That’s a Lot of Fish

February 9, 2025

            In 1986 there was a severe drought in Israel.  The level of water in the Sea of Galilee became quite low and a significant portion of the shoreline, normally underwater, was exposed.  Two brothers who were avid amateur archaeologists were walking along the newly exposed shoreline looking for antiquities when they found first a few gold coins, then a few ancient nails, and then the oval outline of what proved to be a boat, buried in the mud: an intact boat.  The Israeli Department of Antiquities was contacted and after working around the clock for 11 days, the boat was excavated.  A combination of carbon dating and examination of a pottery oil lamp that was on board the boat dated the construction of the boat to 40 BCE, plus or minus 80 years.  So, this boat could very possibly have been in use during the time of Jesus, and it does appear to have been a fishing boat, not at all unlike the one in our story today. 

            The recovered boat is 26 ½ feet long, 7 ½ feet wide, and 4 ½ feet high.  The boat had seats, a small deck in the front and back of the boat, and at one time, it had a mast, so the boat could have been sailed or rowed.  During the first century, fishing boats such as these would have carried a crew of five.  The boat had enough room to hold up to 15 people or had the capacity to carry more than a ton of cargo.  Hold that thought because this fact will become important later.

            Our story today tells us that Simon (Whose name Jesus has not yet changed to Peter), along with James, and John were at the shore of the Sea of Galilee with their crews and their boats.  (And to avoid confusion, I am going to call Simon “Peter” throughout my remarks today).  They had had a long night of fishing and had caught nothing and were in the process of cleaning their nets.  Now, first century fishing nets were made of linen.  The net would be held between two boats and since fishing was best in shallow water, the nets would drag on the bottom of the lake.  And so, these nets would pick up rocks, silt, and sticks that were in the water and since the fishing nets were the fishermen’s livelihood, they really had to be taken care of.  So immediately after fishing, the rocks and sticks would be removed, any tears would be repaired, and then the nets would be rinsed, hung out to dry, and then folded and put away for their next use.  It was a time-consuming process, but it had to be done before the fishermen could go home and get some rest after a long night’s work.

            On this particular day, Jesus had come down to the Sea of Galilee and a large crowd had followed Him.  Jesus was teaching the crowd, but as the crowd got larger and was pushing forward so they could hear His words, Jesus was being pushed towards the sea.  Peter’s boat was there, and so Jesus boarded Peter’s boat and asked Peter if he would move the boat just a little offshore so Jesus could speak to the gathered crowd.  There are places on the Sea of Galilee where the shore slopes steeply upward, creating a natural amphitheater.  Today a tour of the Holy Land can take you to one of these places where a speaking voice can be heard by a thousand people or more.  Jesus undoubtably took advantage of this phenomenon to allow His sermon to be heard by the crowd as He spoke

            The first really interesting thing about today’s story is the fact that Luke does not mention any of the content of Jesus’ sermon; we have no idea what He was talking about that day.  In today’s reading Luke is focused entirely on the interaction between Jesus and Peter.  Now, lest we think that Jesus and Peter are strangers, in Luke 4:38-39, before today’s story took place, Jesus had been a guest at Peter’s home and had healed Peter’s mother-in-law of a high fever, so they were already acquainted, and possibly already friends. 

            But you know how some friends can sometimes ask the most inopportune things?  Well, after He finished speaking, Jesus turned to Peter and asked him to take his boat out to the deep water and let down the nets.  I am certain that Peter had several problems with this request.  First of all, Peter, being a professional fisherman, knew that during the day the fish could see the nets and would just swim around them, and second, that fishing on the Sea of Galilee was always best in the shallow water, so what Jesus was asking him to do was actually kind of ridiculous.  In addition to that, they had just gone through the laborious process of cleaning, mending, washing, and drying their nets and if they put the nets back into the water again, they would have to go through that whole process of cleaning them again, meaning it would be even longer before they were able to get home and get some rest after a long and very unsuccessful night of fishing. 

            I would imagine that it was with a mixture of exasperation and resignation that Peter said to Jesus, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

            We all know what happened next.  They caught so many fish that the nets began to break.  Peter signaled to the other boat to join them to help gather together all of the fish that they caught, and the text tells us that they had so many fish that both boats began to sink.  Now, do you remember the thought that I asked you to hold on to about the fishing boats?  If the two of these boats were loaded so full that they began to sink, that means that they had just caught over two tons of fish.  That’s a lot of fish.

            Peter, the professional fisherman, recognized instantly that what had just happened was impossible.  Peter, who had already seen one miracle when Jesus healed his mother-in-law, now knew that he had seen a second one, and it was a doozy. 

            Since I began preaching last March, I have been using the Lectionary.  The Lectionary is a three-year cycle of weekly Bible readings designed to take you through all of the main themes of the Bible in those three years.  Each week there is usually an Old Testament lesson, a lesson from the Psalms, a Gospel lesson, and an epistle lesson.  The Lectionary readings do not always coordinate, but today they did.  In our Old Testament lesson today about the calling of Isaiah, when Isaiah was confronted with the holiness of God, Isaiah said, “Woe to me!  I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”  Isaiah was terrified. But after God reassured Isaiah, telling him not to be afraid, God asked Isaiah “Who shall I send?”  Isaiah’s response?  “Here am I, send me”. 

            When Peter was confronted with the holiness of God through Jesus’ miracle, Peter fell on his knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”  After Jesus reassured Peter, telling him not to be afraid, Jesus told Peter that from now on, Peter would fish for people.  Peter’s response?  Peter left everything behind to follow Jesus.  There seems to be a pattern here, don’t you think?  John Calvin said, “It is evident that [humans] never attain to a true self-knowledge until [they] have previously contemplated the face of God and come down after such contemplation to look into [themselves]. [1]  For Peter and Isaiah, as for us, the recognition of God’s holiness can cause us to view ourselves in an entirely different light. 

            The change in Peter was evident in how he chose to address Jesus.  Before the miracle, Peter referred to Jesus as Ἐπιστάτα (Epistata) which we translate “master” and means to stand over or to be set over; in other words, an overseer or someone in authority.  After the miracle, Peter refers to Jesus as Κύριε (Kyrie), “Lord”.  It is a word that recognizes the divine authority of Jesus.  Peter, having just seen the hand of God in Jesus’ miracle, left everything behind, and followed Jesus, just as Isaiah had done some 750 years earlier.  This is the step in faith that God is asking us to take also.  To set aside our feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy and to trust God implicitly that He will teach us, and lead us, and guide us.  Pritchard said, “I find it significant that Jesus seems in a sense to ignore Peter’s desperate confession of unworthiness. Jesus knows the truth about Peter, and he knew it all along. What matters is that Peter now knows the truth about himself. With his pride stripped away, he is now ready to serve the Lord.  [2] 

            And so, how do we fit into all of this?  Let me ask a question.  When Jesus asked Peter to do something that was, quite truly, a very foolish thing to ask, what would have happened if Peter had refused?  What if Peter explained to Jesus why His request was so foolish and then packed up his nets and went home?  Yes, God calls us, but His call requires a response from us as well.  Peter DID let down the nets, and then he walked away from a two-ton catch of fish.  This one catch alone was enough to make Peter and his associates financially comfortable.  But he put it all behind him in order to become a servant of God.  When Jesus said that He would make Peter a fisher of people, that was an understatement.  In Acts 2 Peter boldly gave a sermon on the streets of Jerusalem and on that day alone 3,000 people became followers of Jesus, 3,000!  Peter’s contributions to the church of Jesus Christ are pretty much immeasurable.  But none of that would ever have happened had Peter not said to Jesus “But because you say so, I will”.

            There is not a person in this room today, not a person joining us on Zoom today, who God hasn’t called.  Johnson tells us that, “Jesus calls Peter and his partners as they are. Peter is acutely aware of his unworthiness, but Jesus is not put off by this in the slightest. Jesus does not ask Peter to get his act together, his resume prepared and then come back for an interview. Rather, Jesus encounters him as he is, tells him not to be afraid, and calls him to a new mission of catching people.” [3]  God does not need for us to get our act together either.  He encounters us as we are, and He asks us to follow Him and to become His servants as well.  Pastor Brandon Moser says, “[God] didn’t call [us] because [we’re] perfect; He called [us] because He made [us] PERFECTLY for HIS purpose. [4]  God is ready and eager to prepare us to do His work because God understands that within each of us is the capacity to make contributions to the Church of Jesus Christ that are immeasurable.  Each of us has the capacity to touch the lives of others, each of us has the capacity to love others, to teach others, to touch others with the incredible Good News of the Gospel, and to make eternal differences in the lives of others.  This is that to which we are called.  And all of this is in our capacity to accomplish.  All it takes is for us to say, “Because you say so, I will.”

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[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 1:2

[2] Ray Pritchard, KeepBelieving.com, The Frustrated Fisherman

[3] Elizabeth Johnson, WorkingPreacher.org, Great Catch of Fish

[4] Brandon Moser, Facebook Post: January 28, 1:00 PM

No Prophet is Accepted in His Hometown

February 2, 2025

            Every now and then we find some things in the Old Testament that somehow never quite made their way into mainstream Jewish theology.  One of those things is the relationship between God and gentiles.  As far back as Genesis 12:3, the Bible tells us that when God called Abram, God told Abram that “All the people of the earth would be blessed through him”.  Not just the Jewish people, all people.  In Isaiah 42 Isaiah, speaking the words of God to His Messiah, says, “I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles”.  In fact, there are quite a few passages in the Hebrew Bible that speak of God’s plan to reconcile all people and nations to Himself.  And yet somehow, the idea of Israel being a people who would call all of the nations into a relationship with God never appears to have been a central tenant of Jewish theology.

            In actual practice, the first century Jews looked down upon the non-Jewish world as being heathens, idolaters, and sinners, but even beyond that, gentiles were considered to be morally and intellectually deficient because, as the Jewish faith reasoned, no rational person would choose to worship an idol over the one true God.  So great was the disdain in which non-Jews were held that the Jewish purity laws were full of prohibitions for contact with gentiles in all manner of situations.  There was, and still is, no Jewish effort to proselytize, or to seek converts.  It’s not that gentile converts to Judaism are unwelcome, but they are not encouraged.  In short, the first century Jews tended to have little to no dealings with gentiles, and the Bible does not record any large-scale efforts for the people of Israel to attempt to be “a light to the gentiles”. 

