Living Words

By The Rev'd William KlockReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Living Words episodes

May 11, 2025 A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter
A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Easter
St. John 16:16-22
by William Klock

On Easter morning we heard St. John’s account of the empty tomb. How Mary Magdalene had come running to the house where he and Peter and the others were hiding. How she sobbed out that someone had taken Jesus’ body. How he and Peter ran to the tomb as dawn was breaking and how they found it empty, with the linen graveclothes lying there neatly. And we heard John say that “he believed”. Somehow…inexplicably…Jesus had risen from the dead. John believed in the resurrection of the dead. They all did. It was their hope. But it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was confusion, maybe he just wanted to be more certain, but he didn’t say anything. They went back to the house where the other disciples were. They went back into hiding. Doors locked, windows shuttered, no lights, no fire. When things blew over, they could sneak out of Jerusalem, slink back to Galilee. Maybe they could go back to their old lives and everyone would forget that they’d been followers of Jesus.

But then the next week we read from John’s first epistle. We read those words: Everything that is fathered by God conquers the world. This is the victory that conquers the world: our faith! That doesn’t sound like the same John afraid to even tell his friends that he believed Jesus had been raised from death. And last week we read from Peter’s first epistle and he exhorted us to bear patiently with suffering. Peter went from hiding behind locked doors on Easter to boldly preaching the risen Jesus in the temple court just fifty days later. He would eventually find himself proclaiming that gospel in Rome itself, where he would be martyred for that holy boldness. What happened?

Brothers and Sisters, hope happened. Jesus, the risen Messiah, appeared to them in that locked room. They saw him, resurrected and renewed and yet still the same Jesus with the scars of the cross in his hands and feet. They saw Jesus risen from the dead. Not a ghost, not a spirt, but Jesus bodily raised. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. It was supposed to be everybody all at once, not just one person even if he was the Messiah. But there he was, proving the old doctrine of the Pharisees and the Prophets and their fathers true—just not the way they expected. But even that’s not so much what motivated them to leave their hiding places and to proclaim the risen Jesus to the world. It’s what Jesus’ resurrection meant. Because Jesus’ resurrection was more than just an astounding miracle. Jesus’ resurrection was the proof that God’s new world had been born, that new creation had begun, that the promises he made through the prophets and the hopes of God’s people were being fulfilled. Jesus’ resurrection meant that the hopes of God’s people were finally becoming reality. Jesus had kindled God’s light in the midst of the darkness and they knew the darkness would never overcome it. But as they worked this out, they also realised that while Jesus had inaugurated this new creation, it would be they—Peter, John, Mary, the others, you and I—who would carry and announce God’s new creation to the world. Again, this hope, made real, made manifest in the resurrection of Jesus, is what sent the disciples out, not just to announce that God had performed a miracle in raising Jesus, but to announce the God’s new creation had been born and that Jesus is its king—and if that proclamation cost them everything, even if it got them killed—they knew that God would raise them and that he would vindicate them, just as he had Jesus.

Nothing else changed. They were hiding in that locked and darkened house because—usually—when the authorities crucified a rebel or a revolutionary, they would also round up and crucify his followers. As it turned out, it doesn’t seem that anyone was seriously interested in doing that to Jesus’ disciples. But they didn’t know that. The real danger came when they went out and began proclaiming the good news about Jesus—as they challenged the false gods and the pretend kings of the darkness with the light of the Lord Jesus, as they confronted this fallen world and its systems with God’s new creation. That’s when they were mocked, beaten, arrested, and martyred.

Think of Paul. He was one of the one’s breathing threats against Jesus’ disciples. He was there looking on while Stephen was stoned, holding coats so people could better throw stones at him. And then as Paul was on his way to round up Christians to bring them before the Jewish authorities, he was met by the risen Jesus. And, again, it wasn’t just an amazing miracle that inspired Paul to take up his own cross and to follow Jesus—to follow Jesus and to be beaten, stoned, imprisoned, and eventually murdered for the sake of the gospel. It was hope. It was what the resurrection of Jesus meant. Jesus, risen from the dead, was proof of God’s faithfulness and proof that his promises of forgiveness and new life and new creation and of humanity and creation set to rights—everything the Jews (and Paul!) had hoped and longed for—it was proof that it was all true and that it was coming true in Jesus. The light has come into the darkness and the darkness has not and never will overcome it. It was proof that if we are in Jesus the Messiah, we have a share in God’s new creation and that no amount of suffering and not even death can take that away. People aren’t going to risk their lives to report a miracle. What drove Peter, John, Paul—and all our brothers and sisters since—what drove them to risk everything to proclaim the good news was the knowledge, the assurance, the hope that through that proclamation God’s promised new creation would overcome the darkness, the sadness, the tears—that it would make all the sad things of this broken world come untrue—for them and eventually for everyone who believes. The kingdom would spread and grow until heaven and earth, God and humanity are at one again.

All of this is what Jesus is getting at in our Gospel today from John 16. It’s from the middle of the long teaching that Jesus gave to his disciples when they were in the Garden of Gethsemane, after they ate that last Passover meal with Jesus. Over and over Jesus exhorts them saying things like, Don’t let your hearts be troubled…trust God and trust me, too. And: I chose you, and I appointed you to go and bear fruit that will last…If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were from the world, the world would be fond of its own. But the world hates you because you’re not from the world. No, I chose you out of the world. And at the beginning of Chapter 16 he says to them: I’ve said these things to you to stop you from being tripped up. They will put you out of the synagogues. In fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will suppose that they are in that way offering worship to God…I have told you these things so that when their time comes, you will remember that I told you about them.

I expect the disciples were remembering that part of what Jesus said very well when they were hiding. “Jesus said they’d come to kill us,” they whispered in the dark. What they didn’t remember—or at least what they didn’t understand were the words we read today. In verse 16 Jesus says: “Not long from now, you won’t see me anymore. Then again, not long after that, you will see me.”

They expected—like pretty much everyone else—that the Messiah would bring some kind of revolt or revolution. He would overthrow the pagans and take the throne of Israel and, ruling over Israel, he would restore God’s people to their rightful place and status in the world. So it’s no wonder that when they heard this, they started murmuring amongst themselves. John goes on: “What’s he talking about?” some of his disciples asked each other. “What’s this business about ‘not long from now, you won’t see me, and again not long after that you will see me’? And what’s this about ‘going to the Father’?”

Maybe Jesus was going to finally do what the Messiah was supposed to do. Maybe he was going to go gather his army and come back to battle the Romans. John writes: They kept on saying it. “What is this ‘not long’?” “What’s it all about?” “We don’t know what he means!” Jesus was doing that thing again where he would say cryptic things or tell a confusing story. It got their interest and then he could fill them in. Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, John says.

“You’re discussing with each other what I meant, aren’t you?” he said. “You want to know what I meant by saying, ‘Not long from now, you won’t see me; and then again, not long after that you will see me.’ That’s it, isn’t it? Well, I’m going to tell you the solemn truth.”

I can see them all stopping the whispers and leaning forward. “Yes, Teacher. Tell us what you mean!” So Jesus goes on in the silence: “You will weep and wail, but the world will celebrate. You will be overcome with sorrow, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” I can picture the confused looks coming back to their faces. The Messiah was supposed to make everything all better. He was supposed to set everything to rights and to wipe away all the tears. The Messiah was supposed to bring an end to weeping and wailing! So Jesus gives them an illustration they could understand: “When a woman is giving birth she is in anguish, because her moment has come. But when the child is born, she no longer remembers the suffering, because of the joy that a human being has been born into the world.” And then he adds in verse 22: In the same way, you have sorrow now. But I shall see you again, and your hearts will celebrate, and nobody will take your joy from you.”

Even with the childbirth illustration, it was still pretty cryptic. Even with what follows—which we’ll come to in our Gospel for Rogation Sunday in two more weeks—even with that, the disciples really didn’t understand—yet. It was all there in the Prophets and it was all there in the things Jesus had been teaching. The son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the legal experts. He must be killed and raised up on the third day,” Jesus had said at one point. It doesn’t get much clearer than that. And yet the events of that first Good Friday and Easter Day came as a complete surprise to them. But then when they met the risen Jesus it all started to come back to them and it started to fall into place. The wheels started turning. Mental light bulbs started turning on. The one thing left that they needed was the Holy Spirit—but I don’t want to get ahead of the story. We’re still in that fifty days between Easter and Pentecost.

And I think those fifty days must have been some of the most exciting days in the history of the world. The disciples sat with Jesus—risen and glorified, the first bit of God’s new creation real and tangible and true right there with them—and he taught them. He went back over the scriptures—no doubt saying things he’d said a hundred times before—but now, in light of the resurrection, it all started to make sense. And I can imagine their excitement growing between being there with Jesus in all his resurrected glory and as they connected the scriptural dots and as they saw how the story they had grown up with, the story they lived every year at Passover, the story that defined who they were, the story they knew so, so, so well began to unfold in a new way. They’d always known it was a great story about the mighty and saving deeds of the Lord, but over those forty days in the presence of Jesus and hearing him teach and explain the story turned into something more glorious than they ever could have imagined. The God they’d known became so much bigger and more glorious than they ever thought he could be. And then it was time for Jesus to ascend and he had to tell them, “Wait.” They were ready and eager and excited to go out into Jerusalem and Judea to start telling everyone the story—the story everyone knew, but now seen in a new and glorious light through the lens of Jesus’ resurrection—and about this new hope they knew. God’s new creation had finally come and they’d spent the last forty days living in his presence. But Jesus said, “Wait. Your excitement about what God has done is only part of what you need. Wait. Just a little bit—ten more days—so I can send God’s Spirit. Couple this good news with the power of the Spirit and not even the gates of hell will stop you!”

And, Lord knows, the gates of hell have tried, but the gates of hell had already done their worst at the cross, and Jesus rose victorious. And that’s how and that’s why those first disciples took up their crosses and followed Jesus. Peter was crucified at Rome, Andrew was crucified in Greece, Thomas was speared by soldiers in India, Philip was martyred at Carthage, Matthew was martyred in Ethiopia, Bartholomew in Armenia, James was stoned to death in Jerusalem, Simon was martyred in Persia, and Matthias in Syria. Only John survived, after being exiled to Patmos. You see, in the risen Jesus they saw the proof that sin and death have been decisively defeated, that the false gods and kings of the old evil age have been exposed, and most of all they saw that God’s promised and long-hoped for new creation has been born. The resurrection gave them hope and that hope sent them out to proclaim the good news even though it meant following in the suffering of Jesus. And their stories have been the stories of countless Christians through the ages—of the Christians who died in the Roman persecutions, who died at the hands of the Sassanids, the Goths, the Vikings, the Caliphs, the Turks, the Kahns, the French revolutionaries, the Communists, the Islamists. It’s been the stories of countless missionaries who marched into hostile territory for the sake of the gospel, knowing they very well might die for it, but also knowing that the way of the cross is the path into God’s new creation.

Brothers and Sisters, too often these days we’ve lost sight of this. Maybe it’s the prosperity gospel, maybe it’s that we haven’t known any meaningful persecution for so long, but we Christians in the modern west seem to have forgotten this. There’s no room for suffering and the way of the cross in our theology. We gloss over what look like “failures” in church history. I was listening to a sermon this past week. The preacher was telling the story of a missionary named Peter Milne. Milne was a Scottish minister and part of a group that called themselves “one-way” missionaries. When they shipped out to far off lands to proclaim the gospel, they packed their worldly goods in a coffin. It was symbolic. They were going out as missionaries with no expectation of ever returning home. They would die—one way or another—in the land they went to evangelise. Peter Milne went to the New Hebrides in the South Pacific. It was a land of head-hunting cannibals. Milne wasn’t the first to go. Others had gone before and were killed by the natives. Milne was the first to go and to survive and to have a thriving gospel ministry. When he died fifty-some years later in 1924, he was buried in his coffin with the epitaph: “When he came, there was no light. When he left, there was no darkness.” When he’d arrived there wasn’t a single Christian on the island. When he died, there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t a Christian.

But here’s the thing—and the preacher I was listening to completely missed it: Following Jesus means first taking up a cross. It’s not about the glory of “successful” ministry. It’s about dying to self, and living for the hope of God’s glory and the spread of his kingdom. The preacher I listened to said nothing of the others who had gone before Milne to the New Hebrides and been martyred. They don’t fit in with our prosperity and business model theology. We admire their willingness to give their lives for the sake of the gospel, but they sort of get chalked up as failures. But to do that is to miss what it means to follow Jesus, to know the pangs of childbirth, but to also experience the joy that makes the pain and the sorrow pale in comparison.

As Tertullian said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, but so are all the other good-faith “failures”. There was a week when we were church-planting in Portland that I found myself all alone. Veronica’s mom was sick and she and Alexandra had travelled up to Kelowna. The other family that was helping us to get things off the ground had to be away that weekend. It was just me. But The Oregonian newspaper had just run a story on us. I’d had several contacts that week. The show had to go on. We were meeting at a Lutheran Church on Sunday evenings, so I asked the pastor there if one of their organists could come and play that evening. She came and she and I sat there waiting. And 7pm came and went. And 7:05, and 7:15 and we knew no one was coming. I was discouraged and it was obvious. She and I said Evening Prayer together and then she told me her story. She and her husband, a pastor, had been Lutheran church planters in Jamaica for almost ten years. They had a very small group that had asked them to come to help them plant a church and for ten years they tried and nothing ever happened. When they finally decided to quit there were no more people than when they started. She said that she and her husband found the whole thing utterly discouraging. They had made significant sacrifices to be there and nothing had happened. It was tempting to be angry with God. They returned home thinking they were failures and wondering why. They’d been faithful in proclaiming Jesus. They’d spent hours every week in prayer with that little group of people. And then several years later they received a letter. It was from a pastor in Kingston. Not long after they’d left, he’d arrived to plant a church. His group moved into the building left behind by the Lutherans and quickly began to grow and thrive. And he wrote to thank them. “You soaked this place in prayer and you cast gospel seed all through the neighbourhood,” he wrote. He didn’t know why it never grew for them, but he knew they’d been faithful and he was now reaping a harvest he hadn’t planted and he wanted to thank them for their faithfulness. That elderly Lutheran organist told me that story with tears in her eyes and said, “Be faithful and don’t be discouraged. Whatever happens, if you are faithful, the Lord is at work. Some of us plant, some of us water, some of us reap, but it’s all the Lord’s work.” She reminded me of the hope that lies before me—and that lies before all of us—and that Jesus doesn’t just call us to follow him; he first calls us to take up our crosses. Just it was necessary for Jesus to give his life that he might be raised from death, so must we die to ourselves that we might live. Brothers and Sisters, fix your eyes on Jesus. He knew the joy that was set before him and so he endured the cross. He scorned its shame. And because of that the Father raised him from the dead and has seated him at his right hand. His kingdom has been born. Now the joy of the kingdom, of new creation, of God’s life is before us. May it be the reason that we take up our crosses and follow our Lord.

Let’s pray: Gracious Father, as we come to your Table this morning, give us a taste of your great kingdom feast; let us see Jesus, risen from the dead; and make us especially aware of your indwelling Spirit that we might be filled with the joy of your salvation and the joy of your new creation. Strengthen us with joy, so that we will not fear to take up our crosses and follow Jesus. Amen.
36 min
May 04, 2025 A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Easter
A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Easter
1 St. Peter 2:18-25 & St. John 10:11-16
by William Klock

Let slaves obey their masters with all respect, not only the good and kind ones but also the unkind ones.

Those are jarring words, aren’t they? They have been abused at times in history, shouted by masters at their slaves: “God says you’re supposed to obey me and you don’t want to disobey God, do you?” True words, but showing that sometimes true words, when spoken by the wrong person and in the wrong context, turn everything upside-down.

Jarring words written by St. Peter in his First Epistle—chapter 2, verse 18. The verse that leads into today’s Epistle. Originally the Epistle started a few verses later. At the Reformation Archbishop Cranmer extended the Epistle to verse 19, but to really understand what Peter’s saying we need to go back at least to verse 18 to those words about slaves obeying their masters.

It also helps to know that slaves were what made the Greco-Roman world go round. Ten to twenty per cent of the Roman population was slaves and without them life in Rome Empire would have ground to a halt. When we think about slavery, we probably think about race-based slavery in the United States or maybe in Latin America in the colonial era. Slavery in Rome wasn’t quite the same. It wasn’t based on race. Slaves were often prisoners of war or debtors or, of course, the children of slaves. They did have certain rights. They could own property and even buy their own freedom. But at its core all slavery is rooted in the idea that you are not your own; you belong to someone else. You’re not a person; you’re property. That slavery exists, whether in Rome or in the Americas or in other parts of the world today, that slavery exists is a stark and profound reminder that the world is not as it should be. Slaves, as much if not more than anyone else, know the pain and the tears of the present evil age. And I think that’s why Peter singles them out here.

