referring to the position of the Judaisers and his own position.  Look at verses 24-27:

One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar.  Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.  But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.  For it is written,

          “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;

                  break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!

          For the children of the desolate one will be more

                  than those of the one who has a husband.”

One of these covenants is putting people in bondage.  The Judaisers would have said this was the one telling gentiles they could be part of the people of God apart from the Jewish law.  But Paul flips that around.  No, he says, the folks trying to yoke gentiles with the law—Mt. Sinai—they’re the ones bearing children for slavery.  This is Hagar, the slavegirl, and Paul associates her with Sinai and the law.  This would have caught the attention of the Judaisers who likely considered it tantamount to blasphemy.  Paul is turning everything upside down, but he’s not done making his point yet.  He began, “Do you not listen to the law?”  Now he’s going to make it clear what the law—the story of Israel and the Lord’s promises to her—actually does say.  Those pushing the law are, like Hagar, making converts born into a form of slavery, not the freedom established by Jesus.  They, he says, correspond to the present Jerusalem—maybe a reference to the unbelieving Jews, but more likely a reference to those who sent these Judaising missionaries to Galatia and the authority behind their perverted gospel.  In contrast, Paul appeals to the Jerusalem yet to come, the Jerusalem still above, the Jerusalem that will one day descend when heaven and earth are rejoined.  This heavenly Jerusalem is Paul’s authority.  This is the Jerusalem of God’s promise.  Paul quotes Isaiah 54, the promise of the Lord to a then barren Jerusalem that one day she would bear a multitude of children.  Paul understands the fulfilment of this promise to Jerusalem as a fulfilment of the Lord’s promise to Abraham.  Through Isaac, Abraham would become a great people, a people who would be a light to the nations and through whom the nations would one day be brought to Israel’s God in faith, nations that would one day be incorporated into the people of God.  The gentile believers were the fulfilment of that promise and thus the true heirs of God’s promise to Abraham.  They were the free children born of Sarah, despite having no connection with the law.  Paul writes in verse 28:

Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.

 

The promise comes by faith, not by the torah, not by the law.  This is the amazing thing about the new covenant.  As we see throughout the Gospels, not least in our Gospel today, it’s belief and faith in Jesus as Messiah that becomes the defining mark of the people of God.  As Paul says in Romans, it was really that way all along.  Our Gospel next week will stress this, that point in John’s Gospel where Jesus stresses that Abraham rejoiced to see his day—Jesus’ day as the fulfilment of the Lord’s promises to him.  The torah itself was never the defining mark of the people of God.  Faith was.  Torah was simply the way of life for those people of faith.  Torah was never the goal; Jesus was.  He is the fulfilment of it all and that means that no one need live under the old law to part of the new covenant people of God.  Now, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t act and live in a certain way.  The hallmark of the people of God is the indwelling Spirit of God who renews our minds and regenerates our hearts.  He bears fruit in us: things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control.  But again, we are not God’s people because we bear these fruit anymore than the old Israel was God’s people because they were circumcised, ate a certain way, and observed the Sabbath.  Faith is the defining factor that marks us out as God’s people.

So having established that the Judaisers are the ones putting their converts in bondage, Paul continues to draw on the story of Hagar and Sarah.  What ought the Galatians to do with these false teachers who would rob them of their free status in Jesus and put them back into bondage?  Look at verses 29-31:

But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now.  But what does the Scripture say?  “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.”  So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.

“Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman,” he writes.  Get rid of them, for they proclaim a false gospel!

Paul makes a powerful exhortation here.  We must follow Jesus in his new exodus and we must follow him all the way.  For any number of reasons, life following him will be difficult.  As the Israelites faced hardship and temptation in the wilderness, so will we.  But the Lord has shown that he will provide for our needs.  He provided for Israel in the wilderness and he will provide for us through Jesus and the Spirit.  When we are tempted to turn back to Egypt, we must remember that we are inheritors of the Lord’s promise and that they are not merely bare promises.  He demonstrated his faithfulness repeatedly to his people down through the ages and finally in the resurrection of Jesus and the pouring out of his Spirit.  He has given us every reason to trust in him and not to stray from the difficult path to the New Jerusalem.  Let us stay the course.

Let’s pray: Almighty God who has made a covenant of unspeakable grace and mercy with us in Christ Jesus, and conveyed unto us therein an heavenly inheritance upon sincere obedience to his commands, which is our reasonable service; grant that we may evermore rejoice in thee, and walk worthy of our holy calling, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

Ephesians 5:1-14 & St. Luke 11:14-28

by William Klock

In the ancient Church this Sunday marked the beginning of an intensive period of preparation for those to be baptised at Easter.  This was sort of the point from which there was no turning back.  This is what we read in The Apostolic Tradition, dating to the Second or Third Century:

They who are to be set apart for baptism shall be chosen after their lives have been examined: whether they have lived soberly, whether they have honoured the widows, whether they have visited the sick, whether they have been active in well-doing. When their sponsors have testified that they have done these things, then let them hear the Gospel. Then from the time that they are separated from the other catechumens, hands shall be laid upon them daily in exorcism and, as the day of their baptism draws near, the bishop himself shall exorcise each one of them that he may be personally assured of their purity. Then, if there is any of them who is not good or pure, he shall be put aside as not having heard the word in faith; for it is never possible for the alien to be concealed.[1]

 

Our Epistle and Gospel accordingly emphasise the commitment made by the catechumens to follow Jesus.

In the Gospel Jesus gives us a dramatic picture of a man possessed by a demon.  The demon is cast out—sent packing.  Jesus describes the demon in hopeless desperation looking for a new home—as if he were wandering the wilderness.  But he finds nothing.  Eventually he gives up.  He goes back to the man who had been exorcised and sees that someone has “cleaned house” while he’s been gone.  The man looks more attractive than ever, so the demon goes out, finds seven of his friends who are also looking for a home, and brings them back to afflict this poor man.  As Jesus says, “The last state of that man is worse than the first.”

