For our worship service on October 14, 2018, we experience the effects of Jesus interaction with Susanna, who washed his feet with her tears, and Simon the Pharisee who questioned her motives. Through monologues, worship, prayer, and readings from scripture, we see the transforming power of Jesus love and grace. The audio version is condensed and includes the introduction, readings, and monologues of Susanna and Simon, by Corrine Francois-Pijuan and Matt Henegar. A full video version is availible on our website at www.manhattanchurch.org/sermons

Mighty Gods on Weary Beasts

Isaiah speaks to Israel in exile. Conquered, destroyed by the might of Babylon and its gods: Bel

(= Marduk, Baal, cf. Belshazzar) and Nebo (cf. Nebu-chadnezzar). Gods of power, wealth, fertility, control. Now Persia is coming, Cyrus and his gods, a "bird of prey." How do you tell which god is real. The one who wins, conquers, delivers. Israel is defeated, exiled. Where is Yahweh?

Isaiah repeatedly focuses on idolatry. Irony and sarcasm! Unfair? Bel is not just a statue. But Bel, Nebo, the gods of almost all religions are part of the natural world, powers within creation. Not transcendent, beyond nature. They’re bigger than us - us magnified. Humans at our greatest power, pleasure, control - we make a god in that image. We know them. They’re us!

Isaiah sees them stooping. They have to be carried to try to escape the coming of new gods like themselves, who in their turn will have to be carried. Can you see? Blindness and deafness plague humans in seeing the pitiful character of our human-made gods, so natural to us.

The God of the Servant, Able to Carry

Idolatry is the fundamental brokenness of humanity. 1st of the 10 commandments. Israel’s betrayal at Sinai. Idolatry is almost built into us humans. The world centers around us and our well-being. We exchange the glory of the creator for the image of created things. Power within our power.

The Transcendent God is separated from us and every created thing by an incomprehensible gap between creator and created. From the side of the created, the gap is unbridgeable. The gods we make are on our created side of the great divide - something shaped by humans in some human- like form, an image of us, an idol. Our religion wants to turn God into a human-made god.

For God, it is the very human being that is the inadequate and broken image of God. The human is still usable by God for self-revelation within his creation. God can use our elaborate language of greatness and power, but he shows himself in ways that disdain the power and greatness of human empires, wealth, beauty, fertility and pleasure. He chooses slaves. He comes as a nobody.

46:4: "I myself" bear the burden: create, sustain, save. From birth to grey hairs, we are infants.

Idolatry Old and New

Sometimes we imagine that because we avoid images we are without idols. Jesus breaks that delusion. Idols are all the forms of Mammon: all that we depend on to define and secure our lives. The list is as various in detail as humans are diverse. But also very simple: power, wealth, pleasure, control, identity, success, etc. played out on the large and small scales of Life.

Good things that we imagine will carry us, sustain us, secure us. But when they become gods, they eat us alive. (DFW quote) We have to create them, carry them. They never save. God comes in weakness on a cross, with self-giving love. He picks up our broken lives and carries us into his life.

Isaiah, Exile, and a New Vision for Israel and the World

We’re focusing on Isa 40-55, but in scripture it is part of a large book spanning centuries. Israel as independent kingdom protected by God. Jeremiah, that’s past, God’s judgment by Babylon. Now a people in exile, looking forward to Cyrus of Persia, God’s chosen agent for this moment.

Who are we? What is happening, coming? Son of David bearing God’s Spirit (Is 11:1-2, 61:1-2). Son of Man = saints of the Most High receive kingdom but suffer defeat (Dan 7:13-14, 18-22)

Servant of Yahweh in Isa becomes a central focus for revelation, reflection, anticipation of the new. The Servant is Israel as a whole (Is 41), object of God’s pleasure, receives God’s Spirit. How? No longer a warring nation but healing, caring servant, uncrushed, bringing justice to nations. How?

Vision of God: Creator of earth and all people. Servant is God’s agent for covenant, new creation: Light to the nations. Healing blindness, prisoners in darkness. This is God’s glory, true God, not idols. New Event brings a New Song from ends of the earth. All peoples are called to the One God.

