No Prophet Can Die Outside Jerusalem

March 16, 2025

            Anyone who is familiar with farms or raising chickens knows how aggressively mother hens protect their chicks.  As for me, well, I’m not a farm boy, so I had to look it up.  If there is an approaching storm, or if there is cold weather, or if there is a threat from a predator, a mother hen will cluck at her chicks to call them, then as she spreads her wings, her baby chicks will gather under her wings and find protection there.  Protection from the storm, or the cold, or protection from the predator, from whom the mother hen will fiercely defend them.  But there is one even more poignant example of a mother hen’s devoted protection of her chicks.  Sometimes there are fires in barns or in chicken coops, and when the fires have been put out, it is not at all unusual to find mother hens that have died in the fire, but under whose wings are their still living chicks.  The mother hen will literally give up her life in the fire to save her chicks.

            When we read in today’s lesson about Jesus’ longing to gather the children of Jerusalem together as a hen would gather her chicks under her wings, we see in this simile, a picture of the depth of Jesus’ love and care, as He also offers up His life for the protection of His beloved children.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

            In today’s story, a group of Pharisees come to tell Jesus that Herod wants to kill Him and that He should leave Galilee.  Scholars disagree about the meaning of this passage.  Some say that the warning comes from a group of Pharisees who are, secretly or otherwise, followers of Jesus and that the warnings are sincere.  Others say that the warnings, while possibly accurate, are a ploy by the Pharisees to trick Jesus into going to Jerusalem where the Sanhedrin is waiting to arrest Him.  Fortunately, as far as the story goes, their motives are completely irrelevant and Jesus answers them in the most defiant way imaginable. 

            First, Jesus responds to the Pharisees by calling Herod a fox.  Now, given the fact that the 21^st century English speaking world views a fox as being a cunning and resourceful creature, this could appear to be a compliment of some kind, but it is nothing of the sort.  Our first century counterparts lived in a much more agrarian society, with much more familiarity about the difficulties of raising livestock, and people knew that farmers and shepherds had to protect their animals from foxes, and so while there may have been a grudging respect for the fox’s clever ways, these first century folks viewed foxes as being a nuisance and generally as being worthless creatures, as in, the world would be a better place without them.  Sort of like how I feel about wasps and hornets.  And so, Jesus calling Herod a fox was anything but complimentary.  It was, in fact, a derogatory statement by Jesus that Herod was worthless and irrelevant. Given the fact that Herod had only recently beheaded John the Baptist, this was a bold and insolent statement that would have infuriated the already dangerous Herod. 

            But let’s look at the rest of Jesus’ response.  ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.”  What do we think Jesus meant by this?  Jesus meant that there was absolutely nothing that Herod could do that was going to interfere with Jesus’ goal of accomplishing His Father’s mission.  Jesus continued his statement by saying “In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!” 

            In spite of Herod’s well-deserved reputation for a violent temper and a vindictive nature, Jesus is completely unconcerned because, in the end, Herod will be only a pawn in the grand redemption that is soon to take place on Calvary’s hill.  Back in Luke 9 we read that Jesus had resolutely set His face to Jerusalem.  Jesus would see to it that His Father’s will would be accomplished exactly as planned, and there was nothing… nothing that was going to prevent that from happening.

            Next, Jesus gives a glimpse into His motivation for completing His unimaginably difficult mission as He expresses His deepest desire to gather the children of Jerusalem as a mother hen would gather her chicks under her wings.  Like the mother hen that we discussed earlier who gave up her life to save her chicks, so it is that Jesus, out of His extraordinary love for His beloved children, was willing, and indeed did, give up His life for the lives of those He loved so deeply. 

            Over the last few weeks, after having touched on the subject during a sermon, I have been giving a lot of thought to the idea of loving one’s enemies.  I’ve always believed that Jesus had an unfair advantage when it came to this because He knew the hearts of all people.  Jesus knew all of their extenuating circumstances and all of their trials and traumas, and we all know that to have empathy; to take the time to understand the difficulties and challenges that others face can help us to have more compassion and indeed more love for those who might otherwise be really difficult to love.  But it never crossed my mind until recently that there are people here and there who are just unredemptively evil.  During the Nuremberg trials after the 2^nd World War, where Nazi leaders were being tried for their war crimes, an army psychologist, Captain G. M. Gilbert, who had been assigned to work with the accused, wrote, “In my work with the defendants I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it.  A lack of empathy.  It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men.  Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy”. [1]  And yet here’s the thing, Jesus knows the hearts of these people also.  He sees within them their total lack of compassion, and yet still, Jesus loves them and is willing to give His life for them.  So much for my idea of Jesus having an unfair advantage.  He loves them even when they have a complete lack of redeeming qualities, save one.  They were made in God’s image.