Now, the point of Jesus’ story isn’t to give us a theology of demon possession or exorcism.  The story is about Israel and Jesus point is that something drastic had to change.  God’s people had gone off the rails.  As we read in last week’s Gospel, Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of Israel—he came to get God’s people back on track with the ministry and the mission the Lord had given them through Abraham.  Do you remember what that was?  It was to be a light to the nations.  And for the most part, down through her history, Israel had failed.  There had been many different reform movements and reformers through the years.  Some were superficial and some went deep, some were successful and some weren’t.  But none of them ever manage to set Israel straight permanently.  Eventually she went off the rails again and each time it got worse, just as the man in the story was worse after the house-cleaning than before.  Again, something needed to change and that’s what Jesus came to do.  In Jesus the God of Israel returned to his people, not just to rebuke them for their sins, not even just to forgive them for those sins, but to rebuke, to forgive, and—most importantly—to make them his dwelling place, to incorporate them into his life and to transform them from the inside out.

In Jesus we see the faithfulness of God, because in Jesus we see his promises to Israel—and through Israel to the nations—fulfilled.  Jesus provides forgiveness for all the past failures and offers a way of life that sets God’s people back on course for the kingdom and it all centres on and in Jesus himself.  St. Paul describes this new life and this new way of living—this new way of being Israel—in our Epistle today from Ephesians.  Our passage is lifted from the middle of a longer section that begins with Paul describing what some call his “put off/put on” principle.  It’s a principle we see in the story of the demon-possessed man in the Gospel.  When it comes to God, when it comes to his kingdom, when it comes to our loyalties there is no neutral ground.  Again, Jesus didn’t come to forgive our sins so that we can start over with God and hopefully get it right this time.  That won’t work.  We’d just make a mess of things all over again.  No.  Jesus came to forgive and to fix what is broken in us.  In forgiving us he makes us right with God so that by the gift of the Holy Spirit he may then incorporate us into the life of God.  The Spirit regenerates our hearts, turning them from self and sin back to God and to holiness.  The Spirit renews our minds, setting them too on the things of God.  And the Spirit, in uniting us to the life of God, gives back to us the gift of life.  Adam was given that gift, but in sinning he rejected it, he was cut off from the life of God and cast out of his presence and subjected again to death.  But in the Spirit we are connected with that life again, giving us a foretaste of the resurrection that awaits all those who are in Jesus.  And so Paul insists: We’ve got to put off the old and put on the new. It’s either the old, sinful self-centred self or the new Jesus-centred self.  There’s nothing between.  There’s no neutral state.  If you want to participate in life in Christ, you’ve got to put off the old life centred on self and put on this new life that Jesus has made possible.

The Scriptures have all sorts of different ways of describing and illustrating this life.  Jesus talks about himself as a vine and about us as the branches that were once dead wood, but are now grafted in.  In other places he talks about roots and trees and about branches that fail to bear fruit being pruned off and other branches being grafted in so that they can bear fruit.  St. Paul likes to use the image of the body: Jesus is the head and we, his people, his Church, are all the various and essential constituent parts.  But here in this passage about putting off and putting on Paul uses the powerful image of adoption.  Look at Ephesians 5:1-2:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

As I said, our Epistle begins into the middle of a longer discussion.  The “therefore” follows Paul’s admonitions in the second half of Chapter 4.  In 4:17 he writes: “Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live.”  He then goes on to talk about all sorts of sin and sinful thinking: licentiousness, greed, stealing, laziness, dirty talk, bitterness, fighting, and anger.  This is how the Gentiles live, but Jesus has given us new life.  He’s incorporated us into Israel—into God’s people.  (Remember that he’s writing Ephesians to Gentile Greeks.)  And now Paul pauses for a minute to remind us why.  Why do we need to put off those old ways and put on new ways of life?  He refers to it as imitating God—allowing our character to be shaped by his character and he tells us that we need to do this because we’ve been made his children.  It’s the imagery of adoption.

Brothers and Sisters, consider this: Jesus is God’s Son.  If we are in him—taking hold of him in faith not just for forgiveness, but for life itself—then that makes us by adoption sons and daughters of God as well.  In Jesus we are adopted into God’s family.  In Jesus we are made children of God.  And it has been true of God’s family—his children—from the beginning that they are called to live like the family, to imitate God their Father.  Going all the way back to Israel’s time in the wilderness as she was gathered around Mt. Sinai where God gave his law to Moses.  It was there at Sinai, after the Lord had rescued Israel from Egypt, that he made her his people.  In Leviticus 19:2 he declared through Moses: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.”  God’s people are to be holy because God himself is holy.  The torah—the law—was given to Israel to show her what that holiness looked like.

Now in Jesus the law is fulfilled.  Paul now says to be imitators of God because we are his children and we do that best by looking to the example of Jesus.  What does holiness look like?  In Jesus we see that it looks like love—specifically, love in action.  And love in action manifests itself supremely in sacrifice.  The best example of holiness that Paul can think of is the sacrifice of Jesus.  In Jesus the Word of God became incarnate, humbling himself and taking on our human form, being born of a virgin, being scorned, rejected, humiliated, and finally crucified—all for the sake of men and women who were his rebellious enemies.  Jesus’ example of loving sacrifice is the embodiment of holiness.  In the temple the smoke that rose from the sacrifices as they were burnt on the altar was symbolic of their being pleasing to God and as Paul describes Jesus’ loving sacrifice in those same terms: a fragrant offering, a fragrant sacrifice.  Again, in Jesus we see what true love looks like and in that true love we see true holiness.