But what does slavery have to do with Easter? Well, think back. On Easter Day the Epistle, from Paul, reminded us to look up and keep our eyes fixed on the age to come, on the new creation inaugurated by Jesus. Last Sunday we heard St. John exhorting us to overcome the world—to be stewards and heralds of God’s new creation. This is all what it means to let the reality of Easter—of Jesus’ resurrection—work out practically in our lives—to be Easter people. And today it’s St. Peter who speaks to us on this same theme.

All through Chapter 2 of his letter Peter has been writing about who and what Jesus and the Spirit have made us: living stones, a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. And he writes that God’s purpose in all this is that we will “announce the virtuous deed of the one who called [us] out of darkness into his amazing light”. That’s our duty, Brothers and Sisters, to proclaim the mighty and saving deeds of God in Jesus. To make the good news known to the world.

But, Peter warns, don’t undermine that Easter proclamation with worldly living. Here’s what he writes beginning at 2:11:

My beloved ones, I beg you—strangers and aliens as you are…

Remember that when we are born again in Jesus and the Spirit, we’re reborn as part of God’s new creation and, even though we still await its consummation, that makes us in a very real sense strangers and aliens in the world we once knew. The old evil age has been defeated, but it still trundles on even as the new age is breaking in, but that old age no longer has a claim on us. We belong to Jesus. We belong to God’s new world. And it is this new world and it’s king, Jesus that we proclaim. But we also need to live this new world too and that’s what Peter’s getting at. So he goes on:

I beg you to hold back from the fleshly desires that wage war against your true lives. Keep up good conduct amongst the pagans, so that when they speak against you as evildoers they will observe your good deeds and praise God on the day of his royal arrival. (1 Peter 2:11-12)

Brothers and Sisters, our walk needs to match our talk. We have been delivered from sin’s slavery, but the old temptations are still there. That’s why we vowed in our baptism to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil. You and I belong to a royal priesthood and a holy nation. We ought to live holy lives, putting our sinful desires to death. And we do that not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it is part of our Gospel witness. This is what it means to be light in the darkness.

Peter knew the world needed gospel light. As bad as we think our world might be, the ancient world was worse. Unspeakable sin was everywhere. The sexual immorality of our world doesn’t hold a candle to the sexual immorality of ancient Greece and Rome. And idolatry was woven through every bit of life. To become a Christians meant withdrawing from all of that, which meant the pagans looked on Christians as impious traitors. The pagans called Christians atheists, because to worship only one god was pretty much as good as atheism. They accused Christians of being unpatriotic, because Christians refused to worship the emperor. If disaster befell a city, the pagans would blame the Christians for angering the gods. And yet Peter reminds these brothers and sisters that the pagans would also notice how different they were. In a dog-eat-dog word, these Christians treated each other as equals and they loved each other. They even pooled their resources to care for widows and orphans—the cast-offs of Greco-Roman society. In a world of sexual filth, the Christians lived lives of purity. The Christians became known for adopting the infants—especially the newborn girls—left to die of exposure by the pagans. The Christians treated women and slaves as equals of free men. In other words, the Christians were living out as best they could God’s new creation in the midst of the old. They were lifting the veil on God’s future, on the day when everything is set to rights, and giving the pagans a glimpse of it. And the pagans couldn’t help but take note, even as they threw all their accusations at the Christians. Some of the pagans—especially those deeply invested in the evils of this world—they lashed out, they fought back and Christians were thrown into prison and martyred. But even then, their witness had an impact and a few at first, but then more and more and more were drawn to Jesus through their holy witness—not just the proclamation, but by the lives of these Christians—by faith in Jesus put into practice. And the world began to change. New creation spread.

So Peter goes on in verses 13-17:

Be subject to every human institution, for the sake of the Lord: whether to the emperor as supreme, or to the governors as sent by him to punish evildoers and praise those who do good. This, you see, is the will of God. He wants you to behave well and so to silence foolish and ignorant people. Live as free people (though don’t use your freedom as a veil to hide evil!), but as slaves of God. Do honour to all people; love the family; reverence God; honour the emperor.

So, Brothers and Sisters, so much as we are able—without compromising our gospel principles—we are to keep the peace. Peter knew that God is sovereign and that he establishes human rulers in this world to keep the peace, to punish evil, and to promote the good. He knew that those rulers are often far from perfect. Peter even knew that those rulers are often evil. However much you may have thought that Justin Trudeau was the worst Prime Minister ever, however much you may think Donald Trump is totally unworthy of the Presidency, the Roman Emperors were worse—far, far, far worse. Our governments in the West, for all their flaws and even as they forsake the gospel, have been profoundly shaped by that gospel. That could not be said of Caesar. And yet even as Nero would light up his garden parties by setting Christians on fire, Peter acknowledged that—generally speaking—God has appointed such men—as we pray—to administer justice, restrain wickedness and vice, and uphold integrity and truth. So Peter warns Christians to be subject to our earthly rulers. Jesus has not called us to be violent revolutionaries bent on overthrowing Caesar so that we can impose a theocracy. Instead, God wants us to “behave well” and in that to silence the accusations of the pagans. Show honour to all, love our family (he means the church), and honour the emperor. You don’t have to get into idolatry or offer incense to Caesar to be submissive to his God-given authority.

You can see how this actually did work if you look at the history of the early church. Those early Christians lived peaceably. They refused to comprise. They refused to participate in idolatry and in sexual immorality and it cost them, but they lived as truly gospel people. Many of them were martyred for doing so. And you might think that killing people would put an end to a movement. But this quiet, peaceful, holy living worked. It gradually silenced the accusations of the pagans, who gradually and increasing numbers were drawn to the good news and to Jesus.

Here’s the thing. We know that the world is not as it should be. In our anger we often want to lash out ourselves, if not to make it right, at least to make it right for ourselves or to get some kind of revenge. And that only makes things worse. But as those first Christians lived peaceable and godly lives, as the pagans came to Jesus in faith, the world began to change through their influence. Gradually the gross sexual immorality disappeared, infanticide and abortion stopped, the brutality of the gladiatorial games ended, the status of women and children rose, and slavery came to an end.

Brothers and Sisters, the gospel changes the world through humble, peaceable, and holy Christians as it quietly works its way through a nation until that people or nation itself becomes a witness to Jesus and gospel. We really need to hear this lesson today. Those first Christians had no other choice. They were a minority. They had no political power. We, however, living in a world that was once Christian and where Christianity is now in decline and out of fashion, we keep trying to regain it all through political power—forgetting, I think, that the gospel doesn’t work that way. It rises up from below, from the ranks of peaceable, humble, and godly people who proclaim and live it. We will never overcome the accusations and rejection of the pagans by trying to force the gospel on them. Rather, they will be drawn to the gospel through our gospel proclamation backed up by our gospel living.

And this is where Peter says those startling words:

Let slaves obey their masters with all respect, not only the good and kind ones but also the unkind ones.

Did Peter know that one day the influence of the gospel would put an end to slavery? I don’t know. Slavery was a given in his world. But Peter knew that slavery was not God’s plan for human beings. He knew that it had no place in God’s new creation. And yet he tells slaves—and it’s not like he was just writing this to slaves he didn’t know in far away churches, there were surely slaves in Peter’s home church, brothers and sisters he loved dearly to whom he said the same thing face to face—Peter tells slaves to obey their masters—even the evil ones. And I think that’s hard for us to hear, because in our world, this sounds like Peter is colluding with injustice. One of the slogans of our post-modern age is “Silence is violence”. You have to speak out against evil and injustice. But Peter was perfectly aware that slavery was an injustice, so let’s bear with him.

Consider that Peter lived the gospel story very literally. He was one of the fist Jesus called. He spent three years being discipled by Jesus. He was there when Jesus was arrested. Remember, he was the one who lashed out, drawing his sword, cutting of one of the soldier’s ears, putting up a fight for Jesus. He heard Jesus telling him to put his sword away and he saw Jesus heal that soldier. And he was there when Jesus was on trial and he was the one who denied knowing Jesus three times. He was there when they crucified him. And he was there with John on Easter morning to see the empty tomb and later that day to meet the risen Jesus. Peter knew that story. It was as much his story as it was Jesus’s story, even if Jesus was the centre of it. Peter knew what it looked like to bear with injustice and suffering. He’d seen Jesus do it. And because Jesus bore with it, because Jesus refused to respond with violence, because Jesus had submitted to death on a cross, everything had changed. If Jesus hadn’t submitted to death, he never would have risen victorious over it and God’s new creation would never have been born.

Brothers and Sisters, that’s how God’s new creation, how his redemption works: Sin and death did their worst, and Jesus and the gospel rose triumphant. And what Peter is saying is that we, as Jesus’ people, need to inhabit that same story, make it our own, be willing to suffer and even to die if it comes to that, so that the world can know the power of the gospel—of the good new of Jesus crucified and risen.

That’s why Peter goes on like he does in verse 21, where he says:

This, after all, is what came with the terms of your call.

In other words, this is what you’re going to be called to do, this is the life you’re going to be called to live when you take up with Jesus in faith. You’re going to have to inhabit his story. And to make sure we understand what that story is Peter writes what was probably a hymn sung in those early churches.

The Messiah, too, suffered on your behalf, leaving behind a pattern for you so that you should follow the way he walked. He committed no sin, nor was there deceit in his mouth. When he was insulted, he did not insult in return, when he suffered, he did not threaten, but he gave himself up to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might be free from sins and live for righteousness. It is by his wounds that you are healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your true lives. (1 Peter 2:21-25)

The crucifixion of Jesus was the most evil and unjust act in history. Jesus was the one man who deserved nothing but praise and honour and glory, but his own people rejected him, mocked him, beat him, and crucified him. In Jesus, Peter saw the fulfilment of God’s promises through the Prophet Isaiah. God’s royal servant would fulfil his purposes to save the world, but he would do so by submitting to injustice. The servant would be insulted, without responding with insults of his own. He would suffer without casting curses on his torturers. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross” and “we were going astray like sheep” writes Peter, drawing from Isaiah 53. Jesus took on himself the punishment his people deserved. Because he was Israel’s Messiah, the king and the world’s true Lord, he could represent Israel and the rest of us in a way no one else ever could.

So with that in mind—with this idea that each of us is called to inhabit the gospel story of the cross and the resurrection—I think we can understand what Peter is getting at when he tells slaves to submit to their masters and for everyone to be subject to earthly rulers. He’s not just saying that we should passively accept suffering and violence and injustice. What he’s saying is that when you and I suffer for the sake of gospel, for the sake of goodness, truth, and beauty, that Jesus’ suffering is somehow extended through us, and the saving and life-giving power of his death and resurrection meets this present evil age and its people with transforming power. It’s not an easy thing to do. Knowing Peter and how impetuous he was, I expect he struggled with this, but he knew. The flesh cries out “No!”. The flesh wants to push back—to return insult for insult, to get revenge on those who wrong us. The flesh doesn’t want to wait for the gospel to act like yeast in a lump of dough—slowly working its way through. We want justice now! We dismiss the way of suffering, saying that it fails to confront evil, insisting that only power, force, and violence can right the world’s wrongs—or at least the wrongs perpetrated against us personally. And this is precisely why we need to keep our eyes on Jesus and his cross, remembering that his death and resurrection are at the centre of everything. Remembering that the unjust suffering of God’s people is caught up in the suffering of Jesus his son and all part of the same redeeming story.

Brothers and Sisters, this is how the world is set to rights. We think revolution comes by taking up arms and by fighting back, but all that does is replace one evil with another. The real revolution took place at the cross and it spreads as you and I take up our crosses and follow Jesus. It’s hard. We want vindication. We want justice. We want the world set to rights. But there is no better way to remember that God has promised us all these things than to live out that future in the here and now.

Let’s pray: Almighty God, who gave your only Son to be for us both a sacrifice for sin and an example of godly life: Give us grace that we may always receive with thankfulness the immeasurable benefit of his sacrifice, and daily endeavour to follow in the blessed steps of his most holy life, who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, for evermore. Amen.
37 min
April 27, 2025 A Sermon for the First Sunday after Easter
A Sermon for the First Sunday after Easter
1 St. John 5:4-12 & St. John 20:19-23
by William Klock

In the ancient church this was the Sunday when the men and women baptised on Easter would take off their white baptismal robes after a long week of celebrating their baptism. Now it was time for the church to go out into the world to be the new people Jesus and the Spirit had made them. At Rome, in those ancient days, the newly baptised would do this at the church of St. Pancras—a church named after a young Roman martyr. Because of his faithfulness he would become a patron of oaths and vows. Now it was time to live out their baptismal vows, like that young martyr. They’d given their allegiance in faith to Jesus. Now it was time to march out into the world, to proclaim him as the crucified and risen king, and to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil—not matter the cost.

Brothers and Sisters, as the Easter story continues, we’re reminded that Jesus didn’t die and rise from death just to zap us to heaven the moment we believe. He didn’t die and rise again to create an escape hatch out of the world or even out of persecution and martyrdom. He died and rose again so that we might live for him and carry the good news—like royal heralds of the king—out to the far reaches of God’s creation. This has been the mission of the people of God all along, going all the way back to Abraham. He and then his family were called and set apart by the Lord to be a light in the darkness. They were the people who lived with the living God in their midst. Through them, God revealed himself to the nations.

Or, at any rate, that’s how the plan had started. Abraham’s family, Israel, largely failed in her mission. That was part of the plan too. It showed that it would take more than calling and creating and sending a special people to be light in the darkness. The human race has a heart problem. Instead of desiring God, we desire everything else. Instead of worshipping him, we make idols. And Israel had that same heart problem. And so that story of calling and sending and failure leads us to Jesus. It was meant to from the very beginning. He came to set his people to rights—at least those who would follow him, who would trust him, who would give their allegiance to him as messiah—as God’s king. And in his death and resurrection Jesus defeated the powers of the old age and inaugurated God’s new creation. But John stresses, this time something was different. This new people isn’t just called and sent. This time they’re also transformed and equipped. And that’s really the theme of this Sunday after Easter. Every week we’re sent out with those words: “Go forth in pace to love and serve the Lord.” Friends, that dismissal is a call to go out and swim in our baptism, to go our and to proclaim the risen Lord, to go out and do battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. I suspect that a lot of the time we respond, “Thanks be to God” without even thinking about any of that. But those times when we do think about what those words mean, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed—especially when the scriptures or the liturgy or the sermon has really spoken to us that day and we have a clear sense of why God has called us and saved us—it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

So Brothers and Sisters, as we stand overwhelmed by the task before us, John assures us that if we are in Jesus by faith, there are two vitally important new realities for us. The first is that we have been made part of his new creation. We have a share in Jesus’ resurrection from death. Yes, there’s more to come. We haven’t been resurrected yet. That will come some day at the end of the age when the gospel, through the Church, has accomplished its purpose and brought the world to Jesus. But in the meantime, Jesus’ resurrection has freed us from our bondage to sin and death and given us new life. And, second, that if we are in Jesus, he has given us God’s own Spirit. He’s made us his temple, the place where he dwells. The Spirit’s not something to be earned when we’ve become holy enough. He’s not some later experience or second blessing, as if we can be in Jesus, but not have a share in the Spirit. Jesus’ gift of the Spirit is the very thing that fulfils God’s promise through the prophets and that defines us as his new covenant people. And as Jesus forgives and frees us by his death and resurrection, the indwelling Spirit empowers and equips us to live the new life Jesus has given. The Spirit’s life in us is a foretaste and a down payment on the resurrection and the life of the age to come—and most importantly in light of today’s theme, the indwelling Spirit is the one who makes the task set before us by Jesus possible. He’s the one who equips us to fulfil those impossible vows we made in our baptism.

In our Gospel, again John 20 beginning at verse 19, John tells us:

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Judeans. Jesus came and stood in the middle of them. “Peace be with you,” he said.

We shouldn’t pass over these words too quickly. It’s the first day of the week. It’s still the same day that Mary went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body and found it empty. It’s the same day she went running to tell Peter and John. The same day they went running to the tomb to see for themselves. The same day when John says none of them—except, it seems, for him—understood what had happed. John says he “believed” and I think that means he believed Jesus had risen, but that was crazy and he was still working it through so he hadn’t said anything to the others yet. This is that same day. Now it’s evening. And the disciples have locked themselves into someone’s house. The doors are locked. I expect the windows tightly shuttered. There was no cooking fire. Nothing that might make the house look occupied—nothing to give them away. Maybe one little lamp, just so they could barely see each other in the darkness. They were afraid. Four days before, the Jewish authorities had arrested Jesus. Three days before he’s been crucified as a dangerous revolutionary. Soon, they figured, the authorities would come for the rest of them. Best to lay low until things blew over. Maybe in a few days they could sneak out of the city. And so they sat there in the darkness, some silently pondering what all this meant, some still weeping for their dead friend, maybe a couple of them arguing in low tones about what had happened to Jesus’ body and what they’d do next. But whatever they were doing, a palpable sense of fear filled that dark room. John’s telling of the story of new creation reverberates with echoes of the story of the first creation: Darkness was over the face of the deep.

