Signs and Portents

Sermon December 1, 2024

            What in the world is going on here??  Here we are in the beginning of Advent with Christmas and the joyous birth of Jesus right around the corner and our reading today is telling us that, “People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”  Why are we reading apocalyptic literature like this right before Christmas?  Wouldn’t we really rather have a nice reminder about the baby in the manger; maybe an animal or two with a heavenly chorus thrown in for good measure?  No pun intended.

            Well, today is the first Sunday in Advent and our word “Advent” comes from the Latin “Adventus” which is a word that means “to arrive”.  And so, appropriately, Advent is the time for us to be preparing for the arrival of the Christ Child.  But… let us not forget that the birth of Jesus in a manger is not going to be His only Advent.  There is a second arrival that is yet to come, and today’s reading is addressing that Parousia, or second coming of Christ.  So, in spite of the fact that this discussion may seem a little out of place in this otherwise joyful season of Christmas, there are some great reasons to talk about these things now.

            As Christians, we are pretty familiar with the Christmas story.  Even non-Christians are familiar with at least part of it.  Popular culture has seen to that, whether it is through the story that is silently told by a creche or the ubiquitous Christmas songs in the stores, or through Linus’ wonderful narrative in the Peanuts Christmas special.  We are familiar with the events of Christ’s first Advent, but our familiarity with the first Advent stands in stark contrast to the myriads of questions that surround the second one. 

            We spoke just two weeks ago about the Olivet discourse, and we discussed the critical importance of being able to separate the true from the counterfeit.  That concept of finding truth was carried through our lesson last week and expanded, and now this week, Jesus is telling us how holding on to that truth is going to sustain us through all manner of worldly events.  “There will be signs,” Jesus said.  Signs that will sometimes point to anguish and perplexity.  I don’t have to tell you that there is no shortage of trials in this life.  We need look no further than our weekly prayer list to know that sometimes people struggle; sometimes all of us struggle.  And facing difficulties is never, ever, an easy thing.

            In today’s lesson, Jesus is giving us the bad news first, but as He talks to us about the trials that the world is going to face, there is something really interesting that’s hidden in this passage.  When Jesus tells us in verse 27 that people are going to be “apprehensive of what is coming on the world”, He doesn’t use the standard Greek word for “world” which is κόσμος, (Cosmos) he uses the word οἰκουμένῃ (oikoumene) which is a word that refers not to the whole world in general, but specifically to the political and economic forces within the world.  So, with this in mind, let’s take a look at that text again.  The concern of the people is about how these things that are happening are going to affect the politically and financially connected.  But for those who are seeking the truth, the political and the financial should be of much less consequence.  Because our focus as believers isn’t on political power, and most of us aren’t managing huge portfolios.  As those seeking the truth, our focus should be on truth seeking.  And when Jesus says to us, “When these things begin to take place”, these things that are causing the world all of these concerns, we should “stand up and lift up [our] heads, because [our] redemption is drawing near.”  Jesus is reminding us of our place as ambassadors in this world; reminders that we do not belong to this world, but that we are a part of the kingdom of God, even in the here and now.

Have you ever started reading a book, and before you have finished the book, you skipped to the end to see what happens?  Sometimes you really just want to know how the story ends.  Well, as Christians, we have kind of skipped to the end of the book, and we do know how our story ends.  We don’t know when, but we do know how.

As the end times approach and the world’s political and financial systems come crashing down, as the people who are IN the world are panic stricken over what is happening, followers of Jesus will know that the time of our redemption has finally come.  And while the rest of the world is looking downcast, fearful of how these apocalyptic events are going to impact their lives, Christians will be looking up because we know that the kingdom of God, that which we have hoped for, for our entire Christian lifetime is finally at hand. 