Is sacrificial love hard?  Of course.  It’s especially hard when we realise that this isn’t just about sacrificially loving the people we already naturally love, but that we’re also called to sacrificially love our enemies and the people who have hurt us.  We’re called to sacrifice our old way of sinful and self-centred life for the sake of God, which means giving up so many things we love and so many things in which we used to find security.  It’s hard.  I don’t know anyone who has yet to perfect it.  And yet it shouldn’t be a chore.  It shouldn’t be a dreary duty.  And that’s because grace is at the heart of it.  Brothers and Sisters, we are called to love sacrificially because in Jesus God has loved us sacrificially—giving his life for our sake—for the sake of his own enemies.  As his children, sacrificial love should be our nature.  But this is just it.  This is why it’s so important that we consciously put off the old self and put on the new.  We are not capable of sacrificial love on our own.  It’s part of the character that comes with life in Jesus.  It’s part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  And so we have to cooperate with the Spirit, we have to cultivate the life of Jesus the Spirit makes possible.  The more we live in, the more we rely on, the more we cultivate the grace of God in our lives—that unmerited favour that comes to us through the cross of Christ—the more gracious our character will become and the more grace will infuse our nature and our character.  This is why Paul stresses our duty to love in terms of the love Jesus has shown us—reminding us of the loving grace we have been shown ourselves.  This is the cross-centred, this is the Jesus-centred life with God’s grace always at the centre of everything and always shaping our thoughts and our actions.

Now, whenever we talk about “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” we need to remember grace, we need to remember the cross, we need to remember Jesus—we need to remember that we don’t earn or merit forgiveness or life by doing or by not doing.  Forgiveness and life are gifts of grace.  Paul’s been talking about “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” and he’s interjected this point about love and grace here, reminding us that we aren’t God’s people because we act a certain way.  Absolutely not.  We act a certain because we are God’s people.  We aren’t Christians because we’re holy.  We’re holy because we’re Christians.  And with that he carries on in verse 3:

 

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.  Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.  For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. (Ephesians 5:3-6)

The first two things Paul lists as being contrary to this life of loving sacrifice are sexual immorality and covetousness or greed.  Why these two?  Because of all the sins Paul could have listed, these two are the most inherently idolatrous; these two are the most at odds with the character of God and the character of the Christian.  Fertility cults were a major part of pagan worship and often involved “sacred” prostitution.  Some temples were little more than brothels.  In the Old Testament this word for sexual immorality, porneia, was often used to describe Israel in her unfaithfulness, prostituting herself to foreign, pagan idols.  In the New Testament the Church is described as the bride of Christ.  To fall back into our old, sinful ways is to be unfaithful to our Lord.  And throughout Scripture, marital fidelity is the picture often used of God’s love for his people and the love God’s people should have for him.  Greed boils down to idolatry as well and it characterizes the opposite of the sacrificial love we see in Jesus.  Love gives everything it has, but greed is never happy and insists on taking and accumulating more.  Greed and sexual immorality are so utterly contrary to the character of God and his children that we should find it absolutely scandalous that either of these sins might be connected with the Church, with the people of God.

In fact, Paul warns: sexual immorality and greed are the characteristics of idolaters and since idolaters by definition reject God, such people have no inheritance in God’s kingdom.  In fact, they stand in his wrath .  They are not and have no right to call themselves sons and daughters of God.  And Paul warns: It’s not just that sexual immorality and greed should not be part of our character, but that we should have nothing to do with those who are characterized by sexual immorality and greed.

This is first a call for the Church to exercise discipline when it comes to her own members.  The Church cannot turn a blind eye to churchgoers who are unrepentantly greedy or unrepentantly immoral sexually.  For their own sake, those whose character is contrary to their profession of faith must be held accountable even to the point of being put out of the Church if they persist in sin and refuse to repent.  Turning a blind eye to their sin means giving them false assurance of salvation.  This is what church discipline is about.  It’s not punitive; it’s meant to be redeeming and reconciling.

Second, while being light in the darkness means engaging with those lost in the dark, as Christians we must be careful not to fall back into darkness ourselves.  It means trusting in Jesus and committing ourselves to a life and an agenda of holiness in imitation of our Father, rather than trusting in or collaborating with the darkness that so permeates the business and political spheres around us.  Remember, the cross and the empty tomb declare that the days of this present evil age are numbered.  Jesus is Lord and his kingdom is breaking into the world.  In light of that knowledge it is foolish for Christians to invest themselves and to trust in a system that is passing away.  To do so is a betrayal of our citizenship in God’s kingdom.  It’s a betrayal of the family into which we’ve been adopted.  We need to remember Paul’s warning to have nothing to do with darkness.

This is the sort of life we’re called to put off as we find new life, new identity, new character in Jesus.  Paul goes on in verse 7:

Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.  Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.  For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.  But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. (Ephesians 5:7-14a)

Notice, it’s not just that at one time we were in the dark and have now been brought into the light.  That’s true, but Paul says something even more striking: We were once darkness ourselves, but now through the Lord Jesus we are ourselves light.  Again, our character has been utterly and completely transformed.  We were dead; in Jesus we are alive.  We were darkness; in Jesus we are light.  We were once greedy, selfish sinners; in Jesus our lives are characterized—or should be characterised—by the same sacrificial love he has shown to us.  And so instead of taking part in works of darkness, instead of backing the darkness, we are called to bear the fruit of light.  Paul says that these are the things that are good and right and true.  Through the prophet Micah the Lord called Israel as his people to reflect his own character.  They were to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.  That’s a good place to start.  We’re to seek out, Paul says—to discern—what is pleasing to the Lord and for that we have the Scriptures.  In the Bible we have the witness to God’s own character which he calls us to imitate.  We have the witness of the prophets as they called Israel to holiness, to justice, and to mercy.  And in the New Testament we have the example of Jesus which Paul draws on here.  It’s impossible to be darkness and light at the same time, so put off the works of darkness and put on Christ—put on the light.