            In order for us to understand this mindset, it might be helpful for us to take a moment to talk about the Mitzvot, the list of 613 laws derived from the Torah, because it is in the Mitzvot that we find the command to the Jews not to associate with non-Jews.  The command in question is Mitzvot 12, which commands Jews “To be with those who only worship Him.”  That is the command.  Now, while each of the Mitzvot laws finds their source directly in the text of the Torah, many of these laws are rabbinic interpretations of their source text, and Mitzvot 12 is a great example of this.  Mitzvot 12 lists its source as Deuteronomy 10:20 the translation of which I quote directly from The Jewish Study Bible, “You must revere the Lord your God: only Him shall you worship, to Him shall you hold fast, and by His name shall you swear”.  It is the phrase “To Him you shall hold fast” that rabbinic thought has determined to mean that Jews are to keep company exclusively with people who share their Jewish religious practices and beliefs, and they are to avoid those who do not worship God according to the commands of the Torah. 

            The central thought here is one of strengthening faith through community, which isn’t a bad thought.  The only problem is, I can’t see how the rabbis reconcile this thought with the clearly stated Biblical idea that Israel is to act as a light to the gentiles.  One needs to consider how effective their witness will be when those to whom they are witnessing feel a palpable disdain towards them.  This command, rather than leading to an effective witness of God’s love for the world, led instead to a separatist mindset that viewed non-Jews as less than deserving of God’s love.  To understand this, we need look no further than an old Jewish saying that “gentiles are fuel for the fires of hell”.  Among the Jewish people of the first century there was an animosity towards the non-Jewish people that pretty much negated their witness.  And we need to understand this mindset today, because this Jewish aversion to gentiles is going to figure heavily in today’s reading.

            Our text today may actually be a little bit perplexing.  On first glance it appears that Jesus’ audience goes from speaking well of Him and being amazed at His gracious words, to intending to throw Him off a cliff, in a heartbeat.  How did this happen?  To understand this, we need to understand that there were conflicting thoughts about Jesus to begin with.  Though Luke lists this event as Jesus’ first sermon, the text tells us that Jesus has already been active in Capernaum and presumably performing miracles there.  So, first there is the anticipation that Jesus might entertain them with a miracle or two.  Second is the fact that the Israelites are deeply resentful of Roman rule, and that Jesus choosing to declare the Year of Jubilee as being fulfilled that day in their hearing almost certainly brought a surge of hope as the common belief was that the Messiah would subdue Roman rule and return Israel to a place of prominence among the nations.  And third was the nagging feeling that this was just Jesus the local carpenter’s son, and what was HE going to do to defeat the Romans? 

            The congregation at Nazareth was hearing Jesus with their ears, but not with their hearts.  Their skepticism was impeding their ability to accept Jesus’ message on a spiritual level, and their desire to be shown a sign was in direct conflict with the choice that Jesus has made not to use miracles just for show.  Knowing their hearts, Jesus responds to their skepticism with the cryptic statement, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’  While there is some controversy over what Jesus meant by this, the consensus seems to be that the folks in His hometown believed that they were entitled to see what the other towns were seeing.  Jesus reinforced His thought by stating that the people would like for Him to do in His hometown what they had heard He did in Capernaum.  Did you happen to notice an undercurrent of a lack of faith in that statement?  It wasn’t “what you did”, it was “what we heard that you did”. 

            At this point it probably became apparent that the congregation wasn’t going to get to see a miracle.  This was probably the beginning of their turning against Jesus, but the worst was yet to come.  In hearing Jesus’ chosen passage from Isaiah, the listeners assumed that they were soon to benefit from what Jesus was about to do.  Jesus would restore Israel to what the Israelites believed was their rightful place, exalted among the nations.  But then Jesus chose to mention to them two passages, one from 1 Kings and one from 2 Kings, where God had shown extraordinary grace.  And in both instances this grace bypassed the Israelites and was instead showered upon gentiles.  Jesus’ message to the congregation at Nazareth couldn’t have been more clear.  Jesus was declaring, on no uncertain terms, that the heathen, idolatrous, sinful, unclean, morally and intellectually inferior gentiles would be recipients of God’s blessing; and would receive that blessing after that blessing was withheld from Israel.  To the Israelites for whom it was assumed that God’s grace and salvation rested on them as a matter of unbreakable promise, this was the final straw. 

            G. B. Caird says, “Elijah and Elisha provide scriptural witness to the inevitable conflict between God’s purpose and the human desire to make special claims to God’s salvation or place limits on its scope.” [1]  David E. Garland comments, “The illustrations from the ministries of Elijah and Elisha underscore that God shows no partiality.  Neediness abounds everywhere, and God wills to save all, not just a holy few.  But these incidents remind readers that ‘those who appear to be the least entitled to taste the benefits of” The Year of the Lord’s Favor” are the most likely to do so’. [2]  This reminder is galling to any who consider themselves to be the most entitled to receive God’s blessings.” [3]

            Simply put, Jesus did not say what the crowd expected to hear.  If the crowd had been more fully aware of Israel’s call to be a light to the nations, Jesus’ statements would not have surprised them… or irritated them.  If the crowd understood how God calls us to love others, Jesus’ statements would have made sense to them.  If the crowd wasn’t so thoroughly convinced of their superiority over the gentiles, they would have been able to accept God’s inclusiveness rather than rejecting it.  And if the crowd had believed Jesus in their hearts, the Jubilee would have come to them, and they would have been perfectly OK with the fact that Jubilee didn’t look anything like what they expected.

            And so, our question this morning is, what does the congregation at Nazareth have to teach us today?  They teach us that when misunderstanding and misinformation abound, there is one, and only one source for truth.  They teach us that when our faith has been tainted by forces that stand to gain from diluting or corrupting the Gospel, that we must turn to the Spirit for illumination and understanding.  They teach us that when the world is presented with a counterfeit gospel, we have the responsibility as believers to proclaim loudly and boldly the authentic Gospel. 

            The fact that the congregation at Nazareth didn’t hear what they wanted to hear, didn’t mean that what they heard was wrong.  Jesus brought a message of truth, and if the congregation disagreed with that truth, it wasn’t Jesus’ responsibility to make the truth fit their beliefs, it was their responsibility to make their beliefs fit the truth.  If the congregation at Nazareth didn’t agree with the principles of Jubilee, then it was the responsibility of the congregation at Nazareth to adjust their expectations so that they would be in agreement with God’s parameters for Jubilee.  The fact that the congregation at Nazareth was unable to overcome their familiarity with Jesus and accept Him for who He is meant that the congregation needed to re-think their perception of who Jesus is, in order to accommodate the reality of His role as Lord and Savior.

            And so it is with us.  When we read the words of the Gospel are we not hearing what we want to hear?  When we hear the truth about the need to love absolutely everyone, when we hear the truth about the need for social and economic justice, when we hear the truth about the depth of our need for a Savior, are these truths resonating with what we know of the Gospel, or are we in need of adjusting our perceptions?

            My friends, Jesus IS truth.  Jesus said that humans do not live by bread alone, but by EVERY word that comes from the mouth of God.  This is why we are here this morning.  This is why we come to church, why we fellowship with believers, why we study the Bible, why we pray… all of this is about coming closer to God, through the work of the Holy Spirit.  All of this is about allowing the Spirit to match our perceptions to the reality of God’s truth.  All of this is about allowing the Spirit to transform us into the people that God has intended for us to be from the very foundation of the universe.  And all of this is about discovering our capacity to love… to love God and to love others, all others.  Last week I asked that we all learn to make our little corner of the world to be a part of the kingdom of God.  Last week I asked all of us to facilitate that by our sharing the mind and the heart of God.  Let us earnestly seek to allow the Spirit to align our thoughts and our beliefs and our actions with God’s plan for our lives.  And let us learn from the congregation at Nazareth, these lessons on how important it is to make that happen.

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[1] Caird, Saint Luke, Pg. 86-87

[2] Byrne, The Hospitality of God, Pg. 50

[3] Garland, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 209

The Sermon

January 26, 2025

            In the Hebrew, it is שְׁנַת־ (shay-nah) רָצוֹן֙ (rrrot-sown) לַֽיהוָ֔ה (Yahweh), the Year of the Lord’s Favor.  But neither the Hebrew nor the English relate the actual meaning of this phrase because for the Israelites, this phrase is the description of what we now call the “Year of Jubilee”.  And so, before I even start to talk about Luke today, I need to go all the way back to Leviticus 25 so we can understand what the Year of Jubilee is all about.  According to Jewish Law, every 50 years was to be a Year of Jubilee, and every Christian should have an understanding of the requirements for the Year of Jubilee because those requirements reveal a LOT to us about the heart of God.

            The Year of Jubilee was to be a year of rest for the land.  No crops were to be planted, no plants were to be pruned, there was to be no formal harvest.  The people were required to live off of what the land provided, with a promise from God that the land would supply more than enough.  Next, all Jewish people were to return to their ancestral land where their families would be regathered.  Any land that had been sold during the 49 years leading up to the Jubilee year would revert to the original owner.  In fact, when someone purchased land, the price was to be based on how many years remained until the next Year of Jubilee when the purchaser would have to relinquish the land to the person from whom they purchased it.  Finally, in the Year of Jubilee all Israelites who owed debts were to have the debts cancelled and all Jewish slaves were to be freed. 

            Now, let’s stop and think about this for just a moment.  The acquisition of property creates generational wealth.  Whole families become wealthy through the income generated by those purchased lands.  Returning those properties to the original owners every 50 years precludes the possibility of those properties creating generational wealth; and also precludes the possibility of the loss of those properties from creating generational poverty.  This is a law designed specifically to create economic fairness and to prevent the wealthy from disadvantaging other people.  It is a law that illustrates God’s deep concern for the poor and the marginalized by addressing directly one of the primary things that creates poverty.

