Living Words

An Altar to Burn IncenseExodus 30:1-38, 37:25-29, 38:8by William Klock I noted last week that it’s a bit of a mystery why the chapters that give instructions for the priests’ garments and then the ordination of the priests fall in the middle of the section giving instructions for the tabernacle and its furnishings.  Well, not really in the middle.  It comes towards the end of this section, but still, after the instructions for Aaron’s ordination we have another whole chapter that tells us about the altar of incense, the laver or basin for washing, the oil to be used to anoint the tabernacle, the incense to be burned, and a section about a census and the collection of “atonement money” that will be used in the building the tabernacle.  This chapter is our text this morning.  I still don’t think anyone can give a certain answer on why Exodus is put together this way—not that some don’t try!  But as I’ve been digging into this chapter over the last week, there are some ideas and patterns that have struck me.  In light of that I have to take back something I said last week about the laver.  We know it was used daily by the priests to wash their hands and feet before they entered the tabernacle.  I said last Sunday, that it would have been used in the ordination when Aaron was washed before being vested in his priestly garments.  The text doesn’t say that specifically, but it seemed like a safe assumption.  Maybe he was, but I’m beginning to think that he likely wasn’t.  And that’s because everything in this section—except the laver if it was used in the ordination—sort of comes later.  None of it was part of the ordination of the priests apart from the anointing oil.  You see, the tabernacle and priesthood go together.  Hand in glove.  Inseparable.  And so the instructions we’ve seen so far for the tabernacle included the tabernacle itself and the furniture and paraphernalia that went with it that would be needed for the ordination of the tabernacle’s priests.  I know, this is probably a little esoteric, but I think it helps us understand why Exodus has been structured this way.  It’s not as haphazard as it first looks.So Chapter 30 begins with instructions for the altar of incense.  Now, this was a vital and important part of the tabernacle’s furnishings, but not only was it not involved in the ordination, it could not be used until the priests themselves had been ordained and the altar of sacrifice had served its purifying purpose.The instructions for this altar are found in 31:1-10.  In 35:25-28 we read that the craftsmen constructed it just as they were instructed.  Let’s look at the instructions:“You shall make an altar on which to burn incense; you shall make it of acacia wood.  A cubit shall be its length, and a cubit its breadth. It shall be square, and two cubits shall be its height. Its horns shall be of one piece with it.  You shall overlay it with pure gold, its top and around its sides and its horns. And you shall make a molding of gold around it.  And you shall make two golden rings for it. Under its molding on two opposite sides of it you shall make them, and they shall be holders for poles with which to carry it.  You shall make the poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold.  And you shall put it in front of the veil that is above the ark of the testimony, in front of the mercy seat that is above the testimony, where I will meet with you.  And Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it. Every morning when he dresses the lamps he shall burn it, and when Aaron sets up the lamps at twilight, he shall burn it, a regular incense offering before the Lord throughout your generations.  You shall not offer unauthorized incense on it, or a burnt offering, or a grain offering, and you shall not pour a drink offering on it.  Aaron shall make atonement on its horns once a year. With the blood of the sin offering of atonement he shall make atonement for it once in the year throughout your generations. It is most holy to the Lord.” This altar wasn’t particularly large.  It was about a metre high and half a metre square.  Like the altar of burnt offering, it had horns at its corners and was made to match the other furnishings of the tabernacle.  But unlike the altar of burnt offering, which was outside the tabernacle, in the courtyard, the altar of incense was made of gold.  Remember what we’ve seen with the tabernacle: the materials become richer and more precious as we get close to the most holy place.  The altar of incense, we’re told here, was to be placed in the tabernacle itself, in front of the veil that covered the ark of the covenant and the mercy seat.  Every morning and every evening, the high priest was to burn incense on it.  We’ll read about the incense later in the chapter.When we read about the tabernacle itself and the veil above the ark and mercy seat, I said that the veil was probably more of a pavilion draped over the ark and its guardian cherubim as opposed to how it’s often portrayed as an actual curtain that completely partitioned off the most holy place from the rest of the tabernacle.  I’m more convinced of that as we read about the altar of incense here and as I’ve immersed myself this week in reading about incense in the Old Testament and as it was used by Israel’s neighbours.  I also think this clears up the difficulty posed by Hebrews 9:4, which says that the altar of incense was part of the furnishings of the most holy place.  If the most holy place was partitioned off by the veil as is often depicted, the altar would have had to be on the outside of that sacred space.  No one was allowed in there, except the high priest once a year.  What I want to suggest is that the altar of incense itself served as the partition—or better the demarcation—between the most holy place—the place of the Lord’s presence—and the rest of the tabernacle.  More specifically, the cloud of incense—the priest would kindle a charcoal fire on the altar and then incense would be sprinkled over the hot coals—the cloud of incense itself separated the holy place from the holy of holies.Aside from that’s the importance of the incense?  Well, Exodus doesn’t tell us.  We get some clues in Leviticus 16.  There we read the instructions to the priest for the Day of Atonement.  It says there that the cloud of incense covered the mercy seat so that the priest would not die.  Again, this would indicate that the altar wasn’t outside the most holy place, on the other side of a partition curtain.  It was in the presence of the ark and mercy seat, and the smoke itself obscured them from the sight of the priest, serving a protective role.  The veil hung above and over the ark with its embroidered angels standing guard.  It was the altar of incense and its cloud of smoke that separated the priest from the immediate presence of the Lord.But, too, as St. John’s Revelation gives us a glimpse into the heavenly court of which the tabernacle is a model, we see bowls of incense and John writes that the smoke rising from them before the Lord symbolised the prayers of the people.  And so, here in the tabernacle, the priest, acting as mediator between the people and their God, burns this precious and costly incense in the Lord’s presence, symbolically bringing the prayers of the people into his presence.  I think we get sense of this at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel as we see Zechariah going into the temple to make the daily offering of incense.  Luke tells us that at that hour the people were gathered outside the temple to pray.  Zechariah’s offering of incense represented the prayers of the people entering the presence of the Lord.  And just so in Revelation.  God’s people were suffering under persecution and John depicts their prayers rising to enter the Lord’s presence.  Those prayers were an acceptable and fragrant offering to the Lord.Now, let’s move on to verses 11 to 16:The Lord said to Moses, “When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them.  Each one who is numbered in the census shall give this: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as an offering to the Lord.  Everyone who is numbered in the census, from twenty years old and upward, shall give the Lord’s offering.  The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than the half shekel, when you give the Lord’s offering to make atonement for your lives.  You shall take the atonement money from the people of Israel and shall give it for the service of the tent of meeting, that it may bring the people of Israel to remembrance before the Lord, so as to make atonement for your lives.” The people were to offer up their riches freely for the construction of the tabernacle, but the Lord also commands Moses to take a census of the men over twenty—the men of military age—and that each in return is to contribute a half shekel as an atonement offering for his life.  They didn’t have coins yet at that time, but a half-shekel of silver would be about the equivalent of a silver quarter-dollar.  So it wasn’t a lot of money.  Chapter 38 tells us that this silver was used to cast the sockets that held the walls of the tabernacle.Now, this was a one-time thing, but in Israel in later years it was used to justify the temple tax—contributing a half shekel every year for the upkeep of the temple.What we don’t know is why a census would bring a plague that required this redemption.  What we do know is that a census usually meant that the king was tallying up the number of fighting men at his disposal to prepare for war.  In Israel a census was only to be taken when the Lord said to and we have the example in 2 Samuel 24, where David took a census of the people on his own initiative.  The result was a plague—just as described here.  But why?  The Bible doesn’t give us a straight answer, but reading between the lines, it seems to be because God’s people were expected to trust in him.  If Israel was to go to war, the Lord would send the nation into battle, not the king, and the Lord would ensure the victory regardless of the nation’s military might.  Just think of God winnowing down Gideon’s fighting men.  When Israel went to war, they would always know that it was God who fought for them.  Also, it wasn’t uncommon for a king to take a census to sort of count his wealth—to find something to take pride in.  God’s people—and especially his king—weren’t to be like that either.  The nation belonged to the Lord, he delivered her from Egypt, he cared for her, he brought her to the promised land, and he sustained, and he blessed.  The Lord had made Israel what she was, not the king.  So a census was a bad thing, albeit sometimes necessary.  So the Lord gives the people a lesson here and, I think in the Hebrew it’s pretty clear, because the passage about the altar of incense and this passage both have a three-fold emphasis on the Hebrew root that lies behind purification, ransom, and expiation.  I think Pete Enns hits pretty close to the mark here when he writes, “It seems that the human penchant for assessing self-worth is something God will ‘tax’ for the good of the tabernacle and as a prodding reminder to the people of who really has worth.”[1]  Brothers and Sisters, we human beings have a horrible tendency to think more highly of ourselves than we ought.  Everything about worship in Israel was aimed at reminding God’s people that they were sinners and that they were nothing without him.  Old Testament worship gave them proper perspective.  That may seem like a downer, but it’s not.  It’s only when we understand who we are as sinners that we can appreciate and begin to plumb the depths of God’s loving grace.  Think of John Newton.  He was the captain of a slaveship who was one day confronted by the weight of his sin and moved to repentance.  Only someone like him could write those words, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”  And, Friends, only people who know how great their sin is and how great our Saviour is can really appreciate them.Next comes the laver or basin in verses 17-21:The Lord said to Moses, “You shall also make a basin of bronze, with its stand of bronze, for washing.  You shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it, with which Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet.  When they go into the tent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn a food offering to the Lord, they shall wash with water, so that they may not die.  They shall wash their hands and their feet, so that they may not die. It shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his offspring throughout their generations.” The instructions don’t tell us what this laver or basin looked like.  The Mishnah says that it held enough water for the washing of four priests.[2]  The instructions for the laver probably stand here for three reasons.  First, it wasn’t part of the actual worship of the tabernacle.  It was where the priests washed to prepare for worship.  You can imagine how messy the priests would be, covered in blood from the sacrifices.  Before entering the tabernacle to perform their other duties they needed to wash the hands with which they served and the feet that would walk on holy ground.  Second, it’s here because—contrary to what I said last week—it seems that it wasn’t necessary for the ordination of the priests.  And, third, unlike everything else so far, the laver wasn’t made from the general donations of the people.  Exodus 38:8 tells us that it was made from the bronze mirrors—remember that in the ancient world mirrors were made of polished metal, not glass—it was made from melting the bronze mirrors donated by the women who served at the entrance to the tabernacle.  Now, who these women were and how they served at the entrance to the tabernacle when it hadn’t been made yet is a good question and one I can’t answer.  I’ve been through a stack of commentaries and there are lots of speculations, but no real answers.All that aside, what’s probably most important for us is the sober warning in verse 21.  The priests are to wash their hands and feet before entering the tabernacle lest they die.  Once again, the Lord’s instruction for old covenant worship emphasis the sinfulness and impurity of human beings. We cannot enter the presence of the Lord and live without atonement and without purification.  At the same time, these instructions also emphasis the graciousness of the Lord.  He desires human beings to be in his presence and so he goes to great pains to make a way for them to do so.  Brothers and Sisters, think of our own liturgy.  “We do not presume to come to this your Table, O 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 from under your Table.  But you are the same Lord whose property is always to show mercy.”  The Lord is good and proper worship will always remind us of our sin in order to give us a greater appreciation for the grace that God has shown us in Jesus.Finally, the last two paragraphs give very specific instructions for the oil that was to be used to anoint the tabernacle and its furnishing as well as the priests and for the incense that was to be burned on the altar that we started with today.  Since we’re running out of time, I won’t read the whole passage.  Making the anointing oil involved the work of a perfumer, who would distil a fragrance from a mixture of myrrh, cinnamon, and fragrant cassia and add it to an olive oil base.  The incense was made from a blend of a number of spices, some which we can no longer identify for certain.  Frankincense ranks amongst them.What stands out, however, are the warnings.  Not only does oil and incense belong to the Lord, but so do the recipes.  I remember a visitor to the church I attended down in Vancouver asking one of the priests what sort of incense was used in the service.  She wanted to buy some to burn at home.  And, of course, C. M. Almy is perfectly happy to sell incense to anyone who wants to buy it, not just churches.  But this wasn’t the case in Israel.  The Lord says in verses 31-33:And you shall say to the people of Israel, ‘This shall be my holy anointing oil throughout your generations.  It shall not be poured on the body of an ordinary person, and you shall make no other like it in composition. It is holy, and it shall be holy to you.  Whoever compounds any like it or whoever puts any of it on an outsider shall be cut off from his people.’” Similarly for the incense, we read in verse 37-38:And the incense that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the Lord.  Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from his people.” What does it mean to be cut off from God’s people?  We might think it means something like banishment, but if we jump ahead to the middle of the next chapter we see that to be “cut off” means to be put to death.  Interspersed throughout these chapters are these sobering reminders from the Lord that his people are to take his worship with the utmost seriousness.  The Lord can only be approached on his own terms, not because he’s petty and grumpy and easily offended, but because we are sinners, because we are unholy, and what because what is unholy cannot enter the presence of the holy and live without atonement, without cleansing, without forgiveness.Brothers and Sisters, as technical, dry, and uninteresting as some parts of the Old Testament sometimes seem to be, God’s given them to us for a reason.  Israel’s story—everything about it right down to the technical instructions for her worship—Israel’s story leads us to Jesus.  We will never grasp who Jesus is, what he’s done, why he’s done it, and what it all means if we don’t let the story of Israel in the Old Testament lead us to the manger and then to the cross.  As Jesus said so stridently to the Samaritan woman, “Salvation is of the Jews”.  She didn’t understand, because she didn’t know the story.  Israel’s story reveals the sinfulness of humanity—even of those whom God had called and set apart for himself.  Israel’s story highlights our separation from God—even the men he called to be his priests could not enter directly into his presence and even when they came near to it, their sins had to be atoned for and they had to undergo rituals of cleansing and purification.  Israel’s story highlights the seriousness of sin.  Whether it’s Nadab and Abihu offering strange fire or Uzza reaching out to steady the ark so that it wouldn’t fall into the mud—disobedience, particularly when it came to these aspects of worship that were so close to the Lord himself, brought instant death.  Israel’s story highlights our inability to get things right—it highlights the fickleness and unfaithfulness of God’s people and their need for something more than a law written on stone tablets and the presence of God in a tent they could not enter.  But Israel’s story also highlights the grace and faithfulness of the Lord.  Whether in blessing or cursing, we see the faithfulness of God and grace at work bringing his promises to his people to fulfilment.  Only then can we really understand why God took on our flesh in Jesus and why Jesus died for the sake of his people.  Only in light of what we’ve been reading here in Exodus and the rest of the Old Testament, can we understand how the cross can be “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world”.  Then, Brothers and Sisters, we can see in Jesus the height of God’s love for us.  In light of Jesus, these rules and regulations and warnings make sense, because in Jesus we see that God is not and has never been petty or finicky, temperamental or grumpy.  A God like that would never give his own life for the sake of sinners.  No, for Israel, the worship of the Old Testament created a hunger for something greater, a hungering and thirsty for true righteousness of the heart—a hungering and thirst for a day in which hearts of stone would become hearts of flesh.  In light of Jesus we can look back and see that all along, what might have seemed extreme and excessive, was there because God loves sinners, because God desires life for us rather than death, and because it’s vital we know just how sinful and alienated from him we are, so that we truly appreciate what Jesus has done for us.  “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.  I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”  Amen.[1] The NIV Application Commentary: Exodus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 538-539.[2] Zevahim 19b.