And our light should have an impact on the darkness.  The ugly reality of evil hides under cover of the darkness, but as light drives the darkness away it exposes evil and all its ugliness.  In the presence of light evil has no place to hide and no way to deny its ugliness.  In verse 14 Paul says something difficult—Bible scholars disagree on the precise point he’s making when he says that “anything that becomes visible is light”, but the gist seems to be that as much as evil hates to be exposed, that exposure is what brings redemption.  J.B. Phillips puts it this way in his paraphrase:

For light is capable of “showing up” everything for what it really is.  It is even possible (after all, it happened with you!) for light to turn the thing it shines upon into light also.

 

At one point each of us was laid bare to the soul by the light and that being laid bare moved us to repentance and to faith.  Now it’s our duty to be the light that lays darkness bare and calls others to repentance and faith.  And so Paul finishes with what was probably a hymn sung at Easter or at baptisms:

Therefore it says,

“Awake, O sleeper,

         and arise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14b)

Each of us was once asleep—unaware—of our death and subjection to sin, but the light of Christ was shone us.  It cut through the darkness and laid bare our sin, but in it too we heard the proclamation of the Good News: that Jesus is Lord.  He died to conquer sin and he rose to conquer death.  That light moved each of us to turn away from our sin and to take hold of Jesus in faith for the forgiveness and life he gives.  And with that Paul brings us full-circle.  In Jesus we have new life.  In Jesus we’ve been adopted as sons and daughters of God.  In Jesus we’ve been given new character.  In Jesus we who were once darkness have been made light.  Dear friends, if you are still asleep, open your eyes to the light.  As painful as it is, let the light expose your sin so that you can repent and turn instead to Jesus.  Take hold of the light in faith and become light yourself.

If you have taken hold of Jesus in faith, remember who and what he has made you.  In your baptism Jesus has plunged you into the Holy Spirit.  You are light, not darkness.  Your character has been transformed.  Have nothing to do with the darkness.  Have nothing to do with the sin that hides under its cover.  Put off the old man or the old woman and put on Jesus Christ out of gratitude for the sacrificial love that God has shown you in Jesus and knowing that your character of light is meant to glorify God and it’s meant to witness Jesus to others who are still caught in the dark.

Let us pray: Almighty God, consider the heartfelt desires of your servants, we pray,  and stretch out the right hand of your majesty to defend us against all our enemies, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

[1] Ap. Trad. XX.1-4

A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

St. Matthew 15:21-28

by William Klock

Imagine having a sick child.  You’ve done everything you can think of to help her and she’s still sick.  And then you hear that Jesus is in town.  People say he’s the son of God.  He’s healed so many other people.  I’ll go and ask him for help.  For the first time you feel hope.  Jesus can heal her.  I have faith.  And so you go out and find Jesus as he and his entourage our making their way through town.  You call out to him for help, but he keeps walking.  Jesus’ friends tell you to go away, but you keep calling out to Jesus for help.  Finally, he stops, he turns to you, and he tells you that he can’t help you.  He wasn’t sent to help you and that to do so would be like a father throwing the bread meant for his children to the dogs.

A lot of people would say that this doesn’t sound very much like Jesus.  Refusing to help someone in need?  Calling her and her people dogs?  But it’s right here in St. Matthew’s Gospel.  Look again at Matthew 15:21-28:

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.  And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.”  But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.”  He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”  And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith!  Be it done for you as you desire.”  And her daughter was healed instantly.

 

“Have mercy on me!” she says.  And he responds, “I can’t.  You’re not an Israelite.  It’d be like throwing a starving child’s bread to the dogs.”  Yes, Jesus eventually capitulates, but what’s going on here?  This story is often listed among the “hard passages” of the Bible.  Some people have used to argue that Jesus was a racist.  So what’s going on here?

Matthew’s main purpose in telling us this story is to point us to Jesus’ mission.  Matthew reminds us that Jesus didn’t parachute into history to save humanity and the world at a random time and place.  There’s been a tendency in the Church to abstract Jesus’ ministry.  He’s is the Saviour of the world after all, and so we start thinking that if he’d wanted to he could have come at any time and any place to do his saving work, but in doing that we forget that—no—he came and he had to come where and when he did because Jesus is part of a bigger story.

Some people explain away the difficulty here by saying that Jesus was testing this woman to see how persistent her faith was.  It’s possible.  And yet he doesn’t initially address her.  When he says that he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel, he’s reminding his disciples why his mission isn’t to the gentiles, not offering the woman an explanation.  It’s possible that it was a test, but I think a better explanation is that that Jesus really was called to minister to the lost sheep of Israel and, over the course of his ministry so far, the massive scope of his task has set in.  He’s even told his disciples in 10:23 that they won’t have made it through all the towns before the time is up.  That’s when Jesus lamented that the harvest was great, but the labourers few.  His mission was to Israel.  It’s not that the occasional gentile couldn’t be part of it, but that there just wasn’t enough time.  In denying this woman, Jesus was simply being faithful to his calling.

But why was Jesus’ ministry so specific?  “For God so loved the world,” we say, and we struggle to reconcile this with that.  And the reason this is troubling for us is because we’ve forgotten the story.  Not this short story and not even just the story of the gospels, but the big story, the story of Israel, the story of the people of God that runs from Genesis to Revelation.  Again, we tend to lift Jesus out of his historical and Jewish context, out of his First Century context, which means lifting him out of the story of Israel—which again means lifting him out of the Genesis to Revelation story.  What our Gospel today shows us is Jesus right in the middle of the story.