            The cancelling of debts also inhibits the acquisition of generational wealth and the creation of generational poverty.  Those in debt are released from the burden of the money that they owe.  Has anyone ever celebrated their last mortgage payment or their last car payment? When we no longer owe this money, it is a welcome relief as now the money once paid to satisfy the debt becomes ours!  And since slaves usually became slaves out of an inability to pay their debts, the releasing of slaves does the same.  And not only is the slave to be released, but any debts the slave had are to be cancelled, and the slave is permitted to return to their ancestral home, once again taking possession of the land.  Can we see what a reversal this creates?  But it does even more, according to Jewish law, a child born into slavery automatically became a slave as well, so the freeing of slaves did more than liberate the once indebted, it liberated entire families and returned those families to wholeness.

            And lest we think that God’s concern for the poor is limited to a once every fifty-year event, there is a law listed within this Leviticus 25 discussion about the Year of Jubilee that is actually not intended to be a once every 50 years law but is rather a permanent and ongoing law.  Leviticus 25:34-37 “‘If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you.  Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you.  You must not lend them money at interest or sell them food at a profit.” The Bible mentions poverty over 300 times.  God’s care for the poor is one of the Bible’s most common themes.  And that care is emphatically exhibited here in the requirements for the Year of Jubilee.

            And so, this Year of Jubilee, intended to be observed once every 50 years, creates a God ordained economic reset; a procedure by which all people would be given a fresh start; for some, an opportunity to escape poverty and for some, a loss of acquired or inherited wealth requiring them once again to work for their livelihood.

            One of the things that is striking about our studies of the New Testament is the zeal with which the Israelites often approached their keeping of the law.  But to the best of our understanding, the Israelites NEVER observed a year of Jubilee.  NEVER.  From the giving of the Mosaic Law, thought to have been around 1500 BCE to the time of Jesus, the Year of Jubilee should have celebrated about thirty times.  But it never happened once.  The influence of the wealthy was almost certainly the determining factor in the choices that Israel made to ignore this particular law.  Does anyone find this interesting that those who were so demonstrative about following the minutiae of the law so conveniently ignored this one?  Augustine of Hippo famously said, “They love truth when it enlightens them, they hate it when it accuses them.” [1]  Simply put, the wealthy, who had control of the temple and the government, would never have permitted this economic reset to happen.  Rev. David Cotton once said, “Good news for the poor is always bad news for the rich.”

            And so, now Jesus has returned to His hometown and is attending worship in the synagogue.  He has been asked to speak and has chosen the scroll of Isaiah as His text.  He unrolls the scroll to what we now know is the 61^st chapter and He begins to read: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, TO PROCLAIM THE YEAR OF THE LORD’S FAVOR.”  שְׁנַת־ (shay-nah) רָצוֹן֙ (rrrot-sown) לַֽיהוָ֔ה (Yahweh).  Jesus sat down, the customary way for a Jewish teacher to teach, and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  Jesus has come to institute the “Year of Jubilee”. 

            So, how does this work?  The poor are still poor.  The wealthy still take unfair advantage.  No one has been given their ancestral land back, and people are still in prison.  There are those who claim that Jesus was speaking allegorically about spiritual  things; spiritual blindness, spiritual poverty, spiritual prisons… and there can be no question that a part of what Jesus came to do WAS to open the eyes of the spiritually blind and restore wholeness to the spiritually poor or imprisoned, but there is just too much of the Bible expressing God’s deep concern for the earthly needs of His disadvantaged children for us to believe that these needs will be left out of the equation. 

            There is a wonderful book by Dallas Willard called “The Divine Conspiracy”.  It’s a challenging read, but highly recommended.  In this book, Willard explains how God’s kingdom is both future; as in the place of the blessed hope of the Christian but also present in the here and now as followers of Jesus seek to live according to kingdom principles, essentially to create small corners of God’s kingdom in their own lives.  N. T. Wright explained this beautifully when he said, “Although Jesus did not envisage that He would persuade Israel as a whole to keep the Jubilee Year He expected His followers to live out the Jubilee principle among themselves.  He expected, and taught, that they should forgive one another not only ‘sins’ but also debts.  This may help to explain the remarkable practice within the early church whereby resources were pooled…  Luke’s description of this in Acts 4:34 echoes the description of the sabbatical year in Deuteronomy…” [2]

            And just as a reminder, that passage from Acts is a description of how first century Christians actually lived.  Acts 4:32-35: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.  With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all – that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.”  Jesus came to show us the way to live according to these Jubilee principles and it is our responsibility to be the ones who are bringing sight to the blind and freedom to the captives. 

Our reading today tells us that those who were in the synagogue that day “fixed their eyes on Jesus”.  They were eager to hear what He had to say.  As we will find out next week, they didn’t exactly hear what they wanted to hear, but Jo Anne Taylor asks a great question when she says, “Imagine what it might be like to fix OUR eyes on Jesus!”.  She answers her own question when she says, “We would see the ways our lives impact others with greater clarity. When our eyes are fixed on Jesus, we can recognize our part in systems sending out false messages that some people have more value than others, that some people deserve more than others – and we can start to do something to change those systems.  We can demonstrate in real and powerful ways that every human being has value and worth to God.” [3]

Melissa Bane Sevier said, “Even though we remember that Jubilee never fully reasserts the complete fairness and equality God desires, we look for places where justice is lacking, and places where efforts are underway to create more equity. When we see those efforts, we celebrate them. When we are able, we emulate them.  When is it Jubilee? We’ll never see it. But we can access the ideal… by celebrating it, moving toward it, and dreaming of justice.” [4]

            For those whose hearts God has touched, Jubilee makes perfectly good sense.  The knowledge of the fact that every single person has been made bearing the image of the Living God leads us to an understanding of the necessity for complete equality among humans.  As the Spirit imparts to us the heart of God, we see the burning necessity for economic fairness; understanding the depth of the tragedy when even one of God’s beloved children goes hungry or homeless.  As we share the mind of God, we deeply understand the pressing need to bring the Good News of Jesus’ redemption and our reconciliation to God to the not yet believing world.  My friends, if we have accepted the role of discipleship, then our lives are no longer our own.  We have been given a higher purpose.  And though we do what we do out of love, the reward for this service that we give will be unimaginable.  Let us all be about the business of working towards inaugurating the Year of Jubilee.

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[1] Augustine of Hippo, Confessions: Book 10 Chapter 23

[2] N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Pg. 295

[3] Jo Anne Taylor, PastorSings.com: Good News, Bad News – Sermon on Luke 4:14-21

[4] Melissa Bane Sevier, MelissaBaneSevier.Wordpress.com, When Is It Jubilee

How Much Wine?

January 19, 2025

            It’s possible that you may be somewhat familiar with this week’s reading, and if you are not, that’s totally OK, because I hope to look at it from a slightly different perspective anyway.  For the next few minutes, I’m going to have to ask everyone to imagine themselves as being first century residents of Palestine.  Don’t worry, I will help you to do that. 

            We are going to a wedding.  Our text doesn’t say for whom, but given the specifics of the story, and Jesus’ mother Mary’s involvement in the logistics of the wedding, it’s probably safe to assume that it is the wedding of a relative of Jesus.  Jesus is here too, with the first five of His chosen disciples, Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathaniel, and the unnamed disciple who Jesus loved.  It is, of course, common practice to invite teachers and religious dignitaries to things like this.  It gives the festivities an air of prestige and of course the teacher’s students are expected to attend with them.

            We all expect to be here for a while.  The groom and his family have worked long and hard to prepare for this feast, and we will probably be here celebrating for about a week.  I hope you all brought your appetites.  Our twenty-first century versions of ourselves recognize a wedding as being a union between two individuals, but our first century Palestinian selves understand that a wedding is actually a union of two families.  We are all looking forward to a huge celebration; a wonderful and joyous event with singing and dancing and lots of eating and drinking.  Did I say lot’s of drinking?  Well, like I said, it’s a joyous event, and there is an old Jewish saying that “without wine, there is no joy”.

            We are a few days into the event now and our joyous celebration may possibly be grinding to a halt.  The host is running out of wine.  Now, not only is running out of wine disastrous to the reputation of the groom and his family, I mean, twenty years from now, they will still be known as that family that ran out of wine.  But there is more to it than that.  In the Middle Eastern world then, as now, hospitality is a VERY big thing.  So big in fact, that running out of wine at this wedding feast could potentially result in a lawsuit against the groom’s family.  It’s true!  And so, Mary, recognizing this impending disaster, comes to Jesus and says “Hey, we’re out of wine”.

            And now, we have to take a look at Jesus’ response, for a few reasons.  The NIV tells us that Jesus responded, “Woman, why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come.”  And right away our first thought is, “Gee, that was a bit of a testy response”.  But it really isn’t, at least not all of it.  The addressing of His mom as “woman” seems in English to be a bit disrespectful, or maybe distant, but it absolutely isn’t.  In Greek, the word is Γύναι (Gunai) and according to Klink, the word is “respectful, and even affectionate, meaning something like ma’am”. [1] It is this same word that Jesus used from the cross when he said to His mother “woman, behold your son”.  So, the first thing to get out of our minds is this idea that Jesus’ comment is disrespectful.  Now, it is possible that the next thing that Jesus said may have been a mild reproach.  A few weeks ago, we discussed how Jesus gently took the name “Father” away from Joseph and gave it to God.  Just as when Jesus stayed behind at the temple, Jesus is making it clear here that His priority is to do God’s will, not to be doing any human’s will, even if that human is His mom.  But Mary, trusting that her Son will do exactly the right thing, instructs the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do.

            When we first arrived at this wedding and we prepared to eat our first meal, we had to do the ritual hand washing as required by Jewish oral law.  One at a time, we stepped up to these large jars that were filled with water.  A servant poured water over our hands three times and each of us recited a prayer at each pouring.  And, of course, we did this before every meal.  Now, the purification water was sometimes stored in clay jars, but clay jars in time would allow some of the clay to dissolve into the water, rendering the water ceremonially (and probably factually) unclean.  But our host is not using clay jars, they are using stone jars.  Stone jars are more expensive but will not impart residue to the water and so, stone jars remain ceremonially clean all the time.  Nothing but the best for our guests!  And our host has made sure that there will be plenty of water for these ceremonial washings as he has supplied us with six stone jars with each jar holding between twenty and thirty gallons of water.