            And here, in today’s story, the Bible speaks volumes about the nature of God’s forgiveness.  Jesus was willing to forgive everything, to gather all of His beloved children under His wings, as it were, and to save them; every single one of them.  But some were not willing.  And to those who were unwilling Jesus pronounced judgment: “Look!” He says, “your house is left to you desolate”.  We don’t know if the “house” to which Jesus refers is the Temple or if it is the “House of Israel”; those of God’s chosen who have rejected Jesus, but the outcome is the same.  They, and their house have been separated from God.  And there is a difficult theology here, because even though those rejecting Jesus have succeeded in separating themselves from God, God still hasn’t turned His back on them.  Forgiveness and reconciliation to God are always just as close as a repentant heart.  But Jesus’ last words in today’s reading speak an ominous message.   “I tell you; you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” 

            These words will be spoken at Jesus’ second coming, and so His message is one of an urgent nature.  The time to turn to God is now.  The time to accept Jesus is now!  Just before our reading today, Jesus told the parable of the narrow door. “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door,” Jesus said, “because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.  Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’”

            God IS patient with us.  2 Peter 3:8-9 says, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.  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 so, God has patiently waited for millennia, giving His children time to turn to Him and to be saved.  But God’s patience will not last forever.  At some point, known only to the Father, that door is going to close.  Manson says, “God opens the door of salvation for us to enter, but it is narrow.  One has to struggle through rather than stroll in.  If people fail to enter it, it is not because God refuses to admit them.  It means they want to enter on their own terms, and not on the only terms on which entrance is possible.”  [2]  Garland continues this thought, “The strength to enter comes only from God.  [Jesus’] lament reveals God’s passion to save, but salvation requires accepting God’s offer of grace through Jesus and heeding His teaching by reorienting one’s life accordingly.   It is not that God decides who will be allowed to enter and who will be shut out but that God acknowledges who has entered and who has refused to enter.” [3]

            As we look at today’s lesson, we find Jesus, inexorably heading to His death on a cross.  Jesus has selflessly followed this road for three years and will complete His work in a few short weeks.  Jesus would not let the temptations of the devil deter Him.  He would not let the threat of violence by Herod deter Him.  He would not let those who rejected Him deter Him.  And the reason that Jesus persevered through these difficulties is because of love; selfless, extravagant, agape love.  In this lesson we also find the contrast between those who have accepted Jesus and those who haven’t.  Throughout our study of Luke we have seen that the people flock to Jesus, often mobbing Him, and yet when Jesus’ teaching becomes too difficult or too demanding, people walk away.  Just like the rich, young ruler who walked away sad because he didn’t want to part with his fortune, or the Pharisees who were too caught up in their power and influence to follow Him, those who wanted to be associated with Jesus but didn’t want to make the commitment to love selflessly, ended up rejecting their only chance at salvation.

            For us, right now, the door to salvation is open, but it is not a wide door, and it isn’t entered effortlessly.  Entering the door requires a reset of our attitudes and our actions.  It’s not that our actions save us; please understand that clearly.  Salvation is entirely of God and is entirely of His doing.  It’s just that the evidence of our accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior is the fact that He actually BECOMES our Lord and Savior.  Which means that we see the wisdom, indeed the necessity, of allowing God to transform our hearts into hearts of love and compassion and empathy.  To transform our hearts into hearts that long for justice and fairness, to transform our hearts into hearts that demand equality for all and hearts that embrace diversity as the God breathed thing that it is.

            No, we’re not going to be perfect.  We won’t love perfectly, we won’t act perfectly, we won’t think perfectly.  But together, as Christians, we have embarked on a journey.  One that the Methodist theologian John Wesley described as “going on to perfection”.   A process whereby throughout our lifetimes we grow in faith and in faithfulness, to the end that our hearts will increasingly look like God’s heart.  Let us accept Jesus!  Let us walk through that narrow door! And let us learn to become a people after God’s own heart.

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[1] Gustav Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary

[2] Manson, The Sayings of Jesus, Pg. 125

[3] David E. Garland, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 561

Wrong Ways and Right Ways

March 9, 2025

So… How do we think it happened?  Was it a guy in a red body suit with horns and a tail and a pitchfork?  How about, maybe a talking snake?  Or perhaps it was a slick Madison Avenue type in a three piece suit ala Al Pacino in the movie, “The Devil’s Advocate”?  Or just maybe Satan “spoke” to Jesus in the same way that he “speaks” to us; or more accurately in the same way that he seeks to influence us.  I think that if we are to understand today’s text that we need to engage with it honestly, and that means trying to come to some understanding with what we believe about Satan. 

One popular thought is that Satan isn’t real, or that he is simply a representation of the penchant for selfishness that lives in all of humanity.  But the Bible doesn’t allow us the luxury of such a thought.  The Bible speaks openly and often of Satan.  I found over 100 references to Satan in the Bible with just a cursory look.  And while we know very little of how Satan came to be what he is, what IS clear is that he is real, that he is in direct opposition to God, that his intent is to turn as many people away from God as he possibly can, and that, unfortunately, he has power to influence us.  In the book of Job, God gave Satan the power to afflict Job.  The result to Job was devastating.  Jesus, just before He was arrested, told Peter that Satan had asked to “sift [the disciples] as wheat”.  And we all know that the result of that, was Peter’s three denials of Christ.  And so, we dismiss Satan at our peril because Satan asks to sift us also.