Now, it’s true: Jesus did not come to the gentiles.  Yes, some gentiles—a few—came to him, but Jesus did not come to the gentiles.  Jesus came to Israel.  Jesus is Israel’s Messiah.  “But again,” we protest, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…”  Yes.  Jesus brings salvation for all, but we need to first understand that he does so as Israel’s Messiah.  Jesus stresses it right here: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  And in saying that he is not saying that he came to some of the house of Israel who were lost, but that he came to Israel because Israel—the whole people—was lost.  They were sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus came to bring the kingdom that had been promised to Israel through Abraham and through David.  There were aspects of that kingdom that were new and different, but Jesus’ kingdom is built firmly and immovably on the covenant and the promises the Lord had made with Israel down through the ages from Abraham’s time.  He had called Israel to be his people.  He had promised to be their God.  He had rescued Israel and set her apart that he might show her his blessings and give her his word and he did it all so that she could then share that blessing and share that word with the gentile nations.  Remember that Jesus stressed in the Sermon on the Mount that he had come not to abolish the law—not to abolish anything God had promised or covenanted or established with Israel—but to fulfil it.  Jesus didn’t come to do away with Israel.  Many Christians down through history have said that because of Israel’s faithlessness God cast her aside to start over with the gentiles and the Church.  No.  On the other extreme you’ve got the Dispensationalists—very prevalent teaching in North American Evangelicalism—that has Jesus coming and putting Israel on hold while the Lord saves the gentiles and builds a Church.  Eventually, they say, God will be finished with the gentiles, the Church will be completed and then “raptured” out of the world, and the Lord will then pickup where he left off with Israel.  Again, no.  Jesus didn’t come to abolish the idea of God electing a special people, nor did he come to divide the people of God with Israel on the one hand and the Church on the other.  From day one with Abraham God had made clear that his restoration of the world and his restoration of humanity was going to happen through Israel.  Israel may have made a lot of mistakes, fallen into idolatry, failed to live the law, failed to be a light to the nations, but the Lord wasn’t giving up.  The Church isn’t “Plan B” implemented when “Plan A”, Israel, failed.

Did gentiles need redemption?  By all means, yes!  But again, God’s plan was always to work through Israel and so the ministry of the Messiah had first to be for Israel.  Israel had misinterpreted the message she’d been given long before.  Some in Israel had even abandoned it almost entirely.  And so if Israel was going to be the Lord’s means of bringing life to the world, Jesus had first to call her back to the Lord.  Not to do so would be for Jesus to deny the Lord’s promises and to make a liar out of him.

In fact, what we see Jesus doing—and especially so in the middle portion of the Gospels between his birth and his death and resurrection—is taking on the role of Israel himself.  In Daniel the Son of Man character represented the saints or the people of God, but in Jesus’ ministry we see him taking that role on, embodying it himself.  In his birth and ministry we see him taking on the role of the great Davidic King.  And as his ministry unfolds into rejection, suffering, and death we see him taking on the role of Isaiah’s suffering servant.  Again, these are roles the prophets ascribed to Israel, but one by one Jesus takes each of them up himself.  Brothers and Sisters, understand this key point: Jesus is Israel.  He embodies her inheritance and her mission.  Where Israel had failed to be faithful, Jesus is faithful without fail.  Even as he dies, he faces the very same death that the Jewish revolutionaries faced a generation later and for the very same reason: he challenged Rome as King of the Jews.  Jesus came as the embodiment of Israel.  And he came as Israel to show God’s people a new way of being Israel—a new way in which the people would fulfil everything the Lord had ever promised and everything the Lord had ever called Israel to be.  This is why Jesus came preaching repentance.  The people had to let go of all their misconceptions of what it meant to be God’s people, whether that was their hope for violent revolution or their hope that if they were obedient enough the Lord would finally send the Messiah to rain down fire and brimstone on the gentiles and usher in the kingdom.  As the promises were fulfilled in Jesus it did not nullify God’s plan to bring life to the world through Israel.  What it did was reorient Israel around Jesus himself—it forged a new Israel, not based on blood and genealogy but on faith.  Israel had been born as a people when they followed the Lord in faith through the waters of the Red Sea and were rescued from Egypt.  In Jesus Israel is born again.  But this new Israel is born of all those who follow Jesus in faith through the waters of baptism.  Jesus offered a choice.  As he fulfilled the covenant those who repented and reoriented their lives in and around him—those who found their lives in him—became part of the new way of being Israel, centred in Jesus.  But, Jesus warned, those who rejected him and refused him would be cut off—and when he said that he was speaking to the biological children of Abraham.  The axe was set to the root of the tree.  The branches that refused to bear good fruit would be cut off.  Jerusalem, embodying and representing faithless Israel would be and was judged, torn stone from stone, and scattered.

But through Jesus, Israel would continue in a new way—with the law no longer on tablets of stone, but written on her heart, with the Spirit of God no longer residing in a stone temple behind a curtain they could never pass, but actually living inside them—making them the temple themselves.  And as the Spirit changed and renewed and brought to life the law of love now written on their hearts, this new Israel would finally fulfil the Lord’s mission for his people—reaching out to the nations and bringing his life to the world.  So, yes, Jesus came to bring life to the world—to Jew and gentile alike—but to fulfil the Lord’s plan he brought this life by first bringing it to the old Israel, to Abraham’s children.  To do anything else would have been to bypass the Lord’s plan and to make a liar of him.