Let’s take a quick look back at the beginning of Luke and you can tell me what you see.  Mary’s Magnificat, the song that she sang when Elizabeth blessed her and her unborn child, is filled with references to scattering the proud and bringing down rulers, to filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty, to exalting the humble. John the Baptist called the people who came to be baptized by him a “brood of vipers” and asked them “who warned [them] to flee from the coming wrath?”  In His very first sermon Jesus claimed that He had been anointed to “proclaim good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and give sight to the blind”.  Theologians have referred to the coming kingdom as “The Great Reversal”.  God never intended for His resources to be hoarded.  He never intended for people to exploit others for personal gain.  The kingdom will restore God’s planned order of things.  The financial and cultural hills will be made low, and those valleys will be exalted.  Pastor David Cotton once said, “Good news for the poor is always bad news for the rich”.  And those who have taken advantage, those who have exploited others for personal gain, those who have substituted greed for love, are finally going to be called to account for their actions. 

The coming kingdom of God will abound in love, in compassion, in empathy, in justice, in fairness, and in equality.  Those who are unable or who choose not to live as people of the light are going to be left out.  It’s not a pleasant thought.  But here is the truth… that even the worst of those people, are still to be loved by us.

Christians are called to be messengers. We are called to be the ones proclaiming the coming kingdom.  And we are called to exhibit kingdom living in our lives right here and right now.  Because our actions need to be consistent with our message if we expect anyone to actually hear us.  And here’s the thing that we always need to remember.  We never know when our actions are going to have an eternal impact on another person. 

One of the best friends I have ever had was a guy named Roy Williams.  Roy was a black guy and Roy was a Christian, but not just any Christian.  He was a member of a really exuberant church. I know, I went with him once.  You think MY sermons are long?  Great music though!  Roy was also the single most joyful person that I have ever met.  He was always smiling, had a great sense of humor, loved a good joke, and was relentless in sharing his faith with me.  But he was never, in the four years that we were best friends, never once overbearing or “preachy”.  He was just joyous… and always delighted to be talking about his faith.  Roy is one of the three people in my life who are responsible for my having become a committed follower of Jesus.  I may never have made that commitment if it wasn’t for Roy.  But Roy and I lost touch with each other before that ever happened.  And so, I can’t imagine any way that Roy would know the impact that he had on my life, or on my faith.  In a way, this makes me really sad, because I wish that there was a way for me to thank him.  But I also know that Roy was thoroughly familiar with the fact that while we plant the seeds, it’s God who brings the increase.  And Roy was just completely happy to be the guy who was doing the planting.

We are called to love.  We are called to be joyous.  We are called to live lives that reflect the goodness and the kindness, and the love of God.  And our faithfulness to do that may be the only opportunity for someone who seems destined to be left out of God’s kingdom, to be welcomed instead. 

And so, we celebrate Advent both commemorating the historic birth of Jesus and anticipating the future coming of Christ on the clouds of glory.  Pastor James Laurence says, “[Today’s] scripture readings – help us to focus on the deeper preparation that we are called to undertake this time of year. They remind us of the spiritual preparation that is needed to get ready for the return of our Savior.” [1]

Yes, difficulties will come.  But we have already read the end of the book.  Warren Wiersbe says, “Our Lord’s admonition to His people is, ‘Don’t be terrified!’  These things must come to pass, there is nothing anyone can do to prevent them.  This does not mean that God’s people are submitting to blind fate; rather it means they are yielding to the plan of a loving Father who works all things ‘after the counsel of His own will.”  [2]  William Barclay says, “The Christian conception of history is that it has a goal and at that goal, Jesus Christ will be Lord of All.  That’s all we know, and all we need to know.” [3] 

For those of us who are facing difficulties let me just say this:  When reading the story about the death of Lazarus, we find that before Lazarus died, Jesus already knew that He would be raising him from the dead.  When Jesus visited Mary and Martha after Lazarus had died, Jesus walked with them to the tomb. And what did Jesus do?  The Bible tells us that He wept.  But He wasn’t crying for Lazarus.  Because He knew that in just a few minutes Lazarus would be alive again.  He was crying because He was moved by the grief of His friends.  This is the God we serve.  A God who walks with us in our darkest times, and cries with us in our grief.  No, our trials will never be easy, but we do know that we will never face them alone.