I would imagine that a guy in a red body suit with horns and a tail and a pitchfork would be relatively easy to resist.  I mean, we may be intrigued by what he has to say, but he definitely looks sketchy.  But Satan’s real methods are much more subtle.  When, in the past, I’ve discussed how the Holy Spirit speaks to us, I have said that having the Spirit speak to us in an audible voice would be highly unusual, though not impossible.  But that the Spirit mostly speaks to us in ideas and thoughts and notions.  So it is with Satan, who simply makes suggestions, most of which, at least on the surface, seem somewhat reasonable.

 Jesus had just spent 40 days in the desert fasting and praying.  And after 40 days without food, he was hungry.  The Judean wilderness is so desolate that, throughout all of history, it has been mostly uninhabited.  It is a harsh and unforgiving place and very little grows there.  I am told that the desert floor is covered with limestone rocks and that these rocks resemble loaves of bread, probably even more so when one hasn’t eaten in 40 days.  Satan could have used his influence simply to cause Jesus to visualize these rocks as being bread, and it’s not hard to imagine how Jesus might have thought that using His power to satisfy His hunger was probably a pretty harmless thing.  Maybe even something that he could justify because if he died of hunger, what good would He be to the world then?  And I think that this temptation is indicative of how Satan works.  Give someone an idea, then give them a justification for the idea, and then let human nature take its course. 

But of course, Jesus knew that the effects of this temptation would run much deeper than just this one simple event.  James Laurence explains, “This is a temptation [for Jesus] to use His divine power for Himself… not for His heavenly Father, not for humanity, but for himself. And I suspect that the devil knows that if he can get Jesus to think about himself, even just a little, then the devil has won. Because there is no way that Jesus will be crucified for our sins, if he begins thinking about himself in any way.” [1]  So, Satan seeks a toehold with one little temptation, but Satan has a long game.  The little, seemingly innocuous ideas he gives us are designed to erode our faith and lead us into a life of compromises with that faith. 

Laurence continues, “And there is something universal in this. Because once we decide to live for ourselves, and not for God, even just a little, we have begun wandering away from the faith. Because there is no way that we will do anything sacrificial – for God or for others, if we are thinking about ourselves.” [2]

And so, how DOES Jesus resist this temptation?  His response is directly from scripture: Jesus said, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.”  Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 8, but there is more to the verse than what Jesus quoted.  The verse as it appears in Deuteronomy 8 is, “[We] do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”  Jesus had recognized the subtext of Satan’s temptation and had spoken to it directly.  Jesus knew that He needed to follow God’s plan precisely, and that meant that there was absolutely no leeway for Jesus to act in His own behalf.  Can we look at this and see how incredibly subtle this temptation was?

In the second temptation Satan showed Jesus all of the kingdoms of the world and offered them all to Jesus in exchange for Jesus’ worship.  Well, this one doesn’t seem subtle on first glance, does it?  But do we understand the extent of what is being offered here?  Imagine what might have happened had Jesus accepted this offer.  Jesus could have created a society of love and compassion.  All of the wars, all of the pain and suffering, all of the diseases, all of the hate and misogyny and bigotry of the last 2000 years, gone.  Jesus could have created a perfect society, BUT… for those who didn’t want to participate in a society of love and compassion; for those for whom what they had simply wasn’t enough, some force would have had to have been applied to keep these people in line so that the perfect society would work for everyone else.  Ultimately, it would have been a society based on coercion, not on love.  Miller says, “No rule based on eternal authority ever truly wins the allegiance of [people], nor can it last… God wants the will of [humans], [their] hearts, [and their] free obedience in love.  When these are given, then, and only then, is His kingdom at work.” [3]

Jesus answered Satan, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”  And once again there is depth to this answer.  Worshipping the Lord presupposes that we will follow Him also… and follow Him completely.  If we are to place our trust in God, that means that we trust that God knows what He is doing, and we are willing to follow exactly that which He calls us to do.  Jesus knew that there is no plan B for God’s kingdom.  Jesus must do exactly what His Father calls Him to do.

I saw a pretty funny cartoon last week.  Two people were standing and were beginning to be covered with what looked like ashes falling from the sky.  One person says, “What’s this? Why didn’t someone warn us about this?”  The other person replies, “We were warned”.  In the next frame they are knee deep and the first person says, “They saw this coming, why didn’t they tell us?”  the second person says, “They told us”.  In the third frame they are waist deep and the first person says, “They should have said it in a way that we would believe it.”  The second person says, “Some did believe, but some didn’t.”  In the fourth frame they are neck deep and the first person says, “I blame them for letting us not believe them”.  The second person says, “They saw that coming too”.  When Jesus was asked by the Jewish religious authorities to show them a sign, Jesus’ reply to them was that even if someone returned from the dead they wouldn’t believe.  As it turned out, He was exactly right, wasn’t He?