To Serve Me as Priests: Part IIExodus 29:1-46by William Klock Last Sunday we looked at Exodus 28, which is where we see the instructions the Lord gave to Moses for the garments of Israel’s priests.  The passage was full of detailed instructions for the materials and the designs and we saw that these garments were meant to bring dignity and honour to the priests and to bring glory and beauty to the worship of the Lord.  The garments of the high priest, in particular, highlighted his role as mediator.  He bore the names of the tribes of Israel on his garments, both a memorial to the Lord that Israel was his people, and a reminder to the people that the high priest represented them as he offered sacrifices and stood in the presence of the Lord on their behalf.  Even though we don’t know much about the mysterious Urim and Thummim he carried in the pouch on his breast, they again highlight his role as mediator.  A mediator was required even for the King when he needed to inquire of the Lord.  I closed last week with the grand and glorious picture that Jesus ben Sira gives us of the high priest around 200 b.c.—Simon II standing in dignity and honour before the Lord, on behalf of the people.  Seeing the priests in their glory inspired hope and love and loyalty towards the Lord.  Remember, the people could not enter his presence directly, and so the priest, in many ways, stood in for the Lord.  He was a symbol of the Lord’s promise.  His presence communicated the great truth at Israel’s core: I will be your God and you will be my people.  And I said that if the high priest did that for Israel, how much more ought our remembrance of Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross do the same for us—our great high priest who offers not the blood of bulls and goats, but his very self.Now, we’ll see more of this today as we move into Chapter 29.  Again, it’s a long chapter with lots of details.  I’ll have to paraphrase and summarise some of it, but we’ll start by reading the first nine verses, which serves as an introduction and a bit of a summary of the rest.“Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests.  Take one bull of the herd and two rams without blemish, and unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers smeared with oil. You shall make them of fine wheat flour.  You shall put them in one basket and bring them in the basket, and bring the bull and the two rams.  You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water.  Then you shall take the garments, and put on Aaron the coat and the robe of the ephod, and the ephod, and the breastpiece, and gird him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod.  And you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban.  You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him.  Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them, and you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever.  Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons. I hope you noticed how centred this ordination ritual is on cleansing.  Before Aaron and his sons were brought before the Lord to be ordained, Moses was told to prepare a bull and two rams for sacrifice along with bread for an offering.  So we have Aaron and his sons brought before the Lord by Moses.  Moses is the prophet, the one who has met the Lord face-to-face and speaks for him.  Moses brings his brother and nephews to the entrance of the tabernacle.  The text suggests they were naked.  They’ve left everything behind.  And Moses is to wash them with water.  This is a ritual purification.  In the next chapter we’ll read about the laver or basin to be put before the tabernacle.  (It’s not really clear, by the way, why this bit about the ordination of the priests sits in the middle of all the instructions for the furnishings of the tabernacle, but it does.)  Water from the laver is poured or sprinkled on these priest-to-be—an image and symbol picked up in the New Testament for baptism.  For the regular daily service of the priests, it was only necessary to wash the feet and hands, but here at their ordination, everything gets washed.Once Aaron was washed, Moses was to then dress him in the garments we read about last week in Chapter 28: the undergarments, the ephod, tunic, robe, breastpiece, and turban to which is affixed that golden band—here it’s described as a crown—that golden band inscribed with the words, “Holy to the Lord”.  So now Aaron and his sons are washed and clothed in their garments.  They’ve been cleansed by the washing of water and outfitted with the garments that mark them as the mediators between the Lord and his people.  Moses then anoints Aaron and his priestly garments with oil.  Anointing with oil was a symbolic way of setting something or someone apart for God, marking them out as holy.  The tabernacle and all of its furnishings will be anointed, too.  Think of the Messiah.  The Messiah is the “anointed one”—the one set apart and committed to the Lord and his purposes.  The Hebrew word here kind of has the sense of smearing or daubing, so we might picture Moses dipping his finger into a vessel of oil and then marking Aaron and his vestments with it, but the reality—according to the Psalms—seems to have been a lot more dramatic and a lot messier.  Psalm 133 talks about the goodness of brothers dwelling in unity and then draws on a couple of images to express just how good it is.  One of those is the anointing of the high priest:It is like the precious oil on the head,         running down on the beard,on the beard of Aaron,         running down on the collar of his robes!  (Psalm 133:2)So this isn’t the kind of anointing we know, where I daub my finger in a bit of oil and mark a cross on your forehead.  This is Moses pouring the whole jar of oil over Aaron’s head so that it runs down and covers everything.  It really is a dramatic image of being set apart.But there’s more.  Remember the bull and rams and the bread that were prepared.  The instructions for these sacrifices make up the bulk of the chapter.  It starts with the bull in verse 10:Then you shall bring the bull before the tent of meeting. Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the bull.  Then you shall kill the bull before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and shall take part of the blood of the bull and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger, and the rest of the blood you shall pour out at the base of the altar.  And you shall take all the fat that covers the entrails, and the long lobe of the liver, and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, and burn them on the altar.  But the flesh of the bull and its skin and its dung you shall burn with fire outside the camp; it is a sin offering. Washing with water and anointing with oil as symbolic of cleansing and being set apart is all well and good, but the water alone can’t deal with sin.  Before Aaron can serve God as mediator, before he can enter the Lord’s presence in the tabernacle, before he can offer atonement for the sins of the people, his own sin needs to be dealt with.  Now, as far as we know so far, Aaron wasn’t a great sinner or anything.  At least so far in the story, he seems to have been a decent guy.  But that’s just it.  None of us is sinless.  None of us perfect.  We were created to live before the face of God, daily in his presence, but in rejecting him, we were cast out.  The unholy cannot live in the presence of the holy.  Even the best of us stands condemned before God.  As St. Paul reminds us, the wages of sin is death.  Because of our sin, we were removed from the tree of life and subjected to the dominion of death.  And so, to enter the presence of God, this sin offering had to be made on Aaron’s behalf.  He and his sons were first to lay their hands on the bull.  It was a way of sort of claiming the bull as their own, of placing their sins on its head, that it might stand in for them as a sacrifice.  The blood—the life of the bull—wad daubed on the horns of the altar and its liver, kidneys, and fat were burned there.  Even the altar needed this purifying ritual.  It had been made by human beings, it had been touched by sinful hands, and here it is purified with the blood of the sin offering and claimed by the Lord as his own.In a similar way, Aaron and his sons were to place their hands on both the rams.  The first, we’re told in verses 15-18, was to be slaughtered, its blood thrown or dashed on the sides of the altar—the rabbis say the blood was thrown first on one corner and then diagonally on the other so that all four sides were covered—and then the ram was to be butchered, washed, and all its parts burned on the altar.  In verse 18 we’re told that “it is a burnt offering to the Lord…a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord.”  Burnt offerings were meant to show the devotion and commitment of the person offering them.  The sin offering cleansed the new priests of their sin.  The burnt offering showed their commitment to the Lord.When the second ram was brought, they were to lay their hands on it as well.  This third sacrifice is more complicated.  The Lord says:[Y]ou shall kill the ram and take part of its blood and put it on the tip of the right ear of Aaron and on the tips of the right ears of his sons, and on the thumbs of their right hands and on the great toes of their right feet, and throw the rest of the blood against the sides of the altar.  Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments, and on his sons and his sons’ garments with him. He and his garments shall be holy, and his sons and his sons’ garments with him. This daubing of blood on the body seems to have been symbolic of purification.  The other place we see it done is with people who have recovered from skin diseases in the laws of Leviticus.  Why the ear, hand, and foot?  It doesn’t say, but the most obvious reason would be that it symbolises the purification of the ears and hands and feet of the priests who serve the Lord.  Their ears are purified to hear the word of the Lord, their hands are purified for service, and their feet—it’s worth noting that the priests went barefoot in the tabernacle—their feet were purified to walk on holy ground.  And then those beautiful, white linen garments.  Well, they’ve been doused with oil and now they’re sprinkled with blood—purifying them and marking then out as holy to the Lord.  If Aaron had had an altar guild, those ladies would been having conniptions.  But it highlights the messy reality of the tabernacle, of the priesthood, and of the cost of sin—and it highlights just how dramatically the once-for-all sacrifice that Jesus has made has changed everything.Now, that’s not all for this second ram.  Portions of its fat, its liver and kidneys, and right thigh along with portions of the bread prepared earlier were “waved” before the Lord by Aaron and his sons.  After that, Aaron was to take breast of the ram and wave it before the Lord.  The technical term for this offering, not surprisingly, is a “wave offering”.  The Mishnah says that the priest would take these items and wave them first forward and back and then up and down.[1]  Why?  We’re not sure, but it seems to have had something to do with fellowship with the Lord.  This portion of the ram that was waved, the Lord says, belongs to Aaron.  Verses 31-34 say that the ram of ordination belongs to Aaron and his sons along with the bread that was prepared.  The same will go for portions of the offerings brought by the people.  This was the food of the priests.  We read in verse 33:They shall eat those things with which atonement was made at their ordination and consecration, but an outsider shall not eat of them, because they are holy. There’s a pattern with the Lord and his people.  When he calls them to himself, he invites them to eat in his presence.  He did that with the elders of Israel when the covenant was established.  Now he does the same with Aaron and his sons.  There’s a lot packed into this idea, but it highlights the goodness and the faithfulness of the Lord towards those who belong to him and it looks forward in faith and hope to the day when the Lord finally sets this world to rights—a day we see throughout the Bible as a day of plenty and a day of feasting in the presence of the Lord. Now, that sounds like a lot.  Washing, vesting, pouring oil over the head, three different sacrifices.  Now repeat it—seven times.  Look at verses 35-37:“Thus you shall do to Aaron and to his sons, according to all that I have commanded you. Through seven days shall you ordain them, and every day you shall offer a bull as a sin offering for atonement. Also you shall purify the altar, when you make atonement for it, and shall anoint it to consecrate it.  Seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and consecrate it, and the altar shall be most holy. Whatever touches the altar shall become holy. This was a big deal.  That this ordination was take place over seven days pointed back to the creation.  As we’ve seen—remember back to March—the tabernacle itself was full of imagery that hearkened back to the garden.  In the garden, human beings lived in the presence of the Lord and so the tabernacle, the Lord’s dwelling in the midst of Israel, reminds the people of what human beings were created for, it reminds them of the garden.  The priest, when he enters the most holy place, has to purify himself before passing through the veil with its embroidered angel and before he approaches the mercy seat with its fierce angels standing guard.  The tabernacle is like the cosmos in miniature and so its priests are ordained over seven days.The bit about the consecration of the altar leads into the last paragraph.  This last part isn’t part of the ordination ceremony.  It describes the daily sacrifice that will take place on the altar once the priests have been ordained.  Look at verses 38-46:“Now this is what you shall offer on the altar: two lambs a year old day by day regularly.  One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.  And with the first lamb a tenth measure of fine flour mingled with a fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and a fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offering.  The other lamb you shall offer at twilight, and shall offer with it a grain offering and its drink offering, as in the morning, for a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord.  It shall be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the tent of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you, to speak to you there.  There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory.  I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate to serve me as priests.  I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God.  And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God. First, the daily sacrifice.  Again, the altar being mentioned four times leads naturally to the daily sacrifice, but the daily sacrifice also brings together the priests and tabernacle thematically.  The priests had many duties, but this was their most important.  Each morning and each evening a yearling lamb was offered on the altar along with grain and drink offerings.  This daily offering was at the centre of the tabernacle service, it was part of the heart of the torah.  The sound of the animals, the smell of the altar, the sight of the smoke rising over the camp was a reminder to the people that the Lord was in their midst and that the priests were there, behind the curtains of the tabernacle court, acting as mediators on their behalf.  It was one of those aspects of daily life in Israel that, no matter how bad things got, as long as the daily sacrifices were going on, things were still okay.  We get a sense of this in the book of Daniel—Maccabees recounts the history as well.  Antiochus Epiphanes—the one Daniel describes as a “little horn” in Chapter 8—put an end to the service of the temple.  This was a disaster.  It was as if the world had come to an end.  And, of course, remember the outrage directed at Jesus when he disrupted the service of the temple.  Jesus repeatedly pointed to the days of the temple coming to an end.  He would establish and build something better.  And yet most in Israel refused to listen.  Forty years later the Lord’s judgement came, the Romans tore the temple down stone by stone, and the daily sacrifice came to an end forever.  To this day, unbelieving Israel lives without the service or the sacrifices of the temple—caught in a self-imposed limbo, without the redeeming sacrifices of the old covenant, while rejecting the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus, the perfect high priest and mediator.Brothers and Sisters, Jesus shows that God has not forgotten or forsaken his promises to Israel.  He promised here, in verse 45: “I will dwell among the people of Israel and be their God”.  He brought them out of Egypt that he might dwell amongst them—that he would be their God and they would be his people.  In Jesus we see the fulfilment of Lord’s promises.  In Jesus we see what the Lord had been preparing, not only his people, but the whole world for as he took on our flesh to dwell—to tabernacle—in our midst.  In Jesus, God himself became both priest and sacrifice for the sake of his people, both giving himself once and for all as a sacrifice for sin and then bearing that sacrifice into the presence of God as a perfect mediator and advocate for his people.  In Jesus the promises of the old covenant were fulfilled and in Jesus a new covenant and a new people of God was born—a people redeemed by God himself and a people who, themselves, have become the temple through the indwelling of God’s own Spirit—a people transformed, their—our—hearts of stone made hearts of flesh, a people who look not to a law written on stone tablets, but to a law of love inscribed on our hearts by God himself.Dear Friends, think on that as you come to the Lord’s Table this morning.  As he invited the elders of Israel to feast in his presence on the mountain, celebrating their covenant with him and as he invited Aaron and his sons to feast in his presence, having just been set apart as his priests, Jesus summons us to his Table, to his banquet, to recall who he is, who we are, and where we stand thanks to his redeeming grace.  As we come to his Table in faith, recalling his death on the cross for us, as we feast on the bread and wine and recall his body broken and his blood poured out for us, hear his promise: I will be your God and you will be my people.  But more than that, as St. Peter tells us, we not merely his people.  We are a chosen nation, a royal priesthood, and that means that the mission of the old Israel had been passed on to the new.  Jesus has brought us out of darkness and into his marvellous light that we might proclaim his excellencies to the world.  Brothers and Sisters, we are not priests doing our work behind the veils of the tabernacle.  Jesus has made us priests and he sends out into the world.  Here he feeds us gospel food and from here he sends us out to feed a world starving for that very gospel.Let’s pray: Heavenly Father, thank you for the riches of your word and for the riches of your grace that it teaches us.  From start to finish we see sinners redeemed by your grace, your enemies who deserved death, redeemed and forgiven and made holy by you, claimed by you, and then called to serve your mission of grace.  Focus our hearts on your grace, we ask, as we think on your word this morning and as we come to your Table, taking part once again in the great sacrifice that Jesus has made for us.  Fill our hearts with your grace to overflowing that we might be faithful stewards, faithful ministers of your grace as we go out into the world.  Through Jesus we pray.  Amen.[1] Menahot 5:6

