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.

Lessons Learned Through Noah

Genesis 9: 8-17
1 Peter 3: 18-22

We often consider Noah’s story to be one for children. We decorate our nurseries with little arks and cute animals and rainbows. We have the Sunday school kids put on plays featuring Noah and the animals and we have the preschool kids draw pictures of it. But not too often do we think about what we adults can learn about life and God through Noah’s story. Well, I came across ten life lessons that come straight from reading Noah’s story that I want to share with all of you.

 Lesson # 1 : Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark. Noah acted on faith, building the ark long before the rain started. You need to look into the future and plan for it.

This lesson is probably one of the hardest because it requires a delicate balance. God often reminds us not to look too close to the past, but also warns us to not concentrate too heavily on the future which leaves us with the present. This first life lesson requires a lot of faith from us. Jesus reminds us that we have been given a precious gift because God has made it possible through Jesus for all of us to enter into heaven.

And although it is a gift freely given, it still requires a faith response from us. That response of faith is important to how we deal with all that life throws at us. We can more easily deal with the present when we have our eye on the prize of eternal salvation with God. When we remember that it is only through God that we have or receiving anything, it is a lot easier to give up the reigns of control to Him.

 Lesson # 2 : Don’t listen to your critics. Listen instead to your heart, and then do whatever has to be done. The neighbors might have taunted when Noah was blocking their driveway — but he had the last laugh as soon as the rain began falling!

Sometimes our critics will be our family and friends. They won’t always understand what God requires from you to be a faithful Christian. Noah could have let himself be disheartened by all the criticism and laughter, but instead he chose to ignore the naysayers and instead to only listen to God’s voice.

Lesson # 3 : Stay physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally fit. You never know, maybe when you’re 600 years old, someone might come along out of the blue and ask you to do something REALLY big!

While not many people will make it to 600 years old, this is a good point. You’re never too old or too young to learn something new. You may have read the bible a hundred times, but there is always something in there that you will have never noticed before. Perhaps it took a new experience for the scripture to come to life, but that is the beauty of the Bible – as we grow, so does it.

Lesson # 4 : Don’t seek to go it alone. Always travel, at least, in pairs, because two heads are better than one.

There are many times when our pride tells us that we can do this on our own. We don’t need anyone else to tell us what to do. There are times when we are sure of where we should go and what needs to be done. So when someone new comes along and tries to change things, we resist with all we have. Through Noah, God reminds us that he made Adam AND Eve because the only way to live life is through shared experiences with others. We all need companions and friends. It doesn’t have to be a spouse, but we need other people to lean on both in good times and bad.

Lesson # 5 : Speed is not always an advantage. The cheetahs were on board, but so were the snails; and they all arrived safely on dry ground at the very same time.

This is probably the second hardest lesson for people in the 21^st century. We live in a world of NOW. We want the fastest cars, the fastest food service, the fastest coffee makers, the fastest computers and cell phones. Waiting for anything has become anathema to most people.

We used to have a saying that some things are worth the wait. Most people no longer believe that. We have furniture that has been made in twelve seconds instead of handcrafted in twelve months and instead of lasting generations, they barely last a few years. We have cheap electronics that break when we sneeze on them. Everything from our washers and dryers to our cars are made to NOT last when it used to be that things were made to last a lifetime.

What do we get by hurrying life up? Let’s see: How many of us have heartburn nightly from the fast food and stress? How many of us have tension headaches and migraines every month? How many of us have high blood pressure and have to take pills to keep from having a stroke?

Lesson # 6 : Handle Conflict with certainty. If you can’t fight or flee from adversity — at least make certain you have an idea that can float in the battlefield of ideas!

Noah wanted to both fight God and flee from this task he had been assigned. There are many tasks both in our lives and in the church we would like to flee or fight. One of mine is picking hymns. If I had my way, I’d pick the same six songs and play them every other week to avoid the looks Ms. Cleo gives me when I introduce a new song with a bad tune. But I know that we have enough musical talent in this church to handle a bad song or two because that isn’t really what is important about our Sunday worship. What is important is that we have worshiped God and hopefully leave uplifted by His presence in our lives.

Lesson # 7 : Don’t miss the boat! Never forget this underlying truth: that ultimately when all is said and done, we’re all in the same boat!

It’s easy to get caught up in life and forget about God. It’s easy to forget about what it means to be a Christian when everything and everyone around us seems to have forgotten too. But at the end of our lives, we are all going to face one surety – death. And after our death we will meet our Maker. How will we look God in the eye and say, “I forgot to get into the boat because I was busy with my business.” or “I didn’t get in because no one else did.” Or “I got wrapped up in taking care of my children and my job and forgot what time we were to board the boat.” These excuses will seem shallow then because they are shallow now.