I would imagine that Jesus’ consideration about how to go about His ministry in a way that would reach as many people as possible was an extremely difficult one.  At this point, Jesus already knew that He had the power to do miraculous things.  And so, the temptation to do something spectacular and attention grabbing must have been significant.  Herod’s Temple stood at the precipice of the Kidron Valley, so the fall from the tower at the northwestern corner of the temple to the floor of the valley below would have been some 450 feet.  That would be like falling from a 34-story building.  To have leapt from that corner and landed lightly on His feet would certainly have attracted attention.  Perhaps He could then have taken a bow and said “ta-da”. 

With my apologies for making a sarcastic joke, the temptations of Jesus were very, very, real, and in each instance, a decision was made by Jesus as to what the shape of His ministry would be.  His ministry, formulated during these 40 days of trial, would eventually be exactly as God intended it to be: selfless, compassionate, and faithful. 

One thing that I hope no one missed in our reading today is the fact that Satan quoted scripture.  In asking Jesus to jump from the highest point of the temple, Satan quoted Psalm 91:11-12, “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”  Jesus replied, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  And for the third time this morning Jesus’ answer is deeper than it seems.  Jesus clearly saw the distinction between faith and presumption.  Jesus, and we, are called to live faithfully and to trust in God to care for us and to provide for us, but at the same time, we can’t expect that God will protect us if we choose to do something stupid.  There are still consequences for actions, and so taking that leap from the temple wouldn’t have been something done in faith.  Just like Jesus said, it would have been an attempt to test God’s faithfulness.  And that is NOT faith.

And so, what does today’s story have to say to us?  In recognizing Satan’s deceptive use of scripture, we have been given a warning.  No single verse of the Bible is intended to stand on its own.  Every verse, every word, needs to be understood in the light of the witness of the entire Bible.  N. T. Wright says, “It is a central part of Christian vocation to learn to recognize the voices that whisper attractive lies, to distinguish them from the voice of God, and to use the simple but direct weapons provided in scripture to rebut the lies with truth… At the heart of our resistance to temptation is love and loyalty to the God who has already called us His beloved children in Christ, and who holds out before us the calling to follow Him in the path which leads to the true glory.” [4]

The good news is, Satan was defeated at the cross.  Jesus has triumphed and Satan’s fate has been sealed.  The bad news is, Satan is still active in the world and is still able to influence humans.  I’d like to close with some wise words from David E. Garland, “One resists Satan when one is more concerned with serving others than serving oneself.  One defeats Satan when one knows and accepts one’s place in the order of creation and trusts God’s promise to save.” [5]

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[1] James Laurence, MyPastoralPonderings.com, “When We Are Tempted”

[2] ibid

[3] Donald G. Miller, The Layman’s Bible Commentary: Luke, Pg. 55

[4] N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone, Pg. 33

[5] David E. Garland, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 188

Πραΰτης (Prow-teese)

Ash Wednesday Homily

March 5, 20258         

   In his book, Confessions, Augustine of Hippo said, “God, you were within me, but I was outside of myself.  And I searched for you in the things of the outside world.”  So often people seek meaningfulness in their lives by turning to the things of this world.  Blaise Pascal once said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each [person] which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

            People try to fill that vacuum with all manner of things.  Some of those things can be innocuous and some not so much, but all of it is harmful to us if it is an activity designed to fill the space in our hearts that rightfully belongs to God.  In one of that great sage Stevie Wonder’s songs, he said “Always reaching out in vain, accepting the things not worth having”. [1]  Those are wise words, as the world, seeking fulfillment from the things of this world, will never find satisfaction in any of them.  Have you ever wondered why so many millionaires and billionaires can just never seem to have enough money, no matter how much they already have?  It’s because the vacuum that they are trying to fill with money can’t possibly BE filled with money but can only be satisfied by being filled with the love of God. 

One of the most common human temptations is the seeking of the approval of others, and it is this idea that our story today focuses on.   In our story, Jesus is telling us that when we give to the needy, the purpose is not to be giving in order to gain the approval of others; to show others what good people we are.  When we pray in public, the purpose is not to show people how pious we are or how smart we are.  If we are fasting, the purpose is not doing it for show so people will think how spiritual we are or how faithful we are. 

            As is so often the case, our story today goes deeper than appearances.  What we really have here is a question of what is motivating one’s spiritual activities in the first place.  Is someone donating money to seek the approval of others?  If so, I say knock yourself out!  There is no reason why someone can’t make a donation in order to have their name plastered on the front of a building.  Philanthropy accomplishes a lot of really good things that benefit a lot of people.  But there needs to be a level of honesty about whether one is giving out of the kindness of a Godly heart, or out of a desire to be recognized by the world, because when one gives out of a desire for recognition, one needs to understand that that recognition will be their only reward.  On the other hand, the one who gives as a result of a heart that has been transformed by God’s love has no need of recognition from anyone BUT God.