The Servant Sings to the World: Is 49:1-6; 50:4-9

Israel as servant is a challenge. Israel has been blind and deaf. That brought exile. Israel needs salvation, renewal. Servant sings with new voice: Called from birth, hidden as God’s instrument for his glory. Did not grasp God’s glory. God gives the Servant a double mission: to Israel to turn Israel around and restore the people (?). To the nations to be God’s light to turn Gentiles to the one God, salvation for all people. Servant is both the embodiment of Israel and the renewer of Israel. He is to bring the truth of Israel’s God to the whole of God’s creation.

The servant is instructed by God, aided to listen. He learns not to disobey. But obedience brings pain and insult. He must trust God as his justice. God is the one who lasts, overcomes defeat and guilt. God is the helper/advocate of the Servant, but on a scale that was hard for people to see.

Jesus brings together Son of David, Son of Man (royal, triumphant figures) with the Servant of Yahweh. No warrior king, rather a healer. A New thing breaking in. Can you see, hear? People knew how to demonize or follow a king. But the Servant was / is a challenge to see God’s glory.

Isaiah, Prophet, Prophecy, Vision of God

Isaiah is a big book! 66 chapters. Historical scope: Ch 1-39, c. 700 bc. Hezekiah, Assyria. Ch 40-55, c. 545 bc. exile, Persia. Ch 56-66, later, after some return. All one book. All the parts interact. Ch 40-55 are still Isaiah because the prophet actively interprets and continues message in new time. Becomes scripture for later generations. Ch 40-55 especially fertile for NT. Good News. God as creator, transcendent, involved, tender, seen through Servant songs/Arm. Isa continues to Live.

Challenge of Isaiah. People see but don’t (Is 6). Struggle to know such a God (Jesus, Mk 4 parables).

The Drama of What to Say - From Bad to Good News!

God calls/commissions a prophet to express God’s word good or bad. 40:1-11 renews 6:1-13 and sets a fundamental challenge. Israel so blind to God! Focus judgment toward exile. Now a new time (40:1-2). Voice: Get ready! Across the wilderness (John Bap. Qumran). Glory for all. But people are broken. God seems absent. Babylon destroys. God’s Word acts. Lift it up. Tell it.

Good News (Gospel) for Prophet - Zion. Vv 9-11: God is here! Kingly power and tenderness (Jesus). God’s Arm (power/servant). Still a challenge to see, hear (vv 21,28). Listen, Look! God acts.

Image and Reality

We look at the world and think we know what we see. It revolves around us. Ancient/modern gods are forms of mighty humans, ancient images, modern structures. Empires of power, wealth, pleasure, control, identity. Human-shaped images. Who is the God we’re trying to know? Transcendent creator. Surprising purpose. Beyond structures. Into the ages. Lift up your eyes!

We’re not hidden even in disaster. The incomparable God reaches to us with renewing strength.

Autumn in New York

New York has 2 new years: Jan 1 and Sept. Israel also had 2 new years: Passover and Trumpets.

God gave to Israel a cycle of Festivals and other annual days: To remember the story of God’s deliverance, how God made them a people, preserved them. To have times of communal celebration and grief. To harmonize religious life with cycles of nature through the year. Three pilgrimage feasts. Often neglected till after Exile. Great power for renewal (Ps 42).

Passover and Pentecost were permanently linked to Jesus’ crucifixion/resurrection and to the coming of the Holy Spirit: Exodus the great event of deliverance and Giving the Torah.

The Fall with New Year, Day of Atonement, and Sukkoth carried the joining of penitence and celebration (Isa 55). Entering Holy of Holies (Heb 9:24-25), Booths and water in the desert.

Jesus at Sukkoth - the Feast of Booths

Jesus travels from Galilee to Jerusalem for Sukkoth (Jn 7). People are expecting the prophet. Who is he? Messiah? His brothers don’t believe. People know about him but don’t know him. Jesus links to the Sukkoth ritual of bringing water from Siloam to the Temple.

Jesus gives Living Water (Jn 4:10)-a future unfolds of God’s Spirit/Life in us. Water in the desert!

Deacon, Reggie Jackson preaches on Jesus in the Gospel of Mark and Luke. *Please Note* we experienced some technical difficulties and the recorder stopped recording roughly ten minutes from the conclusion of his sermon. We apologize for the abbreviated sermon.

Fullness in Creation, Mystery, and Community

Paul is concluding this relatively short, packed letter to the believers in Colossae, written from prison in Ephesus. It’s full of practical guidance for everyday life. Practical in the sense that Paul knows is necessary. Their roots are all alien to Paul’s message. If they’re to give their lives to this, they need to see how it makes sense of the world, their story, their relationships. Not in abstract arguments or instructions but in one person, Jesus.