To Serve Me as PriestsExodus 28:1-43 & 39:1-31by William KlockSo far Exodus has shown us the tabernacle and the most holy place where the Lord’s presence rested on the ark of the covenant and the mercy seat.  It’s shown us some of the furnishings of the tabernacle and the altar that stood outside.  And as we’ve made our way through these chapters, the priests, sometimes alluded to as Aaron and his sons, have been mentioned, but so far not in any detail.  That’s where the next couple of chapters bring us, first as the special garments of the priests are described and then as the ordination or the setting apart of Aaron and his sons is described.  Lord willing, we’ll look at the ordination of the priests next week.  Today we’ll look at Chapter 28.  Here the instructions are given for the garments the priests were to wear.  And as with the previous passages, we read in Chapter 39 that the Israelites followed these instructions to the letter, making the garments just as described by the Lord.  So let’s look at Exodus 28.  It’s a long passage and, like the other passages so far about the tabernacle, it’s very detailed.  We don’t have time to read the whole thing, so bear with me as I summarise some parts of it for you.Verses 1-5 introduce these instructions and give us an overview of most of the chapter:“Then bring near to you Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, from among the people of Israel, to serve me as priests—Aaron and Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.  And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty.  You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood.  These are the garments that they shall make: a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checker work, a turban, and a sash. They shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother and his sons to serve me as priests.  They shall receive gold, blue and purple and scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen. The first thing to notice is that Aaron’s family is selected by the Lord to serve as his priests.  The tribe of Levi serves the tabernacle in general, but it’s this subgroup of the Levites, the family of Aaron who will be the actual priests.  But two things need to happen before Aaron and his sons can serve the Lord in the tabernacle: they need to consecrated into their role and they need to have appropriate clothing.  The consecration will happen in the next chapter; here we read about the clothing.  Specifically, the garments of the high priest are listed here: a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checker work, a turban, and a sash.  And we see here in the first part of the description, they’re visually connected with the tabernacle.  Just like the tent where the Lord took up his dwelling in Israel, the high priest’s garments are made of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen.Notice how important these garments are.  Verse 3 connects these garments with Aaron’s consecration as the Lord’s priest.  No garments, no priesthood.  In fact, the Lord is deadly serious about it.  Jump to verse 43, the last verse of the chapter and we read:[T]hey shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they go into the tent of meeting or when they come near the altar to minister in the Holy Place, lest they bear guilt and die.  This shall be a statute forever for him and for his offspring after him. What the garments represent is important enough that they’re integral to the priesthood itself.  And we get a sense here of just how seriously the Lord takes his instruction for worship.  Enter the Lord’s presence—even come near—wearing the wrong thing—an act of disobedience—and it means death for the priest.  The Lord isn’t fooling around here.  It’s no idle threat.  Two of Aaron’s sons don’t last very long as priests.  In Leviticus 10 we read that Nadab and Abihu filled their censors with strange or unauthorized fire.  It’s not clear what exactly they’d done, but whatever it was, it was contrary to the very specific instructions the Lord had given concerning offerings and incense.  Both of them were instantly stuck down and consumed by fire.Brothers and Sisters, the worship of God is serious business.  That may be the first takeaway here.  Verse 2 stresses that all of these detailed instructions were to bring glory and beauty to the worship of the Lord.  It wasn’t just about being finicky.  Everything in these details—the details we’ve seen so far and the details yet to come—was to bring glory to the Lord and to make his worship beautiful.  The New Covenant is vastly different in many ways.  The New Testament gives no commands for what a church should look like, how a minister should dress, what our incense recipe should be, what musical style we should use, or how the Lord’s Table should be constructed.  Much of this is different because Jesus has changed everything for us.  We approach the Lord in a different way than the Israelites did thanks to Jesus and the cross.  But glory and beauty are still—or should be integral to our worship.  Does our worship bring glory to the Lord?  Does it do so, in part, by its beauty? A lot of modern worship does neither.  It’s cheap and commercialised and focused more on the worshipper than on the Lord.  When it comes to Christian worship, there are two elements that will always ground proper worship.  The first is God’s word and the second is the Lord’s Supper.  Word and sacrament.  Hearing God’s word, singing God’s word, preaching God’s word, and responding to God’s word in prayer and song will always fill our worship with the glory of God and will always glorify him.  And eating his Supper in which we recall that in Jesus God has given himself to make us his people and to give us life and hope, in that he is again glorified.  Keep word and sacrament central to worship and our worship will be filled with glory.  And the weight of what we do in that kind of worship naturally encourages us to do it with beauty—to invest ourselves in it for the Lord’s sake.  It won’t always look the same.  It may be liturgical or non-liturgical, the style may vary from place to place, but worship centred in word and sacrament will always bring glory to God.Now, let’s look at Aaron’s vestments.  I won’t go into every detail.  Verses 6-12 describe the ephod.  What’s an ephod?  Well, it’s what’s described here.  From the description it seems it was something like an apron.  Like the tabernacle it was made of gold, blue, and purple yarn and fine linen.  But the important part of the ephod were its two onyx stones, set in gold, and mounted on the shoulders.  Each stone was to be engraved with six of the names of the tribes of Israel.  Why?  Verse 12 says:And you shall set the two stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod, as stones of remembrance for the sons of Israel. And Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord on his two shoulders for remembrance. It was a reminder that the high priest was the mediator between Israel and the Lord.  When he offered sacrifices or went into the Lord’s presence and the Lord looked down on him, there on his shoulders, pointing heavenward, were the names of the twelve tribes that made up his people.  They were a written memorial to the Lord.  Jesus does the same for us, our mediator with God, entering his presence as our representative and bearing our names into his presence.Next the Lord gave instructions for the “breastpiece of judgement”—the longest set of instructions here.  It was a pouch about 9 inches by 9 inches square, made of the same yarns and linen as the ephod.  It was attached to the shoulderpieces of the ephod with gold chains.  And it was set with twelve different precious stones engraved with the names of the tribes of Israel.  Again, the stones served as a memorial to the Lord when Aaron represented the people.  These precious stones representing the tribes of Israel turn up again at the end of the story as the foundations of the New Jerusalem.The breastpiece also served to hold the Urim and the Thummim.  Like so much else about the passage, these are something of a mystery as well.  As the text presents the Urim and Thummim, they were something the Israelites already had.  We don’t know what exactly they were other than devices for casting lots—probably two stones with something carved on them.  In Hebrew Urim begins with the first letter of the alphabet and Thummim with the last, so that may have something to do with it.  The idea was that a question with a clear binary, yes or no or this or that answer could be posed to the Lord by the high priest and, maybe by reaching into the pouch and drawing out one of the stones (or whatever they were) the Lord would give the answer.  (So, no, the Mormons have it wrong.  The Urim and Thummim weren’t magic glasses used to translate Joseph Smith’s golden plates.)It’s interesting to read of them, because the Lord outlawed the pagan practice of divination in Israel.  So this was something different.  It’s worth noting that the Urim and Thummim were always and only in the possession of the high priest and were only used by him to consult the Lord on behalf of the leader of the people about something that affected the nation.  So it had to be something really significant for the Lord to be consulted through the Urim and Thummim.  It wasn’t like the pagans, going to a fortune-teller to ask if you should buy this car or marry this girl or take this job.  But even then, the Lord didn’t always respond.  We’re told that Saul consulted the Lord this way and received no answer.  After the time of David they are no longer mentioned.  The Mishnah says that they ceased to function after the death of the first prophets and that while the Urim and Thummim were still in possession of the high priest in the time after the exile, they no longer worked[1]—perhaps because the presence of the Lord had not returned to the temple.Next, in verses 31-35 we read the instructions for the robe.  It was to be made of blue cloth and around the hem it was to have golden bells alternating with pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet yarns.  Aaron was to wear this robe when he entered the holy place:And it shall be on Aaron when he ministers, and its sound shall be heard when he goes into the Holy Place before the Lord, and when he comes out, so that he does not die. (Exodus 28:35)“So that he does not die” probably refers to this whole section, not just the robe.  The priests were not to deviate from the Lord’s instructions.  The bells, again, are something of a mystery.  When the high priest entered the tabernacle, he was supposed to be the only one there, so the bells may have served as a warning to everyone else to leave.  They may have been a reminder to the priest himself of what he was doing so that he could focus his attention on the Lord and a reminder to those outside of what the priest was doing on their behalf.  In light of the seriousness with which the Lord took all this, the bells may have been a way of assuring the people outside that he hadn’t messed something up and been struck dead as Nadab and Abihu were.  We don’t know.  These are just some possibilities.Now look at verses 36-38:“You shall make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it, like the engraving of a signet, ‘Holy to the Lord.’  And you shall fasten it on the turban by a cord of blue. It shall be on the front of the turban.  It shall be on Aaron’s forehead, and Aaron shall bear any guilt from the holy things that the people of Israel consecrate as their holy gifts. It shall regularly be on his forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord. So Aaron was to wear a turban—which was otherwise a symbol of royalty—with this golden plate at its front, inscribed with the words “Holy to the Lord”.  It may have served a double purpose.  As the names of the tribes of Israel inscribed on the ephod and the breastplate were memorials to the Lord that Israel was his people, this golden headband inscribed “Holy to the Lord” was a memorial to the Lord: this was his priest whom he had set apart.  At the same time, the headband was a serious reminder to Aaron of the gravity of the office he’d been given.  He represented the people before the Lord.  How he bore guilt isn’t clear.  The Hebrew word used here can mean either to bear sin or to remove sin.  It might have been a reminder to Aaron that he bore the responsibility for the people’s sin before the Lord or (or maybe and/or) that he was the one who made atonement for the sins of the people.Now, finally, the last few verses describe the basic garments of all the priests:“For Aaron’s sons you shall make coats and sashes and caps. You shall make them for glory and beauty.  And you shall put them on Aaron your brother, and on his sons with him, and shall anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests.  You shall make for them linen undergarments to cover their naked flesh.  They shall reach from the hips to the thighs; and they shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they go into the tent of meeting or when they come near the altar to minister in the Holy Place, lest they bear guilt and die.  This shall be a statute forever for him and for his offspring after him. (Exodus 28:41-43)The Lord gave instructions even for their underpants that remind us of the clothes the Lord made for Adam and Eve, to cover their nakedness.  Aaron and his sons were to be anointed, to be set apart, and to be clothed in these special garments.  They brought glory and honour to the worship of the Lord.  It also meant that the priests stood with glory and beauty—or we could translate the Hebrew “dignity and honour”, before the Lord.  I want to end on that note.  These were beautiful garments, mean to inspire awe and reverence in the people.  They did not approach the Lord casually or carelessly and the priests reminded them of that.  And something I think we might be prone to missing because we no longer rely on human mediators between us and God, is what it meant for the Jews to see these priests standing at the altar or entering the tabernacle, dressed in fine linen, a blue cape, and decked out with gold and gemstones.  This was their representative with the Lord.  Through him they entered the Lord’s presence and through him the Lord was present to them.  To see the high priest in all his finery, in all this glory and beauty, dignity and honour, was what some would call a “religious experience”.This is what Jesus ben Sira describes towards the end of his book of wisdom.  Most of the book is similar to the book of Proverbs, but he ends the book with a hymn in praise of the heroes of Israel: Enoch, Noah, and Abraham; Moses, Aaron, and Phineas; Joshua and Caleb; David and Solomon and he ends his hymn with Simon II, who was the high priest in ben Sira’s own day, about 200 b.c.  I want to read ben Sira’s description of Simon, because it’s the only passage I know of that so vividly describes how the Jews saw their high priest—especially an honourable high priest who commanded the respect of the people.The leader of his brothers and the pride of his people         was the high priest, Simon son of Onias,who in his life repaired the house,         and in his time fortified the temple. He laid the foundations for the high double walls,         the high retaining walls for the temple enclosure. In his days a water cistern was dug,         a reservoir like the sea in circumference. He considered how to save his people from ruin,         and fortified the city against siege. How glorious he was, surrounded by the people,         as he came out of the house of the curtain. Like the morning star among the clouds,         like the full moon at the festal season; like the sun shining on the temple of the Most High,         like the rainbow gleaming in splendid clouds; like roses in the days of first fruits,         like lilies by a spring of water,         like a green shoot on Lebanon on a summer day; like fire and incense in the censer,         like a vessel of hammered gold         studded with all kinds of precious stones; like an olive tree laden with fruit,         and like a cypress towering in the clouds. When he put on his glorious robe         and clothed himself in perfect splendor,when he went up to the holy altar,         he made the court of the sanctuary glorious. When he received the portions from the hands of the priests,         as he stood by the hearth of the altarwith a garland of brothers around him,         he was like a young cedar on Lebanon         surrounded by the trunks of palm trees. All the sons of Aaron in their splendor         held the Lord’s offering in their hands         before the whole congregation of Israel. Finishing the service at the altars,         and arranging the offering to the Most High, the Almighty, he held out his hand for the cup         and poured a drink offering of the blood of the grape;he poured it out at the foot of the altar,         a pleasing odor to the Most High, the king of all. Then the sons of Aaron shouted;         they blew their trumpets of hammered metal;they sounded a mighty fanfare         as a reminder before the Most High. Then all the people together quickly         fell to the ground on their facesto worship their Lord,         the Almighty, God Most High. Then the singers praised him with their voices         in sweet and full-toned melody. And the people of the Lord Most High offered         their prayers before the Merciful One,until the order of worship of the Lord was ended,         and they completed his ritual. Then Simon came down and raised his hands         over the whole congregation of Israelites,to pronounce the blessing of the Lord with his lips,         and to glory in his name; and they bowed down in worship a second time,         to receive the blessing from the Most High. (Sirach 50:1-21 NRSV)Simon was a good and honourable priest, but more than that what ben Sira gets at is that the priest inspired the people.  The priest, standing there as representative of both the Lord and of Israel, reminded them of the covenant, reminded them of the Lord’s words: I will be your God and you will be my people.  And in that, the priest inspired faith and hope and love and loyalty to the Lord and to his covenant.If the priests of the old covenant could inspire the people in faith and hope and love and loyalty to the Lord, Brothers and Sisters, how much more ought Jesus to inspire us to faith and hope and love and covenant loyalty?  Consider that as we come to his Table this morning and recall how, as the writer of Hebrew puts it, he went into the holy place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but to offer his own blood, securing an eternal redemption for his people.  Jesus is our priest and as ben Sira saw the high priest of his day in all his glory as he stood outside the temple offering sacrifices for the people and gave glory to God, we ought to see something even better, even more beautiful, even more glorious as we recall the death of Jesus on the cross.  In him God himself has become our great high priest, giving his own life, that we might live—that might be plunged into the life of his own Spirit and that we might live in hope of the life of the age to come.Let us pray: Heavenly Father, we thank you this morning for your word and how even these minute and seemingly finicky details point remind us of your holiness, point us to Jesus, and inspire us to give you glory.  As we think of the glory of Aaron and his sons, may we be inspired to see the glory of Jesus, our great high priest of whom Aaron was only a dim shadow.  And as we think of the sacrifice that Jesus has offered of himself for us, may we be moved to worship you in glory and beauty.  Through Jesus we pray.  Amen.[1] Sotah 9:12 and Yoma 21b