            And so, asking ourselves the tough question of are we seeking approval for our actions, can help us to evaluate whether we are following the call of our transformed hearts or just seeking to fill that God shaped vacuum with recognition and praise.  The simple truth is… the worldly heart basks in the adoration of others and acts in a manner that allows that worldly heart to receive as much adoration as is possible.  But the transformed heart is so deeply moved when it sees another human in need or in distress that the transformed heart will act to fill that need, according to available resources, because it is the nature of the transformed heart to seek to alleviate that need.  And the transformed heart finds no need to be recognized for its actions, because it has only sought to do what Jesus would have done. 

            This self-effacing attitude is characteristic of the faithful Christian and is consistent with the Biblical call for meekness as the Christian seeks not to be recognized for simply acting as the Spirit has moved them.  It is here that we see this Biblical concept of meekness in action as this person’s motivation is not a desire for self-gain or self-aggrandizement, but simply a selfless act that is born of love.  Now, I seriously do not want for us to misunderstand Biblical meekness.  In the Greek, the word that we translate as “meek” is Πραΰτης (Prow-teese), and Πραΰτης is a word that the ancient Greeks used to describe a horse that had been trained.  Πραΰτης is not describing weakness; it’s not the definition of a wall flower or a 98-pound weakling.  Πραΰτης is the definition of something or someone possessing great power… but power that is under the control of a master.  The meek Christian is one who carries within them the immense power of LOVE.  And it is that love; the overwhelming power of God’s love living within us, that is, more often than not, the source of every good thing that Christians do. 

            Jesus ends this part of His sermon by telling us that, “Where our treasure is, there our heart will be also”.  If one’s treasure is recognition and admiration, then what their heart is doing is seeking to fill that God shaped vacuum with worldly things.  But for those for whom God is their treasure, for those who have allowed God’s Holy Spirit to begin that process of transforming their hearts into hearts that look like God’s heart, then their actions will be the tangible proof that God Himself is their treasure.

            As we enter into this season of Lent, there will inevitably be much discussion among our families and friends about who is giving up what for Lent.  My question this evening isn’t what are we giving up, it’s WHY are we choosing to give up whatever it is that we have chosen to give up.  Are we giving up something in order to show our faithfulness to the world?  Or are we making a quiet sacrifice, known only to us and to God; a sacrifice made in meekness?

            In speaking of meekness, C. S. Lewis once said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less,” [2] It is important that we, as Christians, make Jesus the focus of our efforts.  It is important that we as Christians recognize the power of God’s love being manifested in our day to day lives.  That love has the power to do unimaginably good things.  And that love dwells within the hearts of each of us.  Imagine what we might accomplish this Lent if, rather than giving something up, we were to resolve to live and act in light of that love that lives within us.

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[1] Stevie Wonder, “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing”, (Universal Music Group) 1973

[2] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The Booths that Never Were

March 2, 2025

            Most of you probably know that I am a huge baseball fan and that I follow the New York Mets.  A few weeks back I was reading one of the Mets blogs and they were talking about who were the greatest Mets of all time.  The conversation took shape responding to a question about which Mets should be enshrined on the Mets version of Mount Rushmore (Would that be Mount Metsmore?).  This is not an unusual comparison. We often will find discussions of greatness in one field or another when the greatest of the great are named to the “Mount Rushmore” of that particular field.  And then, of course, we have the REAL Mount Rushmore.  In 1927 the United States decided to commemorate 4 of the great presidents, and so, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt had their images carved into the face of the mountain.  The monument is an enduring testament to the excellence of four presidents who shaped our nation.  And I suspect that this monument, already nearly 100 years old, will continue to testify to the greatness of these presidents for a good long time to come.

            In our story today we read about The Transfiguration.  Jesus, accompanied by Peter, John, and James, ascended a mountain so Jesus could find some solitude to pray.  It’s possible that this happened at night, or perhaps really early in the morning because the text tells us that the disciples were sleepy.  But pretty soon the disciple’s sleepiness would be interrupted as Jesus’ face and clothes became dazzlingly white.  The NIV does a great job of translating the Greek ἐξαστράπτω (ex-as-trap-toe) as “bright as a flash of lightening”.  The King James translates this as “white and glistening” but ἐξαστράπτω was actually used by the Greeks to describe a flash of lightening, and so, here we have a really good description of the transformation that took place as Jesus’ face and clothes became just blindingly white.