            After Mary advised Jesus of the wine shortage and Jesus told Mary that essentially, this wasn’t His problem.  Jesus went ahead and instructed the servants to take all six of those ceremonial stone purification jars and fill them to the brim with water.  He then instructed the servants to draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.  No one except for Jesus, the servants, and possibly the disciples, know that it was water that had filled those jars, but now, the master of the banquet declares this drink, not only to BE wine, but to be the best wine.

            But now, all is not exactly hunky dory at this wedding.  Jesus has just done something that we are going to see from Him often over the next three years of His ministry, because in making this wine, Jesus has created a new problem.  Where is everyone supposed to do the ceremonial washing of their hands?  The ceremonial washing jars are now all filled with wine.

            Jesus has done more than just alleviate an embarrassing problem for one of His relatives.  Jesus, in performing His very first miracle, is also making His first statement about the new wine.  The New Testament, on multiple occasions, uses the phrase “new wine” to represent the new life that Jesus has come to offer us.  And we will talk about this a little bit more later.  This new life in Jesus no longer requires continual ritual purification.  There is no need for the ritual hand washing, which, by the way, never really had anything to do with hygiene.  G. H. C. MacGregor tells us that, “The theme is the transmuting of the water of the old Jewish ceremonial into the wine of the new Christian Gospel.” [2]

            And let’s remember, wine represents Joy!  This new wine is the Gospel that bursts the old wineskins.  It is the joyful proclamation that we have been redeemed from sin and death and that we have been reconciled to the Father and now are able to stand in His presence wearing the robe of Christ’s righteousness.  And not only is there joy… there is joy in abundance, illustrated in the fact that Jesus has just made about 180 gallons of wine.

            OK, we can all come back to the 21^st century now.  John concludes this portion of his story with the statement that, “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”  In an approach that is thoroughly characteristic of John’s style, the subject of interest in his story is not the miracle itself but rather is on the significance of the miracle.  I am not sure how many folks at the wedding became aware of what happened.  We know that initially only Jesus, the servants, and possibly the disciples knew that the water had been miraculously turned into wine.  Things being what they are, I can’t imagine that the story of what happened didn’t spread pretty quickly, and I am sure that all who believed that the miracle actually happened were flabbergasted.  When the story of the miracle was told by the servants, I am sure that some believed them, and some didn’t.  Klink tells us that, “The church’s existence in this world is like being one of the servants in the wedding who knows [the truth about the wine] is but is surrounded by people who are unaware.” [3]  It is important for us not to forget this truth.  We have been entrusted with an awesome responsibility to bring the Good News of the new wine to those among us who are unaware.

For John, the miracle is important because it was a sign.  Klink tells us, “The signs function as the means by which Jesus ‘revealed His glory’.  The signs point us to something beyond themselves, so that the images pressed upon the reader by the narrative regarding Jesus reflect who He is and what He can, and will, do.  These signs then, express what the prologue and introduction have foretold: We beheld His glory.” [4] 

            All three synoptic Gospels relate Jesus’ parable about not putting new wine into old wineskins.  The new wine will expand as it continues to ferment, and that expansion will burst old wineskins that have lost their elasticity.  New wine must be put into new wineskins that have the capacity to expand with the wine.  Our lesson today is telling us exactly the same truth.  The new simply does not fit into the old. 

            Again, Klink tells us, “Everything about those jars of water for Jewish purification speaks of Judaism and the old covenant.  Yet their value was entirely changed in the presence of Jesus.  The moment He arrived; true cleansing had no need for ceremonial jars made of purified stone.  Rather, their use was relegated to serving as containers for celebratory wine.” [5]

            With Jesus, something completely new is happening.  No longer is faith about rituals and purification.  With Jesus, faith becomes a matter of the heart.  As we are reconciled to God through Jesus, the Spirit begins a change in our hearts that will cause our hearts to resemble God’s heart.  Our obedience to God becomes not a matter of choosing to behave in a certain way, but a matter of, through the Spirit, sharing the heart and the mind of God, aligning our actions with God’s plan for our lives.

            My dear friends, the call to us IS to share the mind of Christ.  When we share the mind of Christ, our actions and words begin to take the shape of the loving and gracious actions of our Lord.  And as this love of God begins to be exhibited in our lives, the message that we send to the unbelieving world is: THIS is what life is supposed to look like.  THIS is what God’s love looks like in action.  Come, and taste the new wine.

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[1] Edward W. Klink III, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: John, Pg. 163

[2] G. H. C MacGregor, The Moffatt New Testament Commentary: The Gospel of John. Pg. 48

[3] Edward W. Klink III, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: John, Pg. 172

[4] Edward W. Klink III, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: John, Pg. 169

[5] Edward W. Klink III, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: John, Pg. 171

Water, Holy Spirit, and Fire

 January 12, 2025

           John the Baptist apparently made quite a splash, no pun intended… well, maybe.  Over the last few weeks we have spoken about the huge crowds that had come to hear him speak and to be baptized by him.  Back in September one of our readings from Mark told us that “All the land of Judea and all that were in Jerusalem were baptized by him”.  Yes, John made quite a big splash indeed, and not without good reason.

A nation, under oppressive Roman rule, longing for their promised redemption, probably found great hope in the fact that the prophetic voice of God, silent for the last four centuries, was once again speaking among them.  The excitement must have been tremendous.  John was giving them hope, and I am sure that a big part of his popularity revolved around the idea that people were believing that the redemption of Israel was finally at hand.  John was forceful, he was bold in his preaching and peculiar in his lifestyle and mannerisms.  If someone was going to be a prophet, John probably fit the bill better than anyone that the first century Palestinians had ever seen.  And so, the question that was on all of their minds was “Could this be the Messiah?” 

We don’t know if someone asked John that question directly or if the Spirit simply told him what to say, but John wanted to make it abundantly clear that he was not the Messiah.  According to Jewish law, a disciple, a student of a teacher, was required to do anything for their master that a slave could be required to do, with one exception.  To remove the sandals of your master was considered to be a task too lowly to be performed, even by a Jewish slave… or a student.  This was a task that was reserved for the Gentile slaves.  And yet, John makes it clear to his listeners that he is unworthy to perform even this lowliest of tasks for the One who is to follow. 

John further explains that his baptism with water is a symbolic one, a public statement of one’s intent to turn from their worldly ways and incline their hearts towards God’s righteousness.  But… John says, the baptism of the One who follows will be a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire. 

John then continues to describe Jesus with an apocalyptic statement about winnowing forks and chaff and fire.  The image of the winnowing fork is something with which his audience would have been quite familiar, but for us… not so much.  When grain was harvested in the first century the harvesters used sickles to cut down the entire stalk.  The stalks were laid out on a hardened “threshing floor” where animals were brought in to pull rollers over the grain, which separated the grain from the stalks and chaff.  Then, a winnowing fork, something that resembled a pitchfork, was used to pick the stalks up and toss them up into the air.  The heavier grain would fall back down to the threshing floor, but the much lighter chaff would be carried away with the breeze.  The grain was then collected and stored or sold while the chaff would be gathered up to be used as fuel for the fire. 

And it’s here where John’s language about “burning the chaff with unquenchable fire” starts to maybe sound a little out of place because it doesn’t seem to match our experience with the loving and gracious Jesus that we encounter a little later in the Gospels.  But we need to realize that, while Jesus sought to be a gentle persuader of willing hearts, Jesus did indeed come to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Richard Niell Donovan tells us that, “The separation of wheat from chaff serves as a metaphor for Jesus separating the redeemed from the unredeemed and gathering the redeemed into their heavenly home.  The ‘unquenchable fire’ serves as a metaphor for the eternal punishment of those who are not redeemed, and thus speaks of the eternal consequences of our choices.” [1]

And now for the second Sunday in a row I’m starting to sound like that fire and brimstone guy again, so I really do need to explain.

Each and every person has the full and completely unrestrained choice to decide for themselves what their relationship with God will be.  Whether they choose to examine the claims of the Bible or not… up to them.  Whether they choose to discover the depth of God’s love for them or not… up to them.  Whether they choose to respond positively to God’s love, or ignore God’s love, or outright reject God’s love… up to them.  But in the exercising of these choices, we need to understand that we are also responsible for all of the repercussions of those choices.  And we need to understand the fact that at some point in time these choices will become permanent.  It is not a pleasant thought, but Leon Morris tells us that, “Unless we can be sure that, in the end, evil will be decisively overthrown there is no ultimate Good News.” [2]

Now, please understand this:  It is absolutely not God’s will that anyone should be lost.  We read in 2^nd Peter 3:9 that “God is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”  But… God will not force us, and He will not coerce us.  The choice is entirely and completely ours.  But here is where the second half of John’s description comes into play, because Jesus is not just baptizing with fire, He is also baptizing with the Holy Spirit.  And this is really the essence of what we Christians love to call the Good News.  Because all of our fears, all of our worries, all of our concerns about our status before an eternal God are wiped away when we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. 

Without entering into a discussion today about the merits of the various methods of baptizing, the Jewish understanding was that baptism was all about the emerging from water, having been fully immersed.  This was done as a sign of new life, dying to the old, and being reborn into the new.  And so, as we are baptized with the Holy Spirt, we are entirely immersed in the Spirit.  We emerge from our baptism with the Spirit, – as new creatures, and the Spirit becomes a permanent part of who we are. 