And then Jesus is suddenly there. John wrote about the Incarnation back in his prologue saying that in Jesus the light had come into the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it. That was an echo of Genesis. The first day of the week God called light into being, driving away the darkness. And now the Light Incarnate appears in that dark, fear-filled house and I have to think that somehow and in some way it was filled with light—a light that drove away every last vestige of darkness. And to these frightened men, Jesus announces, “Peace be with you!”

Imagine their surprise. And there must have been some disbelief or some doubts. Or maybe, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, they simply didn’t recognise him. Something about his resurrection had brought a transformation. Same Jesus, same body, but in some way just different enough in appearance that they didn’t recognise him. Of course, it wouldn’t have helped that they simply didn’t expect to see him again either. So Jesus holds out his hands for them to see. One at a time he lifts a foot out so that they can see. There were the marks left by the nails. And he lifted his tunic to show them the wound left by the spear that had been plunged into his side, the wound that had gushed forth blood and water, evidence to the soldiers that he was genuinely dead. And here he stood alive. They were shocked. How could it be? I’ve said before, the reason resurrection wasn’t on anyone’s mind was because this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. This wasn’t a story Jews would have made up, because all the Jews who believed in the resurrection of the dead knew how it would work—and it wasn’t supposed to work this way. At the end of the age the Lord would raise all the faithful at once. There was plenty of disagreement about some of the specifics, but they all knew one thing for sure: It would be everybody all at once, not just one person, even if that one person was the Messiah. This just wasn’t on their radar. Not at all. But now it is and they’re confused and, it seems, even though John says they were glad, they were still more than a little afraid. And so Jesus says to them again, “Peace be with you!”

And Jesus doesn’t waste any time as John tells it. “Peace be with you,” he says, calming their fears. Jesus is alive. And immediately he gets down to the very practical aspects, the real-world implications of his resurrection. Jesus doesn’t waste any time. He says in verse 21:

“As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

Think about that. Here they are, hunkered down for fear of being rounded up and executed. Here they are, afraid to even show their faces in Jerusalem. Here they are, giving it a few days before they try to sneak out of town without being noticed. And Jesus says to them, “I’m sending you. As the Father sent me to you, I’m now sending you: to Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria…to the ends of the earth.” In other words, “You’re not going to go slinking out of the city under cover of darkness. No, you’re going out into Jerusalem with boldness—the same way I went out into Galilee, through Judea, and eventually to Jerusalem at the head of a parade, hailed by the people. You’re going to go with the same boldness out into this city and you are going to declare what God has done. Everyone is going to know who you are. You’re going to declare to Jerusalem that this Jesus whom they crucified died and has been raised from the dead, that he really is the Messiah, God’s King, and that his kingdom, God’s new creation has come.”

Think again of John, just beginning to wrap his head around the idea that Jesus had been raised from death—but still hunkered down with the others, afraid. John couldn’t even tell his friends what he thought had happened. The last thing on his mind was telling it to Jerusalem—and Jesus isn’t talking about mere “telling”—you know, whispering it to a few people who might be safe to tell. No, he’s talking about proclaiming this news—to everybody. Brothers and Sisters, think about that for a minute. Most of us are hesitant to proclaim the good news about Jesus. We have no reason to fear for our lives like Jesus’ disciples did. The worst thing that happens to us is we offend someone, make them think we’re weird. They faced martyrdom—and all but John were, indeed, martyred for their proclamation. We have so little to fear, but we’re afraid anyway. We’ve even stopped speaking in terms of proclamation—the Bible’s way of speaking about evangelism. Instead we talk about “sharing” our faith—watering it down, as if it’s just another option on the religious smorgasbord that someone might want to try out for themselves. We’ve lost our confidence in the good news and in the God who raised Jesus from the dead who stands behind it. No, Jesus calls us to declare the good news like royal heralds, sent out into the world to declare the mighty deeds of God, that he has raised Jesus from the dead, and made him Lord of all.

But, again, consider John. Confused, afraid, just beginning to understand. And then consider the confidence of his words, written decades later in our Epistle:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah has been fathered by God…because everything that has been fathered by God conquers the world. This is the victory that conquers the world: our faith. Who is the one who conquers the world? Surely the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God! (1 John 5:1, 4-5)

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah—God’s king—has been reborn as part of the people of God. And that belief changes everything. That belief transforms the fearful John hesitant to even tell his friends about the dawning realization that Jesus had been raised from death, it turns him into the courageous apostle, exiled for his proclamation of that truth, and writing boldly to the churches to stand firm in that same faith even though great tribulation was about to hit them like a storm. There is everything to be feared out in the world: rejection, mockery, persecution, even martyrdom, but by faith the people of God overcome and stand firm in our witness. It’s not because faith changes reality. It’s because this faith recognizes the new reality born that first Easter when Jesus rose from the grave, the new reality that he is victor over sin and death, the new reality that new creation has begun in him, and the new reality that he is Lord of that creation. By faith we are united with him. By faith we share in his inheritance. And by faith we share in his calling and ministry—his Church, taking up the mantle of prophet, priest, and king.

Like John, we are called to boldly testify about Jesus.

It was he who came by means of water and blood, Jesus the Messiah, not by water only but by the water and the blood. The Spirit is the one who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. There are three that bear witness—the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and these three agree together. If we have received the witness of men, God’s witness is greater. This is the witness of God, the testimony he has borne concerning his son. (1 John 5:6-9)

John points back to Jesus’ ministry. He came by water. That was the start of it. He went to John and was baptised in the Jordan and as he walked up out of the river, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended like a dove, and his Father spoke, “This is my Son in whom I am well-pleased.” That was Jesus’ initiation into his messianic ministry. And that ministry—at least in its earthly phase—ended in blood, at the cross, where he died to conquer death and to provide forgiveness of sins. Jesus’ baptism testifies to his being the Messiah. Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross, testifies to his being the Messiah. And, too, John writes, so does the Spirit. And, he says, consider all the things we believe, in which we trust, based on the testimony of mere men. How much more, Brothers and Sisters, ought we to trust this testimony about Jesus backed up by God himself? And not so much just receiving and believing ourselves, but in light of the fact that this is the truth, this is the good news that literally changes the world, that is changing the world, oughtn’t we to be proclaiming it to that world? Through Jesus and the Spirit God has given us the light. The light that will transform the darkness that sin and death have cast on the world. The light that the darkness cannot and will not ever overcome. Dear Friends, don’t hide it under a basket. Hold it high. Proclaim it. Show it to everyone. Don’t be afraid. God has spoken: “Let there be light!” And as John wrote in his Gospel: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has no overcome it.” He goes on in verse 10:

All those who believe in the son of God have the witness in themselves.

But that’s not where John leaves us in the Gospel. Jesus doesn’t just send his disciples out into the world. That would be an impossible task. Jesus also equips them. Look at verses 22-23 of John 20:

With that, he breathed on them. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he said. “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained.”

As the Lord breathed life into Adam in the original creation, Jesus now breathes on his disciples. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he says. Was the Spirit literally imparted by Jesus’ breath? Luke tells this part differently in his Gospel and in Acts—that whole event with the dramatic coming of the Spirit at Pentecost as they gathered at the temple to hear Peter preach and to be baptised. But notice there, too, that the Spirit comes with a wind—in both Hebrew and Greek, wind, breath, and spirit are all the same word. Jesus was good at acted-out prophecy and I think that’s what he's doing in this case in John’s Gospel. He is—or he soon will be—imparting God’s Spirit to this new people of God, to those who believe, and he illustrates just what this gift is by an act that they couldn’t help but connect to God’s giving life to Adam. But this is new life. And this is what will equip them to go out, despite the threat of death, to proclaim with boldness the good news. Brothers and Sisters, the Spirit does a lot for us, but here Jesus makes sure we know what his primary purpose is. It’s not to give us radical experiences, although that certainly might happen. It’s not to make us holy, although he certainly does that as he turns our hearts and our affections away from self and sin and points them towards God. But, the primary purpose of the Spirit is to equip us to do the impossible: to do for the world, what Jesus did for Israel. To go out in the world in his name and to proclaim what God has done through him. “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

And then those words that have so often been misunderstood and abused: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained.” Remember I said that by faith we have a share in Jesus’ inheritance and ministry. By faith the Father adopts us and makes us his sons and daughters, so we share in what belongs to Jesus. And that means that as he is King and Prophet and Priest, so are we as his Church, his people. And Jesus gets here at two of those things. Here he reminds his friends and he reminds us that when we go out into the world to proclaim his Lordship, to proclaim the good news of his death and resurrection, to proclaim that new creation has come, we do so as both prophets and as priests.

Our message is two-fold. I think the priestly role comes most naturally to us. This is the part of our proclamation where we announce the forgiveness of sins. Think of the priests of the Old Testament, offering sacrifices. That was one of their main duties: to facilitate and to mediate God’s forgiveness to the people. Think of Jesus. He is both priest and sacrificial lamb. He offers and presents himself to the Father as a sacrifice for our sins. And, as priests, we proclaim to the world the forgiveness he offers through that sacrifice. But that is not our only role. We also share in Jesus’ prophetic office—and that’s the part that doesn’t come as naturally to us, at least not as things currently are. But consider what the prophets did. Consider what Jesus did in his role as a prophet. He called out the sins of his people, he summoned them to repentance, and he announced the judgement to come on those who remained unrepentant in their sin, unbelief, and faithlessness. In contrast, much of the Church today is afraid to take on this prophetic role, to name sin, to even use the word. Some parts of the Church have given up altogether and have embraced sin and called it virtue—leaving folks nothing to repent of and with nothing for which they need forgiveness. They’ve gutted the gospel. But these two things, the priestly and the prophetic go hand in hand. Our prophetic office, announcing judgement, is without hope if we do not also fulfil our priestly role of announcing forgiveness. But our priestly office, our message of forgiveness lacks any real meaning if it is not also accompanied by the prophetic announcement that sin is sin and that God will judge it. Brothers and Sisters, this is the good news: that we are sinners, that our holy God judges sin and that the penalty is death, but also that Jesus has died as a perfect sacrifice for sins, and has risen, victor over death, inaugurating God’s new creation and giving a sure and certain hope that what he has begun he will finish. One day all things will be made new, every bit of sin and evil will be swept from creation, and all will be set to rights. And by faith in Jesus we have a share in that new world.

Brothers and Sisters, do we believe that? I trust that we do. We affirm this belief every week as we come to the Lord’s Table. We recall the story. We confess our sins in repentance. And we come to the Table in renewed faith to participate again in those events that set us free from sin and death, in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But maybe we’ve forgotten the real power behind what we confess here at the Table. Friends, think this morning on what the cross and the empty tomb mean. Think on what the blood of Jesus means. Think on what his gift of the Spirit to you means. And then take seriously those words of dismissal: “Go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord.” Consider that in those words Jesus is saying to us, to you and to me, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

Let’s pray: Almighty Father, you gave your only Son to die for our sins and to rise again for our justification: Grant that we may put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, and always serve you in purity and truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

37 min
April 20, 2025 A Sermon for Easter Day
A Sermon for Easter Day
Colossians 2:20-3:4 & St. John 20:1-10
by William Klock

Sometimes there’s a way that seems right, you try to follow it, and you just get yourself into trouble. I parked at the Big Qualicum fish hatchery and went for a ride on my gravel bike on the Horne Lake-Cook Creek Forest Service Road loop. It’s a beautiful ride, but it’s not the easiest. There’s a hill at one point that’s so steep the logging trucks actually have to be towed to the top by one of those giant trucks with eight-foot tall wheels. It’s too steep to ride and even walking it while pushing your bike is hard, because your shoes just slip out from under you in the dry sand and gravel. I saw that 20% grade in my mapping app and thought I’d be smart. There’s another logging road on the map that bypasses that big hill. It would also cut the loop down from 90km to about 75km.

So off I went down the mountain on that other logging road. I should have known better. My mapping app shows how heavily travelled various routes are. I could see that everyone took the main road and went up the giant hill. I could see that no one went the way I was going. I thought I was smart and had found a secret no one knew about. And then that shortcut suddenly ended at ravine. There was a cliff on both sides and Nile Creek babbling away sixty feet below. The logging company had decommissioned the road and removed the bridge. I climbed about thirty feet down the cliff with my bike over my shoulder, sure I’d find a way. I didn’t. And I had to climb back up and then ride back up the mountain, back to the main road with scraped knees and elbows to show for my folly. I got to climb two big hills that day.

We’re always looking for the easy way, no one wants to take the hard and difficult way even if it’s the right way to go. Jesus’ words were looping in my head as I rode back up that hill to the main road: The gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. I was picturing myself barreling down that road, happy I found the easy way, not paying attention, and riding right off that cliff.

This is what St. Paul’s getting at in our Epistle today from Colossians when he writes, Think about the things that are above, not the things of earth.

Here’s what was happening in Colossae—or, at any rate, what Paul feared would happen if the church there didn’t get on the right track. Just as in Galatia, the Christians were being tempted to fall back into a form of Judaism—to start finding their identity in things like circumcision, sabbath-keeping, and diet. They were facing the same sort of persecution the Galatians were and it was very tempting to avoid it by backing away from their identity in Jesus and to instead identify themselves as Jews. Jews were exempt from all the requirements of Roman religion. But that wasn’t the only thing that made Judaism tempting. Even before Jesus came on the scene, there had been gentiles who were attracted to Judaism for its ethics and morality. The ancient pagan world was grossly immoral and barbaric in ways that we—living in a world shaped for two thousand years by the gospel—it was filthy in ways we struggle to imagine. And some of the pagans got sick of it. Yes, the torah made heavy demands, but it also offered a way of life along very clearly delineated lines of holiness and purity. That was attractive to some people. This is what Paul is getting at, at the end of Colossians 2—which I think really needs to be part of today’s Epistle if we’re going to get a sense of the context. Staring in Colossians 2:20 Paul writes:

If you died with the Messiah, coming out from the rule of the worldly elements, what’s the point of laying down laws as though your life was still merely worldly? “Don’t handle! Don’t taste! Don’t touch!” Rules like that all have to do with things that disappear as you use them. They are the sort of regulations and teaching that mere humans invent. They may give an appearance of wisdom, since they promote a do-it-yourself religion, a kind of humility, and severe treatment of the body. But they are of no use when it comes to dealing with the indulgence of the flesh.

Paul had in mind these gentiles who were thinking that the laws and regulations of the torah would give them a sense of wisdom and religion and humility, but it’s not hard to see our own culture in his warning. Everyone it seems is looking for some way to feel better about themselves. Sometimes it’s just a sort of generic do-gooderism. Some people get this way with life-style and fitness routines, disciplining themselves in ways that become a sort of religion. Some people pursue conservation and environmentalism with the fervency of religion. Things like recycling or cutting down Scotch broom or driving an EV become almost sacramental. These things atone—or at least begin to atone—for our sins and the sins of our ancestors. And then there’s the full-on Post-moderns who have bought into various critical theories and the whole dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed. In that system, if you find yourself in the oppressor category—usually because you’re white or male or heterosexual or—God forbid—all three—there is no atonement, there is no forgiveness. You must simply spend the rest of your life genuflecting at the woke altar and confessing your sins and those of your ancestors. There is no forgiveness, but at least you can feel better for constantly signaling your virtue and for being an “ally”. You can even feel holier-than-thou and look down your nose—a Post-modern Pharisee—when you see your fellow oppressors who aren’t kowtowing at the woke altar. These are all just modern expressions of Paul’s “do-it-yourself religion”. They may make us feel better or feel like we’re doing something or even that we’re working to heal creation and make the world a better place, but to put it in his words, They are of no use when it comes to dealing with the indulgence of the flesh. None of these things address our real problem. None of these things will make us genuinely holy. In the end, they turn out to be indulgences of the flesh themselves.

They’re shortcuts. Instead, we need to take that hard and narrow way. We need to take the road that climbs that giant hill, even though it means pushing the bike while your feet slip out from under you in the sand and gravel. Because the hard way is the only way that will get us to the end goal. Every other way will eventually turn into a dead end—with the emphasis on dead. There is only one way that leads to life. Brothers and Sisters, we have to die and be raised back to life. That’s the only way to get out of this worldly sphere and to escape the “worldly elements”—the powers and gods of the present evil age, the powers and gods that keep us perpetuating our sins and our rebellion against God. Because no matter what we do, no matter how many good works we think we’ve done, as long as we’re enslaved to those false gods and systems, we’re just feeding, we’re just perpetuating the fallenness of the world and this present evil age.