Paul teaches people to think Jesus Christ, and here he shows how. First, as creator of all things, who holds everything together in his embrace. Second, Jesus as the deep river running through all of God’s history with humanity, the mystery, the aim of astonishing love and grace unseen till it broke forth in his cross and resurrection. Third, our lives are drawn together across barriers into his life sharing that grace, freeing us from what destroy our life, making genuine forgiveness, love and gratitude our new identity in him.

That’s the practical guide: God’s vision and work for our lives. We’re not stuck with self-help. God’s love embraces us in a community centered on Jesus that enriches all of life.

Shared Prayer, Open doors, a Message of Grace

Here Paul weaves the web of fellowship with these distant believers. Prayer and thanksgiving, both focus on God, what he’s doing, what he has done. Paul the old apostle asks for prayers of new believers and models participation in God’s work - an opening for the word, clearly drawing people into God’s wonderful mystery. Being used by God for his grace.

It was a dangerous world: Paul’s in prison. Still, with wisdom, these young Christians should walk/live toward (not away from) those outside. Any moment (kairos) may offer an opportunity to serve, to tell the story, to love someone. Prepare. Learn deeply the experience of God’s Grace. Engage and flavor real life, how this Grace changes things. Listen to people’s questions and stories. God meets every person he’s created.

Different lives embrace around God’s Fullness

Paul draws them closer by sending Tychicus and Onesimus, and a list of greetings, each name a story of God’s grace. Aristarchus also in jail, John Mark, Jesus Justus, Jewish co-workers.

Epaphras, the one who brought them the Gospel. He got thrown in prison with Paul too.

Luke, a physician, perhaps cares for Paul, studies and tells Jesus’ story, becomes "we" in Acts.

Then Onesimus, a whole drama of transformation that unfolds in the little letter to Philemon and Archippus. Within enforced structures of Roman society, change not by command, but being drawn into the embrace of this eternal/new reality in Jesus. A New Humanity.

and

From Event and Story to Personal Reality - The New Person

Jesus’ reality means that what God did in him shapes the life of every person who trust in him.

The change is deep, becoming a new person, new creation. Deep habits and cultural customs are now seen as deadly and enslaving. We take on a new identity shaped by Jesus.

Love that Embraces - The Heart of Transformation and Maturity

Jesus’ self-giving love in the Cross shows God’s deep love. It defines the New Person in God’s image. God’s image shows in compassion, humility, gentleness, giving Grace to each other.

Love embraces all these changes. Because it’s God’s life, it is the deepest maturity, perfection.

Thanksgiving - God’s Peace shaping our Actions and Experiences

The experience of this New Person brings peace, even in hard experiences. The message/ mystery of Christ feeds our hearts and heads on the deepest level with rich abundance.

We become people of gratitude, shaped into one body, embracing each other in thanksgiving.

What is all of this about "Mystery"?

Paul writes to Believers he’s never met, encouraging them to the fullness of life in Jesus. In a hymn Paul expressed its vast scope: First, all of physical/spiritual creation is embraced in Jesus as creator and incarnation. Then all of human experience, as he dies and, in God’s Fullness, brings new creation out of death to reconcile the universe to God in Jesus.

This is a surprising, challenging event/narrative. Something pointed to but never fully seen before it became reality in Jesus, his life, teaching, crucifixion, resurrection, and meaning. It is "hidden" for ages as God’s Mystery (M, mysterion), his unique, unexpected way of embracing his creation. God’s kingdom should be glorious, overwhelming, not lowly, hidden, dying. But ironically that obscure, crucified Jesus brings God’s powerful, reconciling love to his whole world, both Jews and all nations, creating a new reality.

M. is God’s message (logos), Gospel of the humiliating cross. Even when we "understand" it, it remains a constant mystery, an astonishing revelation/face of the invisible God.

M. is Christ himself! All that he is and means. Israel’s Messiah/Christ, heir of all scripture’s history, can live in all people: "Christ in You!" From death he created new resurrection life. Ordinary people begin to experience surprising glory and hope for God’s future. They are drawn by this love and find that it makes sense of things - "wisdom and knowledge."

How does the Mystery change things?