Finally, we return once again to a discussion about truth.  In the Matthew parallel to today’s passage, Matthew says, “False messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”  This is why Jesus has called us to, “Be always on the watch, and pray that [we] may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that [we] may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”  Because when all is said and done, that’s the plan, isn’t it?  To stand before Jesus?    As Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

My friends, it’s Advent!  As we prepare to receive the newborn king into our lives, let us tell His story!  As we receive His love and His grace, let us reflect that love and grace to the world.  And as we contemplate His second coming, let us be watchful, let us wait patiently, never allowing ourselves to be fooled, always being cognizant of the truth, and let us pray the prayer that the saints have been praying for centuries, “Amen, come Lord Jesus”.

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[1] James Laurence, “There Will Be Signs”, MyPastoralPonderings.com

[2] Warren Wiersbe. “Be Courageous”, Pg. 97

[3] Billiam Barclay, “The Gospel of Luke (Revised Edition), Pg. 261

What is Truth?

Sermon November 24, 2024

            What is truth?  This is the response that Pilate had to Jesus’ statement that He was born and came into the world to testify to the truth.  Pilate actually had a good question.  In today’s story there are three participants, the Jewish authorities, Jesus, and the Roman government, represented by Pilate.  And each of these three participants had their own idea about what was truth.

            The Jewish authorities were committed to following the Law.  For them, truth was to be found in the studying and interpretation of the Torah and it’s not fair for us to think of them as being unfaithful.  The lives of these Jewish authorities revolved around the practicing of their faith, and they were thoroughly committed to their cause.  And yet, the Messiah that they longed for, the Messiah in whom they believed they were putting their hope and trust stood right before them, and not only did they not recognize Him, they outright rejected Him.  Why?

            The Jewish authorities had a pretty well-defined idea about who they thought the Messiah was supposed to be.  The contemporary website, Judaism 101 provides a classic description of the Messiah, as viewed through the lens of the Jewish faith.  “The messiah will be a great political leader descended from King David.  –  He will be well-versed in Jewish law, and observant of its commandments. He will be a charismatic leader, inspiring others to follow his example. He will be a great military leader, who will win battles for Israel. He will be a great judge, who makes righteous decisions. But above all, he will be a human being, not a god, demi-god or other supernatural being.” [1]  This Jewish view of messiah probably hasn’t changed much in the last 3,000 years. 

When we look at Jewish history, discussion of the messiah has always been at its peak during times of trial for the Jews.  The first destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the resulting forced relocation of the Jewish people, scattering them throughout the Babylonian empire, inspired the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Ezekiel.  At that time, the nation of Israel expected the messiah to come as a military leader who would subdue the Babylonians, return the Jews to the Promised Land, rebuild the temple, and reinstitute temple worship.  But God had other plans.  It was the Persians under the relatively progressive king Cyrus who facilitated the return of the exiles to the land of Israel.  The Jewish people themselves rebuilt the walls and gates of Jerusalem, built the 2^nd temple, ordained priests, and reinstituted temple worship. 

The Maccabean revolt freed the Jews from Seleucid rule in the 160’s BCE and they purified and rededicated the temple.  Again, messianic talk abounded in the intertestamental books of the Maccabees; and the heroic efforts of the Maccabees in re-establishing Jewish independence, a relatively short time before the birth of Jesus, undoubtedly affected Jewish expectations of who messiah would be in the subsequent Roman occupation of Israel.  And so, truth for the Jews, at least as it related to the Messiah, was the expectation that the messiah would be a great but human military leader who would put an end to Roman rule and establish Isreal as the head of a dominant world government. 