Something has to change. We have to leave behind the present age—it’s days are numbered anyway and as Christians we should know that—and we need to take our place in the age to come, in God’s new creation. We all know that the world is not as it should be. God didn’t create us for pain and tears and it’s good that we instinctively want to fix that. But we can’t. Not on our own. Our sin and rebellion have broken God’s creation and there’s no fixing it with the broken tools it offers. To get back to where we should be—to get back to that place of fellowship with God, of living in his presence, of being the stewards of his world—means leaving behind the old and joining in the new.

This is what drew people to Jesus during his ministry. He was preaching good news, yes, but he was also wiping away the tears and giving people a taste of new creation. He healed the blind and the deaf and the lame. He cast out demons. He even overturned death on a few occasions. In Jesus, God’s new world, Gods’ new age was breaking in. And then there’s that first Easter morning that we read about in John’s Gospel.

We see Mary standing at the tomb and weeping. Sin and death, all the powers of this evil age had risen up at once and killed Jesus. If there was a time for tears, that was it. The most evil of evil things evil has ever done. Mary represents us all as we cry in the midst of this broken and fallen world full of evil. She was so overcome with the sadness of it all that she doesn’t seem to have been moved even by the presence of the two angels. “Why are you crying?” they asked. And she just kept sobbing. “They’ve taken away my lord and I don’t know where they’ve put him!” And then Jesus walks up and asks her again, “Why are you crying?” And she turns around and asks him, “Sir, if you’ve carried him off somewhere, tell me where you’ve put him.” John says she thought he was the gardener. We pass over that little detail without much thought. At least I did for years and years. But then I started noticing how so many artists in history depict Jesus that Easter morning with a shovel or a hoe in his hands. There’s something to that bit of detail. John mentions it for a reason. Mary mistook him for the gardener because he must have been doing gardener things. So there was Mary crying at the tomb and talking to angels, while Jesus knelt nearby pulling up weeds or tending to a fallen plant. The second Adam was alive. God had raised him from the dead and rolled away the great, heavy stone from the tomb. That was the greatest event on the greatest day in the history of the world. When Jesus burst forth from the tomb, I like to say that he sent a shockwave of life through a dead world. Nothing would ever be the same. And yet what does he do? He walks out of the tomb and starts tending to the garden. My first thought is something like, “Doesn’t he have bigger and better things to do?” But it shouldn’t really be surprising. This is the same Jesus, God incarnate, who humbly took on our flesh and who humbly went to the cross for the sake of his enemies. Why shouldn’t he act the part of a humble gardener first thing after his resurrection? But, too, it shouldn’t be surprising, because this is what he came to do: to set his creation, broken by our sin and rebellion, he came to set it to rights. Why not start with those weeds just outside the tomb and then that rosebush starting to fall over. Mary keeps weeping uncontrollably. And then he says her name and suddenly she knew, suddenly she recognised him. “Rabbi!”she said. And the tears stopped—or maybe they turned into tears of joy. John doesn’t say. But the weeds, the rosebush, Mary’s tears—Jesus didn’t just burst out of the tomb to be some highfalutin and abstract doctrine of resurrection to be studied and discussed by theologians in ivory towers. No, he came out of the tomb, resurrected indeed, but immediately working out that resurrection for his beloved creation and for his beloved people. First the garden and then Mary, and pretty soon everyone.

One by one Jesus has come to each of us as we’ve been confronted with the good news of the gospel. He’s spoken our names. He’s wiped away our tears. We’ve believed. We’ve been baptised. And coming out of those baptismal waters, we’ve been filled with God’s own Spirit and made new. We still wait for the day when we will be resurrected as Jesus was, but the Spirit is a down-payment, an earnest on that day. In our baptism we have died and been raised up with Jesus to a new life. Like Israel delivered from Egypt at the Red Sea, we’ve been delivered from our slavery to sin and death as we’ve passed through the waters of baptism and now Jesus sends us out. Now we’re the gardeners, sent out into the world to proclaim and to live the good news. To tend to the weeds and the falling rosebushes and the tears. To do the things we knew all along needed to be done, the things maybe we tried to do, but that we could never really accomplish on our own or with the world’s broken tools. But now they get done, because the power of the Lord goes with us in the gospel and the Spirit.

We are—again—like Israel. Consider. Israel passed through the Red Sea and then the Lord sent her to conquer Canaan. And yet it wasn’t Israel who won the victory, but the Lord. Yes, Israel had to march and Israel had to fight, but it was always the Lord who won the battle. And just so with us. Jesus has brought us through the waters of baptism and now he sends us out into the world to reclaim what rightly belongs to him. And it won’t happen if we don’t go, but at the same time, it is not we, but he who wins the victory. The kingdom of God fills the earth because of the power of the gospel and the Spirit. But, again, Paul’s warning to the Colossians: We are so prone to forgetting all of this and we fall back into do-it-yourself religion. And so he says in verse 1 of Chapter 3:

So if you were raised to life with the Messiah, search for the things that are above, where the Messiah is seated at God’s right hand. Think about the things that are above, not the things of earth. Don’t you see: you died, and your life has been hidden with the Messiah, in God! When the Messiah is revealed (and he is your life, remember), then you too will be revealed with him in glory.

Here's the good news. Throw away all the do-it-yourself religion. Get off those dead-end trails and get back on the main road. Because if you belong to the Messiah, you’re also already part of his new creation. This is one of the greatest themes all through Paul’s epistles. Paul wants us to understand that what is true of Jesus is already true of us because we are “in him”—or as he puts it “en Christos”, “in the Messiah”. It may not always feel like it, but this is one of the fundamental things about the life of faith that Paul wanted these new believers to understand. It’s often hard, but we need to learn to believe that this is true even if it doesn’t always feel that way. Because it’s in those time when we’re not feeling it—feeling like our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, feeling like we’re far from God, feeling like there’s no escape from sin, feeling like the world will never change—it’s in those times that we’re most prone to falling back into do-it-yourself religion.

And there are two true things that Paul wants us to understand above everything else. If we can remember these two things, everything else is going to fall into place. Jesus has died and he’s been raised from death. And that means that if we are “in the Messiah”, then we have died with him. You have died with him. You are no longer a part of the old evil age. You are no longer a slave to sin and death. You don’t need any do-it-yourself religion to get close to God or to make the world a better place. You just need Jesus. You have been raised with Messiah. Even though we wait for the resurrection of the dead at the end of time, through the indwelling of God’s Spirit, we have in part—here and now—the life of the age to come. Jesus has made us part of his new creation.

Our hope—and the hope of the world—lies with him as he sits at God’s right hand. In his incarnation, in his ministry, in his death, and in his resurrection, Jesus began the process of uniting heaven and earth, of bringing God and man back together. One day that task will be finished, heaven and earth will be rejoined and we will be resurrected and—as Adam and Eve once did—we’ll live in the full presence of God. But in the meantime, we—his church—have been given the task of proclaiming the good news about Jesus and by our life together, giving a dark world a taste of God’s light, of his new creation—of giving the world a taste of heaven.

Brothers and Sisters, that’s how the kingdom spread. That’s how Christendom came to be. As Jesus’ people set their minds on God’s new creation and, as the church, lived it out in the midst of the darkness. And just as the God of Isreal who gave his son for their sake was unlike any god they’d ever known as pagans. This church, this community of people who identified with the Messiah and who gave their lives humbly for the sake of the world, who lived as one people regardless of whether they were rich or poor, slave or free, Jew or gentile, this people who taught the world what love and mercy and grace and justice are, this people showed the world the holiness it had been looking for, it showed the people how this broken world really can be set to rights—when we set aside our do-it-yourself ways and let the Messiah wash us clean and let his Spirit make us new.

Brothers and Sisters, keep your eyes fixed on the things that are above. Keep praying with Jesus: Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, one earth as it is heaven. One day heaven and earth will be fully rejoined, but only because the church, in the power of the Spirit, has proclaimed the gospel to the whole world. In his book Surprised by Hope, Tom Wright wrote this, “People who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.” May that be true of us. While we wait for God’s new world to come in all its fullness, let us never tire of being that new world here and now: as we, empowered by the Spirit, proclaim the good news that Jesus has died, that Jesus has risen, and that Jesus is Lord, as we pull the weeds, and as we wipe away the tears.

Let’s pray: Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant us by your grace to set our minds on things above; that by your continual help our lives may be transformed; through the same, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
32 min
April 18, 2025 A Sermon for Good Friday
A Sermon for Good Friday
St. John 19
by William Klock

Every year, reading the passion narratives over the course of Holy Week, I always find myself at some point, at least for a little while, pondering Pontius Pilate. If we read the Jewish historians Philo and Josephus, they leave us with the impression that Pilate held the Jews and their religion in disdain and relished any opportunity they gave him to exercise his military authority. But then we read about him in the Gospels and we see a tired and exasperated government official who seems to just want to keep the peace. These people for whom he has no great love and even less patience have arrested Jesus. They can’t legally execute him themselves, so they drag him before Pilate. On the one hand Pilate has no interest in crucifying Jesus. He doesn’t like these people and he doesn’t want to do their dirty work. But he’s also finding the whole situation a pain in the neck. He was there to keep Caesar’s peace and the Jews weren’t making it easy for him. And so he had Jesus brought to him and he asked, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And Jesus responded, “Are you asking because you’re interested or because that’s what you’ve heard people say about me?” And Pilate responds, “Am I a Jew? Why should I care if you’re King of the Jews or not? It’s your skin on the line. Your own people—your own priests!—arrested you and handed you over to me. I’m giving you a chance to explain yourself. So what do you have to say?”

Jesus goes on to explain in those well-known (and often misunderstood words), “My kingdom is not from this world. If it were, my disciples would have taken up arms to save me from the soldiers of the high priest.” And Pilate, confused and getting annoyed asks, “So are you a king or not?” And Jesus responded, “You’re the one calling me a king. I was born for this. I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” And we can hear the annoyance and the exasperation in Pilate’s famous answer, “What is truth?” And with that he went back out to address the Judeans. He didn’t understand what Jesus was saying, but that didn’t mean Jesus was guilty. Pilate went out and told them as much. It was usual for the governor to free a Jewish prisoner at Passover, so Pilate offered them a choice: Jesus or Barabbas. Barabbas was a monster. Surely they’d choose Jesus, because they certainly didn’t want Barabbas out of prison. For that matter, Pilate didn’t want Barabbas out of prison! But, no, to Pilates’ great surprise, they shouted out for the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus. Pilate gave up. He symbolically washed his hands and declared to the people, this is on you, not me. And they took Jesus off to die.

Just like Pilate, people have been stumbling over these words of Jesus for two thousand years. People hear him say that his kingdom is not from or not of this world and they then say to us, “Well, then leave me alone. Go worship in your church and leave the rest of us be. Enjoy your pie in the sky when you die.” Even Christians have misunderstood this to mean that we should disengage from the world. But that’s not it at all. Jesus’ kingdom may not be from this world, but it is most certainly for this world. It’s the only hope this world has. It’s what Jesus means when he tells us to pray “on earth as it is in heaven”—to look forward to, to hope for, and to pray for that day when God has set his creation to rights, when earth and heaven and God and man are back together as they—as we—should be. As he created it all and us in the beginning. This is what Jesus bore witness to and it’s what we, forgiven and washed and filled with his Spirit are called not only to pray for but to witness to the world and the people around us. It’s that kingdom that comes not by the sword—which is the only kind of kingdom Pilate could think of. Instead, it’s the kingdom that comes by the love we saw last night as Jesus shared bread and wine with his disciples and then washed their feet. It’s the kingdom that we see coming today, on Good Friday, as Jesus goes to the cross.

On Good Friday, at the cross, all the great stories of the love of God come together in one place. As John tells us the story of Good Friday, he brings all these other stories together. There’s Psalm 22 and Psalm 69 and there’s Isaiah and Zechariah, and there’s the Passover lamb whose bones were not broken and it all points us to the big story of the God of Israel and his people and his love for them—a love that was meant to be, through them, for everyone and for all of creation. They were his agents for challenging the power of evil in the world, for being light in the darkness. And, of course, as we read the Old Testament, we see that their story—not very surprisingly—their story got stuck in the very problem for which it was supposed to be an answer—the great problem of rebellion and sin. And yet, Israel’s failure was God’s opportunity to announce his love once again. He would be faithful to his people. He would send his Messiah and his Messiah would fulfil his purposes for the world.

Think of that bigger story. Going back almost to the beginning we’re told about the men of Babel and their tower. They’d lost all knowledge of their creator. They grasped at divinity themselves, reaching towards heaven. God confused their languages. There’s that “What is truth?” question all the way back there! And there, in the midst of deep darkness, just as the human race seems well and truly and utterly lost, God shows up to make himself known to Abraham and to announce that through Abraham and his family, he will make himself known to the world. A glimmer of light in the darkness. And then that family winds up enslaved in Egypt, so the Lord sends Moses to confront Pharaoh and to lead his people out of bondage—and Passover happens. There are centuries of ups and downs for Israel, but each time things go bad, the Lord sends a deliverer. And then finally he gives Israel a king—Saul—and the Philistines kill him. So the Lord raises up the lowly shepherd, David, who establishes a great kingdom and the Lord promises him a future heir who will be God’s own son and who will rule forever and ever. And then more centuries of ups and downs, of faithfulness and failure—mostly failure—until Babylon brings Israel down in shame and takes her off into exile. And when Israel is at her lowest, shamed and disgraced, that’s when the Lord points to her through the Prophet and declares: Behold, my servant. And he gives the Prophet Daniel, sitting in the shame of exile, a vision: the great empires rise from the sea, but over them all the Lord exalts the son of man as their judge.

And, Brothers and Sisters, this story echoes all through our Good Friday Gospel today. We see Rome, another of those imperial monsters rising from the sea. And Rome does what Rome did best, brutally killing a rebel king. John shows us Pilate as he brings Jesus out to the people the day before Passover and announced, “Behold your king!” But those Sadducee priests didn’t want a Messiah any more than they wanted a resurrection. In fact, they didn’t want a Messiah so much that they shouted out the unthinkable, “We have no king but Caesar!” John shows us Babel and Egypt and Philistia and Babylon at their worst and then he shows us the seed of Abraham, the one greater than Moses, the son of David, the servant of the Lord and declares, “Behold the man! Behold your king!”

And yet, for all it seems that Rome and the Sadducees are out of control, they never really are. As in Daniel’s vision, the beasts rise from the sea and they rage, but the God of Israel never ceases to be sovereign. Even in their evil, the beasts of empire serve his purpose. So, ironically, it’s Pilate the Roman governor, the man cynical of the very idea of truth, who in God’s providence, declares the truth to the people as he announces to them, “Here is your king!” Even as the priests protest his placard on the cross, Pilate again stands firm on the truth, insisting, “What I have written, I have written.” John powerfully reminds us that even this cynical, self-serving servant of Caesar will serve the Lord’s purposes. Jesus had said to Pilate, “You have no authority over me unless it is given to you from above.” So Rome does what Rome does best. It mocks and it kills and yet, in doing that, it providentially serves God’s purposes and proves the point that the God of Abraham and Moses and David does not fight the battle against evil with the weapons of the world, but with love. Everyone that day thought that Caesar had won. The devils were dancing with joy that Friday. And yet Caesar and the priests and the devils all played right into God’s hand. As evil rose to its full height, as it was concentrated all in one place, God won the victory against it on Good Friday.

At the cross, God’s project to set his creation to rights is finally accomplished. This why John opens his Gospel with those powerful echoes of Genesis. In Genesis we read that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. John echoes those words as he tells us that in the beginning was the word and the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us—bringing heaven and earth back together. All through John there are these creation themes. There’s light and darkness. There’s the seed that will bear fruit and multiply. And now on Friday, the sixth day of the week, the day when God crowned his work of creation with the creation of man to rule his new world, John shows us Pilate bringing out Jesus, robed in purple and wearing a crown of thorns, and he declares to the people, “Behold the man!” Jesus is the true image of God and the world is so mired in rebellion and sin that God’s own people, confronted with the image of God in Jesus can only shout out, “Crucify him!” The people who prayed for the return of the Lord to his temple, turned their eyes away when he did return and demanded his death. They were so mired in darkness that they couldn’t bear the light.