An Altar of Acacia WoodExodus 27:1-21 & 38:1-20by William Klock We’ve taken a break from our study of Exodus since March since it seemed appropriate to take some encouragement from Scripture in the midst of a difficult time, but this morning we’ll be picking up where we left off in Exodus, at Chapter 27.  We were in the middle of the bit of Exodus—actually a fairly large “bit”—that describes the instructions for and the building of the tabernacle.  As I said earlier this year, while there are a lot of people who see the giving of the torah, the law, as the high point of Exodus, I’m convinced that the high point is actually the tabernacle.  Exodus is about the Lord creating a people for himself—that’s the “You will be my people and I will be your God” covenant—and the Lord then taking up his residence in the midst of that people, God returning to dwell with human beings.  God created human beings to live in his presence and to rule his creation as stewards.  That’s what the garden was about in Genesis.  In the garden humans shared in the life of God.  But we rebelled.  Because of our sin, we were case out, no longer able to live in the presence of the holy.  We lost our access to the life of God and became subject not only to our broken and sinful wills, but to death.  And, apart from the Lord, humanity eventually lost all knowledge of him.  This is the main message of the Tower of Babel story.  And yet the very next thing we read in the narrative is the calling of Abraham.  In Abraham, God spoke into the darkness of the world and summoned a man from whom he would establish a people—a people amongst whom he would dwell, but also a people through whom the human race would once again know our Creator—and not only know, but eventually be reconciled with him.  This is why I say that the tabernacle is the high point of Exodus.  This is what God’s been working towards since calling Abraham: creating a people in whose midst he would dwell.  The torah was given to set the people apart from the rest of humanity.  The sacrificial system was to give them a means of approach.  The tabernacle, though, was the heart of it: the place in which the Lord would be present at the heart of the Israelite camp and, later, at the heart of their life in the promised land.And so, last time back in March, we read about the instructions (and how those instructions were followed) for this beautiful tent.  It wasn’t big by modern standards.  It was about as long as our church, about as wide as the centre portion of pews and aisles, and about as high as the tie rods that cross our ceiling.  It wasn’t big, but it was beautifully made, not only fit for the presence of the Lord, but full of imagery that both hearkened back to the garden and that reminded the people of the holiness of God.  And this tent was to be setup in the middle of the Israelite camp.  There the Lord’s presence rested on the mercy seat, on the ark of the covenant, and around this great tent the Lord’s people went about their lives according to the covenant he’d established with them.  And as I said last time, the tabernacle wasn’t a church.  Only the priests were allowed inside—and only the high priest once a year into the most holy place where the Lord’s presence was manifest.  But there was a greater complex to the tabernacle, a complex where the people brought their offerings that they might remain in right relationship, might maintain the covenant with the Lord.  And that’s what we get to today.  Chapters 27 and 38 are mainly about the courtyard surrounding the tabernacle and, more importantly, about the altar that stood in its centre, outside the tabernacle.  We’ll focus on Chapter 27 where the instructions are given, but if we turn over to Chapter 38:1-20 we see the report that these instructions were followed out, the court and the altar made, and the writer of Exodus makes the point by repeating the language of the instructions almost verbatim, highlighting the faithfulness of the people to the Lord’s instructions.Let’s start in the middle of Chapter 27, with the tabernacle courtyard, then we’ll work our way back to the altar.  Look at verses 9-19:“You shall make the court of the tabernacle. On the south side the court shall have hangings of fine twined linen a hundred cubits long for one side.  Its twenty pillars and their twenty bases shall be of bronze, but the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.  And likewise for its length on the north side there shall be hangings a hundred cubits long, its pillars twenty and their bases twenty, of bronze, but the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.  And for the breadth of the court on the west side there shall be hangings for fifty cubits, with ten pillars and ten bases.  The breadth of the court on the front to the east shall be fifty cubits.  The hangings for the one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits, with their three pillars and three bases.  On the other side the hangings shall be fifteen cubits, with their three pillars and three bases.  For the gate of the court there shall be a screen twenty cubits long, of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, embroidered with needlework. It shall have four pillars and with them four bases.  All the pillars around the court shall be filleted with silver. Their hooks shall be of silver, and their bases of bronze.  The length of the court shall be a hundred cubits, the breadth fifty, and the height five cubits, with hangings of fine twined linen and bases of bronze.  All the utensils of the tabernacle for every use, and all its pegs and all the pegs of the court, shall be of bronze. What’s being described here is the public area surrounding the tabernacle.  Well, public in the sense that the covenant people, marked out by circumcision were permitted.  Gentiles and anyone who was ceremonially unclean were unable to enter.  What’s described here is the heavy linen fence that will surround the tabernacle itself.  It’s to be one hundred cubits long and fifty wide or about 50 metres by 25 metres.  The fine twined linen is the same as that used for the tabernacle and the veil, although this apparently wasn’t dyed and wasn’t embroidered with angels.  The hardware is similar to that of the tabernacle, but whereas the hardware in the tabernacle was of gold and silver, this is of silver and bronze.  The metals become more precious the closer we get to the presence of the Lord.  The tabernacle was to be situated in the back half of the court with its entrance at the court’s centreline.  Opposite the entrance to the tabernacle was the entrance to the court, curtains of blue, purple, and scarlet suspended from four pillars, similar to the entrance to the tabernacle.Again, the tabernacle was designed to remind people that they were entering the presence of the holy.  From the colourful gate made of expensive yarns and linens with bronze and silver hardware to the tabernacle itself and its embroidered angels and its gold and silver. Now, aside from the tabernacle itself, the most prominent feature of the court was the altar.  This is described in verses 1-8:“You shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad. The altar shall be square, and its height shall be three cubits. Five cubits is about 7 ½ feet.  For reference our centre pews are just a bit longer than that.  So the altar is 7 ½ feet square and about 4 ½ feet high. And you shall make horns for it on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze It’s not clear exactly what the horns are.  Horns were common on both pagan and Israelite altars.  In other cultures they were symbols of strength and fertility.  We don’t know if they were on this altar for that reason or not.  In Exodus 29:2 and in Leviticus 4:7 we read that blood from the sacrifices was daubed on the horns.  Again, Scripture never tells us explicitly why, so any answer we may come up with is going to be speculative.  Similarly, we’re read, for example in First Kings, that running to the tabernacle and clinging to the horns of the altar was a way of seeking refuge in God’s presence.  It may be that the horns were a symbol of the Lord’s strength.  To take hold of them was to dedicate oneself to the Lord, which meant anyone else lost whatever claim they might have on you.  The horns also served a practical purpose for the binding of the sacrifices.  Psalm 118:27 describes this:The Lord is God,         and he has made his light to shine upon us.Bind the festal sacrifice with cords,         up to the horns of the altar! Animals tend to run away when they sense a threat, so the sacrifices were—at least sometimes—tied to the horns of the altar to secure them in place before they were slaughtered.  And it’s hard to pass this by without thinking about St. Paul’s exhortation to present ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.  It’s not easy to die to ourselves and to live for God.  Those animals tied to the horns of the altar had no choice in the matter.  They were dumb brutes.  They had to be tied down lest they run away.  But Brothers and Sisters, we’re called to offer up ourselves to the Lord in light of what he has done for us.  Rather than being bound with ropes, we are bound to the altar by the love of Jesus who gave himself as a sacrifice for sin.  We’re tempted every day to climb down from the altar and to run away, to live for ourselves, and so we need to remind ourselves each day of the love that God has poured out on us in Jesus—a love to which the only response is utter devotion of ourselves. Now, verses 3-8 give the rest of the details:You shall make pots for it to receive its ashes, and shovels and basins and forks and fire pans. You shall make all its utensils of bronze.  You shall also make for it a grating, a network of bronze, and on the net you shall make four bronze rings at its four corners.  And you shall set it under the ledge of the altar so that the net extends halfway down the altar.  And you shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with bronze.  And the poles shall be put through the rings, so that the poles are on the two sides of the altar when it is carried.  You shall make it hollow, with boards. As it has been shown you on the mountain, so shall it be made. Everything about the altar is bronze: the horns, the utensils, the rings, the poles, the grate.  The grate is difficult to picture.  These descriptions, for all their technicalities, don’t give the information needed to actually construct any of these things.  The descriptions give us lot of details about dimensions and materials, but not a lot more.  Some commentators think that the stone tablets likely contained actual drawings of the tabernacle and its furnishings.  Some understand the grate to surround the altar, but most seem to think that it was the surface on which the sacrifices were actually burnt, allowing air to flow to the flames from below and for ashes to drop through from above.Interestingly, the altar is said to be hollow and made of acacia boards covered with bronze.  Just based on the description, it doesn’t sound like something that would survive the fire needed for one sacrifice, let alone many.  I’m inclined to agree with the commentators who believe that the hollow altar was filled with dirt or stones when it wasn’t being transported.  This would have provided a fireproof base for the sacrifices and could be emptied when the altar was carried.[1]  And, of course, that’s what the poles were for: carrying the altar when the Lord directed the camp to move to a new location.It’s telling that even when the altar wasn’t being transported, the poles stayed in place, just as with the ark of the covenant.  Everything about the tabernacle was portable and the people were reminded of that.  Eventually the tabernacle would be set up in a permanent spot in the promised land—and later replaced by a permanent temple—but the Lord condescended to travel with his people as they made their way there.  He didn’t rescue them from Egypt, point them in the direction of the Holy Land, and say, “I’ll meet you there.”  He remained with them in the journey through the wilderness.  He guarded and guided them.  They were his people and he was their God.  It’s a reminder that we belong to this same God as we travel through our own wilderness.  He has not left us.  As Jesus promised when he ascended, he has given, he has indwelt us by his own Spirit.But the altar itself: It was the first thing the Israelites saw when they entered the court.  The tabernacle rose behind it, but from their perspective, the tabernacle dominated the court.  Its sights and sounds and smells dominated the Israelite camp—a constant reminder.  All day long, day in and day out, the priests offered sacrifices on the altar.  Even on the outside of those linen curtains, unable to see the altar itself, the Israelites throughout the camp heard the sounds of the animals being led to the slaughter, tied to the horns.  The smell of those burnt offerings would have dominated the camp.  And rising from the court, there would have been a nearly perpetual pillar of smoke.The Israelites in the wilderness saw the visible presence of God in the cloud or in the fire when the people were on the move, but when they stopped and set up the tabernacle, the Lord’s presence descended to the most holy place.  No one could see the cloud of glory.  Again, that first generation in the wilderness had seen it, but once the Israelites were established in the promised land, the tabernacle itself and sights, sounds, and smells of the altar served to remind the people that the Lord was present.  The altar and the sacrifices, in particular, also reminded the people that to remain in his presence required sacrifice.  The altar was a reminder of the seriousness of sin.  The writer of Hebrews says, “Under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22).  Adam and Eve were cast from the garden because of their sin.  In the tabernacle, the Lord returned to dwell with human beings, but human sin still had to be dealt with.  Only blood covers sin.  Only by blood can sinners remain in the presence of the Lord.  As the altar ingrained this principle in the people it prepared them for Jesus.  If we continue on in the book of Hebrews this is what we read in 13:10-16:We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat.  For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.  So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.  Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.  For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.  Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.  Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. You see, Jesus did something new.  He established something new.  In the First Century church there were Jews who continued to offer those sacrifices of the old covenant and some insisted that gentile converts needed to join them in those sacrifices.  But Jesus has done something that superseded those old sacrifices and the whole of the old covenant—even the idea of the holy or sacred ground of the old covenant.  Jesus offered his blood as a sacrifice for sins, but as the writer here points out, he offered himself up, not in the sacred confines of the temple, not on the sacred altar where atonement for sins was supposed to be made, but outside the camp—in the place that would have rendered the priests of the old covenant unclean.  For the writer of Hebrews, this highlights the fact that what Jesus did at the cross has established something new and better, something that renders the old obsolete.  Our liturgy sums it up this way:“All glory to you, our heavenly Father, for in your tender mercy you gave your only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death on the cross for our redemption; who made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.”Jesus has accomplished once and for all and for everyone what those old sacrifices could do only temporarily for the person who offered the sacrifice.  In that, Jesus has become not just the sacrifice, but also the priest and the altar.  This is why the Christian priest is not the same thing as the priests of the Old Testament.  The Christian priest is “presybter”—the Greek word for “elder”.  The role of the Old Testament priest, one who offered sacrifices and stood as a mediator between human beings and God, that role has been taken on by Jesus, who shares it with every believer. This is also why Christians have no altar.  We have the Lord’s Table.  Here he invites us to share in this meal in which we recall and participate in the events of Jesus death and resurrection, but the only sacrifice we offer here is ourselves.  We recall the love of God poured out in Jesus as the cross and in response we bind ourselves to the altar, dying to self, and offering ourselves as living sacrifices to the God of loving mercy and grace.These were important aspects of our faith that were reasserted by the Protestant Reformers.  At the time of the Reformation, Archbishop Cranmer, for example, ordered that the medieval altars be moved into the choirs or naves of the churches so that the communicants could gather around them, a reminder that the Lord’s Supper is a banquet, not sacrifice.  Our Declaration of Principles, the “constitution” of the Reformed Episcopal Church reiterates both of these points about priests and the Lord’s Supper, adding clarity to the Article of Religion.  We read there that “This Church condemns and rejects the following erroneous and strange doctrines as contrary to God’s Word…That Christian Ministers are ‘priests’ in another sense than that in which all believers are a ‘royal priesthood:’ [and]…That the Lord’s Table is an altar on which the oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ is offered anew to the Father.”Brothers and Sisters, the cross was the altar.  Here the Lord invites to his Table to share in the meal that commemorates that sacrifice, a meal like the Passover, in which each new generation participates in those events and claims them as our own.  This is the meal in which the Lord reminds us once again, “I will be your God and you will be my people”.Now, there’s one last thing in Chapter 27 that we’ll end on.  Look at verses 20-21:“You shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive oil for the light, that a lamp may regularly be set up to burn.  In the tent of meeting, outside the veil that is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall tend it from evening to morning before the Lord. It shall be a statute forever to be observed throughout their generations by the people of Israel. We read the instructions for the lampstand a couple of chapters back.  It’s not clear why the instructions for the oil are here and they seem to look forward to the time when Israel would be in the promised land.  Where they would find olive oil in the wilderness is a bit of a mystery.  Nevertheless, the people provided oil for the lampstand, which was to burn perpetually.  One of the jobs of the priests was to keep it full of oil and to trim the wicks.  The lampstand was symbolic of the Lord’s presence with his people.  But here’s the thing: Only the priests would ever see it.  It was in the holy place, inside the tabernacle, out of view. And, again, we see that in Jesus something new has happened.  In the Incarnation God has taken on our flesh and come to dwell—to tabernacle—in our midst.  In Jesus, John writes, the light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it.  And yet, even we look forward to a better day.  The tabernacle reminded the people of the old covenant of the garden and of their lost fellowship with the Lord—a fellowship still obviously broken as the altar made clear.  And even though you and I live in this new covenant, we too are making our way through the wilderness.  We see the brokenness of the world around us and as glorious as the Incarnation and the gift of the Spirit are to us, they also reminds us that both humanity and the world were meant for something still better.  We live in hope of the day when all creation will be set to rights.  And I think, when John described that new creation, he had in mind the lamp in the tabernacle.  That lamp symbolized the presence of the Lord, but it was hidden away.  Only the priests could see it.  But in his vision of creation set to rights, in his vision of heaven and earth rejoined, John writes, “night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5).  Brothers and Sisters, God with us.  That’s been the end to which the story has pointed and given hope ever since humanity was cast out of his presence.  Come to the Table this morning as Jesus reminds us that, by his death and resurrection, he has made us his people and that at his people we live in hope of that day when all will be set to rights and we will need neither sun nor lamp, because we will once again be living in the presence of God.Let’s pray: Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and for the assurance we find there.  You love your people and even though we have rebelled against you, you have not given up on us.  You desire for us to be in your presence.  As we look to Jesus and the cross, remind us of your love for us and strengthen our love for you that we might, each day, offer ourselves to you as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable.  Through Jesus we ask this.  Amen.[1] See Robert D. Haak, “Altar” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary and Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus (Skokie, Ill.: Varda Books, 2005), 362.