But as we look at this critically, we can’t lose sight of the fact that the Jewish authorities also had a deeply vested interest in maintaining the status quo.  For the most part, the Jewish authorities were very well-to-do.  They were among the Jewish upper class and benefited greatly from their temple income or from donations and stipends if they were scribes.  They maintained their position of power and influence by setting themselves apart as the holy ones, contrasting themselves with the “unclean” and the “sinners” who became “the other”; the enemy from within whose influence supposedly threatened the lifestyles and salvation of the common people.  When Jesus came along, He threw an enormous monkey wrench into this clean vs. unclean narrative.  His radical inclusivity and His emphasis on love and forgiveness presented a genuine threat to the neat little apple cart of the Jewish authorities, and I have no doubt that those authorities felt entirely justified in their rejection of, and ultimate execution of, this threat to their lifestyles and faith as they understood it.

Modern psychological studies have stated that people would rather change the truth… than change their views.  Due to the prevalence of this phenomenon, psychologists have even given it a name.  They call it Cognitive Dissonance.  This is what happens when new information conflicts with existing beliefs.  Those beliefs, when deeply held, can cause an individual to reject overwhelming facts in favor of preserving their deeply held beliefs.  For the most part, the Jewish authorities were either unwilling or unable to reconcile their beliefs with this new teaching of Jesus, in spite of the fact that Jesus consistently tied His teaching to the Torah, and in spite of the fact that His teachings were accompanied by signs and wonders that Jesus performed that defied logical explanation.

For the Romans, truth was all about empire, and the preservation of order by any means necessary.  Nations subjugated by the Romans were required to comply with Roman rules and regulations or face potentially dire consequences.  Pilate was deeply concerned about the claim of the Pharisees that Jesus had declared Himself to be king.  If Jesus had indeed declared Himself king, that would have been interpreted by the Romans as insurrection.  And so, Pilate’s first question to Jesus was “Are you the king of the Jews”?  Clearly this was the most important thing on Pilate’s mind.  Because if Jesus presented a threat to Roman rule, that threat would need to be eliminated.  But Jesus brilliantly counters Pilate’s question by asking him if his question about kingship was his own idea, or something he had heard from someone else.  If Pilate’s question about Jesus’ kingship had come from the Jewish authorities, then it was hearsay, and therefore inadmissible as evidence in a Roman trial. 

The Jewish authorities had not really given Pilate a lot to go on.  When Pilate asked them for what offense Jesus had been convicted by the Sanhedrin, their initial response was intentionally vague.  “If he were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you” they said.  The real issues for the Jewish authorities were first, that they believed that Jesus was a false messiah and second, that Jesus had threatened to destroy the temple.  But Pilate could not have cared less about these charges, which he deemed to be an entirely Jewish issue.  According to Marcus Dods the Pharisees wanted “not to have their judgment revised, but to have their decision confirmed and the punishment executed”. [2]  But Pilate, ever the diligent administrator, was not willing to try Jesus’ case without having a charge on which to try Him, so we read in Mark that the Jewish authorities told Pilate that Jesus was stirring up the people in preparation for an insurrection.  For Pilate, the best approach was whichever one which did the most to maintain order and so, Pilate, though he declared before the Jewish authorities that he found no basis for a charge against Jesus, nevertheless gave the order to have Him crucified.  Pilate, I am sure, justified his actions as doing what was best for the empire.

Did the Jewish authorities and leaders believe in what they were doing?  Of course they did.  Were their actions born of what they believed to be the truth?  Again, of course they were.  But was their truth really truth?  No, it wasn’t.  In fact, did anyone happen to notice the irony of the Jewish authorities not entering the Praetorium in order to maintain their ceremonial cleanliness?  R. C. Sproul said, “As they delivered the Lamb of God to the slaughter, they made sure their hands were ceremonially clean”.  [3]

Did the Roman authorities believe in what they were doing?  Of course they did.  Were their actions born of what they believed to be the truth?  Again, of course they were.  But was their truth really truth?  Again, no, it wasn’t.