And yet the love of God marched sovereignly on—to the cross. At the end of the sixth day in Genesis, God finished his work and now on this sixth day in John’s Gospel we hear Jesus announce that “It is finished” as he takes his last breath. It was finished. His work was accomplished. Humanity was forgiven and creation was healed. Evil had risen to its full height, giving the love of God the opportunity to rise even higher on the cross. Of course, no one understood that on Friday. It would take the resurrection, in which Jesus was vindicated by his Father, in which his victory was brought out into the light for everyone to see, it would take that before they would know and understand and believe. But on the cross, as Jesus breathed his last and slumped, hanging on those nails, it was finished. Once and for all. A full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of Israel, for the sins of all of the nations—for the sins of the whole world. A sacrifice that would finally heal the breach and bring an answer to our prayer: on earth as it is in heaven.

And now, Brothers and Sisters, you and I stand gathered at the foot of the cross, confronted by the very image of God and by his amazing love. Here is the man who represents what we were created to be in the beginning and what, if we will only commit ourselves to him, God will make us to be. Here is our King, who has inaugurated his kingdom—this new creation, this world set to rights, a world founded on love—and not the world’s idea of love, but the love defined by the story of God and his people and by Jesus’ sacrificed for us on the cross. Here we’re confronted by the King and his kingdom and by a vision of the world set to rights. What will we do? We are so often stuck in the kingdom of Caesar. We put our trust in Caesar’s sword and in Caesar’s coins—even in Caesar’s gods. Like those Sadducee priests who were so dead set on holding on to what they had, that they declared the unthinkable, that they declared the very thing they knew so well was false: “We have no king but Caesar.” And John reminds us today that whatever power Caesar may have, has been given to him by God and to fulfil his purposes, not Caesar’s. Brothers and Sisters, let go of Caesar and take hold of Jesus. Let go everything else and take hold of the love of God made manifest at the cross.

Good Friday reminds us. We look up to the cross and we see Jesus. Behold the man. Behold the king. He is the image of God and as we look in his face we see the God who loved his people, who loved the world so much, that he gave his own son that we might be forgiven and set to rights and welcomed back into his fellowship—who sent his son not to condemn, but to save. Here is the good shepherd who lays down his own life for his sheep out of love. Here is the one who shows the greatest love we can ever know as he lays down his life for his friends. Jesus, having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the uttermost. This love we see at the cross is the very love that shone so brightly out of the darkness at the very moment when we thought the light had been overcome. This is the love that redeems and renews us, but even more important than that, this is the love that glorifies the God who is love.

And so, Brothers and Sisters, this Good Friday, be transformed by this love. Our brother and our king has given his life and by that love he gives us life and hope and a lens through which we should, more and more each day, see every part of our lives and every part of the world. This is the love that forgives our sins and heals our hurts. This is the love that is making creation new and that, one day, will wipe away our tears. This is the love that we, as Jesus’ people, manifest to the world. This is the truth we witness for the sake of the world and to the glory of God.
25 min
April 17, 2025 A Sermon for Maundy Thursday
A Sermon for Maundy Thursday
1 Corinthians 11:17-34
by William Klock

In our Epistle today we hear Paul’s description of what took place in the upper room, as the Passover meal came to a close. This little paragraph is at the core of our liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. Paul tells how Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples with those familiar but often misunderstood words: “This is my body. It’s for you. Do this as a memorial of me.” And similarly with the cup saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.” The Christians in Corinth, hearing those words read out would remember the stories told by the disciples about that night. Just like we do, they’d mentally fill in the whole setting from Jesus washing their feet, to the Passover meal, to Jesus taking the Passover bread and one of the Passover cups and linking it with himself and what he was about to do. They’d be thinking about this new covenant. A mystery to the disciples, but the Corinthians knew the story of the cross, too. They knew that the body of Jesus, broken, and his blood poured out at the cross established something new. The Jewish Christians there new especially that when they shared in this meal that Paul described, it was like the Passover meal they’d known all their lives, but now in Jesus it meant something new and something better. Not just an exodus from Egypt, but an exodus from sin and death. Not just being led by God into a land of milk and honey, but being led by Jesus and the Spirit into God’s new creation. As Passover reminded the Jews year after year after of the Lord’s deliverance and how he’d established a covenant with them, how he’d made them his people, and how he’d given them a hope for the future, so the Lord’s Supper, every Sunday, reminded them how Jesus had delivered them from sin and death, how he’d marked them as his people in their baptism—not just in water this time, but by pouring his Spirit into them, and it pointed forward to God’s promises of world to be conquered by his people. But not Canaan. Now it would be the whole world as this new people went out, proclaiming the gospel and living the life of the Spirit. This community shaped by the Lord’s Supper, by this new Passover, was God’s future right here in the present, God’s new creation in the midst of the old, God’s light in the middle of the darkness. Not perfectly, of course, but still God’s future here and now.

We forget. That’s why God gave Israel the Passover. That’s why Jesus gave us his supper. So we don’t forget what he’s done. So we don’t forget who we are. So we don’t forget the task we’ve been given to do. And so we don’t forget our future hope. But still we forget. And that’s why Paul wrote this to the Corinthians. If we back up to the previous paragraph, to 11:17, he writes to them, What I have to say now isn’t a matter for praise. That means he’s about to rebuke them for something they’ve been doing wrong. He goes on: When you meet together, you make things worse, not better. Stop and think about that. I tend to think that when Christians meet together to worship, even if we don’t get everything right, it’s still a good thing. We’re better off for it. On the whole God is pleased. And yet Paul’s saying that when the Corinthian church gets together, what they’re doing is so wrong, that on the whole, it’s a bad thing, not a good thing.

So what are they doing? He writes, To begin with, I hear that when you come together in the assembly there are divisions among you… So when you gather together into one meeting, it isn’t he Lord’s Supper that you eat. Everyone brings their own food to eat, and one person goes hungry while another gets drunk. Haven’t you got houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise God’s assembly, and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? No, in this matter I shall not!

That doesn’t sound very much like the Lord’s Supper, does it? Remember that in the very early church, the Lord’s Supper was probably connected to a fellowship meal. It hadn’t yet become the symbolic meal that it would, where we eat a little piece of bread and take a sip from the chalice. But in Corinth this had ceased to be a truly shared meal. It sounds like the rich were separating themselves from the poor. While they ate like gluttons and got drunk, the poor members of the church went hungry. The rich people probably thought they were doing well. After all, it was very gracious of them to let the poor—many of them slaves—have anything to do with their meals. If they were still pagans, knowing nothing of the grace of God, the poor wouldn’t be here at all. Another case of the Corinthians getting everything horribly wrong, but patting themselves on the back for how gracious they were.

And Paul rebukes them. Back in Chapter 5 he wrote, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast!” But if this is how they’re doing it, it may be a feast, but it’s not the feast. It’s not the Lord’s Supper. Brothers and Sisters, if we don’t come to the Lord’s Table as one, we don’t come at all. Again, Paul warns the Corinthians: If this is how you keep the feast, it’s better if you don’t—because this isn’t the feast. In fact, if we jump down to verse 27, Paul writes: It follows from this that anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone should test themselves. That’s how you should eat the bread and drink the cup. Now, we should stop there and make sure we hear him. “Test yourself before you eat and drink. Test yourself how? He goes on: You see, if you eat and drink without recognising the body, you eat and drink judgement on yourself.

The flow of Paul’s logic here is so simple there really shouldn’t be any question about it. What’s the context of this rebuke? The Corinthians weren’t united when they came to the Lord’s Supper. They were letting worldly divisions and distinctions divide them up. To put it in terms of our Epistle this past Sunday from Philippians 2: They didn’t share this mind amongst themselves. They weren’t being humble as Jesus is humble. And so Paul reminds them that the Supper was instituted by Jesus to remind us of him and to remind us who and what we are in him. And now he warns them that if you eat and drink of the Supper without recognising the body, you eat and drink judgement on yourselves. What’s the body? That’s one of Paul’s ways of talking about the church—especially when he wants to stress our unity and interdependence.

So what he’s saying is that central to coming to the Lord’s Table is doing so as one people. The cross has overcome all our differences. There is no longer rich nor poor, slave nor free, Jew nor gentile, man nor woman. It doesn’t mean those markers are gone. It’s that in the pre-gospel world, those differences divided us all up, but the cross now makes us one. That’s part of how the church puts God’s future, his new creation on display here and now. It’s one of the ways we show the world the beauty of the gospel. Without this unity, the Lord’s Supper is just another meal—like any other worldly meal, where you invite the people who are like you or the people you want to score points with. Ironically, it’s become common for Christians to flip Paul’s warning on its head and to fence off the Table from other Christians who have different views of how the Lord’s Supper works. To “recognise the body” is taken to have something to do with Jesus being present in some way with the bread and wine, and we’ll only let people come to the Table if they agree with us on how exactly that works. Which is just the sort of thing Paul is warning against. Jesus instituted the Supper to be a powerful symbol of our unity in him, but we keep it to ourselves and keep others away who disagree over what exactly that means.

I have to think that this is one reason the church in the West is in such decline. Our churches are too often divided between rich and poor, or divided along political lines or ethnic lines, and while there’s certainly a place for division over serious theological error, most of our division are over matters that should never be a source of division. Paul certainly thought that lack of unity was a problem. He goes on in verse 30: That’s why several of you are weak and sick and some have died. But if we learned how to judge ourselves, we would not incur judgement. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are punished so that we won’t be condemned along with the world. So, my brothers [and sisters], when you come together to eat, treat one another as honoured guests by waiting for each other. If anyone is hungry, they should eat at home, so that you don’t come together and find yourselves facing judgement.

When we think about the Lord’s Supper, we so easily get distracted and hung up on other things. The idea of “real presence” seems to dominate the discussion in Anglican circles these days. When Veronica and I were married, before the service began the priest warned the congregation that only those who believe that Jesus is “really present” in the bread and wine were allowed to come to the Table. I was livid—in part because there wasn’t really anything we could do about it at the time, but mostly because that’s not what Anglicans believe. Or at least what we’re supposed to believe. It may all be an interesting theological discussion, but if we pay attention to Paul, that’s not how the Lord’s Supper works. It's not about what might or might not happen to the bread and wine. Brothers and Sisters, it’s about eating and drinking in memory of what Jesus has done for us. It’s about participating in him and in his death and resurrection—this new exodus by which he has delivered us from sin and death and made us a new creation. And in light of that, it is vital that we come to the Table as one. Not rich or poor, not slave or free, not Jew or gentile, not man or woman, but as the people redeemed by Jesus, a people filled with God’s Spirit, a people who have been made a new temple where Jesus, the Spirit, and the good news of his death and resurrection—where his salvation—is mediated to a dying world.

Let’s pray: Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
24 min
April 13, 2025 A Sermon for Palm Sunday
A Sermon for Palm Sunday
Philippians 2:1-11, St. Matthew 21:1-17, and St. Matthew 27:1-54
by William Klock

The Pantheon in Rome is famous for being one of the architectural and engineering wonders of the ancient world. It was one of the buildings we studied when I took Architectural History and I remember our professor stressing that the photos in our book could never do it justice. It’s a great round building covered by the largest vaulted concrete dome in the world. It looks big. It is big. The dome is 43 metres high. But you don’t realise just how big that is until you add people into the photos. It’s about twenty-five times higher than the average person is tall. And it was built by the Romans two millennia ago. It’s survived all these years, even after builders scavenged the bronze off its roof and left the concrete exposed. It is, again, known for being an architectural and engineering marvel.

But Brothers and Sisters, the Pantheon is important for another reason that’s hardly ever discussed. It was, again, built almost two thousand years ago—in the early second century. Begun under the Emperor Trajan and finished during the reign of Hadrian. It stood on the Field of Mars and replaced an earlier temple dedicated to Mars, the god of war, and built by Agrippa during the reign of Augustus. But the Pantheon, fairly quickly it seems, became an unusual temple. The Romans usually dedicated a temple to a single god. The gods were jealous. They didn’t like sharing. And if a temple were, say, struck by lightning, you’d know that it was the god of that temple who was angry. But the Pantheon became a temple for all the gods—or, at least, many of them. That’s what the name means: pan…theon. It was one of the greatest temples of pagan Rome. But in the Year of Our Lord Six-hundred-and-nine, at the instruction of the Christian Emperor Phocas and the Bishop of Rome, Boniface IV, the Pantheon was stripped of its pagan idols and its pagan altars. Twenty-eight cartloads containing the bones of Christian martyrs were exhumed from the catacombs and reburied there, a Christian altar was placed in the building, and it was established as a church in honour of the memory of those martyrs whom the pagan Romans had killed in the name of their gods. To this day, over fourteen-hundred years later, the Church of St. Mary and the Martyrs remains there, a faithful witness to conquest of Rome by the gospel and of the Lordship of Jesus. A testimony to the power of the cross and the blood of Jesus not only to purify us from our sins and to make us a dwelling fit for God’s Spirit, but to wash creation clean from our sins as well.

We began Lent, listening as St. Matthew told us the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. The devil took him off to a very high mountain and showed him all the magnificent kingdoms of the world. Off on the horizon was Rome. “I’ll give the whole lot to you,” the devil said, “if you will fall down and worship me.”

It was, after all what Jesus had come for. He was creation’s true Lord. Caesar and all the other kings were pretenders, shams, parodies of who and what Jesus really is. All of it, from Jerusalem to Rome and beyond belongs to him. “There is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” to quote Abraham Kuyper. But this was not the way. Jesus will not reclaim his creation without also setting it to rights, without dealing with the problems of sin and death. Without purifying it from our idolatry. To do that requires more.

And so today we hear Matthew again as he tells us of Jesus’ triumphal procession into Jerusalem. When they came near to Jerusalem, and arrived at Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of the disciples on ahead. Go into the village over there and at once you’ll find a donkey tied and a foal beside it. Untie them and bring them to me and if anyone says anything to you, say, “The Lord needs them and he’ll send them back right away.” He sent them off at once.

Jesus was about to act out another one of his prophecies. This time it was to show and to remind the people what sort of king the Messiah was to be. They did want a king who would set all to rights, but in their heads, to their way of thinking, that meant leading a revolt against the Romans. He would be like David, who defeated the Jebusites to take their city Jerusalem as his capital. He would be like Judas Maccabeus, who defeated the Greeks and established an independent Jewish kingdom under the high priest. The Messiah would be like that, only better, greater, more powerful, and his kingdom would be forever. He would raise up Israel and put the gentile kings in their place. The day before or maybe even that same day, as Jesus came to Jerusalem from Bethphage, Caesar’s governor, Pontius Pilate, was marching into the city from the opposite direction, from his base in Caesarea, at the front of a column of Roman soldiers. They were there to represent Caesar’s might and to keep the peace during Passover. If Jesus was the Messiah, now was his time—or so a lot of people thought—now was Jesus’ time to finally and really be the Messiah, raise up his army, and cast down Pilate and the Romans and take his throne.

But that wasn’t the way to the throne any more than bowing down to the devil was. Matthew says that Jesus did it his way to remind the people of what the Lord had said about the Messiah through the Prophet Zechariah: Tell this to Zion’s daughter: Look now! Here comes your King. He’s humble, mounted on a donkey, yes, on a foal, it’s young.

The king they expected was going to ride into Jerusalem on a chariot or at least on a great warhorse. But God’s king is different. A great warrior might take care of the Romans and even take his throne. He could set things to rights in the way of earthly kings, but the world would still be subject to sin and death. So Jesus acted out the prophecy. The disciples brought the donkey and Jesus humbly rode it into the city. And the people cheered all along the way. They spread their cloaks on the road. Others cut branches form the trees and scattered them on the road. The crowds who went ahead of him, and those who were following behind shouted, “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” And the whole city was gripped with excitement when they came into Jerusalem. “Who is this!” they were saying. And the crowds replied, “This is the prophet, Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.

With that prophetic reminder, at least some of the people seemed to get it even if it wasn’t what they expected. Jesus was fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy. The long-awaiting king had come. But not everyone got it. Jesus wasn’t finished with his acted out prophesies. Matthew says that he went straight to the temple and when he got there he threw out the people who were buying and selling in the temple. He upturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of the dove-sellers. It is written, he said to them, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a brigand’s lair!” The blind and lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the remarkable things he was doing, and the children shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David!” they were very angry.

The king was fulfilling the words of the prophets. He came in humility. And he came announcing that he really was going to set the world to rights. He was going to set the world to rights in a way that would make the temple obsolete. All through his ministry he’d been showing how he was the new bridge between God and sinful humans and that last week he spent in the temple—starting with this acted out prophecy and continuing as he healed and preached, he made it clear. So clear that the people invested in the temple and the priesthood and that whole system took it all for blasphemy and had him arrested.