You Are Our Letter2 Corinthians 3:1-11by William KlockOur Epistle today reminds me of applying for my first summer job  when I was in University.  Through one of his contacts, my architectural history professor found me a job working for the county historic preservation society in Vancouver, Washington.  Of course, in reviewing my application the board asked for a couple of recommendations.  I went back to my prof.  He got me the job after all.  And he refused to write me a recommendation.  He said he didn’t have time for that sort of thing.  Instead, he told me to write my own recommendation, put his name on it, and he’d photocopy it on departmental letterhead and sign it.  I wasn’t comfortable with that, but I didn’t know what to do and ended up doing what he asked.  Writing your own recommendation is an awkward thing.  I tried to be conservative in praising myself.  And then I took it to him and he chided me for holding back.  At least I got the job.At the beginning of 2 Corinthians 3 St. Paul writes to the Corinthian Christians about “recommendations”.  In the ancient world, where Paul lived, recommendations or letters of introduction were even more important than they are today.  If someone showed up on your doorstep claiming to be a friend of a friend or representing some important person you couldn’t make a phone call or send an email to verify it.  You could have sent a letter, but it would have taken a long time to get a reply.  So people relied on written letters of introduction.  We know that this was true in the Church too.  A document from the late First Century called the Didache or “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” describes churches writing letters of recommendation for people so that when they went from one church to another claiming to be teachers and servants of Jesus the people in the new church could know it wasn’t a scam or know they weren’t heretics.  This is the background of this morning’s Epistle from 2 Corinthians.  In 3:1 Paul writes:Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? Paul had a difficult relationship with the Corinthians.  Even though he’d started the church and had spent a lot of time with them, the Corinthians didn’t have much respect for Paul.  The Christians in Corinth, in particular, were especially prone to getting carried away with the values of their Greco-Roman culture.  We see this in 1 Corinthians as well.  Greeks placed very high value on rhetorical skill.  They valued people who were good speakers and fast thinkers and from what we can gather, Paul didn’t shine in those areas the way some other teachers did.  The parallel in our culture would be the value we place on flashy production values, slick, feel-good talk, and preachers and churches that appeal to our egos and the things we want.  Paul’s the preacher who sometimes stumbles over his words, isn’t handsome, and wears a slightly shabby suit and if the Corinthians were modern North Americans they’d be passing him over in favour of the slick, handsome, prosperity huckster in his expensive suit and whose services seem more like rock concerts.  Paul didn’t meet their expectations and so when he heard about their problems and wrote to them giving advice, they’d write back and tell him “Thanks, but no thanks.  We’d rather take advice from So-and-so.Reading between the lines, it seems that they’ve told Paul that if he wants to come back to Corinth he’ll need a recommendation from someone they respect.  And at this point we might think Paul would have been in the right to shake the dust off his shoes and forget about these ingrates in Corinth.  But that’s not what he does.  If you want to see what grace looks like, look at verses 2 and 3.  He writes to them:You yourselves are our letter…They rejected him in favour of some slick-talker.  They’ve told him not to come around and not to write to them anymore to give advice.  They’ve disrespected and insulted him.  And Paul writes: I don’t need a letter of recommendation to prove my credentials as an apostle and servant of Jesus.  No.  You people yourselves are my letter of recommendation.  You people, even though you’ve rejected me, you’re the proof of my credentials.You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. If that’s not grace I don’t know what is.  Paul doesn’t need a letter written in ink on paper.  These messed up, confused, infuriating people are still loved by Paul, because despite being muddled and confused, they’re filled with the joy of the Lord and the hope of his kingdom.  For all their faults and for all their inability to see how they’ve been shaped by their culture in their rejection of him, their joy in the Lord and their hope in the Good News is the result of Paul’s ministry to them and that says everything about Paul that needs to be said.  Despite their imperfections, they’re his credentials.  Brothers and Sisters, would that we would all look at the church this way.  We get upset with our brothers and sisters over all sorts of things.  Some may be big deals.  Others are petty even though they seem big at the time.  We get upset because things in the church don’t go the way we want them to or someone doesn’t act the way we think they should.  Maybe they really are wrong.  But, Friends, the church isn’t perfect.  People make mistakes.  Just look at Corinth.  But Paul loved them anyway.  He could see their love for Jesus and that made him love them no matter how unruly they were.  I don’t know how to say it more clearly: Brothers and Sisters, if you love Jesus and someone else loves Jesus, it should be the most natural thing in the world to love each other regardless of your faults or their faults.  The same Spirit has bound you both to himself and to Jesus.  We are all one in him.  You can’t love Jesus and not love his body, the church, and all the people who make it up.Now, to make his point Paul takes them back to this idea of “covenant”.  Covenant is critical to who we are in Jesus, but it’s something we often forget.  We’ve been shaped more than a little by our own culture’s way of thinking.  For about the last century we’ve largely exchanged the biblical language of “covenant” for the language of “relationship” when we talk about how we relate to God.  Describing our relation to God in terms of “relationship” or talking about Jesus as our “personal Saviour” isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s not the language of the Bible and it doesn’t carry anywhere near the depth or the significance of the biblical language.  The Bible never speaks of “relationship”—that’s squishy modern language; it’s also very individualistic language.  God himself, speaks in the Bible of covenant and adoption.  And that’s what Paul goes back to: this idea of being in covenant with God.  We aren’t just in a “relationship” with him.  We’re his people.  We’re his sons and daughters.  And we’re in it together—all of us—as the Church, the Body of Christ with all its many parts and members. Paul takes the Corinthians back to Jeremiah 31.  Israel was in exile at that time.  God had judged her and allowed the Babylonians to conquer her, to destroy Jerusalem, to tear the temple down to the ground, and to carry the people off into captivity, away from the land they’d been promised.  His judgement came on Israel because she was in covenant with him and had failed and refused to live up to that covenant.  Relationship may or may not involve responsibility and commitment, but at the core of the idea of covenant are the ideas of mutual commitment and responsibility.  Israel had failed to live according to the law the Lord had given her, she’d refused to trust in his goodness and his care, she’d worshipped foreign pagan gods, she’d failed to obey him.  Ultimately, she had failed to love him as he loved her and she was unrepentant in her rejection of him.Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord promised the people that he would redeem them.  They may be covenant-breakers—like a cheating spouse—but he was not.  And so one day he would restore Israel by establishing a new covenant.  There would be a new agreement between the Lord and his people.  There would be a new marriage between Israel and her Lord.  He had established the old covenant through Moses when he gave Israel his law, written on stone tablets.  But that law carved on stone did not have the power to give the people the real life they needed and that the Lord desired for them.  And so the Lord promised a new covenant that would restore Israel.  The new covenant would deal with the sins of the people—that’s what the Cross of Jesus is about.  And the new covenant would give the people the new life they needed to truly be the renewed people the Lord wanted them to be—to remake humanity into what we were meant to be—God giving his people his own life, transforming their hearts and minds in a way that the law written on stone was never able to do.  In this new covenant, the Lord promised through Jeremiah, he would carve the law on their hearts—he would give his people his own Spirit.And despite how muddled and confused and wrong the Corinthians were on so many things, despite their rejection of Paul, he could write to them and say that they were his letter, they were his credentials, because the life of the Holy Spirit was evident in their life as a church.  They themselves are a letter from Jesus the Messiah.  The powerful work promised through Jeremiah and the other prophets is manifest in the amazing work that the Spirit has accomplished in them.  Think about that.  Some of them had been Jews—the same sort of Jews that Paul himself had been when he persecuted Jesus’ people.  Some of them had been Greek pagans, worshipping Aphrodite with ritual prostitution and some had been sold out to Caesar who claimed to be divine and the saviour of the world.  But Paul had brought them the Good News that Jesus is Lord.  He preached Jesus’ death and resurrection.  And they had been transformed.  The Spirit had moved them to repentance and given them a totally new life.  The living God had written something powerful on their hearts and they would never be the same people again.  And the pagan world around them could see it even if these people couldn’t see it themselves anymore.  Again, think about that.  Think about your own stories.  Think of the way you were once met with the Good News.  Think of the forgiveness you have found at the Cross.  Think of the new life Jesus has given you.  Just like the Corinthians, each of us has a long road ahead of us as we grow into a mature faithfulness to Jesus and his lordship.  In our baptism he has plunged us into the Holy Spirit and we are not the people we once were.And so Paul goes on, getting back to his credentials, writing in verses 4-6:Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.  Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. All the proof of Paul’s faithfulness as a minister of the Gospel, as a minister of God’s new covenant is right there in the work accomplished in the Corinthians by Jesus and the Spirit.  It’s not that Paul is competent himself.  He merely showed up in Corinth and preached the Word as he’d been called to do by Jesus himself.  But as a result of Paul preaching the Good News of Jesus and the kingdom the new covenant has unfolded right there in a powerful and very visible way.  The “letter”—the old law written on stone—brought death, but the Spirit now poured into them has given them life.  In his resurrection Jesus unleashed life into the world.  All Paul has done is preach that Good News and where he’s done that the Spirit has brought transformation.At this point Paul changes tack a bit.  The reason the Corinthians rejected him and the reason he’s had to explain all this about the new covenant to them is that they’ve lost sight of what’s important.  Again, they’d been captivated by teachers who met superficial criteria of Greek culture as to what a wise teacher was supposed to be like.  Again, the parallel today would be the way people are attracted to programs and high production values and slick talkers in faddish clothes or slick suits who pander to the consumerism and the materialism of our culture.  And so in verses 7 and 8 Paul starts trying to stress the glory of the new covenant that the Corinthians seem to have forgotten.Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? Paul takes them back to the Exodus as he does so often.  They all knew the story.  For those who were Jews this was part of their national and cultural identity.  In Exodus 34 we read how the Israelites became afraid after Moses had been up on Mt. Sinai for a long time.  They saw the thunder and lightning and they thought God was angry.  Ironically, Moses was up on the mountain being given instructions on how the tabernacle was to be built, how all the furnishing and vestments were to be made, and how the people were to worship the Lord.  But down at the base of the mountain the people were convincing Aaron, Moses’ brother, to take their gold and make them an idol in the shape of a calf.  Here they were on their honeymoon, prostituting themselves to an idol.  Moses came down from the mountain and the first words he was given by the Lord to speak to the people amounted to a death sentence for their idolatry.  Moses pleaded with the Lord to spare the people despite their guilt and as a result of his pleading prayer the Lord revealed his nature and character even further.  Even though the Lord insisted that Israel’s wickedness had to be addressed and dealt with, he was still a god of abundant mercy.  As a result of that revelation, Moses went down the mountain and his face was shining.  The radiance of the Lord, reflected from Moses’ face was so great that the Israelites were afraid—they knew their sin and cowered in the presence of the holy, even though it was only the reflection of the Lord’s holiness.  Moses had to veil his face.  The only time he unveiled it was when he went into the Lord’s presence in the Tabernacle, to speak with him face to face.  Now, Scripture doesn’t explain the mechanics of it.  I know I can’t quite picture how Moses’ face radiated the glory of God, but somehow it did.  And it was absolutely magnificent and utterly overwhelming.And Paul’s point is this: If the law carved on stone came down from the mountain in such amazing glory, and if the judgement of the Lord on Israel’s idolatry was manifested in such glory, how much more glorious is the ministry of the Spirit?  He goes on in verses 9-11:For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory!  Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory! Like the Christians of Ephesus who, in Revelation, are described as having lost their first love, the Corinthians had lost sight of the glory of the Holy Spirit’s ministry.  It wasn’t that they’d lost the Holy Spirit.  That’s impossible.  It’s the Spirit who binds us to Jesus, he’s the one who unites us to his life, he’s the one who renews our minds and regenerates our hearts, turning us from everything that is not Jesus and giving us the desire and the faith to take hold of Jesus with both hands.  You cannot be a Christian without the Holy Spirit.  But the Spirit had become “old hat” for the Corinthians.  It’s remarkable considering the miraculous things that we read about going on there in Paul’s first letter to them.  Their church had no shortage of the Spirit’s ministry, but they’d let themselves be overwhelmed by the values of the culture around them.Brothers and Sisters, we need to be on guard in the same way.  Our own culture infiltrates the church in many, many ways.  Our culture is overwhelmingly commercialistic and too often, without even realizing it’s happened, we start building our churches around what amount to sales tactics, as if we’re trying to sell the Gospel.  Programs can be good and useful in accomplishing the work of the Church, but most of the time these days they’re seen as sales tools.  But God doesn’t give us programs.  He gives us his Word.  Through the ministry of the Spirit he caused his Word to be written by prophets, apostles, and evangelists so that we can know him and proclaim him to the world.  And in Jesus he sent his Word to become flesh—not to give us programs or gimmicks—but to die for our sins and to rise again to unleash life into the world.  A Church should never have its identity tied up with programs.  A Church should never be reliant on a slick preacher or putting on a show with high production values.  A Church is a place where the Word is faithfully preached and the Sacraments faithfully administered.  That was the definition the Protestant Reformers developed universally.  What constitutes a Church?  A Church is a body that preaches the Word and administers the Sacraments.  But today it seems many preach everything but the Word and the Sacraments are often side-lined or even sometimes considered optional.  As ministers of the Gospel, we—and that’s both you and I—are not called to be flashy, we’re not called to preach the pop-psychology and self-help that our culture obsesses over, we’re not called to be motivational speakers, we’re not called to preach health and wealth even though that’s what people want to hear—we’re called to proclaim that Jesus has died and risen and that he is Lord.  And we’re called to back-up that proclamation by living the life of the Spirit, by manifesting the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control that the Spirit bears in our lives.  We’re called to be gloriously counter-cultural: being poor in spirit, mourning sin, living in meekness, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, and making peace—even when it means rejection and persecution.  It’s this Jesus-centred and Spirit-empowered life that manifests the glory of God to the world, that makes us the light of the world and the salt of the earth.Let us pray:  Heavenly Father, we thank you this morning for the forgiveness and new life you’ve given us through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  We thank you for pouring your Spirit into us, uniting us to Jesus and transforming us.  In us you’ve revealed your glory.  We ask that you would, in your grace, keep us from taking the life of the Holy Spirit for granted and that you would keep us focused on your priorities despite the competing priorities that surround us in the world.  Keep us faithful to Jesus, to his kingdom, to your Word and to your Sacraments, and to preaching the Good News that Jesus has died and risen and is Creation’s true Lord.  We ask all of this through him.  Amen.

Two Men Went Up to Pray

St. Luke 18:9-14

by William Klock

I want to look at today’s Gospel, but before we do we need to backup in the passage to look at the context.  What was Jesus’ reason for telling this story of the two men praying in the temple?  In Luke 17 the Pharisees approached Jesus and asked him when to expect the kingdom.  It was one of those “If you’re so smart, tell us such-and-such” questions.  In this case, “If you’re really the Messiah, Jesus, tell us when the kingdom’s going to be here.”  And they were asking because they did believe that the Messiah was coming and because they did believe that when he came he would usher in God’s kingdom.  The problem with Jesus was that what he was saying and doing didn’t meet their expectations and for all his talk about the kingdom, they couldn’t see anything happening around Jesus that looked like the kingdom.  In fact, everything Jesus was doing was pretty much the opposite of what they expected.  So their question was really an attack on Jesus.  When we ask those “If you’re so smart” questions, what we’re really saying to that person is: “You’re not really as knowledgeable as you think you are” and when the Pharisees asked Jesus when the kingdom was coming what they were really saying is, “You’re not the Messiah.”

And so Jesus took their “question” and turned it back on them.  The kingdom is in your midst, he told them.  Woe to you if you can’t see it, because judgement is coming.  Just as it came in the days of Noah and as it came to Sodom in Lot’s day, most people won’t be expecting it.  They’ll be going about their business and their lives and then—BOOM!—judgement will come and there will be no mistaking it.  Like lightening is unmistakable as it lights up the sky at night so the judgement on Jerusalem, on the temple, and on unbelieving Israel will be unmistakable when it comes.  But then it’ll be too late.  You need to take hold of the kingdom today.

 

Now Jesus takes the Pharisees’ question as a teaching opportunity.  Just like a lot of people today who are focused on Jesus returning to finish his kingdom work, the Pharisees—and many other Jews—were fixated on the coming of the Messiah for the wrong reason.  The Jews of that day were obsessed with the soon coming of the kingdom.  Anticipation of the coming of the Messiah had reached a fevered pitch by the First Century.  If there’d been a First Century Jewish equivalent to the Christian publishing industry, it would have been churning out silly books like “The Late, Great Planet Jerusalem” and “Thirty Reasons the Messiah is Coming in A.D. 30”—probably something about “blood moons”, too, for that matter.  The people wanted and longed for the Lord to come to vindicate his people and to judge their enemies.  And while the specifics may be different, Christians today often have the same obsession.  We long for the Lord’s return to vindicate us and to judge our enemies.

Brothers and sisters, that kind of longing and that kind of obsession with the question of “When?” often betrays the need to ask a more important question: “Who?”  You see, people obsessed with “When?”—like the Jews of Jesus’ day and a lot of people today—are usually very certain of their status as kingdom insiders.  The Jews were sure of their status as God’s people and so they could look forward in confidence to the coming day of God’s wrath.  They were the good guys and they would escape while all their enemies would get their just comeuppance.  But Jesus backs us up and forces us to question that assurance of our status as insiders.  In fact, what he gets at is that just this kind of assurance and just this kind of hope and longing for judgement on our enemies is a cause for concern.  Because as Jesus has shown, the kingdom of God is about redemption and reconciliation.  God will judge sinners at the end of the story, but first he sent his Son into the middle of the story to provide a means of reconciliation so that sinners can escape judgement on that last day.  Jesus came not to condemn, but to redeem.  That’s one of the key defining values of his kingdom and it’s why the Pharisees and most of the Jews missed it.  They were looking to be vindicated for their righteousness; they were looking for judgment; they were looking for fire and brimstone on their enemies.  Instead Jesus condemned self-righteousness and embraced the outsiders with mercy and grace.  We need to examine our own attitude.  Do we long for Jesus’ coming because we can’t wait for our enemies to be destroyed or are we longing to see our enemies embraced by the grace of God so that they too escape destruction?

So the people asked “When?” is the kingdom coming and Jesus redirects them to a more important question: “Who will be in the kingdom?”  What do kingdom people look like?  More importantly, what kind of attitude and values do they have?  You see, before you start getting excited about the coming kingdom, you first need to ask if you’re going to be part of it.  To answer the question of “Who?” Jesus tells two parables.  Look at 18:1-3.

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.  He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.  And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’

 

Jesus has been talking about judgement and now he takes us into a courtroom.  An ancient Jewish court was very different from a modern court, but we can imagine one of our own civil courts easily enough.  You’ve got a plaintiff bringing a complaint against a defendant.  Both of them come before a judge to have the complaint decided.  In Israel there were no juries; every case was basically like a modern civil case where a judge makes the decision.  Each side would come to make their case.  A just or righteous judge would rule fairly and in accordance with the law and the person he ruled in favour of would leave vindicated or “justified”.  The Gospels almost never address this issue of justification, but it becomes very important in St. Paul’s epistles.  This court language and imagery is what St. Paul is drawing on when he talks about the justness or righteousness of God and about God justifying his people.

In the parable Jesus tells us about the judge and the plaintiff.  The judge is a bad judge.  In the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles we read about King Jehoshaphat.  He wasn’t perfect, but he was a good king who tried to bring the nation back to the Lord.  He opposed the worship of false gods and idols and he cleaned up and reformed the judiciary.  We’re told specifically that he appointed judges and he gave them this commission: “Consider what you do, for you judge not for man but for the Lord. He is with you in giving judgment.  Now then, let the fear of the Lord be upon you. Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the Lord our God, or partiality or taking bribes” (2 Chronicles 19:6-7).  That’s the profile of a good judge, but Jesus describes someone just the opposite.  The judge in Jesus’ parable neither fears God nor respects man.

And in front of the bench Jesus places a widow.  It’s not without reason that throughout Luke’s Gospel he uses widows as examples of piety and of people to whom God shows his goodness.  Widows were often the poorest of the poor.  They had no one to look out for them, which is why throughout the law, the Lord commanded his people to care for widows.  But this judge does just the opposite.  It’s safe to assume that this woman’s case had something to do with property or inheritance that was righty hers, but that was being withheld.  Other people would simply bribe the judge to give them justice, but this woman is too poor for that.  All she can do is go before the judge over and over and over in the hopes that she can wear him down.

It’s popular to take this parable out of context and to twist its meaning.  A lot of people understand this parable to be telling us that if God doesn’t answer our prayers, we need to keep praying.  If we keep praying long enough, we’ll wear down God the way the widow wore down the unjust judge.  Brothers and sisters, stop and think about what that says about the God we worship.  First, the God of the Bible is a God who is sovereign.  He’s also a God who is perfectly good and perfectly wise and perfectly patient.  If God hasn’t answered our prayers the way we expect, it’s not because we need to wear him down.  A god who can be worn down by our constant petitions is no god at all.  No.  If God isn’t giving us what we’ve asked for, it’s because what we’re asking isn’t what he wants for us.  Jesus’ point is that our prayer is meant to be an expression of our trust in God’s goodness and wisdom and faithfulness.  And we can trust him precisely because he is the polar opposite of the unjust judge of the parable.  We pray and we don’t lose heart because we pray to a God who is faithful and just and who isn’t worn down or manipulated by our shallow, short-sighted petitions and complaints.  Look at how Jesus continues the story and consider how dramatically this unjust judge contrasts with our perfectly just Lord:

For a while [the judge] refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’”  And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says.  And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?  I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. (Luke 18:4-8a)

The judge eventually gives in and does the right thing—he sends this woman away from his court justified or vindicated.  He does what’s right, but he only does it because he’s feeling beaten down.  Jesus uses imagery from the boxing ring: the poor widow eventually corners the unjust judge and forces him to do justly.  Now, does that sound like God?  Can we beat God down by our persistence in prayer?  If that’s how we’re praying, friends, we’re praying to an idol, to a false god.  In contrast to the judge, Jesus points to God who is perfectly just and who is faithful to justify and to vindicate those who cry to him out of their suffering.  In contrast to the judge, who only did justly when forced to, God will justify his people speedily.

This is important.  Consider the context.  Jesus was preparing his disciples for a time of coming suffering and persecution.  He knew that he was going to Jerusalem this last time to face his own death.  He was probably considering the possibility that some of his disciples might be executed with him.  Even if they weren’t, Jesus did know that as they carried on his mission, taking his good news to the world, they would face persecution.  Jesus promised them that they would suffer and be persecuted—the slave is not above his master.  But in the midst of that, Jesus reminds them, the Lord will hear their cries and will vindicate them.  “Keep praying,” Jesus is saying, “keep crying out to God in faith, and know that he will vindicate you.

And that’s just the point.  Look at the last part of verse 8:

Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

 

Prayer is an expression of faith in our perfectly good, perfectly wise, and perfectly just God, would he find faith when he returned in judgement to Jerusalem a generation later?  And in our case, will he find faith when he comes in judgement to consummate his kingdom?  We ask “When?”: When is Jesus coming back?  And Jesus turns the question back on us: Better to ask, will I be found faithful on that day?