This faithfulness of God to his promises—what we call the “righteousness of God”—is the theme of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans.  Through the book Paul explains how God has been faithful to and how he has fulfilled his covenant promises to Israel and at the end, in Romans 15 he sums it all up, writing:

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised [that means Israel—Abraham’s biological children] to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,

          “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,

                  and sing to your name.” (Romans 15:8-9)

Jesus fulfilled God’s promises to Israel so that when the story of Israel and the Lord’s faithfulness to her—especially his faithfulness in Jesus the Messiah—was proclaimed to the Gentiles they would—we would—fall before God in worship of his great mercy.  This is the story the first Jewish Christians proclaimed to the gentiles.  This story of the faithfulness of God was the story St. Paul proclaimed as he travelled the Roman empire and as the gentiles heard it, they put their faith in Jesus, they were baptised into his body, and as they found their life in Jesus—the true embodiment of Israel and the fulfilment of God’s promises to her—as they found their life in Jesus the gentiles were grafted into Israel.

It’s often a contentious point today in some circles, but the story we’ve inherited, the story told from Genesis to Revelation makes it clear that Israel is the Church and the Church is Israel and Jesus stands at the centre-point, at the bridge between them.  The Jewish root that was Israel gave birth to Jesus the Messiah who is now the trunk of a tree that branches out to the entire world.  Anyone who may—Jew or gentile—can take part in the life of Jesus.  All any of us needs to do is take hold of him in faith, trusting that in his death he has forgiven our sins and in his resurrection has given us life. Both literally and metaphorically, Jesus provides the blood to make us Israel.  All we need is faith.

Of course, getting back to our story in Matthew, at the time this Canaanite woman approached Jesus, neither he nor his disciples were ready for any of this.  Jesus wasn’t even ready for the cross yet, but here’s this woman who is ready for Easter—ready even for Pentecost!  It’s remarkable.  Here she is a foreigner.  They meet up with her outside of Israel in a foreign land.  Near Sidon was a major temple of the god Eshmun, a pagan god of healing.  She may have just come from that temple with her daughter, disappointed that nothing had happened.  But she hears that Jesus is in town and she goes looking for him.  She’d heard about him.  Not only that, she knew more about the Lord’s promises to Israel—or at least she understood them better—than most people in Israel, better even than Jesus’ disciples.

When Jesus told her that he had come only for the lost sheep of Israel she responded: “But even the dogs eat what falls from the children’s table.”  She understood, she accepted that Jesus had come to redeem Israel.  She understood that his mission wasn’t a mission to the gentiles.  That would have bypassed and undermined the Lord’s covenant promises.  But she was okay with that because somehow she also knew what Israel was called to be and to do.  She knew who the Messiah was and what he was called to do.  She addresses Jesus as “Son of David”—his messianic title that even the disciples hadn’t yet fully grasped.  And she knows that if he is the Messiah, his goal is to fulfil the Lord’s promises to Israel so that his greatness and his mercy will be proclaimed to the gentiles—to people like her.  She somehow knows that through the Messiah, the gentiles will be able to participate in the life of Israel, in the life of God’s covenant people.  And so she grabs hold of Jesus in faith and insists.  His mission may not be the gentiles, but that doesn’t mean the gentiles can’t and won’t come to him.

This woman has hope because she understands what the Lord and what his kingdom are all about.  She has hope because she knows what the Messiah is ushering in.  And even though she’s envisioning Easter—even envisioning Pentecost—while Jesus hasn’t even made it to the cross, by her faith she reaches into that future and drags it into the present.  Jesus sees her faith and can’t help but make her daughter well.

Brothers and Sisters, each of us has reached out to Jesus through the waters of baptism—reached out in faith in order to take part in the life of Israel, in the life of God’s people.  By that faith—not through what we’ve done, not because of who we are, but by that faith—we’ve been grafted into the people of God, we’ve been made part of the body of Christ, we’ve been incorporated into the story.  By faith we’ve each been given a part to play in that story and the Holy Spirit has given us fruit to bear and gifts to use as we work together as Jesus’ people to preach, to proclaim, to live and to make real the story of Israel, the story of God’s faithfulness to the world.  God’s intent is to bless—to redeem, to restore, to make whole, to make new—his world through his people.  In Jesus we’ve seen what the kingdom of God is like.  When we gather as the Church we see a glimpse of the kingdom as it will one day be.  As we come to the Table Jesus gives us a foretaste of the great banquet that awaits us.  All of these things are gifts of grace.  They strengthen our faith in the faithfulness of God and in that they give us hope.  But, Brothers and Sisters, let us live in faith as the woman in the Gospel.  Again, Jesus wasn’t even ready for the cross, but she was ready for Easter.  You and I live in hope of God’s future, but don’t stop there.  Live in hope and faith, bearing the fruit of the Spirit in the world to make God’s future a reality here and now.   Live in hope and faith, truly living in the knowledge that Jesus is Lord, proclaiming his kingdom and making it known here and now.

Let us pray: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of faith by which we have been grafted into your Son, Jesus, and in him grafted us into your people, Israel.  We were stones, but by the gift of faith you have made us children of Abraham.  We were dead wood, but by faith you have grafted us into the living vine and caused us to bear fruit.  Strengthen that gift of faith we now ask, that as we live in hope of your future we would live in such a way, bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit and using the gifts you have given us, to make your future known this day in the present for all the world to see.  As you’re people, strengthen our faith that we might be the blessing to the nations you have called us to be, holding high the light of Christ and proclaiming boldly that Jesus is Lord.  Amen.