Our long Palm Sunday Gospel today—Matthew 27—vividly depicts the Messiah’s humble way to his throne. Betrayed by his friends, rejected by his people. Standing humbly before the Roman governor so many people expected him to slay. Facing trumped up charges made by lying men. Left condemned to death as the people chose instead that Pilate should free a brutal, violent revolutionary—a man truly guilty of the trumped of charges against Jesus. Standing humbly as the very people he came to save cried out to Pilate, “Crucify him!” Standing humbly as he, the king, was rejected by his own people who cried out, “We have no king but Caesar!” Standing humbly as Roman soldiers mocked him, beat him senseless and scourged him, ripping the skin from his body. Humbly dragging the very cross on which he would be crucified through the city. The king, nailed to a cross and hoisted to die between two violent thieves as his own people shouted blasphemies at him, as the chief priests and scribes mocked him shouting, “He rescued others, but he cannot rescue himself. If he’s the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross! He trusts in God; let God deliver him now if he’s really God’s son!”

For hours it went on. Jesus, pulling on those nails driven through is wrists, pushing on the nails driven through his feet, lifting himself to gasp for breath through the pain, while the people gathered around: Jews, Romans, even the pastors, the shepherds of his people who claimed to speak for God mocked him and shouted blasphemies. Luke writes that Jesus prayed for them: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And eventually his body could take no more and Jesus breathed his last breath. And, Matthew says, the earth shook. The great veil that guarded the holy of holies in the temple was torn in two. And the Roman centurions standing guard were scared out of their wits and announced the very thing Jesus’ own people would not: He really was the son of God!

Brothers and Sisters, there can be no Easter without Good Friday. To set the world to rights—to really set to rights—not just to take a throne, not just to defeat the Romans—but to defeat sin and death and to reconcile sinful men and women to God required a king willing to let evil rise up to its full height, to let evil concentrate itself all in one place, and to let it do its worst, crashing down on him all at once. It required a king willing to throw himself into the gears of this fallen, broken, and sinful world to bring them to a stop. It required a king willing to give his life for his own people even as they mocked and blasphemed him, so that he could rise from that humiliating death to overturn the verdict against him, rise victorious over sin and death and the absolute worst that they could do. Only that humble king could defeat death and bring life—real and true life—back to God’s creation and gather a people forgiven, cleaned by his blood, and filled with his Spirit to become a new temple, a new holy of holies where the nations would—where the nations now—enter the presence of God.

It was in that humble king that those Roman centurions saw something they had never seen before. Their Caesar called himself the son of God, but in Jesus they saw the God of Israel at work in all his glory, in all his love, in all his mercy, in all his faithfulness—like no god they’d ever known—completely unlike any god or goddess honoured in the Pantheon. Whether they knew it or not, those centurions that first Good Friday announced the defeat of Jupiter and Mars, of Hera and Diana, of Neptune and Vesta and all the others. And they announced the defeat of Caesar, too. In less than three centuries, the Emperor of Rome himself would be captivated by the good news about Jesus, the son of God, the great King who was setting the world to rights.

But Brothers and Sisters, the good news about Jesus, crucified and risen, didn’t go out through the empire and to the nations all on its own. It was carried, it was stewarded by a people—by a church—that, itself, took on the humility of the Saviour. The bones of those martyrs buried in the Pantheon are a testimony to the faithful and humble witness of Jesus’ people in those early centuries. They didn’t just proclaim a message. They lived it out as a community—as the vanguard of God’s new creation born that first Easter morning. In the midst of a world of darkness, of false gods and idolatry, of brutality and immorality hard for us to imagine today, they gave the pagans a glimpse of God’s future. By the way they lived, they lifted the veil and showed the world God’s new creation. It was not only the proclamation of the church, but the very life of the church that showed the world a better way, a way no one before had ever known.

Here's the truth of it: The people of the humble king must be humble too or it’s all for nought. This is why Paul, writing to the Philippians, says to them, If our shared life in the king brings any comfort; if love still has the power to make you cheerful; if we really do have a partnership in the Spirit; if your hearts are at all moved with affection and sympathy—then make my joy complete! Bring your thinking into line with one another. In other words, if you’re going to be a gospel community for all the world to see Have this mind amongst yourselves! Here’s how to do it. Hold on to the same love; bring your innermost lives into harmony; fix your minds on the same object. Never act out of selfish ambition or vanity; instead, regard everyone else as your superior. Look after each other’s best interests, not your own.

But it’s so hard to do that, Paul! So, so hard! And Paul knew that. And so he takes them back to the cross. Brothers and Sisters, everything goes back to Jesus and the cross! This is how you should think amongst yourselves, Paul goes on—with the mind that you have because you belong to Jesus the Messiah. And now he doesn’t quote from the passion narratives because they weren’t written yet, although I think that would have worked just as well. Every Holy Week we immerse ourselves in the passion narratives and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John remind us of the very thing Paul writes here. But instead Paul breaks out into song. He reminds them of a hymn they presumably all knew and he copies it out for them:

Who, though in God’s form, did not regard his equality with God as something he ought to exploit. Instead, he emptied himself, and received the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And then, having human appearance, he humbled himself, and became obedient even to death, yes, even death on a cross. And so God has greatly exalted him, and to him in his favour has given the name which is over all names. That now at the name of Jesus every knee within heaven shall bow—on earth, too, and under the earth. And every tongue shall confess that Messiah Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Paul reminds them of the humble king, the son of God who not only took on our flesh, but who gave his life in the most painful and humiliating way possible so that on his way to his throne he might take us with him.

Brothers and Sisters, the only way we will ever be faithful in being the people Jesus has called us to be, the only way we will ever be faithful in being the new creation people the Spirit has made us, the only way will ever be faithful stewards of the gospel is to keep the cross of Jesus always before us. There’s a reason why we confess our sins before we come to the Lord’s Table. There is a reason that we repeatedly recall our unworthiness to enter the presence of God on our own merit. There is a reason why, as we rise in the morning and as we go to bed at night, we confess our sins. It’s so that as we hear the absolution and as we come to the Table, we will remember just how gracious and merciful and loving God has been to us. It’s why we sing songs like “Amazing Grace”. Amazing grace is such a sweet, sweet sounds, because apart from grace we are such sinful wretches. And it is inevitable that when we forget this, when we start to think of ourselves as deserving of the gifts God has poured out on us, when we forget the heinousness and offensiveness of our sins and our rebellion against God, dear Friends, that’s when we forget the true power of the gospel and the true mercy of the cross and the great depth of the love of God for sinners. When we forget the sinfulness of our sin, we lose sight of the amazingness of God’s grace. Eventually we lose the mind of Jesus the Messiah and we cease to be the community of humble servants that he has made us. And our light grows dim. Our witness fails.

We see it happening all around us in the West. We’ve stopped talking about sin and we’ve thought more highly of ourselves than we ought. We preach a doctrine of cheap grace. And our light has gone dim. Our churches have emptied and the culture has claimed them for its own. In some they preach false gospels of prosperity or the divinity of man or the goodness of sexual perversion. We setup idols to politics and earth power in them. Some are literally gutted, becoming theatres or bars. Others are little more than tourist attractions: testimonies to the power of the gospel in the days we proclaimed it, but now empty, dead shells. The culture removes the cross and sets up altars to its idols. Brothers and Sisters, before it is too late, let us knee before the cross of Jesus and look up. Let it fill our vision. Let us remember that he—the sinless son of God—died the death we deserve. And let us meditate on the depth and power of his grace that we might share the humble mind of our humble king, that we might be the people he has called us to be, the people he has given his Spirit to make us, the people who will steward the gospel until every knee bows and every tongues confesses that Jesus the Messiah is Lord and gives glory to God the Father.

Let’s pray: Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for mankind you sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
32 min
April 06, 2025 A Sermon for Passion Sunday
A Sermon for Passion Sunday
Hebrews 9:11-15
by William Klock

William Coffin Coleman. He was a travelling salesman. He was in his dark hotel room one night and looked out the window. This was before the days of electrification. He saw a blindingly bright lamp in a window across the street and had to know what it was. He walked across the street, knocked on the door, and found out that the lamp—one that ran on pressurized gasoline—was made by a small local company. Within days he’d tracked down that little company and bought it. That company would become the Coleman Lamp Company and pretty soon those blindingly bright lamps—the “Sunshine of the Night” as they called it—would be selling across North America and the technology would be adapted to lanterns you could carry with you. With a Coleman lamp there was no more fumbling around or straining your eyes in the dim light of a wick lantern. In fact, it’d be crazy to go back to those old kerosene wick lanterns. A Coleman was not only brighter, it was also safer. Back in the 20s and 30s displays would show a table lamp mounted on a rotating arm. Around and around it would turn and it would never go out and it would never start a fire. You couldn’t do that with a kerosene wick lantern.

With that in mind, think of our Epistle from the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is sort of like a biblical Coleman lamp display, except here the writer of Hebrews holds up the New Covenant for his fellow Jews and turns it around and around to show all the ways it’s better than the Old and how you’d be a fool to want to go back to the Old. Matt talked about this in his sermon last week—although without the Coleman illustration. Last week’s Epistle from Galatians highlighted just how tempting it was for Jewish Christians to fall back into the old way—the old covenant way—of doing things. Some of this was that it was simply the life they knew. When they became Christians they didn’t stop being Jewish. But there were also Gentiles now coming into this messianic movement. The unbelieving Jews didn’t like that. As far as they were concerned Gentiles were unclean. And so these Jewish Christians were shunned by their friends and family and even kicked out of their synagogues for associating with Gentiles. It got worse as the Jews began to actively persecute the Church. Jesus had given these new Jewish believers so much more than they’d had in the old covenant, but it was easy to think only about living for the day. For Jewish Christians it was tempting and it would have been easy to simply drift away from the church and fall back into old covenant Judaism. And so the writer of Hebrews urges them not to do that. Despite the persecution, what they have now in Jesus is so much better than what they had before. The old covenant gave a promise of a new world and a new life in the Messiah. In Jesus, the Messiah has finally come and he’s fulfilled that old promise. He’s inaugurated the new world and the new life. In Jesus we take part in the fulfilment of God’s promises and that’s worth it, no matter the cost.

To make this point the writer of Hebrews takes us back to the tabernacle, the precursor to the temple in Jerusalem. Look at Hebrews 9:11-14.

But when the Messiah arrived as a high priest of the good things that were coming, he entered the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands (that is, not of this present creation), and not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood. He entered, once and for all, into the holy place, accomplishing a redemption that lasts forever. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the sprinkled ashes of a heifer, make people holy (in the sense of purifying their bodies) when they had been unclean, how much more will the blood of the Messiah, who offered himself to God through the eternal Spirit as a spotless sacrifice, cleanse our consciences from dead works to serve the living God!

The tabernacle. Think back to the book of Exodus. The Lord rescued his people from their bondage in Egypt and at Mt. Sinai, in the wilderness, he gave him the law, written on stone tablets. At the same time he also gave Moses very detailed instructions for building the tabernacle—the tent complex where the people would worship the Lord and present their offerings and sacrifices.

That tent, the tabernacle, was built to mimic Eden as we see it in the first chapters of Genesis. The imagery used to decorate the tabernacle was meant to invoke the idea of a garden. At the core of the tabernacle, as you progressed from the camp of the Israelites into the outer court of the tabernacle and then into the centre of it was the holy place, where only the priests went, and then beyond that was the most holy place. That was where the ark of the covenant was kept. It was God’s throne room. That was where the cloud representing the glory of the Lord rested—God in the midst of his people. But no one was permitted into the most holy place. Sin and uncleanness cannot enter the presence of the Lord. Only once a year did the high priest enter the Lord’s presence to offer expiation for the sins of the people.

Sinners cannot enter the presence of our holy God. This is why Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden. But there in the wilderness, as God’s plan of redemption began to move forward, he instructed his people to build this tabernacle so that they could once again know him, so that they could live with him in their midst. It was a partial undoing of the consequences of sin. Adam and Eve had once lived in the most holy place, in God’s presence. That’s what Eden was about. They were to live and to serve in God’s presence, cultivating his garden. And as they were fruitful and multiplied, the garden, that holy place would grow—until it filled the whole earth. Because of their rebellion, Adam and Eve were driven out from God’s presence. But in the wilderness the Lord helped Israel to build a model of that most holy place, he took up his residence in it, and he gave the people a law by which they could live on the periphery of that manifestation of his glory. They couldn’t enter directly into his presence, but whereas Adam and Eve were driven away, in the tabernacle, the Lord now drew his people near. It was the beginning of something good. The beginning of renewal. The tabernacle, the law, the whole old covenant were good things. They reminded God’s people of his promise to one day set all of creation to rights and to restore his people fully to his presence. It was a light in the darkness.

The problem for Israel was that in the day-in and day-out activity of living around the tabernacle, of living the law, and of routinely making sacrifices and offerings, it became very easy to forget that all of this pointed to a greater reality and a greater fulfilment. These things were like the dim light of a wick lamp. The tabernacle, the sacrifices, the law were never meant to be a permanent arrangement. The point was never for God’s people merely to camp out around the place of his presence, merely to be able to get close to the Holy of Holies. The goal was to return to Eden itself, to return to a life in the presence of the Lord. God and humanity brought back together; heaven and earth rejoined. A far greater light was coming. As Christians we’re, too, often guilty of forgetting God’s end goal. We come to the Lord’s Table on Sundays, we gather with our brothers and sisters for worship, and we make it very routine and hum-drum, forgetting that what we have here is a down-payment on the full inheritance that Jesus will be bringing with him when he returns—of resurrection and new life and of living fully in the presence of the Father.

This is what the writer of Hebrews is getting at when he talks about Jesus as our great high priest of the good things to come. The tabernacle was a good thing, but it pointed to better things, just as the Lord’s Supper is a good thing, but points to something even better. And Hebrews says, as our high priest, Jesus entered not in to the most holy place of the tabernacle. No. At the cross Jesus entered into the true, the real holy of holies—the one of which the holy of holies in the tabernacle was only a representation and only a shadow. In his death, Jesus entered the real, the actual presence of his Father. The good news is that because Jesus has entered the Father’s presence as our great high priest, since he has made purification for us, we’re now ourselves welcomed into the Father’s presence as well.

Again, in the face of hostility and persecution, many Jewish Christians were tempted to just go back to the old way of doing things. In their day the temple, the great building of stone on the mountain above Jerusalem, had replaced the tabernacle, but it was laid out on the same plan and served the same purpose. The temple and the sacrifices were good things. Why not just do things the old way? The Lord had commanded them, after all. Why risk persecution by joining with Gentiles to worship Jesus? And so Hebrews reminds them: as good as the temple was, Jesus went to the real place the temple represents. The temple was a model that pointed to the heavenly reality. When Jesus takes us into the heavenly reality, how can we possibly justify going back to the model?

Jesus as our great high priest entering the most holy place naturally leads us to the second point Hebrews makes here about the new covenant and how it’s better than the old. The priests of the old covenant entered the most holy place of the tabernacle once every year. We’re told here that Jesus entered once and for all time. The old sacrifices were good until the next time you sinned. The sacrifice that Jesus made at the cross is good forever. Why? Because when the old priests went into the holy of holies they took with them the blood of goats and calves. Jesus entered the presence of the Father with his own blood.

This was hard for many Jews to understand. The Messiah was supposed to triumph over Israel’s enemies and reign forever. He wasn’t supposed to die, let alone die the most humiliating death imaginable at the hands of their pagan overlords. Maybe the Messiah would be their great high priest, but priests make sacrifices. They aren’t supposed to be sacrifices themselves. That’s what bulls and goats were for. And yet, it’s all there in Israel’s scriptures—if you know how to look at it. And that’s what Hebrews is about.

So, first, the Old Testament sacrifices taught the people to trust the Lord. To offer a sacrifice is to give up something valuable. This is a principle throughout the law. The sabbath, for example, taught people to give one day a week to the Lord. The gentiles scrambled for a living six days a week, but not God’s people. The sabbath taught them to trust in the Lord’s provision. Think of the manna in the wilderness. Five days they gathered what they needed, but on the sixth day the Lord provide an extra measure to see them through the Sabbath. The Sabbath was an act of faith. And so was the tithe. The gentiles held on to everything they got, but God’s people gave him the first tenth—not the last, not what was left over—but the first tenth of everything. It was an act of faith and he provided.

But the animals sacrificed for the people in the temple took things a step further. They reminded the people of the cost of sin. Because of their sin, Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, cut off from the tree of life. Brothers and Sisters, sin puts us outside the presence of our holy God. Sin separates us from the source of life. Sinners die. The only way back into the presence of our holy God is by the shedding of blood. And that’s the second point made about sacrifice here. Redemption from sin requires the death of another in our place. The animals sacrificed in the temple were costly sacrifices, but they were also imperfect sacrifices. They were dumb and unwilling. They served only until the next sin was committed. And they brought the people only into the tabernacle or the temple. For the people to be truly cleansed from sin, for the people to enter into the Holy of Holies would require an even costlier sacrifice.