This is the point of the second parable that Jesus tells.  What does the faith of kingdom people look like?  Look at verse 9:

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:

 

“He told this parable to some who trusted in themselves.”  There were Pharisees in the crowd.  They certainly “trusted in themselves”, but Jesus doesn’t just address the parable to them.  The parable is addressed to everyone there who had this problem: to the Pharisees, to others, and even to his disciples.  And he addresses it to us.  The characters in the story may have changed over the two millennia since Jesus told the story, but you and I have this same struggle.  Too often we trust in ourselves instead of God.  Too often we are too sure of ourselves—too sure of our guaranteed place in the kingdom and sure for the wrong reasons and just as sure of the spot that others will have outside of the kingdom.  Jesus goes on:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ (Luke 18:10-12)

The Pharisees goes into the temple and he sets himself apart from everyone else.  As far as he’s concerned, he’s better than all of them.  And he prays.  But his prayer is nothing more than a boast of his own righteousness.  And since people in those days prayed out loud, the implication is that he’s boasting to the other people gathered in the temple as much as he’s boasting to God.  He boasts that he’s one of the righteous: not an extortioner, not an adulterer, not like the sleazy tax collector in the back.  He boasts that he fasts twice a week—not just on the required days, but twice a week—and that he doesn’t quibble about tithing on just the things he’s required to tithe on, but on everything he gets.  He boasts that he’s not “unjust”.  And that brings us back to the courtroom.  What started out looking like a religious setting takes us back to the court.  This man is certain of his status before God.  He’s certain that were he to stand in the dock before the judge, he would be vindicated and his cause found just—because he’s not a sinner like all the others, because he does good, because he keeps the law.  This man represents Israel.  He was circumcised, he ate the right food, he kept clear of gentiles and unclean people and so he was pure.  He’s convinced he’s in the kingdom, and yet he trusts only in himself.  He embodies the rebuke the Lord gave his people through Isaiah: “this people draw near with their mouth and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13).

In contrast Jesus describes the other man:

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13)

Here’s the polar opposite of the Pharisee.  He was a social and religious outsider.  He collaborated with the Romans and spent his days in contact with unclean gentiles.  He knows that he has nothing in which to boast, he knows he’s a sinner, and so he comes to the temple and throws himself humbly on the mercy of God in repentance.  It’s an expression of faith in the one who judges justly.  And so Jesus says:

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)

Again, we’re back to the courtroom.  As much as the Pharisee, like so many, went into the court confident of his case, it was the poor tax collector who was vindicated—not for his righteousness, but for his faith.

And people in the crowd would have looked at Jesus like he was crazy.  The Pharisee should have gone home vindicated, not the tax collector.  The tax collector was one of those collaborators who should have gone down in flames with the Romans and Herodians when the Messiah came.  And this is just the problem with so many people who are so eager for the Lord to return and who are eager for judgement.  They are—we are—like the Pharisee, smug in our assumptions of righteousness and justness, smug in our assurance of being kingdom insiders, and eager for all the evil outsiders to get their comeuppance.  And yet what Jesus is saying here is that this is precisely the attitude that kingdom people do not have.  Kingdom people may well have assurance of their status before God, but they have that assurance not based on what they’ve done, but on their faith in Jesus.  And kingdom insiders don’t look with eager expectation for their enemies to be judged.  No, in fact, just the opposite.  Kingdom people do good to their enemies, pray for them—pray for them to repent and turn to Jesus that they might be reconciled with God rather than judged when he returns.

Brothers and Sisters, God’s kingdom is about reconciliation and redemption.  It always has been, ever since he called Abraham to himself, blessing him in order to be a blessing to the nations.  Jesus brought that mission of blessing to its climax as he created a new people, his Church, to be a light to the world that the whole human race might be drawn to the Lord and know him and go home justified by faith.  That’s our mission.  And that means that our lives ought to be characterised by humility—by the knowledge that, like the tax collector, we are poor sinners redeemed by grace.  We can stand before God only because Jesus, the only human being who was ever perfect enough to stand before him on his own merit, went to the cross to die the death we deserve.  And kingdom people, because of our humility, because we have experienced and known the love of God for sinners, will always be about redemption and reconciliation—about seeking not to condemn the lost, but to summon them to Jesus.  Because kingdom people were once lost, because kingdom people know what it means to be lost, and because we desire to share this life we know only by grace with everyone around us.

But all too often we forget the true nature of grace.  We look at the sinners around us and we start to think like the Pharisee in the parable and we start looking down on others.  And it isn’t a great step from looking down on sinners to longing for their judgement.  Think of all the times we look at others with judgement and condemnation.  Think of our attitude towards the people who hurt us.  Think of our attitude towards the Mormon who knocks on the door or the Jehovah’s Witness handing out cult literature on the street corner.  Think about our attitude towards the people we hear on the street cursing up a storm with the Lord’s name or the same-sex couple holding hands.  Think about our attitude towards the members of the “wrong” political parties who are ruining our country or ushering in an era of persecution for the Church.  Think of our attitude towards criminals and prisoners and our attitude towards the people in far off countries who follow false religions.  What’s our attitude towards all these people?  Brothers and Sisters, the answer to that question reveals our place in the kingdom.  It reveals whether we’re the Pharisee who went home condemned in his self-righteousness or the tax collector who went home justified for his humble faith.  Yes, God’s people long for justice and we seek justice in this world—that’s part of our mandate—but if we are truly following our Lord, we’ll recognise and we’ll remember that Jesus went to the cross, not to reconcile good people to God, but to reconcile sinners—all sinners, including you and me, including the people who hurt us, including the cultist interrupting our dinner to argue doctrine, including the kid dropping f-bombs and the same-sex couple, including Liberals and New Democrats and Conservatives and Greens, including criminals and prisoners.  Jesus even died to reconcile terrorists and murderers to God.  We have a duty to speak out against evil and sin in the world, but Brothers and Sisters, let us never be like the Pharisee.  Let us never speak out of self-righteousness.  Let always remember that the only way evil and sin will ever be overcome is as we proclaim the good news that Jesus is Lord and as sinners are welcomed to the cross and into the kingdom with the message of God’s reconciling love for his enemies.

Let us pray: Lord God, you declare your almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace, that we, running the way of your commandments, may receive your gracious promises, and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

He Will Provide

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

by William Klock

Jesus has given us new life and he expects us to live it.  It’s easy to fall back into old ways; it’s easy to forget when the world, the flesh, and devil call us back to the very bondage from which Jesus freed us.  But we need to live the new life we’ve been given and the Holy Spirit will help us do it, even when it seems impossible.  Look at the cross, look at the empty tomb, look how the Holy Spirit has been poured out on us at Pentecost…consider it, reckon it, do the math and you have to conclude that the life Jesus gives is ours.  Jesus has led on in an exodus from our bondage to sin and death.  We’ve been transformed.  And knowing that reality makes all the difference in living that reality.  And we need to be reminded of this—sometimes daily, maybe even hourly!  And what we have in our Epistle today is another reminder.  In fact, it’s a reminder with a story.  In the Bible I use for everyday reading Chapter 10 of First Corinthians begins with the heading: “Warnings from Israel’s History”.

We all know the old saying that people who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.  I was a history major and heard over and over again that those who do know history are doomed to watch those who don’t, repeat it.  But Paul wants to make sure neither happens.  One of the problems at Corinth seems to have been that the people took their freedom in Christ and abused it as license to live in sin.  Quite a bit of First Corinthians is aimed at correcting this problem and that’s where today’s lesson comes from.  And so Paul takes them back to the history of Israel.  He reminds them of the great story of redemption.  And part of doing this is so that he can remind them where they stand in that story—he wants to give them their spiritual bearings.

Paul once again takes them back to Israel’s exodus from Egypt.  This was the event that gave Israel her identity and forged her as a people.  And his point to the Christians in Corinth is that they’re now in a very similar position.  Earlier in the book he talked about Jesus as the Passover Lamb.  The Passover lambs sacrificed in Israel pointed to the final and once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus that would bring the true exodus for all humanity from our bondage to sin and death.  And the point Paul makes now is that if Jesus is the true Passover lamb, then that makes us—all of us who are in him by faith—that makes us the true Passover people.  Think about that as we look again at 1 Corinthians 10:1-5.

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.  Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

 

Last week we looked at the meaning of the Passover.  In that meal, shared by Jews down through the ages, each new generation participated in those great events by which the Lord delivered his people out of bondage and into a new life.  The people Paul was writing to in Corinth knew the exodus story well.  Many of them were Jews.  But he puts our attention on two things in particular that happened during the exodus and during Israel’s time in the wilderness.  The first is the cloud and the sea, the second is the spiritual food and drink.

First the cloud and the sea.  When the Israelites left Egypt they didn’t choose their own route.  The fastest way out of Egypt was the road along the coast, but the Lord manifested himself in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night and he led them straight into the swamps and marshes and lakes further south—the area where the Suez Canal is today.  As a place to hide this might have made some sense, but not as an escape route.  The people could look up and see that cloud or that flame and they knew—just as Moses knew when he saw the burning bush and took off his shoes in fearful awe—they knew that the Lord was with them.  They could look at the cloud or the flame and know that God was present, that he had spoken, that he had freed them, and that he was leading and caring for them.  The cloud and the flame led them to the sea, it led them miraculously through the water and had just as miraculously drowned the Egyptian army.  They owed their freedom and deliverance to the God manifest in the cloud and they had every reason to trust in faith that he would continue to be with them, guide them, and protect them in the wilderness.  And as he met them at Sinai and gave them his law, as he called them to be a holy people and his witness to call the nations back to him, the Lord’s lovingkindess gave Israel the motivation to serve and to be the people he had freed them to be.

And Paul describes it this way.  He says that by the leading of the cloud and in the waters of the Red Sea the Israelites were baptised into Moses.  Jews didn’t usually think of the crossing of the Red Sea in terms of baptism, or at least they hadn’t until John the Baptist and Jesus came along.  They used this imagery of the exodus too and made the connection with baptism.  In John’s Gospel Jesus talks about being born of water and the Spirit, for example, just as Israel was born there in the exodus by the leading of the cloud and passing through the sea. Paul is telling the Corinthians that the cloud and the sea were for Israel something like what the Holy Spirit and baptism are for us as Christians.  Israel’s story points to our story.  As Israel was born in the exodus led by Moses, so we are born as the New Israel in the exodus led by Jesus.

And, Paul stresses, there’s a reason for this.  Remember that it’s all part of one big story.  That first exodus from Egypt established Israel—those descendants of Abraham accompanied by a multitude of other peoples leaving Egypt with them—it established them as the Lord’s people and in a miraculous and amazing way that we can still look back to with awe and wonder it demonstrates and proves the faithfulness of the Lord in keeping his promises.  Israel’s story through the exodus and the conquest of Canaan, through the time of the judges and the kings, through her exile and her return, all of that story of Israel as the Lord’s people and of the Lord proving his faithfulness then leads us to the culmination of Israel’s history in the coming of Jesus as the Messiah.  Jesus is the great demonstration of the Lord’s faithfulness and Jesus himself fulfils Israel’s story in his person and in his death and resurrection.  And this is how we—most of us gentiles—can through faith in Jesus be grafted into the living tree.  It’s how we can be as much a part of Israel as those people who were led through the Red Sea and the wilderness to the promised land.  Israel’s story and God’s promises are now being worked out through us.  This is what Paul is stressing to the Corinthians.  Their problem, though, was that they’d forgotten their part in the story.

So as the Israelites were—as Paul puts it to make his point—as they were “baptised into Moses”—so Christians are baptised into Jesus.  The cloud and the sea made the Israelites Moses’ people—people of the old covenant—as the Holy Spirit and baptism now make us Jesus’ people—people of the new covenant.  And now Paul brings in the third and fourth elements of the exodus story.  In the wilderness they all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink.  When Paul calls them “spiritual” food and drink what he’s referring to is the way they were supernaturally provided by the Lord.  There was nothing but sand and rocks and scrub in the wilderness—nothing to eat and in many places no water to drink, but the Lord provided manna for the people to eat.  They didn’t know what it was—“manna” literally translates as “What is it?”—but it miraculously appeared every morning.  Just enough for the day would keep without spoiling, and somehow a double portion would miraculously keep over the Sabbath so that they could rest that day instead of gathering it.  And, at least twice, the Lord miraculously provided water from a rock when there was no water.  Paul’s point is that the Lord did not lead his people into the wilderness without providing sustenance.

And, Brothers and Sisters, the same goes for us.  Like Israel, we have a long way to travel in the wilderness before we arrive at the inheritance we have in Jesus, but he has provided for our sustenance.  The Lord’s Supper is a tangible reminder of his provision for us.  There’s no reason to give up and there’s no reason to go back to our old life of bondage just because life in the wilderness is hard or because it seems like we’ll never reach the promised land.  The Lord is with us.  Jesus sustains us.

And this is why Paul warns them, again going back to the Israelites.  The Lord sustained Israel in the wilderness and that’s why he was so displeased with most of them.  The Israelites presumed on the Lord’s grace and so had many of the Corinthians.  Life in the wilderness was hard.  When the Israelites got to the promised land they saw the walled cities and great warriors guarding it and they were afraid.  In between they grumbled against Moses and they grumbled against the Lord.  They whined about what they’d left behind in Egypt and more than once they fell into idolatry.  And a lot of this was a picture of what was happening in Corinth.  Members of the Church were living in sexual sin, some were taking part in the pagan festivals in the temples, they were abusing spiritual gifts, and there were deep divisions within the church—and they thought it was all fine because they had been baptised into Jesus, the Holy Spirit had been poured into them, and because they ate the bread and drank the wine in the Lord’s Supper. They thought they’d reached the pinnacle of Christian maturity.  They even called themselves the “spiritual” people.  But they had stopped pressing on, they had stopped striving for holiness and for growth in Jesus.  The wilderness pressured them.  The world, the flesh, and the devil called them back to their old lives…and they gave in.

Now, Paul really is saying that baptism does in fact transfer you from one kingdom into another—it really does incorporate you into Jesus and into the Lord’s covenant and into the New Israel.  And the Lord’s Supper really does mean that we participate in the life of Jesus who died and was raised.  But the sacraments Jesus gave us don’t work like magic.  They don’t automatically confer redemption.  Faith is required and real faith transforms our character and our way of living.  Baptism and the Lord’s Supper bring us into the Lord’s covenant and covenants have obligations.  Israel had the torah, the law.  We, the new Israel have the law of the Spirit.  Yes, it’s a privilege to be part of that covenant.  This is why we ask, in the baptism liturgy, for God to grant what the newly baptised cannot have by nature.  We are enemies of God by nature.  It is only by grace that we can be restored to God’s fellowship.  It is only through the sacrificial death of God himself in Jesus and by his resurrection that we can be forgiven and made alive again in God’s presence.  But this is precisely why St. Paul urges the Corinthians and urges us that there is a responsibility in all of this.  We have been crucified with Christ.  Our old selves are dead and we have risen with him to new life.  And so having been set free we cannot use our freedom for license or for sin—the very things from which we have been freed—any more than the Israelites freed from their Egyptian slavery could go back to bondage.

We can live in assurance that the Lord will never let us be snatched from his hand, but that doesn’t mean we can’t turn from him and be lost.  Most of the Israelites lost out on their promised inheritance because they refused to live out their end of the covenant in faith. They died in the wilderness.  And so those Christians in Corinth and many today who turn from the renewing and regenerating grace of God in the name of “rights” or “freedom” may fall back into their pagan or pre-Christians ways and forfeit their inheritance in Jesus.  In the previous chapter Paul talks about pummeling himself as if he were a boxer fighting a round against his old, unredeemed self, lest he fall away and be disqualified.  If that was true of Paul, the great apostle, how much more was it true of the Corinthians and how much more true is it for us?  This is why Paul says in verse 7:

Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.

 

In the verses that follow he goes on to list the ways in which Israel failed in the wilderness: idolatry, sexual immorality, grumbling against God and putting him to the test.  We can add to the list the sins we struggle with ourselves.  We can add all the ways in which we trust in things and people instead of trusting in Jesus.  And when we think of the ways we cave in to sin and the ways we fail to trust Jesus we can feel the weight pressing down.  In last week’s lesson from Romans Paul talked about being debtors and sometimes we feel that weight in a negative way, but Paul’s point is that we are not debtors to the flesh, we are not debtors to Adam, we are not debtors to sin.  We are debtors to Jesus who died for us and has raised us with himself to new life.  He has freed us and he has laid on us an obligation to holiness.  And the good news is that he has equipped us to lead this new life.  Paul goes on, saying:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.  (1 Corinthians 10:13)

 

We’ve all heard the old cliché that God won’t give you anything you can’t handle.  Brothers and Sisters, that’s not true.  God gives us all sorts of things we can’t handle.  The point is that Jesus has poured his Holy Spirit into us to transform our hearts and minds.  He’s filled us with his grace to strengthen us and to make us holy, and in his—not our own power—in his power we can face the world, the flesh, and the devil and endure, overcome, and escape their temptation.  We can’t.  But he can and he never ceases to be with us.

