God’s Handiwork

Numbers 21: 4-9
Ephesians 2: 1-10

The passage in Ephesians speaks directly to our hearts because it is about death and life. Paul tells us we were all at one time dead in our transgressions and sins. The way we lived our lives showed no signs of life. But being Paul, his message is not about death, it is about life. We are given life through the grace of Jesus Christ, through his faith in God.

For some people, it takes a long time to realize they are walking corpses, animated only through their wants, desires, and needs. They live for what they can obtain, what they desire to receive, and what they need to survive. Life has its passions, but they are passions of the flesh. They are the things that hold us captive instead of making us free as we wish them to.

You have seen people like this, perhaps you were once one of them. They are the ones that would rather take one more drink than put down the bottle and be sober. They are the ones that are addicted to pain pills. They are the ones that live to go to work and burn themselves out on their jobs and responsibilities. They are the ones that eat food nonstop or refuse to eat anything at all. They are the ones that would rather watch television for six hours at night than be social. They are the ones that seek out new sexual partners every weekend. They are the ones that exercise constantly to get a better body, but forget a healthy body is meant to be lived in. They are the ones who fill themselves with duties and jobs and social activities to forget about their misery.

I once read that when a terrible plague came to ancient Athens, people there committed every horrible crime and engaged in every lustful pleasure they could because they believed that life was short, and they would never have to pay any penalty. In one of the world's most famous poems, the Latin poet Catullus wrote, "Let us live and let us love, and let us value the tales of austere old men at a single halfpenny. Suns can set and then return again, but for us, when once our brief light sets, there is but one perpetual night through which we must sleep."

This is life lived without hope. The only satisfaction to be gained is through earthly pleasures. There is no hope, there is no life and there is no real happiness. These people’s lives are empty and they use these means: pills, jobs, social activities, food, sex, and alcohol to fill the empty voids in their lives. They are searching for home, a place they can feel completely comfortable and it’s okay to be who they are, whoever that may be.  Paul tells us in this passage that each of us has at one time (or perhaps may still be) lost in the passions of the flesh.

But the story doesn’t end there. There is a place to feel alive and whole. There is a world that accepts the person you are and wants to help you become the person you’ve always wanted to be. The fulfilling of our self starts with accepting Jesus Christ. It begins there, but it doesn’t end with just acceptance of Christ. It also includes the acceptance of whom we were and who we will now become as Children of God.

You see, the radical gospel of grace as it is found throughout Scripture, has always had its critics. An older gentleman once told me that by trusting in God's justifying and preserving grace, I would end up living a life of sin before long - and thus, lose my salvation and be consigned to hell. Paul anticipated that reaction from the religious community of his own day after he said, "Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more".

So he asked the question he expected us to ask: "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Should we sin so that we can receive more grace? In other words, "If people believed what you just said in Romans 5, Paul, wouldn't they take advantage of the situation and live like the dickens, knowing they were 'safe and secure from all alarm'?"

That's a fair question. But it reveals a basic misunderstanding of the nature of God's saving grace. Paul's response is unmistakable: "Certainly not? How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?".

Someone confronted Martin Luther, upon the Reformer's rediscovery of the biblical doctrine of justification, with the remark, "If this is true, a person could simply live as he pleased!" "Indeed!" answered Luther. "Now, what pleases you?"

Because we have misunderstood one of the gospel's most basic themes, Martin Luther's statement looks to many like a license to indulge one's sinful nature, but in reality it touches upon the motivation the Christian has for his actions. The person who has been justified by God's grace has a new, higher, and nobler motivation for holiness than the shallow, hypocritical self-righteousness or fear that seems to motivate so many religious people today.

If we want to escape a zombie like existence, faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to live. Faith in Jesus, who trusted God implicitly, creates a life of salvation. It is a life that requires sacrifice, but most Christians have found that the sacrifices are worth it because God blesses our every good deed. Sometimes it is in ways we can quantitatively hold onto, and in other ways we are blessed with a richer spirit, a happier home, and a more peaceful existence.

Peace and happiness have nothing to do with our physical well-being. If it did, those I have previously mentioned would be gloriously happy as they submit their will to all their fleshly pleasures. But they aren’t happy deep down. They are lost and many of them are deeply afraid of life. Christians do not live without problems or illnesses, but the peace we have comes from God. It is a happiness that resides and is directly given by Jesus Christ in what he did for us on that cross.

We are saved through faith in Jesus Christ. That means, no matter what the world throws at us, no matter what pain we experience now, God can and will make it right. Our physical death is merely the end of one chapter to our new life in Christ. What that means for all of us that were once dead, is that the world has no hold on us anymore. Sure, we can experience brief pleasure in that triple chocolate sundae with sprinkles or going out on the town and getting drunk, but these are momentary, fleeting, and empty pleasures.