For Jesus, truth was something entirely different.  For Jesus, truth wasn’t a what, it was a who.  For Jesus, the entirety of truth was to be found in the person of God.  And because Jesus is the exact living representation of God, the entirety of truth is to be found in Him as well.  “I am the way, the truth, and the life”, Jesus once said. 

My dear friends, Jesus IS truth.  The red letters in the Bible represent the words of the One who is truth personified.  His very life is a testimony to who God is and to what God is doing in our lives.  God created all of us and as such, He has a claim on all of us, but His claim is not manifested in demanding fealty as if He was some sort of human ruler.  Rather His claim results in a joyous reunion of parent and child.  The parent abandoning all dignity, running to meet Their prodigal child and preparing a feast because They are overwhelmed with delight at Their beloved child’s return.  THIS is the nature of the God who created us.  And yet this is the God who humanity has collectively thumbed their nose at.  It is a peculiar human desire to want to be left alone, to control our own destiny, and to make our own decisions, no matter how bad those decisions may be.  But God’s desire is to change our hearts.  To help us to see the world the way He sees it, and to understand how having loving hearts helps us to be a people who exemplify God’s truth and reflect that truth to the world.

I had a friend once who was a Buddhist priest.  He was thoroughly familiar with Christian theology and in a conversation that we once had, he boiled down the entire Gospel into the single statement; that Jesus teaches things that work.  When we live lives of compassion, empathy, grace, and love we begin the work of building a society of peace and justice and fairness.  According to my Buddhist friend, Jesus taught things that promote harmonious living.  And while I have some serious theological issues with my friend’s beliefs, I can’t say that he is wrong about the end result of kingdom living.  Ultimately, heaven will be populated by a people who, though they will be entirely themselves, will follow exactly Jesus’ example of loving God and loving others.  And it is that love that will make heaven, to be heaven.

Theologians like to say that the kingdom of heaven is eschatologically here.  What that means is that heaven is actually in two places at once.  It is, of course, our blessed hope for the future.  It is the place that Jesus has prepared for us, filled with many mansions and abounding with the love of God.  A place of joy and peace and a place where God Himself will wipe away every tear.  But heaven is also in the here and now and is manifested every time one of God’s beloved children is fed when they are hungry, clothed when they are naked, housed when they are homeless, defended when they are persecuted, uplifted when they are marginalized, and taken in when they are rejected.

When we, as believers carry the truth of the Gospel in our hearts and live that truth in our day to day lives, we show the world the vision that God has for our future.  A future of joy and peace, of justice and fairness.  A future devoid of pain and suffering.  And a future where love for God and love for others permeates everything that is said and done.  This, my friends, is what truth is.  Let us be the people who show the world that truth.

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[1] Tracey R. Rich, https://www.jewfaq.org/mashiach, The Messianic Idea in Judaism

[2] Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John

[3] R. C. Sproul, John: An Expositional Commentary, Pg. 324

I Am He – No You’re Not

Sermon November 17, 2024

            The year is 66.  Discontent with the Roman occupation of Isreal has been festering for decades.  After 129 years of Ruman rule the people of Israel are tired of the oppression, tired of the oppressive taxes, tired of the brutal methods of the Roman army who have been empowered to keep the peace, tired of the lack of personal freedoms imposed by the Roman puppet kings, tired of the paganism of the Romans and the insolent opposition to their worship of the one true God  And so, this discontent, brewing for so long, is finally reaching a boiling point.

            Within the population of Israel are a couple of different groups with different ideas about what the future of Isreal should look like.  The Herodians are what today we might call the oligarchy.  They are the wealthy and the influential, supporting Rome because they have profited from their Roman connections.  The Pax Romana, the peace afforded by Roman rule, creates a very conducive environment for their businesses and their lifestyles and they are perfectly happy with Roman rule so long as it continues to support their agenda. 