And now we reach the point in our story where Jesus is finally baptized, Jesus comes up out of the water and He says a prayer.  And as He is praying, Luke tells us that heaven was opened and that the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

But here, troublemaker that I am, I need to stop and ask, what exactly is it about which God was well pleased?  I mean, to this point in the story, Jesus has been born, received some gifts from some wise men, stayed behind at the temple in Jerusalem, causing some consternation for His parents, and just got baptized.  That’s really not much of a resume so far, so why is God so pleased?  God is pleased not because of what Jesus has done, but because of who Jesus is.  Does this sound familiar?  David E. Garland tells us that, “The effects of the Spirit in the life of Jesus are evident in what follows: the power to resist the wiles of Satan, the power to recall and apply scripture, the power to see God’s plan and purposes and to proclaim the Word boldly, the power to withstand hostility, and the power to minister to and heal the oppressed.  The Spirit in the lives of believers can do the same things.” [3]

The thing about which God was well pleased, was the fact of Jesus’ complete and total obedience to the will of God, through the leading of the Holy Spirit.  And there is a lesson to be learned for us here too.

God chooses to love us for who we are.  But God will not allow us to remain the same.  As He fills us with His Spirit, our values and our goals and our desires become rearranged.  Bit by bit, we leave worldly wisdom behind, and we begin to view our lives from a kingdom perspective.  We become obedient to the will of God, not because we make a choice to behave in a certain way, but because it is simply our new nature to do so.  Jesus did what He did because He and the Father had the same mind and the same goal.  Through the Holy Spirit, believers are able to have the same mind and the same goal as God also.  Let’s stop and think about this for just a moment.  The Holy Spirt who is fully and completely God, dwells within each of us.  And the only limitations to the Spirit’s ability to transform us into Christ-likeness are the limitations that we impose ourselves.

My dear friends, we have been called to a heavenly task.  As believers, we are not content to sit idly by as those we love (and just a gentle reminder, those we love includes everyone!), we are not content to sit idly by while others make choices that result in their separation from God instead of their reconciliation with God.  Remember, this is the real and living God actually dwelling within us, and it is He who directs us towards compassion and empathy.  It is He who leads us to share His remarkable, extravagant, all-encompassing love with others.  It is He who calls us to be gracious and forgiving.  And when needed, it is He who gives us the words to say that help others to find ultimate truth in the person of Jesus Christ.

Now, before we all get all nervous.  Let me make something clear.  I’m not advocating knocking on doors, or handing out tracts, or accosting strangers at the Shop-Rite.  Not that there may not be some who God calls to these ministries, but for the most part, we need to understand that sharing God’s love works best one heart at a time. And that when we are faithful, God will put people in our path and call us to be a friend to them.  And that friendship may manifest itself in a variety of different ways, depending on needs and on available resources.  Maybe it’s a little financial help when really needed, or perhaps an offer to babysit, or to make a grocery run.  Maybe it’s no more than lending a sympathetic ear or maybe just sitting and being good company.  How do we know what to do?  We probably don’t, but the Spirit will tell us.

And as we are being faithful to love these folks who God has put in our path; it is critical to remember that our job is just to plant the seed.  It is God who brings the increase.  You’ve heard me say before that the person who is most responsible for me being a Christian has no idea that his words and actions led me to Christ.  But this friend of mine, this person in whose path God put ME, was happy simply to be the one planting the seeds.  He didn’t need the confirmation of my conversion.  He didn’t need an ego boost from tallying another soul.  He didn’t need these things because what he did, he did in love.

When all is said and done, the most powerful force in the universe is love.  If I… if we, each in our own little corner of the world, are able to love others with a love that resembles the love with which God loves us, then we will find ourselves being seed planters also.  And there is nothing in this life that is more important

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[1] Richard Niell Donovan, SermonWriter.com, Biblical Commentary on Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

[2] Leon Morris, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Luke Revised Edition, Pg. 108

[3] David E. Garland, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 172

The True Light

Sermon January 5, 2025

            In the early 1990’s I was traveling with my mom and my family from New Jersey to Memphis, Tennessee to visit my grandparents.  My mom had decided that she wanted to do something on the trip that would be fun for her grandson, and so we stopped to visit the Luray Caverns in Virginia.  The caverns were pretty spectacular with stalagmites and stalactites everywhere, underground streams, and vast expanses of space.  The place was huge!  In fact, I understand that the Luray Caverns are the largest caverns on the east coast.  All of the spaces in the caverns were brilliantly illuminated, and I never once gave any thought at all to that illumination.  We are just so accustomed to seeing things in the light that we don’t even give it a thought.  And even at night there is often moonlight, and starlight, and when you live in New Jersey the ubiquitous artificial lighting that mostly allows us to see even in the dark.  I didn’t give that lighting in the caverns much thought, until they momentarily turned off the lights.

            Have you ever been in complete and total darkness?  It is extremely unsettling, and I for one am glad that the lights were only off for maybe 10 seconds or so, although those ten seconds did seem interminable, and you could hear a collective sigh of relief as the lights were turned back on.   So, I am sure that I was not the only one who found the darkness to be quite uncomfortable.  In that total darkness it was absolutely impossible to see anything.  The tour guide who turned out the lights suggested that we put our hands in front of our faces.  It was a worthless gesture.  If you have never been in complete darkness, it is difficult to explain what it was like, but you dare not take a step, because you have no idea where that step will lead.  My son Joe was around 11 years old at the time and I remember fumbling around trying to find him just to take his hand.  When the lights came back on, I was holding one of his hands and my wife Jackie was holding the other.

            Darkness is debilitating.  Humans lack the ability to accomplish anything in the dark, lack the ability to travel safely in the dark, lack the ability to defend themselves or others in the dark, lack the ability to interact with others in the dark, in short, we become pretty much useless.

            In today’s reading, John tells us that “In [Jesus] was life, and that life was the light of all [humankind].  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcomeit.”  Jesus is the light illuminating the souls of those who love Him.  For those who don’t know Him, or don’t love Him, they are walking in darkness, and that darkness is total.  Total, as in not being able to see your hand in front of your face.  Total as in not being able to travel safely or to defend ourselves.  Total as in being completely unable to interact with others in any meaningful way.  Total, as in pretty much totally useless.  Imagine the most complete darkness you have ever experienced, then imagine trying to function in that darkness.  And spiritually speaking, that is what we are trying to do if we are living our lives without “the Light of all humankind”.

            Now, one would think that the world would welcome the light; that the world would gravitate to that light as a moth to a porch light.  But John tells us otherwise.  In the Greek, the word John uses that we translate as “overcome” is κατέλαβεν (ketayleben) and κατέλαβεν is a compound word with κατά which is a word that Greeks used in the same way that we use the prefix “anti” which is used to negate the word that follows it, and λαμβάνω (lambano) which means to take or to receive.  So κατέλαβεν means to fail or refuse to receive.  The light shines in the darkness, but those living in the darkness refuse to receive the light.  (That’s my translation).

            The purpose of John’s Gospel is to introduce us to “The Word” who is the light of the world.  The first 18 verses of the Gospel which we read this morning are called the “Prologue” and in classical Greek literary style the prologue introduces us to the major character of the story that follows, and gives a brief synopsis of what that story is all about.  So, what is John telling us in his prologue?

            First, John introduces us to “The Word”.  The Word is not yet identified as Jesus – that will become apparent a little later, but the first thing that John wants us to know is that in the beginning the Word was with God and the Word was God.  Here, John intentionally echoes the words of Genesis 1 as he speaks of the beginning; the time when nothing yet existed.  A time that, according to the second verse in the Bible, the earth was formless and void.  God existed before anything in our universe was created, and at that time The Word was already with Him.  The Father and the Word are equally co-existent.  And when the act of creation began, how did creation come into being?  What happened?  What does the Bible tell us about how creation began?  Genesis tells us that God SAID “Let there be light”.  It was God’s WORD that caused the light to happen.  God planned the universe, but it was the Word, that literally spoke it into existence.  This is why John tells us that “All things came into being through [the Word], and without [the Word] not one thing [would have come] into being.”  This person, who so far is only identified as “The Word”, is the actual, in fact, creator of the universe.  The relationship of the trinity is a mystery, and it is impossible for our finite minds to comprehend, but John makes it crystal clear in his prologue that the Father and the Word are one.  One God.

            John continues his prologue introducing us to John the Baptist, and it is here that John states the purpose of his Gospel.  John tells us that John the Baptist “came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through [that light] all might believe.”  John repeats this idea towards the end of his Gospel when he says in chapter 20 “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.  But these are written that you may believethat Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”  John’s purpose is to introduce us to God, in the person of Jesus Christ, that in coming to know Him, we may know God.  And that in coming to know God, we may have life in his name.

            So, how does this all work?  Well, like John, let’s start with the Word.  What is a word anyway?  A word is an audible or written expression of an idea.  If I were to say the word “banana”, I would have expressed a word with which we can all identify.  We will immediately have in our minds the image of a banana.  And so, when we speak of God’s Word, we are actually talking about the idea of the physical manifestation of all that God is.  God sent the Word in order to reveal Himself to us.  Edward W. Klink III tells us that the “’Word’ reflects the truth that it is the very nature of God to reveal Himself”. [1]

            Next, John tells us that this “’Word’ became flesh and made His dwelling among us.  And we have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  God is revealed to us in His entirety, in the Son, who is the fully human, yet fully divine and complete image of God.  Everything God is, the Son is.  This God, who created the universe, and created us, has chosen to reveal Himself to us in the person of the Son, Jesus.

            I would like to step away from John’s Gospel for just a moment so I can say something about this Son who is full of grace and truth.  Way back in Exodus 33, Moses asked God if God would allow him to see God’s glory.  God’s response to Moses was that He would cause His goodness to pass in front of Moses.  God’s glory is His goodness!  The grace that forgives, the truth that reveals, the love that abounds, the glory of God is to be found in His goodness.  And THIS is the glory of the one and only Son.  That His goodness is one and the same with His Father’s goodness. 