The true gift, the true pleasure in a Christian’s life is that no matter what today holds, we know our tomorrow rests in God’s hands. We are loved; we are forgiven for our sinful ways; and we are saved. Praise be to God: Father, Son and Spirit!

Amen.

Foolishness and Weakness

Psalm 19: 7-14
1Cor1: 18-25

Have you ever tried to explain your faith to an atheist? Which part is harder, when you describe how God became a human only to allow himself to die on a cross to save all of humanity, or when you try to describe the Trinity which has puzzled most Christians let alone non-Christians?

Christianity, especially our faith in the saving grace of the cross, appears to be utterly foolish to those who do not believe. But Paul tells us that to those who are being saved, the cross of Christ is God’s power being shown to the world. We are left to wonder how to explain that in a moment of nonviolent self-giving, God created the most powerful moment in history by allowing his Son to die on a cross.

The cross is a symbol of death the way the electric chair is today. For Christians, this part of our faith is the most puzzling which is perhaps why it is so hard to explain it to others. It could be why we have such a hard time articulating our faith the way God has asked us to do.

When Jesus is betrayed at Gethsemane, some of the disciples pull their swords, ready and willing to fight for Jesus even to their death. But Jesus tells them to put their swords away because if he wanted, he could call down legions of angels to defeat these people and save him from their plans. Instead, Jesus willingly walks with them to the synagogue to be convicted. Then, when no two people could come forward with the same testimony, it is Jesus himself that gives damning testimony by proclaiming that he is the Messiah, and claiming a kinship to God when he says, “I am.” which is the name of God and considered a great blasphemy by the Jews.

Jesus gives himself to the people. The people do not see the Messiah they want, the Messiah they think they need and so they cry out to crucify him. Are we any different?

We often will pray for the things we think we need or for God to make certain things happen the way we want them too. We imagine God to be like us instead of wondering if we should be more like God. We wonder where God is when we need Him, but we never ask God what He is up to. We look around and see all the bad things in the world and think to ourselves that God has abandoned us, but we never look at our own two hands and wonder what we could do in the name of Christ to make the world different.

The scripture we read today is about the people in Corinth who have gotten caught up in trying to live and save their selves. They forgot Paul’s message that the only way to live is to die and the only way to be saved is through Jesus Christ. It’s a message today’s church often forgets as well. It’s one we don’t like to broadcast too much because it’s really hard to explain how death can allow a person to live. We also have a hard time explaining to the rest of society that believes in freedom of religion that in Jesus Christ we will know salvation.

How do we navigate these roads? With humility and the Holy Spirit guiding the way.

What Paul is trying to get through to the church in Corinth and to us reading today is that all of life leads us to one place – death. Every living thing will someday die. It is an inescapable fact of life. However, Paul tells us that in the death of Jesus on the cross, the way he sacrificed his body and soul, the way he emptied himself for humanity – we have been given a way to live beyond the death of our bodies.

In and with Christ, we will live beyond the death of our mortal self. God brings us into his relationship with His Son because of what Jesus willingly did for us two thousand years ago. Jesus appeared weak to the Jews and the Romans, but it is through his willing weakness that God’s power has changed our lives.

This is what we struggle to express to the world - how the weakness of God is stronger than our greatest strength, and how the foolishness of God is wiser than our wisest person.

It makes no sense, it holds no logic that can be easily explained or expressed. We are left with a bunch of nonsensical words to explain why we believe that through a man who is also God, we have been given the gift of eternal life. But even more than that, we have been given a chance to make our lives new and better NOW rather than waiting until the day we die.

You see, the real gift of Christ when he died on that cross is that we are continually being saved from ourselves and our own sinfulness. The truth is that we are part of the group that is perishing even as we are part of the group that is being saved. We are sinful, which creates death. We are forgiven through Christ, which creates life. So we seesaw back and forth, and each time we ask for forgiveness for the sinful things we have done, we are given a new chance to reform our lives. We are given a new chance to change and be better and happier than we were before.

It’s why it is so important to share this Good News. Every person needs to know that they have a chance to live a better life NOW rather than later. Every person should be given the chance to change their life for the good. It is not just non-Christians that need to know this, it is Christians too. There are too many people who call themselves Christian and do not know that God continually saves us from ourselves. There are too many of us who have forgotten what it means to take up our cross and deny our own wants.

Jesus challenges all of our misconceptions and presumptions. Jesus, who could have walked away from the pain, the humiliation, and the torture, challenges us to stay and fight too. Jesus fought by willingly walking to his death. As a church, as a society, as an individual – what are we fighting for in the name of Christ? What are we doing that shows we are not afraid of death or humiliation? What are we doing to show that we have taken up our cross and we are following in Christ’s footsteps?

Amen.