Brothers and Sisters, think on that as we come to his Table this morning.  That’s what the bread and wine here are for.  They remind us that Jesus has given his body and blood for us as the true Passover lamb and here at his Table he calls us to be and reminds us that we are the true Passover people, freed from the bondage of sin and death to walk in holiness and to bear the fruit of the Spirit—to be light to a dark world.  Here he renews our hope as he gives us a glimpse into that day when the darkness is gone and the earth is full of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  Here at the Table Jesus reminds us that he is Lord and he sends us out to proclaim his lordship and his kingdom.  But here he also reminds us that he does not send us out unequipped.  He sends us out full of grace.  He has given us life by his very body and blood and made us one with him.

Let us pray: Heavenly Father, as we acknowledged in today’s Collect, we can do nothing good without you.  We ask you to fill us each day with your Spirit and your word, that we might live according to your will.  Remind us especially as we come to your Table this morning, that it is only through your Son, Jesus, that we have forgiveness and life.  Let us take the strength and sustenance you give us here into the world that we might bring light and life to the darkness.  We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

On the Lord’s Supper in Time of Sickness and Plague

by William Klock

When you walked into the church this morning I’m sure you noticed that the Lord’s Table looks different.  Instead of the coloured burse and veil covering the chalice and paten, there’s a big brass container.  For those who may not be familiar with this sort of thing, it holds individual glasses of wine.  We’ve decided to make a temporary change in how we share in the Lord’s Supper.  The local public health unit is advising that we could be living with the Health Ministry’s guidelines for worship for at least another year.  This change isn’t ideal.  It alters the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper and that’s not a good thing, but it is permissible on a temporary basis.  Bp. Sutton warned me that most the REC went to these individual glasses during the Spanish Flu epidemic a century ago and that it took 70-80 years to get rid of them.  So we’re going here cautiously.

In light of that, today, I’d like to talk about the Lord Supper, what it is, how it works, the importance of the symbolism involved.  In terms of thinking about how the Lord’s Supper works,

Christian thinking has become encrusted with different ideas, some biblical and some not, so let’s start with something surprising similar that I think we can all understand.  It’s another ritual: the birthday party.  Birthdays are full of symbolism, just like the Lord’s Supper.  We invite our family and friends, we may dress up or wear funny hats, we decorate the house, we bring gifts for the birthday boy or girl, and most important, we have a cake covered with candles.  Someone lights the candles—ideally the number of candles corresponds to how old the person is—and then he or she makes a wish and blows them out.  And everyone sings “Happy Birthday”.  Even if the party is simple and only has some of the elements, we’d all recognise it for what it is.  And what is it?  Are we merely celebrating the fact that our friend has made another trip around the sun?  No.  It’s more than a celebration of another year.  It’s a celebration of our friend’s birth.  It looks back to the past.  For some of the big milestones we may even drag out the baby pictures.  But it also looks to the future with hope.  We sing “Happy Birthday” and then follow it up with “…and many moooore” and the birthday boy or girl makes a wish.  Here’s the key I want you to think about: The birthday party celebrates today, but while it does that, it also looks back to the past, draws it into the present, and looks hopefully to the future.

Now, let’s think about another party.  This one’s in the Bible, in the Old Testament, and it takes the form of a feast or a meal—or a supper (see where I’m going with this?).  In Exodus we read about the Passover and how the Lord told his people that it wasn’t a one-time event, but something that was to observed every year in perpetuity.  And so if we were to visit a family in the time of Samuel or the time of King Hezekiah…or if we were to visit the family of Joseph and Mary at the time of Passover, we would find them eating this meal that they had eaten with their parents, and their parents with their parents, and so on all the way back to that night before Israel left Egypt.  Everyone who was circumcised, everyone who bore God’s covenant sign was summoned by the Lord to be part of this meal right from the beginning and down through the generations.  Families gathered in their homes and the father or grandfather would recall those events of long ago: How God’s people had been slaves in Egypt and how the Lord had rescued them, brought them through the Red Sea, given them his law, and eventually led them to the promised land.

At one point in the meal, the youngest boy chimes in as part of the liturgy—what the Jews call the Haggadah: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”  And Father or Grandfather would respond with the ancient words of the liturgy that “this is the night when our God, the Holy One, blessed be he, came down to Egypt and rescued us from the Egyptians.”

You or I, not being familiar with what’s going on might say, “But this isn’t the night.  That night was over three thousand years ago.”  And they might explain to you that, yes, it is.  It’s not about them as individuals.  It’s about them as the covenant people of God, united through the ages by his promises and by faith in his faithfulness.  Everyone who bears the covenant sign of circumcision is part of that people, just as everyone who takes part in this meal is part of that people.  And everything they do in this meal points to this reality.  The little boy asks more questions: Why are we eating unleavened bread?  Why are we eating these bitter herbs?  Why do we recline instead of sitting at the table?  Why do we eat this roasted meat?  And Father explains—again this is all part of the liturgy—that the unleavened bread reminds them of the haste with which the Lord led them out of Egypt.  There was no time for bread to rise.  The bitter herbs remind them that in Egypt they were slaves.  To recline at the table is the posture of free people.  Slaves stood.  And this reminds them of the Lord’s deliverance.  And the roasted meat recalls the Passover lamb eaten that night, it recalls the burnt sacrifices made in the temple, and it recalls the blood painted on the doorposts of our houses.

The lamb and the blood were especially important.  The Lord’s people were already marked out by their circumcision, but the blood painted on the doorposts served as a sign to distinguish the Israelites from the Egyptians when the Lord swept through the land, taking the lives of all the firstborn.  The Passover served to distinguish the people of God from all other people.  The elements of the meal served to remind the people what it meant to be God’s people: They were once slaves, but the Lord had delivered them and made them his own, and he had given them his promises for the future—a promise of a Messiah who would set all to rights—for whom they continued to live in hope.  And so the meal not only marked out a people for deliverance from Egypt, it continued to mark out a people who would be delivered one day by the Messiah, a people to be delivered into the life of the age to come.  This is how this night hundreds or even thousands of years after those events could still be that night.  Through this meal, given by the Lord, his people were not only set apart from all others, but united across the generations in his promises.

Now, we come to the meal that you and I share each week.  I hope you’ve started see the connections and I hope you’ve started to see how it works.  We gather together as the people whom the Lord has made his own through baptism, we hear the Scriptures read and recall the history of God and his people.  And then we come to his Table where the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection are recalled, where we hear again the words of Jesus, spoken in the upper room in the last Passover meal he celebrated with his disciples, and we eat bread and drink wine.  What’s going on?  How does the Lord’s Supper work?  What’s the significance of the symbols and images involved?  I hope you’re beginning to see that now.

Still, we may have to clear away some clutter to see it clearly.  I’ve spoken about the Passover and what it did and what it meant, because that’s where we have to start if we’re going to understand what the Lord’s Supper is all about.  Just as Jesus created a new people of God, a new Israel, with roots firmly planted in the old, but now centred on himself, Jesus also took the Passover, put himself at the centre of it, and gave this new people a new meal.  Passover is the key, but over the years Christians have often lost that focus.  Many of the Church Fathers turned to Greek philosophy—particularly the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato—to explain things, instead of looking back to the Old Testament and to the Judaism of Jesus’ day.  By the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas had worked out a whole theology rooted in these Greek ideas.  And the focus of the Lord’s Supper became centred, not on participation in the meal, but on a transformation believed to happen in the bread and wine during the blessing or what became known as the “prayer of consecration”.  Outwardly the bread and wine were still bread and wine, but inwardly, their essence was transformed into the essence of the body and blood of Jesus.  This led to all sorts of abuses of the Lord’s Supper.  People took to worshipping the bread, believing it to literally be Jesus.  The congregation was excluded from the Supper and, when they did receive, the wine was withheld from them.  Individual wafers were introduced—called “hosts”, because they were believed to “host” the literal body of Jesus after being consecrated.

But it went further.  These pagan philosophical ideas led to very different understanding of ministry and ordination.  The idea developed that ordination was mostly about the bishop—in succession from the apostles themselves through the laying on of hands—imparting a spiritual gift to the new priest so that he could effect this mystical change when celebrating the Lord’s Supper.  Both the Lord’s Supper and the ministry of the clergy were twisted into something far different from what we see in the New Testament.

The Reformers saw this and worked to rectify it, but they didn’t agree on everything.  Martin Luther made some significant reforms, but for him, even if the bread and wine didn’t literally change, it was still about the real presence of Jesus in, with, and under the elements.  John Calvin, on the other hand, had a greater sense of what I’ve been talking about.  He was still focused on the idea of Jesus’ presence in the Lord’s Supper, but was right to understand that the Lord’s Supper doesn’t work through a change in the bread and wine, but through our participation in it.  He argued that Jesus isn’t brought down to the Table, but that as we participate we are lifted up to experience the heavenly feast.  Others in the Reformed camp, like Ulrich Zwingli, argued that the bread and wine were simply symbols and the meal was strictly a memorial of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  The English Reformers steered a course between Luther and Calvin.  The Articles of Religion allowed for a range of belief on the Lord’s Supper, sort of with Luther’s ideas as a guard on one side and Calvin’s on the other.  Down through the centuries Anglicans have bounced back and forth between the two.  It wasn’t until the 19th Century that the ideas rejected at the Reformation were brought back into Anglicanism by the Oxford Movement and some Anglicans bounced over the wall and out of bounds.  Our Reformed Episcopal Church was formed in response to that trend, which is why our Declaration of Principles, reaffirming the Articles of Religion, denies very clearly “That the Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper is a presence in the elements of Bread and Wine.”

You see, if we look back to the roots of the Lord’s Supper in the Passover and if we look at what Jesus did in the upper room, we can see that this simply isn’t how the Lord’s Supper works.  Jesus didn’t give his disciples a new sacramentology when he handed them the Passover bread and wine.  There was nothing about the Passover that needed explanation by Aristotle or Plato and the same goes for the Lord’s Supper.  As the Passover worked by participation—by eating the meal—so the does the Lord’s Supper.  Jesus simply took the bread and the wine of the Passover meal and said, “This is me.  This is my body and this is my blood which are about to be given for you.”  The disciples would never have read some Aristotelian change in the essence of the bread and wine into that statement and neither should we.  Matt Colvin, in the book he published last year, makes the case that the portion of bread that Jesus used was a bit that was traditionally reserved to represent the coming Messiah.[1]  He makes a very good case, which highlights just what Jesus was doing.  Every year the people of God ate this meal in which the symbolism of its elements recalled to them their deliverance, affirmed their status as God’s covenant people, and caused them to look forward to the day when he would usher in the age to come.  And, as he took the bread and wine and identified them with himself and the sacrifice he was about to make, Jesus was saying, “The day you’ve longed and hoped for has come.  The Passover is fulfilled this day.  I’m about to lead you into a new Exodus and to create a new people.  From now on, the bread and the wine will recall to you not your deliverance as slaves from Egypt, but that you are the new Israel delivered from the slavery of sin and death.”

Just as the Passover recalled and brought into the present the Lord’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt, just as the Passover made each new generation participants in the Exodus, just as it united them with those who first took part in those events, in the Lord’s Supper, as we recall the death and resurrection of Jesus and eat the bread and drink the wine he’s given us, we are united with him in his death and resurrection.  As the blood of the lamb was painted on the homes of Israel, marking them out as the people of God, sparing them from judgement, and giving them a hope of life in the promised land, so our participation in the Lord’s Supper marks us out as the new Israel, as God’s people apart from all others, to be spared his judgement, and living in hope of the age to come.  Think of the acclamation we make during the Supper: Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again.  Both the past, when Jesus set us free from sin and death, and the future, where all are set to rights, are brought together with the present, with today, here at the Table.

St. Paul sums this up and covers a lot of points all at once in 1 Corinthians 10:14-22.  His concern was Christians who might be enticed back to idolatry, not necessarily through actual worship in the temples, but by eating food that had been sacrificed to idols.  The pagans believed that eating these meals in the temples was a means of identifying with the pagan gods.  Paul says, “Don’t do that!  Why?  Because you are united with Jesus now.”  And as evidence he points to the Lord’s Supper.  Look at verses 16 and 17:

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?  Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

 

The Supper joins us with Jesus in his death and resurrection, not through some kind of “real presence” (however that’s defined), but as with Passover, as we participate in the events of our deliverance from sin and death.  But, too, the Supper also unites us to each other in Jesus.  Paul stresses the significance of the one loaf of bread and the one cup of wine from which we all share.  They bring us back to Jesus, the one who died and rose for us, but they also unite us into a single body.

And that brings us back to where we started, with this funny tray of individual wine-fill glasses on the Table.  Can you see why observing the Lord’s Supper this way is less than ideal?  The same goes for individual wafers.  We share in one bread—in the one Jesus—not our personal Jesuses.  And just so with the cup.  This is why we use a single loaf of bread and a single chalice.  This is why the Reformers fought against the use of wafers in their day.  The first edition of the Prayer Book stressed that the bread was to be round and unleavened and sufficiently large so that it could be broken in pieces for everyone present.  A few years later, the second edition changed the rubric and called the sort of bread that was commonly eaten at ordinary meals, but of the best and purest flour.  Archbishop Cranmer understood that it was important that the bread look like the bread people are used to eating.  Whether it was leavened or unleavened was a matter of indifference.  The point is that Lord’s Supper is a meal.  Yes, it’s a ritualise meal, but it’s still a meal.  Using weird bread that doesn’t look like the bread people ordinarily eat undermines that and leads to superstition.

Now, that said, while it’s not ideal to change the symbolism of the Supper, doing so doesn’t change what the meal is.  It might lead us astray in what we think about it, but the Lord’s Supper remains the Lord’s Supper.  This is why I’ve preached on this today.  I want to be sure that there’s no misunderstanding that results from this temporary change.

The other option in our current situation is what we’ve been doing: observing the Lord’s Supper sub una—under one kind.  I’ve fielded a few questions about this.  Some churches have continued to include wine in the Supper, but have reserved it for the minister.  I think that’s unwise and leads us back to the errors of the Middle Ages.  If the people don’t get it, the priest shouldn’t get it either.  This is the same reason that I don’t celebrate the Lord’s Supper when I’m alone or with my family on holiday and away from a church.  I think it’s wrong to deny you the privilege of the sacrament by my absence, but then take advantage of it myself.  That’s not right.  No, Jesus envisioned situations in which wine would not be available.  In ancient Israel, wine was for special occasions.  Ordinary people didn’t usually have it available—not for a weekly observance like the Lord’s Supper.  The poor and slaves certainly didn’t.  In our liturgy we read Jesus’ words at the Last Supper as they are recorded by St. Paul.  He says to take and eat the bread in remembrance of him, but when he instructs the disciples to take and to drink the cup, he adds the words “as often as you do this”.  It’s a little clearer in Paul’s Greek what’s going on here, but what’s happening is that Jesus is putting a qualifier on the wine and not the bread, recognising that wine may not always be available.  “Eat the bread in remembrance of me and, as often as you are able, drink the wine in remembrance of me also.”  Again, while observing the Lord’s Supper without wine is certainly less than ideal, Jesus foresaw such a situation and doing it that way is, I think, better than the minister drinking the wine while denying it to the people.

Now, lastly, another issue these last months for many: What happens when we can’t gather together physically?  Some have asked why we haven’t livestreamed our service.  The easy answer is that we don’t have the equipment or internet connection to do so.  But there’s more to it than that.  It’s hard to fault churches for making mistakes on this point, because we’re all in territory that’s new to us, but I also think this is why it’s important to have an understanding of the Lord’s Supper and an understanding of just what the Church is in advance, before we’re under the sort of pressure we’ve been under to come up with solutions.  I’ve seen churches livestreaming their Communion services and inviting people to go to the kitchen for bread and wine and so that the minister can consecrating them over the TV or Internet connection.  Others have consecrated bread and/or wine in advance and distributed them to church members to have while watching the livestream.  Increasingly, as churches are becoming accustomed to this, the services aren’t even livestreamed anymore; they’re put together in advance and then released Sunday morning.  At that point, it seems to me that we’ve been reduced an illusion of gathering.  More recently I’ve seen one minister perform what he called a “pantomimed Communion” on his livestream.  No bread or wine, just saying the words and going through the motions, then pretending to hand the bread and the cup through the computer screen.  In many cases, a minister and one or two others eat the Lord’s Supper and simply invite others to watch from a distance over the Internet.