Lesson # 8 : Don’t rely much on the experts. Remember that amateurs built the ark while professionals built the Titanic and the Challenger Space Shuttle.

You may not have a PHD in rocket science, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have something to offer the world. Everything you have gone through in your life has taught you something. It’s amazing what a little bit of your life experience could teach a young teenager just starting out. So perhaps instead of leaving it to the experts who often get it wrong because they are concentrating on only one viewpoint, maybe it is time for you to step up and offer your valuable knowledge to this church and the other areas of your life.

Lesson # 9 : Fear is nothing more than “False Evidence Appearing Real”. The woodpeckers on the INSIDE are often a bigger threat to your overall well being than the storms raging on the outside.

Jesus never had a lot of patience with fear. He allowed people to have doubts, but every time someone was fearful in the gospels, he rebuked them. Fear paralyzes. Fear stops potential things from become reality. Our self doubts and worries cause us more damage than the things we are actually afraid of happening. Perhaps you fear looking a fool if you try to teach Sunday school. I know I felt that way when I started with Confirmation class, something I had never taught before.

Those children soak up everything I give them. Some days it’s really good stuff. Other days, it’s not. But that class that I was so dreading at the beginning of the year has become one of my favorite things about being a pastor here at Trinity. Perhaps your fear will become your greatest treasure as well.

Lesson # 10 : Remain faithful and optimistic. No matter how bleak things look, if God is traveling with you, there’s always going to be a rainbow of peace on the other side of the storm.

None of these lessons are easy, but they all come with one important guarantee. God is with you. You are not alone. If you mess up, then try again. Because at the end of your life, there is a rainbow waiting for you that offers ultimate peace and happiness for all that you have suffered while trying to live a good, Christian life. However, if you never try, if you never have faith in what sometimes seems impossible and improbable, then all you are left with is regrets. That is no life to live. There’s no afterlife in that either.     

Amen.

Wash and Be Cleansed

2 kings 5: 1-14
Mark 1: 40-45

Who are you? The answer you give depends on what is important to you at this point in your life. The answer to the question changes with what takes up the largest part of our life at the moment it is asked. Perhaps you have just finished your degree and consider yourself a graduate. Perhaps you have just retired from your job and consider yourself permanently on vacation. Perhaps you just had a baby and consider yourself a mother or father. Or maybe you had a grandchild and your mind is on being a grandparent. We also define ourselves by the things that have been part of our lives the longest such as our careers, our family, and our hometown.

For the man in the book of Mark, when asked who he is, his answer would have been, “An outcast, a man with leprosy, a nobody.” Because of Jewish purity laws, a person with any kind of disease or infirmity was cast out of the town and out of the synagogue. They were no longer allowed to mix with those who were clean in case they contaminated them.

Logically, this makes perfect sense. If someone has a cold, we want them to stay away from us. I don’t want them sneezing or coughing by me because I don’t want their cold. If we know someone has something contagious or a disease or condition that could be dangerous to OUR well-being, our first instinct is to ostracize them. We do not want them in our presence so that we will not suffer as well.

Do you remember 25 years ago when HIV/AIDs became really well known? Remember how afraid everyone was of the disease? Anyone who contacted the disease was no longer welcome in their friends and families homes. They often lost their job if it became known they had it. Getting medical and health benefits while having such a disease was an uphill battle with very little luck of actually getting the help they needed. No one wanted to touch them, to sit by them, to breathe the same air as anyone with HIV or AIDs.

There are some people who still feel this way because they are not educated on how the disease is contracted and how it is spread. Thankfully, educating people became the number one defense in helping people with HIV/AIDs to get back the rights that were taken from them out of fear and ignorance. Unfortunately for those who lived 2000 years ago, they did not have the same chance.

Once you were pronounced unclean from whatever condition you had it was really hard to get accepted back into society. No one wanted that person near them because they did not want to be outcasts either. Once again, we see Jesus breaking all the rules of proper society to right a wrong.

The man with leprosy comes up to Jesus and falls to his knees. This man has no pride left. He has lost everything and pride is a poor substitute for clothing, food, and family. There he is on his knees before Jesus, breaking the rules by being in the presence of someone clean, and he begs Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

This man is not just asking for Jesus to heal him of his skin condition. He is asking Jesus for his life back - his family, his children, his friends. He is asking for the right to walk down the street and not have people shun him. He is asking for the right to be able to get a job and pay for a roof over his head and food for his belly. He is asking for the right to be an active and participating member of society, one who can once again walk into the synagogue and worship God without having people spit and hiss and run from him.