            The more we learn about Jesus, and through Him, the more we learn about the Father, the more we understand this picture of a God who loves us and is relentless in revealing His love for us in the hope that we may choose to receive His love, and to love Him in return.  Warren Wiersbe says, “Just as the first creation began with ‘Let there be light’, so the new creation begins with the entrance of light into the heart of the believer.” [2]

            But John hasn’t finished his prologue yet, and some of the rest of the story isn’t such good news.  John tells us that “[Jesus] came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”  In other words, the beloved refuse to love and the created reject their creator.  Warren Wiersbe again, “Whenever Jesus taught a spiritual truth, His listeners interpreted it in a material or physical way.  The light was unable to penetrate the darkness in their minds.”[3]  As unfathomable as it is to me, some will reject the Good News.  They will refuse to hear it, or refuse to believe it, or refuse to even consider it.  And I believe that the worst part of that rejection is the fact that, those who die without Jesus will spend the rest of eternity in that total darkness about which we spoke.  Unable to be productive, unable to function, unable to accomplish anything of value. 

Now, the last thing in all the world that I want to be is a fire and brimstone preacher.  I often say that we don’t serve a God of retribution, we serve a God of reconciliation.  It isn’t God’s desire to smite those who reject Him, but the sad fact is that there are some who will, and it is they themselves who will make the choice to live in darkness.

            But to those who do receive Him, we are given the right to become children of God.  Karl Kuhn says, “John’s exaltation of Jesus as the transcendent Word is only one side of the story. The other is his claim that the Divine Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. John’s exaltation of Jesus to unimaginable heights of transcendence serves his even more crucial interest of proclaiming that in Jesus, the barrier between the divine and human realms are breached to a degree never before realized. In the Word, John claims, God’s mercy and truth now flow in measures never possible before: “from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace”.[4]

            God came to reclaim the world that He created and the people that He loves.  God’s mission, as He has chosen to pursue it through the work of Jesus, is, as I just said, not one of retribution, but one of reconciliation.  It is God’s desire that none of His beloved children be lost, but that all be saved.  To that end, He has sent Jesus to show us God’s glory.  A glory that will be revealed in His goodness, His forgiveness, His compassion, His patience, and His love. 

            My dear friends, let us step into the light of that goodness and live as children of the light.

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[1] Edward W. Klink III, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: John, Pg. 88

[2] Warren Wiersbe, “Be Alive”, Pg. 12.

[3] Warren Wiersbe, “Be Alive”, Pg. 13

[4] Karl Kuhn, WorkingPreacher.org: Commentary on John 1:1-18

I Thought He Was with You

Homily: December 29, 2024

            There is a very famous movie that was released in 1990.  In the movie, the McAllister family is preparing for a Christmas trip to Paris.  The night before they are to depart, they all sit down to dinner, and their youngest son Kevin disrupts the meal.  He is subsequently sent to the attic as punishment.  During the night, they have a power outage and the next morning the family oversleeps, leading to a mad rush to make it to the airport on time.  Somehow, in the rush, Kevin is left “Home Alone”.  The family only discovers the fact that Kevin is missing when their flight is halfway across the Atlantic.  The rest of the movie divides its time between Kevin’s story of thwarting a home invasion and his mom, Kate’s story of frantically trying to book a flight and return home to find her son.

            Those who have seen the movie can understand Kate’s absolute panic when she realizes that she doesn’t know where Kevin is.  This panic is where Mary and Joseph found themselves when, on the way home after their Passover trip to Jerusalem, they discovered the fact that Jesus wasn’t with them. 

In today’s story, our English translation softens the language, telling us that Mary and Joseph were “anxiously searching”, but the word that Luke uses in the Greek is ὀδυνάω (odounow), and to give us a better sense of what Mary and Joseph were actually feeling, in the Biblical story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus, after they had both died and the rich man was begging Abraham to have Lazarus put a drop of water on his tongue because he was in agony in the flames of hell, that word “agony” is translated from our word ὀδυνάω.

Yeah, Mary and Joseph were pretty upset, but I think that we need to know a little bit more about how this happened, because we can’t entirely blame Mary and Joseph.  During a typical Passover, the population of Jerusalem would increase from about 50,000 people to about 150,000 people.  Entire communities would travel to Jerusalem together in caravans because of the safety provided in numbers.  In those caravans, the women and children would travel in front with the men and young men following behind.  With Jesus being 12 years old, he was quite literally a tween.  Young enough to travel with his mother and the children, but also old enough to travel with his father and the young men.  So, it’s not hard to see how Mary may have thought that He was with Joseph and vice versa. 

Upon discovering the fact that Jesus was missing, Mary and Joseph returned to Jerusalem, looking for Jesus, and eventually finding Him in the temple.  Mary chides Jesus for staying behind in Jerusalem, saying “Your father and I have been searching for you”.  Jesus answers “Why were you searching for me?”  In the Greek, this is actually posed as a rhetorical question, a question with the assumption that they absolutely should have known where He was, even though they didn’t. 

So, what do we see when we look at this passage?  Do we see irresponsible parents?  Do we see some kind of adolescent rebellion, or maybe a combination of both?  No, I don’t think that we see any of that.  As a parent, I suppose it may be a little difficult to reconcile Jesus’ actions with the fact of His absolute sinlessness, but the answer to all of this lies within the text itself where Jesus says, “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

William Barclay says, “See how very gently but very definitely Jesus takes the name father from Joseph and gives it to God”[1].  Jesus’ here identifying God as His Father was something that was unique in Jewish literature.  The Bible often refers to God as “our Father” or as “The Father of Israel”, but never had God ever been referred to as Father in such a personal way.  At the tender age of 12 Jesus has already begun to develop an understanding of His singular and special relationship with the Father. 

We need to realize that this understanding is something that Jesus wasn’t born with.  His awareness of His relationship to the Father, His knowledge of the nature and scope of His mission, His understanding of His role as Lord and Savior, these are all things that developed as He grew.  This is why Luke will later tell us that “Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature”.  Though divine, Jesus was still fully human.  And just like any other human, Jesus had to grow into an understanding of who He was and what He was called to do with His life. 

And the time that Jesus spent with the rabbis in Jerusalem was an important part of that discovery process.  Jesus was never going to receive a world class Jewish education in Nazareth but in Jerusalem He could sit and learn from the best and the brightest.  Jesus had come to a point where He had realized that He needed to prioritize His relationship with the Father.  This is why He stayed in Jerusalem to study, and this is why He was surprised when His parents didn’t know where He was.  Jesus was making His first steps towards adulthood, and a part of that was taking advantage of the opportunity to stay and learn while He had the chance.  But Jesus had one more year to go before He turned 13 and according to Jewish law, that is when He would become responsible for His own actions and could decide for Himself how He would practice His faith.  And so, Luke tells us that Jesus returned with His parents to Nazareth and was obedient to them. 

I believe that this story, the one and only story in the Bible about Jesus’ childhood, was included due to the importance of what happened in Jerusalem that year.  It was a year that Jesus took a major step forward into adulthood, a year that His understanding of His unique and special relationship with the Father was refined, and a year that he recognized His mandate to prioritize His mission, even over His responsibilities to His own family.  It was this attitude that would one day prompt Him to ask the question “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?”  It was a year that Jesus would take a large step on the journey that would lead Him to fulfilling His calling.

Why we study the life of Jesus?  What do we hope to gain in our studies?  We study because we, as believers, are called to be like Jesus, and understanding His life and teaching is a critical part of the process of seeking Christ-likeness.  And so, I’d like to close with a thought from Clinton E. Arnold.  “What is important from Luke’s summary statement is that the life of Jesus reveals what a human life full of God’s Spirit and wisdom looks like.”[2]  The recognition of a special relationship with the Father, the desire to expand on the knowledge of one’s faith, the prioritizing of God’s mission in one’s life, all of these things that we see in 12 year old Jesus are qualities that we, as God’s children, also would do well to nurture in our own lives. 

My friend, Greg Monroe once said to me that prayer is not us asking God to do our will.  Prayer is us asking God to incorporate us into His will.  As we seek to follow Jesus and His example, may we also learn to grow into God’s will for us.

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[1] William Barclay, “The Gospel of Luke” (Revised Edition), Pg. 30

[2] Clinton E. Arnold, “Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke”, Pg. 147

Emmanuel

Homily December 24. 2024

            I find it fascinating that the opening verses of the story of the birth of Jesus include shepherds.  Shepherds had dirty jobs.  I mean REALLY dirty jobs.  The contact with animals that these shepherds experienced in the performing of their duties rendered them ritually unclean.  And as long as they worked as shepherds, they were perpetually ritually unclean.  Let’s stop for one moment and think about what this means.  Shepherds were, as a result of their profession, NEVER permitted to set foot in the temple and never permitted to participate in worship.

And their ceremonial uncleanness also separated them from the rest of the Jewish community because, as we all know, ritual uncleanness was contagious.  If you were to touch someone who was unclean, that made you unclean also.  And not only was the shepherd’s job dirty and alienating, but apparently, the people who worked as shepherds didn’t exactly have the best reputation.  In fact, according to Jewish law, a shepherd’s testimony was inadmissible in a court of law, presumably due to the character, or lack thereof, of those who were drawn to this profession.

            And so, with this in mind, the Christmas story takes on somewhat of a new dimension.  I mean, why were the angels sent to shepherds?  God could have sent the angel chorus to anyone He chose.  He could have sent that chorus to Caesar Agustus.  In the dark of night, He could have lit the imperial palace up as if it was midday and filled that space with the sound of heavenly praise.  But He didn’t.  He could have sent the angels to the temple and to the priests to herald the arrival of their long-awaited Messiah.  But He didn’t.  He could have sent that heavenly chorus directly to the high priest’s house and let the high priest be the one to tell the world the good news about Jesus’ birth.  But He didn’t.  A few weeks back we read that Luke identified 7 of the most influential men in the Roman world, but the angels didn’t visit any of them.  Instead, it was shepherds.  Why?

            Well, when WE hear good news, who is the first person that we want to tell?  We share our good news with those who are the most likely to delight with us over the news.  And so, we share our good news first with our closest family and friends, So, God’s choice to tell the shepherds first, is telling us something about God Himself.  God first told the Good News to those who He knew would be the ones who would rejoice with Him. 