Brothers and Sisters, none of these things is the Lord’s Supper.  The emphasis on either consecrating elements through the screen or distributing preconsecrated elements in advance totally misses the point of the Supper.  It doesn’t work through the blessing of the bread and wine.  When Jesus blessed the bread and wine, he wasn’t doing so to change them.  He was giving thanks for them as any good Jew would have done at any meal, including the Passover.  In our terms, he was “saying grace” before they ate.  No, the Lord’s Supper “works” through the participation, through the eating as the Lord’s people gather together to share them.  That means, first, that you actually need real bread (and hopefully wine).  Jesus was clear, “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (John 6:55).  But, second, it also means that we have to gathered together physically.  Consider that when it came to the Passover, the Lord’s instructions specifically said that everyone had to be under the same roof.  Cousin Saul can’t participate in the family Passover via Zoom.  He has to find another household to join if he’s away from home.  These meals work by participation and participation requires physical presence and real food.  What goes for Passover in this case goes for the Lord’s Supper.  Modern Christians have been increasingly buying into a sort of Gnosticism that downplays the physical and the material and puts all the stress on the spiritual and it’s because of that that we’re reach a point where we think that virtual gatherings or a pantomimed meal are actual substitutes for the real thing.  They’re not.  Brothers and Sisters, virtual meetups can have their place when we’re unable to meet together physically, but I fear we’ve forgotten that they are not adequate substitutes for gathering in person as God’s people.  The very name used for the Church in the New Testament, ekklesia, on the one had translates a Hebrew word meaning to be “called out”—we are the people called out of the nations by God—but it’s also a word that means “assembly”.  The ekklesia cannot be the ekklesia without physically assembling together.  One pastor I know introduces his pre-recorded livestream every week joyfully shouting, “Welcome to church!”  A virtual gathering to watch a prerecorded sing-along and sermon might be the best some can do right now, but it’s not “church”.  That’s not what ekklesia means.  That doesn’t mean we can’t take a temporary break from physical gatherings if necessity demands as has been the case for many churches these last few months, but as we seek to accommodate the current crisis, it’s important we not undermine who and what we are as the people of God, as the Church.

So that’s it.  I don’t have a neat gospel application this morning, but I think it’s important that I address some of what’s been going on these past months and what we’re doing as we move forward, at least in terms of the Lord’s Supper.  When the times comes to receive the bread and wine I’ll give some more instructions as to how we’ll do that with these individual glass, but for now, let’s pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the meal you have given us.  It teaches us what you’ve done for us in your death and resurrection.  It teaches us what you have made us as your people.  It marks us out from the rest of the world.  And it gives us hope for the day when you will finish what you have started.  I pray that you would give us a greater appreciation for your Supper and wisdom and understanding to get it right as we participate in it in these difficult days.  Amen.

[1] The Lost Supper (Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress, 2019).

But Now My Eyes See You

Job 42

by William Klock

This morning we come to the final chapter of Job.  We can break it down into three short parts: Job’s response to the Lord, the Lord’s rebuke of Job’s friends, and the epilogue, where we read how the Lord restored what Job had lost (and then some).  While it might seem like we should have looked at Job’s response to the Lord as part of last week’s text, I left things with the Lord’s speech for a reason.  The Lord’s speech really marks the conclusion or the high point of the book of Job.  Job’s response is important, but for the most part, Chapter 42 just ties up the loose ends.  Assuming that these last short verses are the climax of the book, especially focusing on the Job’s restoration, is one of the ways of misreading the book that gets people into trouble.

As I’ve been studying Job—there are plenty of Christian and Jewish commentaries, but it’s also a book that catches a lot of secular attention—I’ve noticed three main ways that people misread or misunderstand the book.  The most common, and one that seems to pop up a lot amongst secular readers, is summed up in George Bernard Shaw’s critique.  He’s reported to have written, “If I complain that I am suffering unjustly, it is no answer to say, ‘Can you make a hippopotamus?”  Like everyone, Shaw was sympathetic with the plight of Job.  Like a lot of people—especially secularists and critics of religion who mock the idea of God or, if they may grant his existence, like to think he’s doing a very bad job of it—Shaw was sympathetic with Job as he shook his fist at God and demanded an answer.  And Shaw didn’t really grasp what the Lord was getting at when he put Job in his place.  Yes, the Lord’s point was to make it abundantly clear to Job that “I am God and you are not”, but not in the sense of “I’m God; you’re not.  Now mind you own business” or “I’m God; you’re not.  I can do whatever I want”.  The Lord’s point was to impress upon Job that divine wisdom is beyond human ken and that for us, wisdom means to faithfully trust in the Lord, precisely because he is wise—and to trust that in his wisdom, he is also perfectly just, perfectly good, perfectly loving, perfectly faithful.

The other misreading, one that is common in Evangelical—especially Reformed Evangelical—circles, sees the Lord finally putting Job in his place as a sinner.  Job’s great folly, in this view, is his claim of righteousness.  And so the Lord puts him in place and reminds him that he has sinned, that he never really deserved his material blessings, that they were all of grace, and then restores those blessings once Job has repented in dust and ashes.  Now, while there may be a lot of theological truth here.  The sort of righteousness that, say, St. Paul writes about and that none of us can every achieve isn’t the same sort of righteousness that Job is claiming.  It’s a category mistake.  It ignores the Lord’s own defence of Job’s righteousness and it mostly misses the point of the book.  We ask why bad things happen to good people and St. Paul might say—and he’d be right in saying it—that sin is the problem and that we’re all guilty.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  True.  But that’s not the point of the book of Job.  Job is talking about a different kind of good—people who are indeed sinners, but who still pursue God and righteousness with all their being.  Why do bad things happen to them?

And, third, I’ve run across not a few people who fall into the Prosperity Gospel camp who seem to ignore most of the book.  God rewarded Job for his righteousness, but the devil took it all away.  But, in the end, God gave it all back because Job deserved it.  In other words, faith commands blessing, just don’t let the devil take it from you.  It’s a modern spin on the Retribution Principle, which is one of the main things the book is meant to shoot down in the first place.

So this morning as we look at this final short chapter we need to ask two questions of it.  First, how is Job’s final speech a response to the Lord?  And, second, how does the epilogue serve as a fitting conclusion to the whole book?  So, first, Job’s response.  You’ll find it in 42:2-6:

“I know that you can do all things,

         and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

         things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

‘Hear, and I will speak;

         I will question you, and you make it known to me.’

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

         but now my eye sees you;

therefore I despise myself,

         and repent in dust and ashes.”

 

In Job’s response to the Lord’s first speech, Job acknowledged his smallness in comparison to God and put his hand over his mouth.  Now, responding to the Lord’s second speech—you’ll remember from last week, this was the one about Behemoth and Leviathan—Job acknowledges the bigness of God: he can do all things and no one can thwart his purposes.  Job owns the Lord’s accusation: “Yes, I am the one who tried to counsel God, but that was a dumb thing to do.  I was speaking without knowledge.”  In verses 4 and 5 he does the same thing again, owning the Lord’s accusation and acknowledging his ignorance and foolishness.  But verse 6 is the key here.  The Hebrew is difficult and the ESV translates it as “I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”  He despises himself, says the ESV.  He accounts himself as nothing, because he’s realised how foolish it was to challenge God.  Job is ashamed of what he’s done.  The second verb that the ESV translates “repent” has the sense both of changing one’s mind and of regret.  It may be that Job is saying he regrets his charges against God, but the way it’s connected grammatically with “dust and ashes” should lead us to understand Job to be turning aside from his ash heap.  His time of mourning, his time of self-pity and anger with God is over.  Job’s ready to move on even though the path before him is uncertain.

After the Lord’s first speech, Job acknowledge his place.  You are God; I am not.  But there’s more that has to be acknowledged.  This is the point where George Bernard Shaw stopped.  When we think God’s managing the universe poorly, simply reminding us that he is God and that we aren’t isn’t an answer.  And this was the point of the second speech about Behemoth and Leviathan.  On the one hand Leviathan is not one to be challenged and if God is so much greater than Leviathan, neither is he.  On the other hand, the Lord holds out Behemoth as an example of the human response to himself.  God cares for Behemoth just as he cares for Job.  When the river rages, Behemoth is a symbol of stability, because he doesn’t question the Lord’s wisdom.  Job needs to learn to be more like Behemoth.  Job’s faith was in the retribution principle, in the idea that God governs the universe according to an external (not to mention, mechanistic) standard of justice.  God, however, has shown him that, first, his justice cannot be so naïve reduced to a simple formula and, second, that his basis for creating and ruling the cosmos is not justice, but wisdom.  Job has taken the Lord’s lesson to heart.  He retracts his arrogant accusations and demands for answers that he would never be able to understand, and he’s now ready to trust.

Now, apparently the Lord was expecting a similar response from Job’s friends.  They aren’t the ones who have experienced great loss like Job has, but they’ve been spouting nonsense all through the dialogue.  They’ve falsely accused Job and, as much as they’ve defended God’s justice, they’ve forced him into the Retribution Principle box to explain his actions.  Seeing that Job has heard the Lord and humbly retracted his accusations and demands, you’d think his friend would, too.  But they didn’t and so the Lord speaks next to them in verses 7-9:

After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.  Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves.  And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly.  For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”  So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

 

Again, Job has taken back what he said in response to the Lord.  Elihu isn’t mentioned.  Some see that as evidence that his speech is a later addition to the book, but I think it’s just as likely that the Lord doesn’t include Elihu, because, for the most part, he spoke truthfully about the Lord.  He didn’t put the pieces together quite right, but Elihu wasn’t as off-base as the other three.  That said, receiving this third rebuke, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar repent as well and offer sacrifices while Job prayers for them.  I don’t think it’s necessary to dwell on these verses other than to note one more thing that shows a change in Job.

Early in the book we saw Job acting as priest on behalf of his family.  We’re told that he offered sacrifices for his children in case they had committed some offense against God.  This revealed a chink in Job’s faith, a flaw in his theology.  Job, at least in part, conceived of God in pagan terms—as a God who could be placated should he or his children commit some petty offense against him.  Job didn’t even know if they had committed an offense, let alone know specifically what it might be, but he sacrificed to God anyway.  This is pagan thinking.  Now, Job serves as a true intercessor for his friends.  He knows what they’ve done wrong, he’s heard with his own ears the Lord’s compassionate words, and so he steps in on behalf of his friends, not in superstition and not worried that God is petty and arbitrary with his judgement and punishments, but knowing that he desires restoration and fellowship.  This may not be the trigger for what happens next, but I think it serves an important rhetorical bridge between his confession of humility before the Lord and the Lord’s restoration of Job’s material blessings.  Job is thinking correctly about God.  Let’s look now at that starting with verse 10:

And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.  Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. And each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold.

  And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. And he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys.  He had also seven sons and three daughters.  And he called the name of the first daughter Jemimah, and the name of the second Keziah, and the name of the third Keren-happuch.  And in all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters. And their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers.  And after this Job lived 140 years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, four generations.  And Job died, an old man, and full of days.

 

If we’re not careful, this can be a pretty confusing ending to the book.  One the hand, we might ask how Job’s restored prosperity makes up for all of his suffering.  Sure, the Lord gives him more sons and daughters, but does that make up for the sons and daughters he’s lost?  And, of course, after all this discussion showing that the Retribution Principle—a sort of wooden formula by which the wicked are punished and the righteous rewarded—after all the discussion that the Retribution Principle (or any other simplistic idea of justice) is not how God governs the cosmos, it can seem more than a little odd that Job does the right thing and gets all of his stuff back.  I’ve heard more than one Prosperity Gospel huckster use the epilogue to affirm that heresy.  So how does this fit in with the rest of the book?

Well, the first thing we need to remember is that the main focus of the book is not Job, but God’s governance of his creation.  The Adversary challenged God: It’s bad policy to reward people for their righteousness.  They’ll just be good for the stuff you give them.  And then Job challenged God: It’s bad policy to allow the righteous to suffer.

The first half of the book addresses the Adversary’s challenge.  Job, although he didn’t know it, served as the Lord’s star witness. Does rewarding righteousness just lead to people who are good for their own benefit?  The evidence of Job’s life vindicated the Lord’s policy.  Job has pursued righteousness for the sake of righteousness.

The second half of the book dealt with Job’s challenge.  He and his friends have assumed all along that God runs the cosmos on the principle of justice and they believed that justice was defined by the Retribution Principle.  So the Lord has now made it clear to them that as much as he delights in blessing the faithful, it is not his policy to do so.  Justice is not his means of governing the world, which means the Retribution Principle falls flat.  Now, that said, it doesn’t mean that the Retribution Principle is all wrong, it just means that it can’t be used to control God, to call him to account, or to predict what he’s going to do.  The idea that God punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous is true in a proverbial sense.  Here’s what I mean by that.  Think of the book of Proverbs and the wisdom there.  Proverbs aren’t guarantees or rules.  They’re generally true, but they make no guarantees.  Take Proverbs 21:5 for example:

The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance,

         but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.

 

Hard work leads to abundance and shortcuts to poverty much of the time, but there’s no guarantee.  Some people work hard and never have abundance.  Other people find a shortcut and make millions out of it.  Proverbs are all about context, which is why the book of Proverbs can tell us with one breath not to answer a fool according to his folly and with the next that you should answer a fool according to his folly.  It depends on the fool and the nature of his folly.  Wisdom is knowing the difference.  And just so with righteousness and blessing.  The Lord delights to reward righteousness, but righteousness is no guarantee of reward.  The world isn’t perfect and there are time when, in his wisdom, the Lord has priorities that outweigh some of the blessing we might think we deserve.  This is why we need to trust him.  Now, Job did trust the Lord.  His problem was that he wrongly assumed that the Lord operated on a very narrow and simplistic principle of justice.  His trust faltered when God seemed to fail.  But now Job understands that God’s governance of the world is rooted in wisdom—and a wisdom that we can never begin to fathom—and Job has learned to trust again.  And this time his trust will ground him more firmly than he ever could have imagined before.

 

So the Lord restores Job and in doing that he sends an important signal.  Nothing’s changed on his end.  He had blessed Job before and he will continue to bless him.  His policies have not changed and they will not change.  What’s changed is Job—and, I suppose, the Adversary.  The Adversary now knows that the Lord’s policy is wise and Job now knows that the Lord is not bound to an external or simplistic standard of justice.  Job will now think of his prosperity very differently.  Even though he was righteous purely for the sake of righteousness, when all this began, he believed he had a right to his blessings.  Now he knows that his blessings are a gracious gift of God—even when he is righteous.

I think this is the lens through which the epilogue finally makes sense.  People ask how a restoration of his prosperity and new sons and daughters make up for Job’s losses and dead children, but that’s to miss the point.  Job’s restoration isn’t actually about Job.  It’s not about healing his pain or making him whole.  It’s about sending the message that the Lord’s governance of the cosmos has been vindicated and that, despite this brief interruption made to prove the wisdom of his governance, he will continue to govern the cosmos as he always has.  This is important.  A lot of people read the end of Job and think that the take-away is that when we are suffering, we can hope in our happiness or our prosperity someday being restored.  That’s not the point at all.

You see, the point of the book of Job, I’ve become convinced, is not to put ourselves in Job’s shoes and to imagine how we might feel or respond.  I’ll be honest, I was leaning in that direction when we started.  I thought this would be a good book to study in the midst of a pandemic and the social and economic wreck that has come along with it, but that’s to miss the point.  That said, I still think the book is immensely relevant to us.  Actually, I think it’s even more relevant the more I’ve studied and my own thinking on the book has been turned away from thinking about myself in the midst of difficult times, and instead, thinking afresh about the wisdom, the goodness, and the faithfulness of God.  That’s what the book of Job is ultimately about—about getting us to think correctly about God, because there is perhaps no time when we’re more prone to thinking wrongly about God than when we’re in the midst of suffering and tragedy.  Here God reminds us that, yes, he does delight to bless his friends, but he is under no obligation to do so and, sometimes in his great wisdom, our good or the good of others or the good of the cosmos take precedence over the blessings we think we deserve.  Job teaches us to the Lord no matter our circumstances, because we can be sure that regardless of what’s happening, he is in control and acting wisely.  Job doesn’t offer the explanation we might want, but it does give us this consolation and it’s the most we can handle as his finite creatures.  It’s a call to be who and what he made us to be in the first place—creatures invited to live in his light, to share his life, and to trust wholly in his wisdom and goodness.  If there’s blame to be had, it’s ours.  We’re the ones who rebelled and we follow in the footsteps of Adam every time we try to take God’s role on ourselves, every time we get angry with him, every time we think that we can out-god God or think we could do things better.

So Job should leave us wiser.  We cannot grasp the depths of divine wisdom, but we can pursue the path of human wisdom that begins with fear of the Lord.  This was the vocation that Adam rejected, but it’s the vocation that Jesus, the new Adam, has given back to us.  That first Easter morning as he conquered death, he began the work of rolling back, of undoing the wreck that our rebellion has made of Creation.  That shockwave of new creation has gone out into all the world.  It has touched each of us.  It has made us new, it has turned out hearts back towards God, and it has restored to us Adam’s calling: to trust in the wisdom of God as we live before his face and carry his kingdom and its new life to a world still struggling through the results of human unfaithfulness.

Let’s pray: Gracious Father, thank you for the book of Job.  Here you hold up a mirror and show us our own unfaithfulness.  Here you expose our wrong thinking about you.  And yet you do not leave us lost and condemned.  You not only show us our smallness, but also your greatness.  You remind us of your wisdom, you give us reason to trust you even in the midst of suffering, you call us to think rightly of you and, in that, you deepen our faith in you, you deepen our fellowship with you.  May we trust you more fully, Father, and may we walk more closely at your side.  Through Jesus we pray.  Amen.