Faith Enough

Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16
Mark 8:31-38

Peter has always been my favorite disciple. John may have been Jesus’, but Peter is mine because of how the Gospels portray him as very human and flawed. In the previous passage in Mark that we didn’t read today, Jesus asks the disciples who they say he is and Peter promptly replies, “The Messiah.” He earned instant approval from Jesus even as he tells them to not speak of this to anyone.

There was a two-fold reason for Jesus to request for them to not say that he was the Messiah. The first is that Jesus has never been about telling people how to think and what to do; he shows them through example, and through parables. The second reason he does not want them to repeat this is because Jesus still has a lot to teach his disciples about what it means to be the Messiah.

As some of you may be aware, the Jewish people understood the Messiah to be the one who would vindicate them. The Messiah would desecrate the Roman army and sit on the throne that the Caesar now sits on and once again rule the Jews like the kings of old. They held tight to the idea that the Messiah would come from King David’s lineage. Peter and the eleven other disciples were no different in their expectations. They too wanted to be free from tyranny.

The passage we read today is where Jesus shows them a different side to what being the Messiah is all about. He speaks of humiliation and contempt, of beatings and death. Immediately, the disciples’ minds closed down, their ears could hear no more. It is doubtful they even heard let alone understood what Jesus meant by “and then in three days he would rise again”. All they could hear is that the blessed Messiah, the one they had all waited for was not talking about becoming king; he was talking about becoming a laughingstock that would be killed!

The shock and fear that must have coursed through Peter is unimaginable. In a fit of anger and frustration, he pulls aside the man he has just named Messiah and begins to yell at him. Peter tells Jesus that he has it all wrong. This is NOT the way it is supposed to go down. Jesus is supposed to amass an army and take down the Romans and get his hands on the crown. Jesus isn’t supposed to DIE and on a CROSS – the worst and most humiliating death a person could suffer.

But just as Jesus told Satan no in the wilderness, when he hears the voice of Satan in Peter’s words he tells him to “Get behind me! You do not have your mind on the concerns of God, but of human ones.”

Then, to make things worse, Jesus tells the disciples and the crowd following them that they too will have to take up their cross to be true followers of him. He tells them they must deny their own wants and needs and follow Jesus even unto death. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that with those words, some or many of Jesus’ crowd of followers began to slowly drift away.

It’s one thing when Jesus is speaking of love and acceptance and forgiveness. When Jesus heals the sick and comforts the injured and lame, but when he begins to speak these radical ideas of death and suffering in the name of God, that is a whole new story and one that many do not want to hear. It is one that we often do not want to hear.

Our favorite part of Easter is Easter morning. Some will deny it, but most will freely admit it. We like the hymns of praise and glory hallelujahs. We enjoy the scent of lilies in the sanctuary and the children singing contemporary praise songs. We like shouting HE IS RISEN much better than we like solemnly declaring on Good Friday that Jesus is dead. It’s human nature to gravitate more toward the happy news than the sad news.

But Lent is a season of reflection. Lent is the time when we take stock of our lives, of our very souls and denounce them as unclean and unfit for Jesus. Or at least we should. Sometimes Christian churches concentrate too much on the empty cross of the Risen Jesus rather than the cross upon which hangs the torn and bloody body of our dead Savior. We need to remember both during Lent and Easter.

Yes, the Good News is that Jesus beat death and so can we. But the news we really need to know is that if we are to be true followers of our Lord and Savior, then we will be willing to follow where the Lord leads us, even if it is to a place of sorrow, despair, or even death.

Jesus’ life on earth wasn’t a very pleasant one. Jesus didn’t seek out the rich and famous to hang out with. He didn’t seem to be very interested in collecting money or clothes or anything else of material wealth. Why do so many of us think that Jesus wants us to only be happy, to only have the best of everything and to never know a day of pain?

Is that what Jesus truly wants for us? Have we become so blinded by our possessions that we truly believe the idea that prosperity should be ours because we believe in Christ? How arrogant. How wrong we would be.

What does Jesus want from us? The very same things he wanted from his disciples. “Take up your cross and follow me. Do not be ashamed of me and I will not be ashamed of you.”

Are we listening? Perhaps a man named G.A. Studdert-Kennedy who wrote a poem in the early 20^th century called Indifference can shed some light on if we are listening or not. It says:

When Jesus came to Golgotha,
They hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands
and feet, And made a Calvary.
They crowned Him with a crown of
thorns, Red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days,
And human flesh was cheap!

When Jesus came to Washington
They simply passed Him by,
They never hurt a hair of Him,
They only let Him die;
For men have grown more tender,
And they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street,
And left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, "Forgive them,
For they know not what they do!"
And still it rained the winter rain
That drenched Him through and through;
The crowd went home and left the streets,
Without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall
And cried for Calvary.

Amen.