Different bibles translate the next line in various ways. This one says Jesus was indignant. Some say Jesus was angry, or it has been translated Jesus was moved with compassion or Jesus had mercy upon him. Compassion and mercy sound like Jesus, don’t they? But the idea of Jesus angry or indignant is much more interesting because of how human it sounds to our ears.

What was Jesus indignant or angry about? Was it this man who has broken the cleanliness law? Is it the question the man asks, as if Jesus would be unwilling? Is Jesus mad at the situation, the social injustice that is before him in the presence of a man ostracized from his community because of a skin condition? Is Jesus mad and indignant because even though he does have compassion upon the man, even though he is about to show him mercy, soon their roles will reverse.

What happens here is a reversal of fortunes. Jesus tells the man, “I am willing. Be clean!” but before he says these words he reaches out and TOUCHES the man. This was expressly forbidden. Jesus has now broken the purity laws by touching someone considered unclean. This makes Jesus unclean. But Jesus does more than that when he touches the man. Jesus offers himself, his presence and his comfort in the form of his hand upon the man. Who knows how long this man has gone untouched by everyone, even the other outcasts. No one but someone who has been relegated to the outside of their community would understand what this felt like to the man.

Here was Jesus, powerful and authoritative, looking the man in the eye, speaking with him as a human being and then touching him as an equal. This is the first sign of respect shown to the man with leprosy in what we can imagine was a long time. Respect. Jesus respects human beings and their feelings. God respects who we are and what we are.

Once the man is cleansed, Jesus tells the man to go to the priests so that they can declare him a part of society once more. Jesus tells the man to not tell anyone what he has done, but the man cannot remain silent. He has witnessed a miracle, one that has changed his life forever. There was no keeping silent on this! His joy knew no bounds and he became a messenger – one that spread Jesus’ goodness far and wide.

However, the result of his disobedience is that now Jesus has become the outcast. He could no longer enter a town openly, but had to stay in lonely places. Jesus gave the man his position and power in that one moment when he touched him, and Jesus took the man’s place as an outcast in society.

It gives me shivers to think about this. Jesus loves us all so much that he takes our place, takes our suffering as his own. Whatever is going on in our lives; the good, the bad, the ugly – Jesus walks it with us. Helps us through by shouldering the burdens for us. Sometimes we ask people, “if you could do it differently, knowing now what you didn’t know then, would you?” Jesus’ answer would be “No, I wouldn’t do it differently”. We all know it. Jesus would give up his place for us any time we ask.

The man said, “If you are willing..” Jesus, moved with compassion for the man’s situation, angered at the injustice perpetrated upon the man, indignant that the man even had to ask the question – gives his place to him without looking back. And if you think Jesus wouldn’t do the same exact thing for you, then you’re wrong.

Jesus proved that when he willingly went to the cross for you. He refused to defend himself, refused to call upon the angels or His Father in heaven for help. He allowed himself, one totally pure and clean from life’s sinfulness, to take our place, to take our punishment. Jesus loves you that much. Jesus respects the person you are that much.

Now, how much do you love and respect Jesus? Jesus swapped places with us. That means he took our punishment so that we could have his reward. We now stand at God’s side because that is where Jesus belongs. We now have God’s ear because Jesus does. We now have eternal life because Jesus does.

But do you act like you are always in God’s presence? I wonder what it will take to make us change our ways and see that God is not up in heaven waiting to judge us, but is by our side and helping us through each and every moment of our lives.

Amen.

Why He Came

Isaiah 40:21-31
Mark 1: 29-39

Is it any wonder that we have doubts and disbeliefs? Is it any wonder the population of atheists continues to grow? Jesus is so confusing! God refuses to do what we expect God to do and it confuses us to no end. This passage in Mark is another great example of Jesus refusing to do what his disciples expect, what we expect of him.

Last week we talked about fears and how change exacerbates our fears of the unknown. Jesus is completely unknown to these people that he is meeting, and the disciples have only just met him as well. But even as the disciples begin to know more about Jesus’ character, he still continually surprises them. Jesus continues to surprise us to this day.

In the beginning of this passage we see them leaving the temple where Jesus just taught with authority and performed an exorcism. Now they head to Simon’s home where they find his mother in law ill and in bed. Already knowing how compassionate and powerful Jesus is the disciples turn to him and he immediately goes to the woman. What is interesting in this passage is that Jesus does not pray or perform some ritual to heal Simon’s mother in law. He touches her.

Jesus takes her hand and helps her get up out of bed. The passage does not say so, but we can tell that by Jesus’ touch alone, the fever is taken from the woman and she immediately begins to go about her daily work.