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

2 Corinthians 6:1-10 & St. Matthew 4:1-11

by William Klock

Where did Lent come from?  What’s it about?  Why do we still observe it?  Every once in a while it’s good to refresh ourselves about this.  Well, we know from the writings of some of the Church Fathers, men like Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian going back to the Second Century, that Christians pretty much everywhere kept a fast from Good Friday to the Easter Vigil as a way to prepare themselves to celebrate the joy of Jesus’ resurrection.  There was another tradition that developed in those early centuries as well, one that we know was discussed at the Council of Nicaea in 325.  This was the observance of a forty-day period before Easter during which candidates for baptism were taught what it meant to be a Christian and the commitment and sacrifice involved.  Gradually, this also became a time when those who had been excommunicated because of sin fasted, prayed, showed themselves penitent, and were restored to the Lord’s Table at Easter.  As Europe became dominantly Christian and the baptism of adult converts was no longer the norm, the emphasis of this time of preparation came to centre on that of the old three-day fast in preparation for Easter and on the general need for penitence for all God’s people, not just those about to be baptised or those seeking restoration to the Church.  Our current arrangement, that is, where Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and continues through Maundy Thursday, excluding Sundays was settled about fifteen-hundred years ago.  For all the years since, Christians have on this day read the Gospel recounting Jesus’ fasting and temptation in the wilderness.  In the weeks that follow, we’ll walk with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem and recall the sacrifices that he made for the sake of his people and be reminded that the way to life passes ultimate through death.

As I’ve said before, this first half of the Church year leads us through the life of Jesus as we make our way from Advent to Pentecost.  Today’s Gospel now shows us just how Jesus’ life and ministry will serve God’s purposes, first for Israel and then for the nations.  Our Gospel picks up at Matthew 4:1.  This follows immediately on the heels of Jesus’ baptism by John.  Remember John.  He called Israel out to the wilderness and was baptising people in the Jordan River.  What he was doing was a prophetic re-enactment of Israel’s exodus from Egypt.  The Lord was about to rescue his people once again and lead them somewhere new.  John also called back to the prophets when he told people that the Messiah was coming.  John baptised with water, but the coming Messiah would fulfil the Lord’s promise through the prophets; he would baptise with the people with the Holy Spirit.  God’s new age was about to break into the present.

And Jesus came to John and was baptised.  He didn’t need to repent or to be forgiven, but in his baptism he identified himself with his people, with Israel.  As he came out of the water the Spirit descended to anoint him and the Father declared: This is my beloved Son.  “God’s son”.  That was Israel’s title.  And now it’s given to Jesus.  Where Israel had failed over and over and continued to fail in her faithfulness to the Lord and to the mission he’d given her, Jesus now picks up Israel’s role and Israel’s mission.  He will be faithful to it.  He will fulfil it.  And in doing that he will reveal the faithfulness of God—to his promises and to his people.

So, if John’s baptism in the river was symbolic of Israel’s passage through the Red Sea, what’s Jesus to do next?  The Lord will lead him into the wilderness.  And that’s just what St. Matthew tells us happened next.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” (St. Matthew 4:1-3)

The Lord had led Israel into the wilderness, the Spirit now leads Jesus.  For forty days Jesus fasted and prayed, preparing himself for the journey ahead.  Matthew says that he was hungry.  I think that’s probably putting it mildly.  And it’s at the end of this period of preparation that the devil shows up to tempt Jesus.  Again, this is how we should expect the story to develop if Jesus is prophetically re-enacting the story of his people.  They were tempted in the wilderness and so now is he.  And the devil leverages his hunger.  “The Lord has declared you to be his Son.  If you believe that’s who you really are, satisfy yourself and turn these stones into bread.”  No doubt, Jesus had spent much of those forty days and nights contemplating what it meant to be the Son of God—and probably also pondering why the Spirit wanted the Son of God to be so hungry.  But Jesus was obedient.  To embody his people and to follow in their footsteps, being faithful at every step where they had failed, that was the Lord’s plan for him.  That was the means by which he would redeem his people.

The devil’s temptation here is subtle.  He doesn’t tempt Jesus to disobey the Spirit overtly by the leaving the desert.  He tempts Jesus to turn the rocks into bread—to remake the wilderness itself.  And yet Jesus knew that the Spirit had brought him to the wilderness for a reason and to undermine that, however it was done, was to be unfaithful, to be disobedient.  It was to reject his Father’s plan.  He rebukes the devil with the words of Deuteronomy 8:3.

But he answered, “It is written,

 “‘Man shall not live by bread alone,

         but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Jesus appeals to the sermon that Moses preached to the Israelites as they were preparing to march into Canaan:

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.  And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)

There was a reason why the Lord allowed the Israelites to be hungry: it demonstrated their faith in his provision.  Were they willing to trust him even when it meant hardship?  The Lord taught them that there’s more to life than bread.  What good is living today if you miss out on the life of the age to come?  The Israelites had failed that test, grumbling against Moses and wanting to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt.  Now, where Israel failed, Jesus passes the test.  He trusts his Father to provide where he has led and shows that he knows that obedience to God’s call is more important than physical comforts and even life itself.  If he can’t endure fasting, how will he endure the cross?  And Brothers and Sisters, if we can’t endure fasting, how can we expect to live sacrificially as Jesus calls us to live, giving up everything that is not him in faith as we look forward ourselves to the age to come?

 

Back to Matthew: The devil tries again, taking a different tack.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,

 “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and

 “‘On their hands they will bear you up,

         lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:5-6)

Now the devil tempts him to jump from the highest point in Jerusalem, to force God’s hand.  Angels would deliver him and all of Israel would recognise him as Messiah.  What a temptation this must have been.  During those forty days of fasting and prayer, Jesus contemplated that rejection was going to be a significant factor in his ministry.  A few would follow, but Jesus would largely be rejected by Israel—and eventually that rejection would culminate in his death.  But what if he could prove to all of Israel that he was the Messiah?  What if he could side-step the rejection and go straight to the throne?  But Jesus knew that this was not his Father’s plan.  If he became King that way, he’d be no better than David.  There would be no means of redemption for his people.  There would be no Spirit poured out on them to renew their hearts.  He would be King, but the Lord’s promises to Abraham, to Moses, to the Prophets would go unfulfilled.  The nations would know that Israel had a king who worked miracles, but that was never the means by which the gentiles were to be drawn to Israel’s God.  They were to be drawn by the display of his faithfulness to his promises.