            And as the disciples recovered from their sleepiness, they noticed that Jesus wasn’t alone.  Unfortunately, the NIV offers an incomplete translation of the next part of the passage as the NIV reports that the disciples see that Jesus had been joined by Moses and Elijah, who also appeared in “glorious splendor”.  The NIV omits the Greek word “ἰδοὺ” (ee-doo).  The New King James version more accurately translates this passage as, “And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah”.  That word “Behold” is the Greek word, ἰδοὺ, and this is a word that means not simply to see something, but to examine something for the specific purpose of understanding it.  The text tells us that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah were discussing Jesus’ “departure [that] he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.” and Luke is asking us to pay specific attention to what they are saying.  Jesus, Moses, and Elijah were discussing Jesus’ impending death.  But curiously, they were not using the word that was most commonly used to describe “death”.  In fact, the word that they used was Exodus.  Yes, the same word that was used to describe Moses’ God empowered miraculous deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, was now being used to describe an even more miraculous deliverance.  That of the deliverance of humankind from sin and death through the work that would soon be accomplished by Jesus on the cross. 

            And so, let’s take a moment to understand this event through the eyes of Peter, John, and James.  To the Jewish people, Moses and Elijah were, and still are, rock stars.  Moses is the giver of the Law, the man who met God face to face and whose own face was illuminated, brightly reflecting the glory of God.  A man who wore a veil over his face to hide that shining so as not to frighten his people.  Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, guided them through 40 years in the wilderness, and was the person through whom God worked the miracles of providing water from a rock and manna from, well, nowhere.  Moses was kind of like our George Washington… if George had maybe performed a miracle or two.

            Elijah is the preeminent prophet of Israel. A prophet who boldly spoke truth to power.  During Elijah’s time the Israelite King Ahab’s wife was not Jewish, she was Phoenician and was a princess.  Ahab’s marriage to her was a brilliant stroke of political strategy, forming an alliance with a former enemy, but his wife Jezebel didn’t worship God, she worshipped the Phoenician deities Baal and Asherah.  During the reign of Ahab, Ahab, and many Israelites turned to the worship of these idols also.  Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal in a challenge in which Elijah successfully called down fire from heaven to consume a sacrifice after 450 prophets of Baal failed to do so.  In doing this, Elijah returned most of Israel to the worship of the one true God.  Elijah also asked God to bring about a drought, which He did.  Elijah provided miraculous food to a widow, her son, and himself, raised that widow’s son from the dead, and then had God end the drought.  Elijah did not die but was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind.  Elijah was kind of like our Abraham Lincoln… if Abe had maybe performed a miracle or two.

            When I was in college at Berklee, I was a fairly decent trombone player, and I was blessed to be able to play in the best student big band in the college.  One late spring day we were playing, and it was hot in the room, so we had the doors open.  This band was quite good, and so there were crowds gathered at the open doors at both ends of a fairly large room listening to us play.  Suddenly, the crowd at one of the doors parted like Moses parting the Red Sea, and in walked the president of the college with Duke Ellington.  The band fell apart and stopped playing as each of the members, myself included, just kind of stared in open-mouthed astonishment at this legend who had just entered the room.  I mean if there were a Mount Rushmore of Jazz, Duke would certainly be on it.  Our director greeted Duke and then restarted the song that we had been playing, Duke listened for a moment or two, then nodded his head in appreciation and left the room.  That brief moment has remained one of the highlights of my college experience and is a memory that I will always cherish.

            And so, in a way, I can identify with the disciples; even though my experience was completely worldly, and their experience was miraculous, and astounding, I can still understand how they must have been awe-struck.  As Moses and Elijah departed, Peter had what he thought was a brilliant idea: “Hey Jesus, let’s make a Mount Rushmore here with you and Moses and Elijah”.  Well, he didn’t ACTUALLY say “let’s make a Mount Rushmore”, he said let’s build three booths.  But the idea is the same.  The idea is that he wanted to commemorate this miraculous event with some sort of monument.  I don’t find it difficult at all to identify with Peter here.  The desire to remember something momentous, to have a physical reminder of something amazing that happened is completely understandable.  In fact, the United States is absolutely full of monuments that commemorate one event or another, as are, I am sure, most countries.  There seems to be a peculiar human need to memorialize important events with monuments of one sort or another.  But before Peter was even finished making his remark a cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” 

            And I really see this voice as a sort of a wake-up call to Peter and the other disciples.  Our faith is not a static thing.  It’s not something that we get figured out and then have the luxury of sitting back and enjoying our acquired knowledge.  We can’t take our faith and cement it into a single mountaintop experience, because ultimately, our faith is something that will never stop growing.  And our faith grows only through listening to Jesus. 

            We all know Peter’s story.  We know about his abject failure when he denied Jesus three times.  And yet, we also know that Peter overcame his failures to become one of history’s most effective messengers of the Gospel.  Peter, just like the rest of us, needed to continue to listen, continue to learn, continue to grow in faith and in obedience; Peter had a momentary thought that he wanted to bask in the experience of witnessing Jesus’ glory and seeing Moses and Elijah in person, but Peter had a far more important call that wasn’t at all related to his thoughts or his feelings or the peaks of his experiences.  Peter had a call to serve God; to be the hands and feet and voice of Jesus in the world after Jesus had ascended.  And we have the exact same call.  If the world is going to hear the Good News, from whom are they going to hear it?  They need to hear it from us.  They need to hear it from our lips, and they need to see it in our lives.