No one in that house expected Jesus to be that powerful. They really didn’t know much about him at all yet, but when Simon saw his mother in law was ill he hoped that Jesus could do something to ease her burden.

I doubt they expected such an instantaneous healing. Although they lived in a time where magic and miracles were much more easily accepted, they didn’t see that many miracles. When someone proclaimed to be a healer they usually had gods they prayed to, tonics that had to be given, and sacrifices were made. It took time and effort, and more often than not the person was not healed.

Then along comes Jesus whose mere touch can bring relief from pain, illness and disease. The word spread quickly and everyone with any kind of affliction came to him. He healed their sicknesses and he drove out the demons that plagued their lives. Then the next morning he went to pray and when his four disciples found him they said, “Everyone is looking for you!” and instead of immediately going to the people searching for him, Jesus tells them it is time to move on.

Every week I stand up here and tell you that Jesus has the power to change your life for the better. Some of you believe that and others of you don’t.

You’re not alone. Anyone who tries to say they have never doubted the existence of God or doubted that God cares about THEM – is probably lying. God does things in such a unique way that we can never figure out what is coming next. Sometimes God’s plan does not make any sense to us at all.

There was a professor on the philosophy of religion who used to ask us if God was all powerful and all benevolent, why did he let 40,000 children die every day from hunger and mal-nutrition. At the time I did not know how to answer. I do now. Why is it that America throws out 40,000 people’s worth of food every single day and yet we feel no guilt that children go hungry? We have two hands and two feet – we need to learn to use them and not blame God.

Yesterday I learned that a good friend of mine’s brother died. It wasn’t really unexpected since he had been desperately sick with cancer. The saddest part of it is that his mother died two years ago when his father accidentally ran her over and then a year ago, his other brother died unexpectedly. Now all that is left of the family from two years ago is a father and a son filled with grief. It is so much loss to endure in such a short period of time. What is God thinking? Why would God allow this family to suffer so much? What GOOD can come of such a terrible situation?

Isaiah tries to give us some answers to these questions. He reminds us that God is so powerful that we are merely grasshoppers in comparison. Tiny brains with tiny bodies and not a lot of power to affect change in the world. No sooner have we made something of ourselves than we die off from old age. But God has existed much longer and will continue to exist long past our short lives. Isaiah tells us that although we will never understand God’s plans, God never leaves us alone. He will strengthen the weary and bring surety to those who stumble because God never gets tired or stumbles in his purpose.

When we try to make sense of God we will only end up more confused. It doesn’t mean we have to have blind faith because those who are blindly faithful often fall farthest from God’s truth. It means that questions are a good thing. Questions help us reason things out and make sense of a senseless world. I’ll probably never know why my friend’s family suffered so much in such a short period of time, but I know God knows why. I know that whether I understand or not, isn’t what is important. We put too much importance on knowledge and reason and understanding and not enough on acceptance.

When my professor told us that statistic, I really struggled with it. I couldn’t understand why God would allow it to happen. It took me a long time to accept I didn’t understand and once I did – that is when other things became more clear. For example, the world produces enough food to feed every person on the planet, except some nations have hogged the food supply. America is one of those nations. Why do 40,000 children die EVERY DAY from hunger? Partly, because of us.

I accept there will be some things I will never know about God and the world and life. We all need to accept that the past can never be changed, but the future holds infinite possibilities if we’re willing to be open to them. Jesus took twelve men from small fishing villages and opened up a whole new life for them. They saw and did things none of them would ever have imagined before Jesus came into their life. Jesus was the unexpected surprise that changed the whole world.

God gives each of us the ability to have the same miraculous change. It starts with accepting what sane people doubt. It starts with understanding that you will never understand completely. It starts with throwing reason and caution and logic out the window because logic will never get us into God’s head. The only way to know God is to know Jesus, and I promise Jesus will keep on surprising you for the rest of your life if you never stop searching for him. Where Jesus is at, what Jesus is doing, is not what we would expect.

Jesus is on death row with the triple homicide prisoner. Jesus is on the corner with the prostitute who has an STD. Jesus is with the teenager who just had an abortion. Jesus is with the one person you dislike most in your life. It doesn’t make sense. It has no reason or logic to it, but then God never said we grasshoppers needed to understand. We just need to believe and accept.

 Amen.

The Days are Short

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

1 Corinthians 7: 29-31


Both of our passages hold the same message, but it is directed at two very different types of people. Jonah was telling a bunch of sinners that God was about to destroy their city and all of them with it. He proclaimed, “You have only forty more days before God destroys Nineveh!” Oh yes, the days were short for those wicked, evil people. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians the same message but it is to a new church who is struggling to do what is right rather than what is wrong. Paul offers them encouragement by telling them that the days are short until Jesus comes back and so therefore they need to be prepared in mind, body, and soul for that moment.