Those sacrifices pointed to Jesus. In Jesus, God himself took up our flesh—he became one of his own people. He did that so that he could represent them. He became like a second Adam. And so Jesus obediently and willingly gave his life for them—and for us. He was the costly sacrifice—the spotless lamb, the best of the flock. As our representative, he took on himself the death that we deserve. This is why we can say, as we do in the Lord’s Supper, that by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world has been made. This is why we can pray that by his flesh and by his blood our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood. The blood of animal sacrifices gave a superficial cleanness to people who had been defiled by their sin, but Jesus’ blood doesn’t just make us superficially clean. It purifies us from the inside out. And so we can also pray that as his body and blood make us clean, we may evermore dwell in him and he in us. By his blood we can finally enter the Holy of Holies, we can finally be restored to the presence of our holy Creator.

And that gets at the third point made here—the third way in which Jesus’ sacrifice is better than the old sacrifices and the new covenant is better than the old. The sacrifices of the old covenant were shadows pointing to the real sacrifice. The holy of holies in the temple was a shadow of the real holy of holies, not just the heavenly presence of the Father, but it looked forward to the day when Creation will finally be set to rights, when heaven and earth will finally be joined together and humanity can once again live in God’s presence, just as Adam and Eve did before they sinned. The cleanness and atonement offered by those old sacrifices was a shadow of the atonement and the cleanness offered by Jesus. Jesus didn’t just enter the central room of the temple in Jerusalem to offer the blood of an animal on our behalf. Jesus, who is both God himself and our perfect human representative, entered into the actual presence of his Father with his own blood shed at the cross. In doing that he offers a sacrifice that washes us clean from sin to the very core of our being.

Somehow the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, Hebrews says, purifies our conscience from dead works so that we can serve the living God. Brothers and Sisters, through Jesus we are transformed. Chapter 6 introduced this language of “dead works”, but it refers to our repentance from our old pagan and sinful ways and also, for the Jewish Christians, from the obligations of the old covenant and its temple and sacrificial system. As good as those things were, as God-given as they were, Jesus now offers something better. Jesus’ sacrifice undoes our sin once and for all. Through him we have access to the presence of God. What we lost when Adam sinned we now have back—or at least we have the down payment of it and hope for its fullness in the future. Jesus washes us clean with his blood and having purified us for the presence of God, he makes us his dwelling place, his tabernacle, as he fills us with the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit then sanctifies our hearts and our minds, making them holy again so that we can serve the living God just as Adam did in the garden. Jesus, by his sacrifice, not only leads us into the holy of holies to know God’s presence, but in giving us the Spirit he also makes us—you and me and, collectively his Church—the holy of holies: God’s presence in us.

Verse 15 stresses again that this is all and only through Jesus:

For this reason, Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant. The purpose was that those who are called should receive the promised inheritance of the age to come, since a death has occurred which provides redemption from transgressions committed under the first covenant.

Jesus is the mediator. There’s no other way. Even the old way—the way of the tabernacle and the sacrifices—that God once gave is now defunct. It’s been fulfilled. The thing to which it pointed, the thing for which it was preparing the people, the new thing has finally come in Jesus.

Imagine a frozen river. The first time Veronica and I went to Montréal the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers were frozen. We were driving across the bridge from the west end of the island where the two rivers meet and we saw a Jeep cruising over the ice back towards Montréal. The ice was that thick. You can do that in the middle of a cold Québec winter, but when Spring comes the bridge is the only way across. Try driving your car on thin ice—or try driving on water—and you’ll die.

In Jesus, Spring has come to the world. In Jesus a bridge has been provided across the water. The law was perfectly good in its time, just as the ice was safe to drive on if you wanted to cross the river in January, but the time has passed for that. If you want to cross the river now the bridge Jesus provides is the only way. Hebrews was written to people who feared persecution for following Jesus. They were used to driving on the ice and despite the fact that it was now melting and thin, they were still tempted to keep driving on it. Last week in our Epistle from Galatians we read about the Judaisers. They were insisting that to follow Jesus the Gentiles had to be circumcised, follow the right dietary rules, and observe the Sabbath. They still said they were following Jesus, but it doesn’t work that way. That’s like telling everyone how perfectly good the bridge is while trying to drive your car across the thawing river. The ice is melting. The time for those old ways has passed. Jesus offers something better and his way is now the only way.

Brothers and Sisters, do our lives demonstrate faith in Jesus as our sole mediator? While you and I may not be tempted to go back to the law or the temple or the old covenant sacrifices, we have our own pasts to which we often hold more tightly than we may realise. We profess faith in Jesus, but we still haven’t repented of all of our old loyalties, all of our old ways of doing things, all of our old sources of security. We profess Jesus, but we still find satisfaction in sin and in self. We say we trust Jesus, but we still look for security in work and in money. We say we trust Jesus, but we often evaluate ourselves not based on what he has done for us, but on what we think we’ve done for him. Friends, it’s like giving people directions to the bridge, while we ourselves are sitting in our cars with the engine running, nosing our wheels into the water and thinking we’ll somehow get across the river. Lent is a time for us to look around, to take stock, and to evaluate our situation. Easter is only two weeks away. It’s a reminder that in Jesus Spring has arrived. The river isn’t frozen anymore. We need to let go of the old ways of life and follow Jesus across the bridge. Yes, to follow Jesus means challenge and sacrifice, but Jesus is better in every way. He and he alone has redeemed up from death to serve the living God.