The kings, the dignitaries, the religious rulers, they weren’t going to rejoice with God over the birth of the Messiah.  In fact, they would end up opposing Jesus because he threatened their power.  And so, God sent the heavenly host to tell the shepherds, and what did the shepherds do?  When they saw the baby Jesus in the manger, Luke tells us that, “they made known what [the angels] had told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them,” And what did the shepherds do after they returned to their fields?  Luke tells us that, “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them.”  God told the shepherds first because God knew that they would be the ones who would be rejoicing with Him.

            Isaiah tells us that the Messiah will be called Emmanuel, which means “God with us”.  And Jesus truly is “God with US”.  He is not God with the kings and the well connected.  He is not God with the religious authorities.  He is God WITH US!  He is God who doesn’t require His followers to have an elite position in society.  He is God who doesn’t require elite training in the Bible or in religion.  He is God who does not require an elite income or elite status to be His follower.  He is simply God with us.  And if we ever, ever doubt our worthiness to come before God, just remember that He came to the perpetually unclean shepherds first.

            It’s not possible to read the Bible and not come away with the understanding that God holds a special place in His heart for the poor and the marginalized.  The shepherds who were rejected by the people, excluded from worship, and deeply distrusted, are the very ones that God embraced.  It’s almost impossible to comprehend the fact that unclean shepherds, led by God to a baby, lying in a sheep’s feeding trough, wrapped in strips of cloth, and in a cold and damp cave, is the way the creator of the universe chose to enter the world.  No power, no influence, no friends in high places, just Emmanuel… God with us.

            God’s kingdom is not about power and authority, though God has those things in unfathomable abundance.  God’s kingdom is about God choosing to reconcile the world to Himself.  It’s about bridging the gap between God’s holiness and our sinfulness which God accomplishes by assigning the sinlessness and goodness of Jesus to us… and making it as if our sin never happened.  And this transaction, this free gift of a loving and gracious God is available to absolutely everyone who chooses to accept God’s gift of new life in Him.

            It doesn’t matter who we are.  It doesn’t matter where we’ve been or what we’ve done.  It doesn’t matter how far away from God we think we are.  It only matters where our hearts are right here and right now.  This is the message of the shepherds.  God comes to the unclean, the unwanted, the unappreciated, and the rejected, and out of the difficulties of their lives, He creates something unimaginably beautiful.  He creates a life that He teaches to love Him and to love others.

            Here is the simple truth… If Jesus was willing to be born into an environment as dismal and as smelly as a manger, there is no heart into which He will be unwilling to be born as well.

Love Grows

Sermon for December 22, 2024

            This is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and for any who may have missed it, it is the Sunday of Love, and so we will be talking about love this morning.  For us in the twenty-first century English speaking world, we express the concept of love with just one word, “Love”.  Now, the concept of love actually has several different shades of meaning and so, when we use the word, we have to interpret the thought behind the word through the context in which it is used.  Unfortunately, it’s possible to misinterpret which shade of the word is being used and given the depth of emotion contained in this concept of love, the results of misunderstanding can sometimes be problematic.  For the first century Greco-Roman audience however, there were no such issues because the Greeks actually had four different words, with four completely different meanings, all four of which we translate into the English word “Love”.  Please allow me to explain.

            First, they had the word φῐλῐ́ᾱ (Philia), a word that we would refer to as “brotherly love”.  In fact, Philadelphia is called the city of brotherly love because the name “Philadelphia” is derived from the Greek words φῐλῐ́ᾱ which means love and ἀδελφός which means brother or sister.  φῐλῐ́ᾱ could best be described as the deep and abiding friendship that you would have for a brother or sister, or a closest friend.

            Next, they had the word ἔρως (Eros) which is the root of our word “erotic”.  ἔρως describes love that includes a physical component, essentially describing a love between mutually committed individuals.

            Then, they had the word στοργή  (Storge) which is love with an obligatory component, such as a love one would have for their children, or even a love one has for their country.  It’s important to note that the obligatory nature of στοργή does not detract from the depth of love felt for the beloved.  It simply means that this is a type of love that one is expected to have.

            Finally, there is the word ᾰ̓γᾰ́πη (Agape), and ᾰ̓γᾰ́πη is a word that is extraordinarily rare in its use in classical Greek literature but a word that abounds in the Bible.  In fact, ᾰ̓γᾰ́πη is used over 250 times in the Septuagint, which is the third century BCE Greek version of the Old Testament,  And it is used more than 200 times in the New Testament.  This makes ᾰ̓γᾰ́πη love one of the most common themes of the Bible.  And the meaning of the word is a love that is not self-centered, but rather a love that is outwardly directed; a love that places the needs and wants of others ahead of one’s own. 

            ᾰ̓γᾰ́πη is defined by the words of 1 Corinthians 13 which are among the most well known words in the Bible due to their being one of the most commonly read Bible passages at weddings.  Readers of this passage tend to interpret it as instructions on how we are to love, and they aren’t wrong, but that’s not the whole story.  This passage actually describes the love that God has for us.  It’s a love that is patient and kind, a love that is not jealous, boastful, arrogant, or rude, it is love that does not insist on having its own way, that keeps no record of wrongs, and that rejoices not in wrongdoing but in truth.  This passage succinctly describes the love that God has for us and is also describing the love that God calls us to have not only for Him, but also for one another.

            Our first reading this morning is known as the Nunc Dimittis, a Latin phrase meaning “now you allow to depart”, but the passage is more commonly referred to as the Song of Simeon.  Luke describes Simeon as a righteous and devout man.  It is presumed that Simeon is elderly because the Holy Spirit has promised him that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah with his own eyes.  Led by the Holy Spirit to the temple on the day that Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to perform the purification ritual, when Simeon saw Jesus, he received Jesus into his arms and praised God with the words that we just read a few moments ago.

            In Luke’s narrative, Mary and Simeon are the only ones who actually hold the baby Jesus.  That’s not to say that others didn’t (I can’t imagine a father not wanting to hold his son!), but these are the only two whose actions were important enough to be mentioned in Luke’s narrative.  But why do we think that is?  Our reading today tells us that Simeon “took” Jesus into his arms, but the sense of the word that was used is that Simeon “received” Jesus into his arms, giving us the image of an infant being gently handed to a loving grandparent.  And upon taking the child into his arms, inspired by the Holy Spirit, Simeon says something that is truly revolutionary.  He says that, not only will this child be the glory of His people Israel, but also that He will be a “Light of revelation to the Gentiles”.  In these words, Simeon prophetically reveals God’s loving plan to reconcile to Himself, not only the Jewish people, but all of His beloved children.

            This universal love of God for His children is echoed in our passage from Matthew today.  Matthew speaks of the compassion that Jesus had for the crowds because they were helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 

            The week before last, my girlfriend and I took a trip to Manhattan to see the Rockette’s Christmas spectacular and to see the Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center.  I have been living is New Jersey for over 50 years and I had never done either of these things.  Never in my life have I ever been in a traffic jam, on foot, on a sidewalk.  There were so many people walking, so many people stopping to take pictures and selfies, so many people trying just to get from point A to point B, that the foot traffic on the sidewalk came to a complete standstill.  It took us over 45 minutes to walk 5 blocks. 

If you are watching the TV show “The Chosen” (and if you aren’t, you really should check it out!), the episode where Jesus is trying to get to Jairus’ house to heal his daughter looks very much like my trip to Manhattan.  Time and time again the Bible tells us about the enormous crowds that followed Jesus, and how they would press in on Him from all sides, and how He occasionally would try, often unsuccessfully, to get away from the crowds just to find a little solitude.  But as I read today’s passage, I can look at the crowds that followed Jesus in the light of the human traffic jam that is Manhattan at Christmas time, and the impact of Jesus’ statement that the harvest was plentiful was really brought home to me in that image.  Massive crowds, following Jesus, seeking answers to questions when they are not exactly sure what those questions even are. 

Harassed and helpless indeed.  And while Jesus devoted a good chunk of His time to trying to help people not only to find those answers, but to understand the actual questions themselves, He couldn’t do it all by Himself.  And so, Jesus, with compassion and love for those who were seeking answers, asks us to pray that the Lord will send out workers for the harvest.  And there’s a little bit of irony in this because we actually end up praying for ourselves.  Because WE are the workers for whom we are praying.  Jesus calls us to seek out with compassion and love the harassed and the helpless, that we may begin to be the ones who help to provide answers and clarity for them.

And it’s here that we run squarely into the heart of our call, because it is here… in this reading, that Jesus tells us why he does what He does.  Did anyone happen to catch it?  Matthew tells us that, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them.”  Jesus’ mission is about far more than just obligation.  And it has absolutely nothing to do with the metrics of how many people did we save today.  Jesus didn’t just die for us, He lived his entire life for us.  Everything He did was centered on reconciling us to God, and everything He did, was done from an unshakable foundation of ᾰ̓γᾰ́πη love for each and every one of His beloved children.

I have a confession to make.  I am a complete social media geek.  I spend way too much time on Facebook and Quora, but I really like spending time on those apps because they give me an opportunity to share my faith, and that is something that I do rather often.  Not too long ago, a dear friend of mine, a committed believer who always seems to be seeking to expand the knowledge of his faith, forwarded a post questioning the universality of God’s love.  The premise of the post was that God’s love is reserved only for those who accept Him, leaving us to presume that God doesn’t love those who don’t accept Him.  I began my rebuttal to this post by quoting 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting ANYONE to perish, but EVERYONE to come to repentance.”  And I said in my reply that I believed that the answer to the question of “does God’s limit His love” would be found in discovering who are the “anyone” and who are the “everyone” that are referred to in this passage.  It turns out that the Greek word that is translated “anyone” is τινας (tinas) and parsing the word isn’t particularly helpful because in some verses in the Bible it does mean all people but in some other verses it means only certain people.  But the word used for “everyone” is different.  The “everyone” is translated from πάσας (pasas), and every use of this word that I could find in the Bible clearly means “all” or “every”.  This word is an emphatic statement of inclusion, and Jesus uses it three times in today’s reading. 

And so, upon whom did Jesus have compassion?  Πάσας, everyone.  To whom was Jesus called to bring the Good News of our reconciliation to God?  Πάσας, everyone.  And upon whom are WE called to have compassion?  Πάσας, everyone.  And to whom are we called to bring the Good News of our reconciliation to God?  Πάσας, everyone. 