There was a boy named Greg who was 17 years old and couldn’t have been more satisfied with the way his life was shaping up. He was on the high school football team and was one of the most popular boys in school with a cheerleader for his girlfriend, and a scholarship to go to college. But Greg had been getting headaches for several months. Vicious headaches that left him tired and weak. He had also noticed that his throat seemed to be constantly getting sore as if his lymph nodes were always swollen. But being almost a man and a big hero at the school, Greg didn’t worry about these things. He fought through it and ignored all of his symptoms, never telling anyone what was going on.

Until the day he got hit by a linebacker and got a concussion. At the hospital they did a full work up of tests and as they were doing the head scan something alerted the doctors that all was not right. After a lot more tests a doctor came in to tell Greg and his family that Greg had what appeared to be a malignant brain tumor that had spread to his lymphatic system. Greg was going to die and he was only 17 years old.

Life takes on a whole new meaning when the days are short. All of a sudden, the things that seemed so important no longer have meaning. The things that we always put off for another day are suddenly imperative that we do now. The little arguments that we got into at the water cooler all of a sudden seem childish and wasteful. Every moment spent with our family and loved ones becomes very precious. The world becomes a brighter place, and it becomes a darker one as well.

What happened to Greg rarely happens to the rest of us. Not many of us know when we will die. We live our lives happily not knowing and we take for granted the amount of time we are given. The two passages before us today are meant to jolt us back to reality. They are meant to remind us that life is about more than the routines we fall into, the comfortable feelings we have with our life, our family, and our job. When a person is told, “Your days are numbered” then each one becomes a precious gift.

The first churches understood that gift. They looked forward to Jesus coming back at any moment. They did not want to cling to the world and its ways, they clung to God and Jesus’ ways. None of us know the day or the hour when Christ is to come, all we know is that like the Corinthians Paul advised, we need to be ready for him. We need to be looking for Jesus. We need to be living as if Jesus is already here.

The people from Nineveh were a corrupted people. They had lost sight of God’s glory and power. They had accepted the world into their hearts instead of God. They were okay with murder and mayhem. They were okay with prostitution and abuse. They were okay with greed and poverty. They told themselves it was not their problem, they were required to take care of their own and the rest of the city could take care of itself. Does this sound familiar?

How many of us turn on the news at night and listen to the stories of violence with half an ear and a hardened heart? How many of us open up our newspapers and learn about a corrupt official, a fire that left a family homeless, or how twenty people lost their jobs and we read on without a thought, worry, or care? Sometimes if we read something truly horrific like a mother throwing her baby in a dryer we will pause a moment and be sad. We might even say a small prayer for the baby’s life, but it isn’t long before it is gone from our minds. We have enough to worry about after all. We can’t let the world’s problems bring us down.

Greg happened to feel the same way. It wasn’t until he faced death that he realized how out of balance the world was and how far removed he was from that world. It wasn’t until he heard someone tell him, “Your days are short” that he understood how far removed he was from God and what God wanted for his life.

It’s the question we stop asking. We grow so comfortable with who we are and what we are, we grow comfortable with the indecency and inhumanity prevalent throughout the world that we stop questioning. We stop wondering. We lose our hope and we lose our wonder. We forget to ask, “Jesus where are you? God what do you want for my life? Holy Spirit, who are you bringing into my life?”

We have the ability to make real changes with what we have right here and right now. Each of us has the ability to change a little bit of the world around us. Last weekend I was sad about some things that I couldn’t change or help and instead of hiding my head, I decided to do something. I went out and gave blood because I hadn’t given in awhile. This time of year, the blood supply drops dangerously low. I made a difference to three different people by giving an hour out of my Saturday. There are other things we can do to make a difference.

When you see someone that looks lonely, talk to them. When you see someone who looks hungry, buy them a meal. When you hear about a mission trip, go on it. They are small things. Some would say they make no difference at all. However, if we ALL did these things, what would the world be like? How different would it be if every time we saw a hungry person, we fed them? How different would the world be if when we saw someone that needs a shoulder to cry on, we offered it?

I’m telling you now that whether you live for five more days or fifty more years, your days are short. All you have been given has been given for a reason. Look around you, start asking the hard questions, and figure out what Jesus is up to. Figure out what God wants for you and for your family. It is never too late. Just ask Nineveh. When they heard Jonah’s message, from the oldest to the youngest they repented their ways and God saw, and God forgave them. It is never too late to make a change unless you wait until there are no more days left to you.

Amen.