Let us pray: Gracious Father, we thank you this morning for the sacrifice you have made in the death of your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. In Jesus the price of our sin has been paid once and for all. By his blood we are washed clean through and through. Strengthen our faith, Father, that we might trust fully in Jesus as our only mediator. Open our eyes to the areas of life in which we’ve failed to repent, and give us the faith to entrust those things to you. We ask this through him, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.
34 min
March 30, 2025 A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
Galatians 4:21-31
by the Rev'd Dr. Matthew Colvin
Our epistle lesson this morning comes from Galatians 4. I know that Pastor Bill preached on it just recently, but I would like to look at it too, from a different angle. It is one of the most controversial chapters in the NT, both for its view of Judaism and for its hermeneutical maneuvers. Paul is concerned for Christians in Galatia. The Judaizers were taunting Gentile Christians with the manifest visible superiority of Judaism: its splendid temple; its priesthood; its Torah; all the society’s esteem and honor. And against this, what did Christians have to show? They were hiding for fear of the Jews; they were subjected to persecution and arrest; they had been kicked out of the synagogue and subjected to the ban, excommunication. Above all, there was the disgrace of worshipping a criminal who had been killed by the most shameful sort of execution, crucifixion by the Romans.
All this was exploited by Paul’s enemies in Galatia, the Judaizers or the circumcision party. Their strategy was to exalt themselves by trying to get the Gentiles to envy them - “They zealously court you, but for no good; yes, they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them.” – The verb zeloō means both to be zealous and to be jealous. Paul’s enemies are behaving like spiteful middle school girls — not like the righteous women of this church, but like the ones I knew when I was in school — trying to exclude a hated rival by social shunning, in order to magnify their own status. To stop them and shut them down, Paul needs to do more than just answer their case logically. He also needs to undermine their ethos; he needs to subvert the system of value that makes their case so plausible at first glance. They are counting on Paul’s readers sharing their value system. Paul wants to make sure his readers do not share it. It is a task that he undertakes in many of his letters. In Romans he addresses the Jews as those who
“rest on the law, and make your boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law.”
He is setting forth the Jewish system of value, the grounds of their boasting. And it was a very good grounds for boasting. The longest book in the Bible, Psalm 119, is one continuing paean of praise to the Law, the Torah. It is full of statements like, “I love thy commandments above gold and precious stones” and “The law of thy mouth is dearer unto me than thousands of gold and silver.” But Paul rips this point of boasting away by asking, “Yes, the Law is wonderful — but do you actually obey it?”
In Philippians 3, Paul gathers together all the things that he could have been proud of as a Jew:
“If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;”
That stuff that the Jews think is so valuable? Their circumcision, their membership in one of the two faithful tribes (Benjamin and Judah)? Their zeal, their lawkeeping? It's all worthless. In fact, it's so worthless that I threw it all away. I have something of real value that none of that stuff can give you.
In the book of Hebrews, Paul or someone from his circles who thought an awful lot like him has the difficult task of undermining Jewish boasting about the Temple, the priesthood, and the sacrifices — a task that might seem impossible, since these things were instituted by God and everybody knew it. The temple was imposing, gleaming with gold. Paul calls it a “tent”, the sort of makeshift, flimsy structure that you go camping in, and you lie down in it, and there's nothing but a thin layer of cloth between you and the outside, and if it's too windy, the thing is in danger of collapsing; and anyway, it's that way because you're going to take it down and pack it up anyway. That's what he thinks of your fancy temple. Besides, the real temple is in heaven. Your tent is made by human hands; the only Temple worthy of the name is made by God. The priests’ ministry was observable; they were dressed in robes; everyone could see their work, and that they had been instituted by God. Paul says, “They keep on dying, which is proof that their work isn't much good. And they have to offer sacrifices for their own sins, not just the people’s.” The sacrifices were there for all to see: they had been commanded by God himself. The blood of the sacrifices flowed continually at the temple, on a daily basis. Paul says, “See how they have to do it over and over again? That's because it doesn't really work. They need Jesus. That's the only sacrifice that works, and that's why Jesus only needed to be sacrificed once.”
Yes, Paul is a genius at overthrowing his opponents’ strongest arguments. He loves to take their most powerful evidence and use it against them. He is a master of rhetorical jujitsu, throwing his opponents to the mat by using the momentum and force of their own attacks. He is like Elijah in the contest with the prophets of Baal, one man against 450, “And he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood, and said, “Fill four waterpots with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.” Then he said, “Do it a second time,” and they did it a second time; and he said, “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time. So the water ran all around the altar; and he also filled the trench with water.”
In Galatians 4, it is a terribly difficult rhetorical task that Paul faces: his opponents appear to have the Torah, the OT, on their side. It does, after all, command circumcision; it does prohibit the eating of unclean foods; it does tell the stories of Ishmael, Moab, and Ben-Ammi, the ancestors of the rival nations surrounding Israel, all of whom are deprecated as the offspring of incest, slave marriage, or concubinage. These stories account for the origins of the Gentiles around Israel. Israel itself, however, was descended from Isaac, the legitimate son and heir of Abraham. These stories underscore the chosenness of Israel, and the fact that these other nations were not chosen. “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated” was not just a statement about two sons. It was a statement about two nations: the Edomites and Israel. It says that Israel is the covenant people that God loves, and Edom is not.
So it is Paul’s opponents, not Paul, who have the easier case to make here: Jewish people are (most of them) descended from Jacob (Israel) and Gentiles are not. And they might have made this case most plainly from the story of Isaac, Abraham’s son miraculously conceived by the power of God in Abraham’s old age. This is strong rhetorical ground for the circumcision advocates in Galatia. Circumcision is commanded in the Torah for God’s people.
It is breathtakingly audacious for Paul to argue that a proper understanding of the Torah will lead you to the conclusion that circumcision doesn't matter. Paul calls the Torah a yoke of bondage. I'm not sure we appreciate how bold a move this is. The exodus was Israel’s independence day. It's when they came out of slavery in Egypt and became a free nation. Paul says that the circumcizers advocating Torah-obedience in Galatia are like those who wanted to go back to Egypt. It would be like an American saying that the Declaration of Independence is the document in American history that made everyone slaves. But that is what Paul says about the Torah, given on Mount Sinai: that covenant has led to the present state of affairs: Jerusalem that now is, and is in bondage with her children.
Now, we know from elsewhere in Paul’s letters, especially Romans, that he considered the Law a good gift of God and the reason why the Law was now leading to slavery was because Israel was using it wrongly, not because the Law was bad. The slavery results from Israel’s sinfulness, not something wrong with the Law. But here, he doesn't go into that, because he is focused not on the Law as it was given by God, but on the Law as it was used rhetorically by his opponents. You have heard the expression, “He is wrapping himself in the flag”? That is what the Judaizers in Galatia are doing with the Torah: using it as a uniform to distinguish true, Jewish Christians from second-rate, Gentile Christians. And Paul says: You think that you look cool with your bling; but it's really chains to keep you enslaved.
Above all, Paul takes the bull by the horns and uses an audacious maneuver to deal with the Judaizers’ most powerful weapon: the taunt of illegitimacy. That is the point of the Ishmael story as used by Jews: the Ishmaelites, the Arabs, are illegitimate offspring of Abraham, just as the Moabites and Ammonites were stigmatized as the offspring of Lot’s daughters after the destruction of Sodom. Only Jews were the children of Isaac; they had been called into existence by the power of YHWH himself. They were not the product of an ill-conceived attempt at surrogate pregnancy, and with a slave wife.
Be aware that the Judaizers have centuries and centuries of social and legal precedent for their view. That line that Paul quotes from Sarah — “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman” — that was a line that Paul’s opponents loved to quote. When Sarah said it to Abraham, she wasn't just being mean. The lawcodes of Ur-Nammu and Lipit-Ishtar, from around the same time as Abraham, contained rules about exactly this sort of situation, and they are formulated with exactly the same sort of phrasing:
“If a man has a wife a free woman who has born children to him, and he takes a slave wife and she also bears children to him, the children of the slave wife shall not share in the inheritance with the children of the free wife.”
Sarah is saying, “Husband, you know the law from when we lived in Ur. This is what we have to do.”
And the heretics in Galatia were taking up this two-thousand year tradition of legal and social stigma against children of slavery, and applying it to Gentile Christians. It's a powerful tool of shaming and social marginalization, and it is based on a very foundational text of the covenant: the story of the birth of Isaac. Both the Judaizers and their Galatian Gentile victims believed this text was the word of God. Both believed that the Jews were descendants of Isaac. Paul knows all this. He has chosen to fight them on their strongest ground; he gives them home field advantage. He pours water so that it fills up the trench. And then he incinerates their whole argument like Elijah.
The stigma of illegitimacy? He turns it back on the Judaizers. They are the bastards now, the “children of the flesh”; they are “in bondage” with their slave-mother. The Gentile Galatian Christians? They are “children of the promise.” And just as it was back then, the child of the slave woman is persecuting the child of the promise. The two sons are marked not by their circumcised or uncircumcised status but by the slave/free polarity that distinguishes their mothers.
Paul has to reach a little bit here. The LXX Greek translation that Paul used here doesn't actually say, “persecuting”. What the LXX says is that Sarah “saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian who had been born to Abraham playing with her son Isaac (paizonta meta Isaac tou huiou autes).” That's the most straightforward way to take it. But the word “playing” can also mean “mocking”. And that's probably how Paul took it. And then he magnifies it into the sibling rivalry from hell by glossing “mocking” as “persecuting”. Where did he get this from? It is transferred from the situation between the Judaizers and the Gentile Christians in Galatia.
By casting the rivalry as a conflict between the flesh and the promise, Paul undercuts the Judaizers’ use of the Torah. That is why he says, “These are two covenants” — the boldest piece of clever interpretation in the Bible. It is all part of his rhetorical strategy concerning the Torah that he has laid in the previous chapter, Galatians 3. The two covenants are NOT the Old and the New. They are the Torah covenant and the covenant with Abraham (which turns out to find its fulfillment in Christ). And the covenant with Abraham is more original, more foundational, more important, more primary. The law was added 430 years later. The Torah was a stop-gap measure to keep things under control until the fulfillment of the covenant with Abraham. And for Paul, Gentile Christians are that fulfillment: “in you, all the nations — the ethnê — shall be blessed.”
This aligns the Gentile Christians with the whole purpose of the Covenant with Abraham, and means that Paul can cast them as the true children of the promise. They are citizens of the only Jerusalem that counts, the “Jerusalem above”. And by citing the line of Sarah, “cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman”, Paul makes clear what the stakes are here: the Judaizers and those who trust in the Torah to be their badge of membership in the covenant are not merely mistaken. They are Ishmaels and they will not inherit. They will be cast out. The Gentile Christians — and faithful Jewish Christians who did not pressure them to get circumcized — will be counted as true members of the covenant with Abraham, and the Judaizing circumcision-pushers will not. Who are the bastards now?
Paul revels in what God has done. It is perfectly in accordance with his way of working: "He catches the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the cunning is brought to a quick end.” (Job 5). The Judaizers have fallen into the pit that they have dug: their taunts of illegitimacy rebound on their own heads; the glory of the title of “true children of Abraham” is wrapped around the Gentile believers whom they had stigmatized. Paul’s jujitsu victory is complete and total, because it is the victory of Christ, who led captivity captive and triumphed by being crucified.
In the end, Paul’s fierce warfare over the Galatians has to do with vindicating the honor of Christ, with proving that He has really accomplished all that Paul says he has; with showing that the covenant with Abraham is truly fulfilled in Jesus, because he is the yes and amen. To go back to the Torah is to turn the clock back and engage in historical reenactment; to live a life of live-action-role-playing instead of reality. It is a costly and foolish attempt to gain privilege and honor by denying the completeness and finality of Jesus’ work, and attempting to supplement it with another identity in terms of the Torah.
The true Exodus is via Christ, not via the Torah. That is part of the meaning of our gospel lesson this morning from John 6. Here the true bread from heaven, Jesus, works a miraculous feeding like the manna of old. But he does it not in order to cause the crowd to envy his disciples; he has no desire for his followers to act like the Judaizers, zealous courting others to provoke them envy. No, his disciples are to be the means by which the bread of life is given to the multitudes — and the two small fish, symbol of Gentiles and of fishing for men, of the fulfillment of Jeremiah 16:16: “Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them.” In the end, the nations are to be blessed through the disobedience of Israel. Our time is short, so I will not try to prove this exhaustively, but I want you to see the pattern: Joseph’s brothers disobey and sell him into slavery, so that he is carried off to a Gentile land, Egypt, and becomes assimilated to Egyptian ways. But God works it all out so that Joseph’s imprisonment in an Egyptian prison works out for the salvation of Joseph’s brothers and all Egypt, “to save many alive.” When Jesus touches dead bodies, a woman with a 12 year flow of bleeding that made her unclean, or a leper, what happens? The usual laws of uncleanness work backward: rather than becoming unclean, Jesus makes these people clean. That is the way God has designed the exile of Israel to work: rather than the exiled members of Israel becoming lost and destroyed, they have mingled with the nations and thereby brought it about that in order to keep His promises to Israel, God will save the Gentiles as well. As a result, “In Abraham’s seed, all the nations shall be blessed.” Isn’t it funny how Satan’s schemes always backfire? He is truly the Wile E. Coyote of the Bible.
He will have his church be Israel for the sake of the world; thus we are to be true heirs of Abraham, fulfilling the purpose for which He was called.
Amen.
0 min
March 23, 2025 A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent
by the Rev'd Dr. Matthew Colvin
In Dante’s Inferno, the Italian poet’s lurid imagination has created a special circle of hell as a punishment for thieves: because they are sinners who did not distinguish between what was their own and what belonged to someone else, they are punished (in Dante’s imagination) by a blurring of the lines distinguishing their own bodies and nature from those of something else: monstrous lizards chase them down as they run in terror, and when they catch up with them, they jump onto them, clasp them with their four legs, and fuse their lizard bodies together with their human bodies, producing a horrific human-lizard hybrid. It is one of the creepiest and most disgusting punishments in the Inferno, and when I read it, my skin crawls.
A similar revulsion is evoked by parasites. My fellow American missionaries in the Philippines used to joke, whenever they came back to the United States and got a stomachache, that it was caused by their Philippine parasites becoming unhappy with American food. My wife has seen a pregnant woman cough up a five inch worm, still twitching. I could multiply examples, but you get the point: parasites are uniquely disgusting because they violate our bodies and live inside us against our will.
Demon-possession is like this, except that the violation is even more severe: a malevolent and powerful spiritual entity dwelling within a human being, controlling his speech and actions, his mind and body, against his will. This sort of parasitism is subtly implied in an oddity of the language in Luke 11 :14: “And he was casting out a demon, and it was mute.” Who was mute? The gender of “it” is neutered, which matches the word for demon, daimonion. Yet the very next sentence says, “So it was, when the demon had gone out, that the mute spoke.” Do you see how the properties of the demon are the properties of the man it possesses?
This should make your skin crawl. It's very evil. The sorts of frightful scenes of violence depicted in the movie The Exorcist are not actually far fetched in comparison with the actions of demon-possessed persons in the Bible: cutting themselves, breaking chains, attacking people and “prevailing against them so that they flee naked and wounded”, speaking with other voices, throwing the possessed person into fire or water.
No wonder the Jews wanted to get rid of demons. One of the marks of a great rabbi was that his teachings were authenticated by miracles, including the exorcism of demons. This was a popular piece of Jewish wonder-working. Acts chapter 19 speaks of “vagabond Jewish exorcists”. The historian Josephus tells how such people operated:
“I have seen a certain man of my own country, whose name was Eleazar, releasing people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this: He put a ring that had a Foot of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down immediately, he abjured him to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazar would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left the man.”
– Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews.
By contrast with this, Jesus simply commands the unclean spirits, and they come out. There is no struggle; when demons see that Jesus has arrived, rhey normally beg for mercy before he even says anything. And it is interesting to hear the language they use. In Luke 4,
“Now in the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon. And he cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Let us alone! What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come to destroy us? I know who You are— the Holy One of God!”” (Luke 4:33-34)
and again, in Matthew 8:
“And suddenly they cried out, saying, “What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?”” (Matthew 8:29)
Before the time. These demons know that they are doomed (so their wickedness is also deliberate sin against knowledge), and what's more, they know there is a scheduled day in history when they are to be destroyed. What's surprising to them is to discover that that day has suddenly come forward and is upon them already in the person of Jesus. It is very much like the exchange between Martha of Bethany and Jesus when he comes to raise Lazarus in John 11:23: “Your brother will rise again.” “Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” The expected future resurrection — that event “at the last day” — turns out to have a human face, and he is here now, in 33 AD. So with the demons: they think that they can continue to possess people until the resurrection and judgment, unaware that in the person of Jesus, the judgment is upon them now.
33 AD. Anno Domini. Jesus, from the moment of his baptism in the Jordan river, began to announce that He was himself the fulfillment of the OT’s prophecies of the coming kingdom of God. His healings and driving out demons; his parables and commandments; His baptism and transfiguration — everything spoke of His office as the Messiah, “a savior, who is Christ the Lord”. When John’s disciples ask Jesus, “Are you the coming one, or do we wait for another?”, He had no need to plead his own cause and use persuasive arguments to convince them of His messiahship. His answer is “Go and tell John the things that you see and hear: “The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” That is to say, His actions already matched the job description that Israel knew from the prophets, especially Isaiah. His vanquishing of demons was a sign with the same meaning as the others: behold, your King. And yet we are told by the fourth gospel that Jesus “came unto His own, and His own did not receive Him.” So we are confronted with the question: Why did they refuse to believe in him?
15 But some of them said, “He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.”
This is why the ascribing of Jesus’ miracles to the devil is unforgiveable — not that it is especially worse in seriousness than, say, blaspheming against the Father, but that it removes the possibility of salvation. If you mistake the fireman for a bad guy, you’re not going to let him remove you from a burning house.
16 Others, testing Him, sought from Him a sign from heaven.
These people are “testing him” – the same verb used of Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, and indeed, their request for a “sign from heaven” is a renewal of Satan’s suggestions that Jesus should perform a gratuitous miracle to force people to believe in Him. Let’s remember that He has just cast out a demon. So they are asking for another miracle to authenticate the first miracle. What end will there be of such doubt? If miracles could compel faith, these people would have believed already.
Jesus’ reply has three parts.
His first response is to point out how illogical it is to imagine that Satan, whose goal is to oppress human beings and subject them to demonic power, would sabotage his own work by freeing anyone from demonic power.
His second argument is even more pointed, and to understand its full force we must recognize the echo of the OT and the narrative situation that echo calls up. He asks them,
“If I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons with the finger of God (ἐν δακτύλῳ θεοῦ), surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
This is a very direct reference to a prominent Old Testament passage, Exodus 8:17-19. It is near the beginning of the ten plagues. Already Moses has inflicted two plagues on Egypt: he has turned the water to blood, and he has brought forth frogs on the land. Amusingly enough, Pharaoh’s magicians did so with their enchantments — with the result that there was even more water turned to blood, and even more slimy frogs hopping around Egypt.
Pharaoh’s administration kept the Israelites in bondage not only by physical whips and brutal oppression, but also by projecting a spurious aura of competence and knowledge, so that they have a wise ability to control events. We see this in our own day, when the Federal Government has so thoroughly persuaded everyone that it can save us, that when a hurricane strikes a coastal city, there are people who blame the Federal disaster relief agencies and the government for not doing more; when evil people shoot schoolchildren, the government must “do something about it”; and our diets must be dictated to us with a food pyramid based on scientific research; synthetic pharmaceuticals must be prescribed for every ailment according to the wisdom of scientists. These wonder-workers are able to put a man on tbe moon; how, then, can we doubt their wisdom. Do not even imagine that there is another way, or another truth.
So it is in Egypt bedore the Exodus. As in our day, so in Egypt there was a “ fascination with wisdom, which, in addition to imitating the great regimes, represented an effort to rationalize reality, that is, to package it in manageable portions”. In our day, this wisdom is technological, statistical, scientific. In ancient Egypt it was priestly and magical. And so, even though it means more water turned to blood, and more frogs on the land, Pharaoh’s magicians must by all means show that they can replicate the miracles of Moses. The wizard’s duel is crucial to maintaining the supremacy of Pharaoh’s regime. He has the best magicians. Anything Moses can do, they can do too. But then, something happens:
Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod and struck the dust of the earth, and it became lice on man and beast…Now the magicians so worked with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not. So there were lice on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.”
As one writer (W. Brueggemann) comments:
“The Egyptian empire could not! The gods of Egypt could not! The scientists of the regime could not! The imperial religion was dead! The politics of oppression had failed! That is the ultimate criticism, that the assured and alleged power of the dominant culture is now shown to be fraudulent. Criticism is not carping and denouncing. It is asserting that false claims to authority and power cannot keep their promises, which they could not in the face of the free God, [the God of Moses]. It is only a matter of time until they are dead on the seashore.”
Jesus’ words, “The finger of God” call up in his listeners’ minds the contest between Moses and the magicians of Pharaoh. Jesus’ accusers are failing to recognize that He is in the position of Moses and Aaron. They and their “sons” — that is, their disciples — are in the place of the magicians of Pharaoh. By whom do they cast out demons? Oh, that's right, they don't. They cannot do what Jesus has done, so they are discredited as judges — and this in the Biblical sense of the word (think Samson, Deborah, Barak). They cannot save.
By connecting his actions to Moses’ miracles in the Exodus, Jesus is implying that He is the agent of a new Exodus; that the time of salvation has come. Those who oppose that salvation and ascribe His work to the devil are in the position of Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s magicians: not only are they powerless to do what He does, but they are actually opposing God’s salvation.
Jesus’ deliverance of the mute, demon-possessed man is actually an instance of that basic conflict, and a preliminary step to the ultimate conquest and final defeat of Satan. He compares himself to a violent house-robber who has defeated the strong man guarding the house; and he contrasts that image with the ineffectual efforts of others before him.
A friend of mine once had bats and squirrels living in his attic. By careful use of humane traps, he eventually got rid of them, and raccoons moved in. Once that happened, he decided the time for gentleness was past, and he got his .22 and a dog. Just like that, Jesus suggests that the house of Israel has been cleansed of its idolatry, but it is now suffering something far worse: nowhere in the OT do we hear of anyone possessed by a demon. But demons are seemingly lurking everywhere in the gospels. Past cleansings of Israel have been ineffective, like a situation where seven worse demons move into a man who used to have one. Jesus’ intention — for those whom he drove demons out of; for his people Israel; and ultimately for the world, is a permanent and effectual pest-removal.
But notice the scenario that Jesus describes:
When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. 22 But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoils. 23 He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters.
This is the prelude to a thorough plundering of all of Satan’s dominion over this fallen world. Remember when Satan tempted Jesus? He took him up on a mountain and offered him all the kingdoms of the world if he would bow down and worship him. It is a real estate transaction: that is the significance of taking Jesus up on a mountain and showing him all the kingdoms. God does a similar thing with Abraham, telling him to look at the land of Canaan, “for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever.” (Genesis 13:15) Satan was offering to trade Jesus the kingdoms of the world. Jesus refused, because he does not make bargains with Satan. His intention is to defeat him, and disarm him, and take away his dominion.
And the Bible shows us how that happened:
“Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.” (Revelation 20:1-3)
The Gentiles are no longer under the domination of demons. No one is worshipping Thor or Zeus or Baal anymore. And when Satan is released one last time, it is only so that he can be thrown into the lake of fire after he shows how unrepentant he is.
So, with the house cleansed, what happens now? God has got rid of the demons, and He intends to dwell in this house Himself. Our gospel lesson closes with Jesus’ response to a woman in the crowd who calls his mother blessed: “Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts which nursed you!”
Mary is certainly blessed. But that blessedness was not merely a matter of giving birth to Jesus. Remember that Mary responded to the angel, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” Mary, as a symbol of faithful Israel, submits herself to God and to His purposes. The result is that God honors her obedience by coming to dwell within her. So too with us. “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it,” for God dwells with them.
Now that raises one last issue. I have a number of different quotations I’m going to share with you concerning the relationship of obedience and bodily resurrection and our individuality.
Some of you have read CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters? They are a series of fictitious letters in which Lewis pretends that one demon, a senior demon who has a lot of experience, is writing to a junior demon all kinds advice about how to tempt a man and lead him to Hell. C.S. Lewis said this was the most difficult of all his works to write. There was something oppressive and depressing about channeling an evil voice and writing in this style for so many pages. Well, here's what Uncle Screw tape advises his junior devil Wormword about human beings:what God wants to do with human beings. He says,
“But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself--creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.”
Still distinct! Remember what was so creepy about that demon possessed man in our gospel reading this morning was that he didn't seem to be himself. And the demon speaks out of him. The demon is mute, and he is mute. He's lost his distinctiveness. It's like that Dante lizard people, fused with the demon.
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic philosopher, not a Christian. In fact, he was a persecutor of Christians, even though he has a reputation as a wise emperor. We happen to have his private journal Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, everything he was thinking about his spiritual life. Even though he's the wealthiest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world, the emperor of Rome, we can tell from reading what he writes in his meditations.
He was terrified of dying. He was not looking forward to it, and he was desperate for any philosophical help that could give him some comfort, some assurance in the face of this terrifying fact of death that seemed inevitable. His solution to the problem was to cling to the hope that his rational soul, his rationality, his sense of reason, was divine. The body, it's going to rot; it's going to disappear. It's going to become collrupt, but the soul, the rational soul, when you die, it's going to be caught up into the divine fire and become one with God. In Stoicism, they thought that the sun is God, the divine fire that everything else that's rational in the universe is a little bit of the divine fire. It's in your soul. And so when your body dies, whoosh! — Up your soul goes and joins God. If I were to take two flames and join them together, there'd be one flame. That's the way they think about it. And so Marcus Aurelius says, “That's not the person your mother gave birth to. And that divine fire is not part of your body that your mother gest stated and gave birth to. Then he asked his question, the mask slips for a minute and he says, “But what if you're inextricably linked to it through your sense of individuality” — meaning, what if you're really tied to your body by being an individual human being? What if that's what makes you an individual human being is that you have a body that is the center of your consciousness and your agency and you look out of your eyes from your body and you interact with other people and shake hands with them and embrace them and speak to them face to face and see them, and they see you because you have a body and they have a body. And that's what it means for you to be an individual. So if that's what it means for you to be you, is that you have a body, then it's not much comfort to think that your soul is going to be absorbed into the bigger fire of God. Then where are you? There's God, but where are you? So he says, “What if you're inextricably linked to the body through your sense of individuality?” And he he can't answer the question, so he immediately says, “That's not what we're talking about here.” “I don't want to think about that.” It's so scary. It really would feel like standing on the edge of a deep abyss. if when you die, you lose your individuality and you're not you more. Because you'll have body anymore, and you've been absorbed into God. That's not that different from what Screwtape was talking about: the demons would like to absorb you. Marcus Aurelius shies away from the full force of his own pantheism and from the horrible consequences that it has for individuality.
Two more quotations. In Job chapter 19, we have those famous words of Job about resurrection. He says, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that the last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold him. I, and not another! My heart faints within me.” Job says he's going to see God. Job in his individuality and his identity is going to see God because he's going to have a body and eyeballs that look at him.
One last business. On the day of Pentecost, we have some fire, but it isn't individual souls getting absorbed into God. Rather it's tongues of fire coming down from God and resting on individuals who are filled with God's Spirit, and when they are filled, do they lose their individuality? No, they start speaking, respectively, all their different languages that their hearers know from where they grew up. So when God fills us with His spirit, he doesn't rob us of our identity. He doesn't absorb us into himself, but he fills us with himself and makes us more who we are, and that is why the resurrection of the body that we confess in our creed is a great comfort because it assures us that we, each of you individually, who you are when you are raised from the dead, you “and not another” will see God and be in relationship with him.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father we thank you that you've given us victory over Satan and his demons, that you have assured us that you have called us to yourself. You have given us your spirit and you desire to dwell within us and make us into a holy temple fit for your dwelling. Help us by faith to cling to Christ in whose service is perfect freedom. We pray in his name. Amen.
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Living Word Reformed Episcopal Church, Courtenay, British Columbia

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