God’s love knows no bounds, has no limits, is withheld from no one.  If indeed the call to the believer is a call to Christ likeness, then the call to us is to love exactly as Christ loved.  Both in the scope of HOW we love, as we seek to love selflessly, giving of ourselves to others out of compassion for their needs and their situations. And also in the scope of WHO we love, as we seek to love inclusively out of compassion for each and every person, because every one of them bears the image of the Living God.  This is the essence of ᾰ̓γᾰ́πη (agape).  This is the essence of love.  This is what it means to love as Jesus loved.  To love without limits, to love selflessly, and to withhold that love from no one.  From the manger to the cross, Jesus showed us what it means to truly love.  Let us go and do likewise.

Prepare the Way Part II

December 15, 2024

            Last week we spoke about making straight the way for the Lord.  We discussed the importance of learning to evaluate where are our valleys, our feelings of inadequacy or helplessness?  Where are our hills of ego and status-seeking and where are our crooked places of distractions and indifference?  Last week our focus was on identifying the problem.  Today the focus is on addressing the problem.

            John the Baptist had a tough task in front of him.  In the Jewish common theology of the first century, salvation was a matter of birthright.  In the mind of the first century Israelite, if you were Jewish, you were automatically an heir to an unbreakable promise from God that you were accepted into His kingdom.  But that isn’t exactly what the Bible says, and so, John doesn’t mince words.  “You brood of vipers” he said.  And the Greek word that he used is :  Γεννήματα (Yeneemata), which actually means to beget or to bring forth.  Here, John is calling those who have come to see him not the children of God, but the children of vipers.  And then he asked them “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

            What wrath?  For his first century Jewish audience, they thought of themselves as children of the Promise, God’s chosen people.  And so, John’s challenge was to teach his listeners that being a descendant of Abraham was worthless unless their lives reflected Abraham’s righteousness as well.  Dr. Doug Scalise teaches us that, “One of the central elements of the Old Testament covenant is the generational promise, which begins with Abraham, continues with Isaac and Jacob, and is extended through them to all of their descendants.  But John says that this promise is meaningless, apart from repentance. In other words, claiming the promise of Abraham without the faith of Abraham simply doesn’t work. John is changing the game, and his preaching challenges his hearers to [understand that change]. [1]  John illustrates his point by telling the crowd that God could make descendants of Abraham out of the stones that surrounded them, if He so chose. 

The message that John the Baptist was bringing was revolutionary.  For a first century Jew even to consider the fact that they may not be resting comfortably in God’s good graces was unthinkable.  And so, John continued, “Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.  Therefore, every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” You see, John knows that those who think of themselves as “good people”; the important, the wealthy, the well connected, and the self-righteous, are the most difficult people to convince of their need for a savior.  John knew that he had to convince the Jewish people that something they had believed for their entire lives was wrong.  And John knew that an ordinary teacher was not going to be able to accomplish this, which is why John needed to be recognized as having the authority of a prophet in order to speak, and to be heard. 

            Apparently, John’s message reached enough of his listeners that some of them began asking him, “What must we do?”  John’s answer shouldn’t have been news to his listeners.  94 times Old Testament authors repeat the command to care for the poor, and so, John tells the crowd, ““He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise.”  Dr. Judith Jones says, “John’s words show that he views poverty neither as an accident nor as the fault of the poor. In his time, as in ours, the earth produced more than enough goods to feed and clothe everyone. The problem then and now is that the resources have been grabbed up by a very small percentage of the population. John called not only the wealthiest but also the merely comfortable to treat their accumulation of goods as directly related to the seriousness of their repentance. How we get money and how we use money exposes what we value. Economic issues are spiritual issues. If we ignore God’s commands to practice social and economic justice, how can we claim that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? If we prioritize our pleasures above our neighbors’ basic necessities, how can we claim to love our neighbors as we love ourselves?” [2]

            Last week I mentioned that God was about to do something brand new, and that John is the herald of that message.  In Jesus, God teaches us that righteousness is not about what we do, it’s about who we are.  Reversing Dr. Jones’ comment, when we truly love our neighbors, their needs will become a priority to us.  When we truly love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will, in the words of the prophet Amos, “Let justice run down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.  And we will do these things simply because it is within our new nature in Christ to do so.

            And then, from the crowd came two additional questions.  First, the tax collectors asked, “What should we do?”.  Tax collectors were despised by the Jews because they were viewed as traitors, working for the hated Romans.  To make matters worse, Tax collectors had a guideline from Rome about how much tax they were required to collect and their pay was included in that amount, but tax collectors routinely collected more than the required amount, and then pocketed the difference.  John told them to collect no more than they were required to collect and to stop padding their paycheck with the extra money they were taking from the taxpayers.  Next, a group of soldiers asked, “What should we do?”  Roman soldiers often used their position of authority to extort money from people, threatening to have them jailed or worse if they didn’t pay up.  John told them to be satisfied with their wages and not to intimidate or falsely accuse anyone. 

            It’s interesting to note here that, while both tax collectors and Roman soldiers were among the most despised of Israel’s inhabitants, John doesn’t tell them to quit their jobs… but rather to do their jobs in a way that exhibited ethics, and justice, and even love towards others.  Donald G. Miller says, “This counsel of John is not to be thought of as mere moralizing, nor as salvation by works.  Had he stood for this he would not have broken with the religious leaders of his day.  He is not saying that if [people] are generous, honest, and faithful, they will thereby earn the right to become members of the coming kingdom.  He is rather saying that if one acknowledges [their] unworthiness and accepts God’s gracious gift of entrance into the coming kingdom, [they] will show [that gratitude] by ethical behavior [towards others].  This is not the ethics of legalism, but the ethics of gratitude”. [3]

            Can we see the distinction here?  A changed heart that loves and honors others can only be achieved by a transformation of that heart that is brought about by the Holy Spirit.  In recognizing the hopeless situation that we face before God as a result of sin, we turn to Him asking Him for His gracious forgiveness.  And this forgiveness results in μετανοίας (Metanoias), which is the Greek word that we translate “repentance”.  But μετανοίας means to have a transformative change of the heart, or to have a completely new perspective on our lives that alters the way we think and the way we act.  In short, we become an entirely new person; a person recreated, bearing not only the image of God, but also bearing the image of God’s heart.

            I said before that the “good people”, the important, the wealthy, the well connected, and the self-righteous, are the most difficult people to convince of their need for a savior.  This principle didn’t just apply to the Israelites of the first century.  This principle is universal among humans.  And so sometimes harsh language such as John used is necessary to jolt people out of their presumptive righteousness. 

            And so, the pressing question for us this morning, and for every minute of every day, is “what must we do?”  Well, as we discussed last week, we must prepare the way for the Lord in our own hearts.  We must set aside our insecurities, and our egos, and our distractions, and our indifferences, and we must devote time to prayer, asking God to let His Holy Spirit make the transformative changes in our lives that are necessary in order for us to become productive and faithful citizens of His kingdom. 

            And as God is going about the business of changing our hearts, we can practice.  We can practice loving others, even to the point of seeking to place their needs ahead of our own.  We can practice kindness, and empathy, and forgiveness.  And we can practice justice.  We can recognize the places where the word’s systems create injustice, and we can become a strident voice advocating for fairness and equality in our community and in our world.

            John’s language over the last two weeks has been apocalyptic.  “The wrath to come”, “The axe is at the root”, “baptizing with the Holy Spirit and fire”!  John is making it crystal clear that a new world is coming, and that that world will be very different from the one we now inhabit.  The Rev. Chelsea Harmon said, “If the world is ending, it’s best to live the way of the world that is to come; because then, we will at least recognize ourselves when we are in it.  As people who are washed and cleansed by God’s own transforming hand, we’ve already begun to be different, living from the core of goodness that is Christ within us, rather than our selfish motivations which so often control us.  We will see that the fruit of our ordinary faithfulness was actually the fruit of God’s kingdom coming, here and now; the purifying for eternity has already begun by the work of the Holy Spirit!” [4]

            Rev. Harmon asks an excellent question.  “When this world ends and all that is left of us is what is of God and his Kingdom, will we be able to recognize ourselves?”  Will the fully transformed person that we will become closely resemble the person that we are today?  Or will so much more transformation be necessary that we won’t even recognize the new person that we will become? 

            These are good questions; questions that we should give some thought.  A few weeks ago, I made a comment about theologians liking to say that the kingdom of God is eschatologically here, meaning that the kingdom of God exists in two places at once.  One is the kingdom that is the blessed future hope of every follower of Christ, and the other is the kingdom that is present among us in the here and now.  And as citizens of that kingdom in the here and now, it is our quest, our responsibility, our fondest desire, that we should manifest kingdom living to the fullest of the ability that God grants us through the Holy Spirit.

            But every bit of this is built on the foundation of gratitude for what God has done for us through Jesus.

            The other day I saw a meme on Facebook that had a Philip Yancey quote.  And I love Philip Yancey.  He was talking about the thief on the cross, and he said, “In one of his last acts before death, Jesus forgave a thief dangling on a cross, knowing full well the thief had converted out of plain fear. That thief would never study the Bible, never attend synagogue or church, and never make amends to all those he had wronged. He simply said “Jesus, remember me,” and Jesus promised, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’ It was another shocking reminder that grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what God has done for us.” [5]  It is this grace, this entirely unmerited and extravagant grace, that prompts our response of gratitude.  God has done for us, in Jesus, that which we could never have accomplished on our own.  God has given us life and has reconciled us to Himself, making us beloved citizens of His kingdom.  With that in mind, is there any part of our lives that we should be unwilling to give Him in return?

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[1] Doug Scalise, “What Should We Do”, BrewsterBaptistChurch.org

[2] Dr. Judith Jones, Commentary on Luke 3:7-18, WorkingPreacher.org

[3] Donald G. Miller, The Layman’s Bible Commentary: Luke, Pg. 45

[4] Chelsea Harmon, Luke 3:7-18 Commentary, CEPreaching.org

[5] Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace, Quoted on Facebook