Yes, unexpected things happen: Suffering, struggle! Jews - Greek, slave - free together! So much breaking of old patterns. There’s a learning curve: continued teaching to bring every person to maturity in Christ. They learn to recognize the M. and gain assurance.

Seeing life on that different scale. Yes, it’s physical, (bodily, good creation). Physical is united with Spiritual. There is a higher, deeper life and purpose in all things and in our own lives. The exclusively physical is too small to grasp all of reality, which always carries an element of mystery. It’s never transparent to us. We experience it, but only partially even in our highest experiences. Life is given a structured, solid vision based on trust in Christ.

How do we engage?

We’re part of that physical-spiritual creation, drawn together by this self-giving love and vision of reality. We learn and grow by teaching, exhortation, wisdom toward maturity. We realize the mystery that Christ lives in us, we receive him as Lord who shapes us.

We do everything at once with him: We walk forward: we live, make mistakes; he helps and draws us up; we repeat. We sink roots: we need nourishment from this great, amazing story of God’s love and work. We learn to recognize new patterns, the mystery of God’s work everywhere. We let him build us, change values, give new love, openness, grace.

We let Faith/Mystery make life secure by trust in Jesus - God’s Fullness! There’s always more. We’re always called higher. That ever-growing love and challenge bring thanksgiving.

and

Letter to a New Church: Who are We, You and I?

Paul is pacing up and down in prison (with Aristarchus, probably in Ephesus). He’s writing to believers he’s never met, a church taught by his co-worker Epaphras in the city of Colossae east of Ephesus, close to other cities of Hierapolis and Laodicea. Paul has been dealing with crises in Ephesus (2Cor 2:8-10) and in Corinth and Galatia. He is sending this letter to a Gentile community, by Tychicus ("Lucky") and Onesimus ("Useful"), an escaped slave, now a believer, returning to Philemon, who is part of the community. A lot at stake.

Paul could write some simple encouragements and instructions as an apostle. He does encourage and instruct, but there’s nothing superficial about Colossians.

These people have entered a major life-change by committing their lives to Jesus. From Roman/Greek culture, they are trusting their existence to a "Messiah" (anointed king) crucified by the Romans, whose story flows from Israel and Abraham. But more, this Jesus was the very presence of the One God of the universe, killed by humans!

Paul wants to lead them deeper into lives of love and gratitude, but not just as his good advice. He wants them to see this life as part of God’s history with Israel and all people in Jesus. Indeed this truth is the core of the whole universe, uniting the spiritual and the physical. All our alienations, injustices, and sins, work against God’s great work of reconciliation.

Finding ourselves in a Personal Universe - an Embracing Creator

In our text Paul is reflecting on how joy and thanksgiving have broken out among these Gentiles. They’ve joined Jews like Paul in experiencing God’s deliverance from slavery, from an authority that engulfed them in darkness, deception, broken human life.

God brought them into light in Jesus, who embodies his love. The light of Jesus’ love revealed the slavery that sin trapped them in. He broke sin’s power by redemption and forgiveness.

Jesus could do this even for Gentiles/nations because he is the unique bond between God’s invisible spiritual reality and the whole visible physical world in all its complexity - the universe (ta panta). He is God becoming part of his own visible creation, as "image."
He is "firstborn" the bringer of God’s life into creation as creator and as incarnation.

It is "in him" that creation takes place and "in him" that the universe continues to exist. He is God’s personal embrace, holding together all aspects of creation by his love. The physical world is rational, discoverable, unified by its creator and sustainer’s embrace.

Finding ourselves in Life and Death - the Reach of Jesus’ Embrace

But in human existence, the physics and biology of the world are not usually the focus of everyday life. We struggle with our conscience and consciousness that we are broken, messed up, fearful, dying. Our moral sense and wide-ranging consciousness cause us to see not only the beauty of the world, but our injustice, selfishness, hurt, rebellion, sin.

In Jesus, God not only unites the physical and spiritual, God also brings his identity as creator of life into the deepest suffering of humanity in death. Jesus is "Beginning" in a new, ultimate sense for humans: He begins the creation of life that conquers death, through death and resurrection. Jesus is "firstborn" of this new creation - then He invites us in.

Here the "Fullness" of God finds full expression. His love breaks through our deepest pain. He goes to the bottom of alienation and reconciles the whole created universe into Jesus. This is the vision from which the Colossians and we learn love and gratitude and growth.