            Peter became a faithful witness.  His sermons literally brought thousands of People to a saving faith in Jesus.  But in order for him to accomplish that, Peter needed to come down from that mountain top.  He needed to fail.  He needed to fall down, and he needed to be picked up and he needed to be forgiven, and he needed to be renewed.  In the last chapter of the Gospel of John the Bible relates the deeply touching story of Jesus restoring Peter.  And through that restoration, through Peter’s experience of being forgiven, through Peter’s experience of Jesus picking him up and once again asking Peter to follow Him, Peter experienced the depth of God’s grace, and he responded to that grace with a devotion to Jesus that literally changed the world.

            I’ve never seen it, but I am sure that Mount Rushmore is quite impressive.  And I would imagine that Peter’s Mount Rushmore of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah would have been quite the tourist attraction for the last 2,000 years.  But we are not going to get where we need to be by clinging to our past.  Jesus is God’s son, and we need to listen to Him.  We need to let Him pick us up and restore us when we fall.  We need to listen to Him as He draws us forward into faithfulness, into obedience, into discipleship.  Let us leave our monuments behind us as together we walk into a future of love.  Love for God and love for others.  It is that to which He calls us.

I’m Supposed to Love WHO?

February 23, 2025 Luke 6:27-38

            I would imagine that most of us learned about the Golden Rule as children.  “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”.  The Golden Rule is actually REALLY old.  There is an Egyptian story called “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant”.  The story dates from around 2040 BCE; a story that is over 4,000 years old.  The story is about a servant who was mistreated.  The servant responded to the mistreatment with grace and forgiveness and was eventually compensated for the mistreatment.  In a speech given by the servant, he commented “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.”  This is likely the first recorded statement of the Golden Rule.  Over the millennia philosophers have often cited the Golden Rule.  About halfway around the world from Egypt, the Analects of Confucius from about 500 BCE contain a version saying, “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.”  And the renowned Jewish rabbi, Hillel the Elder was once asked to explain the Torah while standing on one foot.  Hillel replied, “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah, the rest is the explanation, go and learn.

            It is clear that this altruistic idea has been a part of the human experience for a very long time, and has been present in vastly different cultures, and so it is not at all surprising that Jesus would have repeated the Golden Rule Himself, but has anyone noticed a difference in the way Jesus expresses the idea?  Luke 6:31, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  Jesus takes this thousands of years old idea and turns it upside down.  It becomes, not a matter of avoiding doing things that you would not like having done to you and rather becomes a matter of living in such a way that your actions towards others are shaped by how you would like for them to treat you.  Can we see the difference?  It is a positive expression of the adage and not a negative one.  And in the process, Jesus has made this rule far more impactful, for there is a world of difference between avoiding the occasional hurtful act to another and living in a constant attitude of treating others kindly and justly. 

            Our story today is a continuation of The Sermon on the Plain that we began last week.  After pronouncing the woes, Jesus begins to teach about HOW to implement the things than bring blessing.  Now, I seriously doubt that Jesus said “Well, I have good news and bad news”, but He certainly started with the bad news first.  “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”  Jesus wasted no time in jumping right into the teaching that “those who listen” are called to love others without exception, even their enemies.  And as an aside, did you all happen to pick up on the little preface to Jesus’ statement?  “To you who are listening”.  Garland says, “Whether they truly listen will be determined by their obedience”.  [1]

            When I think of scripture there aren’t many things that are more difficult for me to comprehend, or more challenging for me to live, than love of one’s enemy.  For those of us who are accustomed to the world’s way of doing things, this is a difficult thing to accept.  And when people are mean, or arrogant, or hurtful, or dismissive, or any one of hundreds of ways that people can express their disdain for another, it becomes even harder for us to believe that we are supposed to love these people.  But when we are thinking that it is us who have to force ourselves to do this, then we are approaching this in the wrong way.  First of all, there isn’t a one of us who has the power to do this effectively on their own.  This is something that can only be accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit.  But beyond the Spirit simply helping us to be loving to the unlovable, the Spirit also helps us to see how loving our enemies helps to bring about that little corner of God’s kingdom in our lives that we keep talking about.  Hutchings gives us a wonderful insight into this when she says, “Jesus understood that peace is achieved by seeking justice, not just for those of our own tribe, but justice for all. Justice is the social dynamic of LOVE. Justice for all tribes, all nations, all races, all genders, justice for those on the left and justice for those on the right.  Justice-seeking [and] peace-making [are] a Way of being in the world which has the power to transform enemies into Lovers. It is not for the faint of heart, but for the fierce. Not ferocity, which is born of self-interest, but the ferocity born of LOVE [and] compassion.” [2] 