The devil throws two bits of Psalm 91 at Jesus.  It’s a psalm about the Lord’s protection.  It sounds good, but it’s not the whole psalm.  Other parts of the psalm qualify God’s provision for his people.  The first two verses read:

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. 

I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust.”

The shelter of the Most High is a wonderful place to find oneself, but to live under his protection requires that we first abide in his shadow.  He is our “refuge and fortress”, but we put ourselves in his care as we trust in him.  In verse 14 the Lord says,

Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;

I will protect him, because he knows my name.

The devil loves to plucked portions of Scripture out of context in order to twist their meaning, reminding us of God’s promises of blessing and care, while neglecting to remind us of the need for faith, for holiness, and for obedience.  God’s people show their love for him through obedience.  Jesus later said, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).  The same goes for Jesus’ relationship with his Father.  The Lord’s blessings would come only as Jesus walked in faithful obedience.

Jesus rebukes Satan with the words of Deuteronomy 6:16.

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

 

Where Israel had failed, Jesus is again obedient.  Israel had tested Lord.  Jesus, instead, expresses his trust in the Lord’s plan, knowing that only through his rejection will the Lord’s promises be fulfilled.

Now, the devil makes one last attempt at dragging Jesus away from the path to the cross.  Look at verses 8 and 9:

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

Israel, too, was tempted to idolatry in the wilderness and failed—and failed and failed and failed throughout her history.  Jesus is tempted as his people were.  “All kingdoms of the world will be yours,” the devil says, “just submit to me.”  Jesus and the devil both knew that if the Lord’s promises through the prophets were true, Jesus’ lordship would extend beyond Israel to all of Creation.  Gabriel had announced to Mary: “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33).  When the Father had spoken at Jesus’ baptism, he had spoken words from Psalm 2 where we also read of the great King:

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,

and the ends of the earth your possessions.  (Psalm 2:8)

The devil again offers Jesus a shortcut to his throne—a shortcut that would bypass the heart of his messianic ministry.  Again, Jesus knew that what would bring the nations to his throne was the redemption of Israel through his death and resurrection and the display of the Spirit’s power in the hearts of his people.  In these events the nations would see the greatness and the faithfulness of the God of Israel and they would be drawn to give him glory and to submit themselves in faith to the Lord Jesus.  That was to be God’s means of welcoming the gentiles into his presence and into his kingdom.  And yet, if Jesus followed the devil’s shortcut, there would be no kingdom—at least not the sort of eternal kingdom in which all was set to rights, in which God himself was king, the sort of kingdom that Israel had always looked forward to as the “age to come”.

No, the Lord had charged his people in the wilderness, saying:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might…. It is the Lord your God you shall fear.  Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.  You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you—for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God. (Deuteronomy 4-5, 13-15a)

Israel had failed.  Even in the wilderness, while Moses was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, Aaron had led the people as they made and worshiped a golden calf.  Most of Israel’s history was marked by the worship of foreign gods.  But Jesus responds to the devil’s temptation with the command God had given through Moses:

“Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

 “‘You shall worship the Lord your God

         and him only shall you serve.’” (Matthew 4:10)

Where Israel failed, Jesus is faithful.  He chooses the hard path of obedience that will bring not only kingship, but also redemption.  Jesus was destined not only to be King of the Jews, but Lord of all Creation and conqueror of sin and death.  For that to happen, evil had to be concentrated all in one place, to rise up to its full height, to do its worst to Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah—so that God could raise him from death, overturn the false verdict the people had announced, and vindicate his Son.  Jesus knew that to restore the life of God to his people, the way to inaugurate the age to come in which all would be set to rights, he must first let evil do its worst—he had to walk the path of rejection, suffering, and death.  By his faithfulness, Jesus redeemed those in Israel who were faithful to him.  By his faithfulness, Jesus created a new people of God in whom God poured out his Spirit.  By his faithfulness, Jesus was declared Lord with power and authority.  And because of his faithfulness, the nations have seen the faithfulness of Israel’s God and now give him glory as they—as we—submit ourselves to him in faith.

And now we, ourselves, walk in faithfulness to the glory of God.  As Lent puts before us the suffering of Jesus and reminds us that God’s life for us came through his submission to death, it reminds us that we, too, must die to self and embrace the narrow path, the way that leads to suffering and rejection, in order to know the life of God and of the age to come.  We take our first steps down that narrow path as we repent and turn aside from everything that is not Jesus, as we open our hands and let go of everything that is not Jesus, and then take hold of him with both hands in faith, trusting in him for the forgiveness of sins, for the life of the Spirit, and for life in God’s world set to rights.  Lent calls us to set aside our distractions that we might fix our gaze on Jesus, taking up our crosses and following him.

St. Paul warned the Corinthians in our Epistle “not to receive the grace of God in vain”.  What a splash of cold water that must have been.  They thought they were doing so well, but Paul rebukes them for tolerating sins that horrified even the pagans; for abusing spiritual gifts, using them selfishly rather than to edify the church; for allowing the values of pagan culture to twist their understanding of the gospel; for abusing the Lord’s Supper—the list is long and troubling.  Brothers and Sisters, fast and pray these next forty days that the gospel might permeate ever deeper into our hearts and minds, submitting them to the renewing and regenerating work of the Spirit.  Let us not receive the gospel in vain.  Instead, may we each day die to self that we might emerge the other side of death into the life of God and know his glory.

Let’s pray: Lord Jesus Christ, for our sake you fasted forty days and forty nights: give us grace so to discipline ourselves that our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may always obey your will in righteousness and true holiness, to the honour and glory of your name; for you live and reign with the Father and Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.