            Simply put, we make the choice to love because God loves us.  We make the choice to be gracious because God is gracious with us.  N. T. Wright, one of the most brilliant theologians of our generation says, “God is generous to all people, generous (in the eyes of the stingy) to a fault: He provides good things for all to enjoy, the undeserving as well as the deserving.  He is astonishingly merciful (anyone who knows their own heart truly, and still goes on experiencing God’s grace and love, will agree with this); how can we, His forgiven children, be any less?  Only when people discover that this is the sort of God they are dealing with will they have any chance of making this way of life their own.” [3]  This is what I am talking about when I talk about the Holy Spirit transforming our hearts.  As we allow the Spirit to make these changes we discover the fact that it is not our behavior that is changing, but our attitudes.  This new heart that God gives us causes us to think differently about the world and our role in it; and these new attitudes mirror the things that Jesus taught and lived.

            Not too long ago I was having a discussion with a friend about a political issue; the subject of which is inconsequential to this discussion, but I was taking a theological view of a situation where some people are viewed as being, shall we say, less than good people BECAUSE of their political stance.  I raised the point that if Christians are to approach this situation with compassion for these supposedly less than good people, there is a chance that these people may be influenced by the unmerited love shown to them, and that that love may possibly lead them to a saving faith.  If, on the other hand, they are treated judgmentally and disrespectfully by those brandishing the name of Christ, the end result will be to drive them away from Christianity.  And so, from a kingdom perspective, it makes perfectly good sense to love your enemy.  How else are we going to reach them with the Good News that they TOO have been reconciled to God and are loved by Him?  The believer who is willing to stand in the gap and take the potential abuse from those who are alienated from God and don’t understand His love for them, may be the very ones who lead these people to Christ. 

            Next Jesus discusses giving and tells us that when we give something we should give without expecting anything in return.  Among the Israelites, alms giving was regarded as a virtue and as we have discussed at other times… many Israelites liked to make a big show of their giving to the poor.  But for the Greco-Roman world things were very different; and remember, Luke was writing to a predominantly Greco-Roman audience.  The Romans lived by the rule “Do ut des” (Doe oot dayz) which roughly translates “I give so that you may give”.  According to Garland, “Showing sympathy for the poor was alien to Greco-Roman ways of thinking, as was the notion of private or public assistance to the disadvantaged”. [4]  In Roman society, giving always involved a quid pro quo, an expectation that the recipient of the gift would reciprocate in some significant way.  If a giver did not stand to gain in some way by giving something to someone, they simply would not give.  Luke is calling gentile Christians to have a different attitude about giving.  Christians give, not because they stand to gain from giving something to someone in need, but because they have already gained by receiving God’s grace, and their hearts… transformed by the Holy Spirit, seek to reciprocate to God, by giving to God’s children.

            Jesus wraps up this second section of His sermon by telling us not to judge or to condemn.  The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  I have said many times over the years that if the goal of the Christian is Christ-likeness, then we also are not in the world to condemn the world, we are here to show the world the way to the savior, Jesus. 

            When we don’t judge; when we don’t condemn; when we forgive, God returns to us ever so much more than the little that we are able to give others.  This part of the sermon ends with a little parable. 

When you went to market to buy some grain in first century Palestine, the merchant would pour the grain into a measuring cup and then you would pay for the grain based on the size of the cup. 

Well, have you ever bought potato chips?  They always have a disclaimer on the bag that reads “This package sold by weight, not by volume.  Contents may have settled during shipment”.  Then you open the bag and it’s probably not even half full.  Right? 

Well, that grain that you just bought at that first century market hasn’t had a chance to settle yet, but by the time you get home and that grain has settled, that cup will probably only be about half full too.  But Jesus tells us that when God measures that grain for us, He pours it into the cup, then he shakes it to settle it, and He presses it down to compress it.  And when He’s shaken all that He can shake and pressed down all that He can press down, then He just keep pouring until the measuring cup overflows. 

This is how God responds to us when we show kindness to His children, especially to those in need.  We talked last week about God’s abundance.  Here, in this parable, Jesus shows us the depth of God’s desire to fill us to overflowing with good things.  And as those of us who have experienced the depth of God’s grace and the abundance of His love, the call to us is to reciprocate, by showing that grace and that love to the world. 

This is what God is calling us to do, this is what Jesus is teaching in this part of His sermon.  God will put people in our path, and our transformed hearts will lead us to meet the needs of those who God sends to us in order that we may help them.  Most of us are not called to be missionaries or to try to help the whole world; most of us are just called to create our own little corner of God’s kingdom in our lives.  Just as God fills our cups to overflowing, let us choose to do for others, what we would wish to have others doing for us, and fill their cups to overflowing as well.

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[1] David E. Garland, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 278

[2] Dawn Hutchings, PastorDawn.com, Progressive Sermon: Luke 6:27-38

[3] N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone, Pg. 55

[4] David E. Garland, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg.280

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