            The Zealots are the malcontents.  They are exasperated with the excesses of the Roman occupation and declare themselves to be freedom fighters.  For years the Zealots have bred insurrection.  A group within the Zealots called the Sicarii carry daggers around in public places just seeking opportunities to murder Roman officials and Roman sympathizers.  The Zealots believed that war with the Romans was not only inevitable but that when it happened, it would be a holy war, ridding Israel of the pagan influences of Rome.  But there was more.  The Zealots believed that instituting a war with Rome would bring about the coming of the Jewish Messiah, the defeat of all of the world’s pagan governments, and the exalting of Israel as the Nation that would head an everlasting government that would rule the entire world. 

            The Essenes were a group of separatists who eschewed cosmopolitan life in favor of monastic living within a community of people who were dedicated to ritual purity and separation.  The Essenes were also deeply fascinated with the study of the end times and would very possibly have been sympathetic to the cause of the Zealots.  As an aside, the Dead Sea Scrolls are thought to be the library of the Essene community.

            The Pharisees and the Sadducees were the religious ruling elite, who for the most part tried to work with the Romans in order to maintain the political power that accompanied their position as Temple officials.  This arrangement appears to have been mostly pragmatic, as the focus of the Pharisees and Sadducees tended to be more about protecting Temple worship and the following of the Jewish Law than it was about governing.

            Caught in the middle are the common folk, who are just trying to maintain their day-to-day life, keep up with the obligations of supporting themselves and their families, and keeping up with the Roman taxes to avoid having their homes taken away.  For the most part, the common folk didn’t want war with Rome, but if you were to have taken a poll, the majority of them would have more closely aligned with the rebels than with the Roman loyalists.

            In the year 66, the discontent came to a head, and the Zealots led an open rebellion against Rome.  A Zealot leader named Eleazar was able to put an end to the daily sacrifices to Ceasar, which were a requirement of the agreement that the Israelites had with Rome.  Then, a group of Zealots attacked the Roman auxiliary garrison, murdering every Roman soldier that was stationed there, and of course stealing all of their weapons and armor.  This attack left Rome with no alternative but to respond… and respond they did.  They sent the General and future emperor Vespasian to put down the uprising.

            This war with Rome lasted for four years, culminating in a seven-month Roman siege of Jerusalem.  Those living in Jerusalem during the siege ran out of food and, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, 1.1 million inhabitants of Jerusalem died during the siege.  Many of them died from hunger, and those who tried to escape were captured by the Romans and crucified just outside the city walls in full view of the inhabitants of the city.  By the year 70 the emperor Nero had died, and Vespasian had returned to Rome to succeed him as emperor.  Vespasian’s son Titus, also a future emperor, assumed command of the Roman forces in Judea and finally breached the walls of Jerusalem and put an end to the uprising.  As the Roman army was about to enter Jerusalem for the first time, Titus issued an order to destroy the city and not to leave one stone standing on top of another.

            The siege of Jerusalem was horrific.  And a part of today’s lesson predicts this destruction.  Our reading this morning is the beginning of what has come to be known as the Olivet Discourse, because this teaching of Jesus, that predates the fall of Jerusalem by about 35 years, was given while He and the disciples were sitting on the Mount of Olives.  This part of our story is so important that all three Synoptic Gospels relate this teaching in detail.  The word “apocalypse” is derived from a Greek word that means to uncover or to reveal, and here in apocalyptic language, Jesus reveals to the disciples the startling information that the Temple will soon be destroyed.  For centuries, theologians and scholars have debated the text of the Olivet Discourse, trying to determine whether Jesus was simply addressing the future destruction of Jerusalem, or was speaking to the larger issue of His second coming.  While there doesn’t appear to be general agreement among scholars, the consensus, and the thing that seems to make the most sense, is that the discourse speaks to a combination of both events.

            Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Temple was almost certainly about the events of the year 70.  And does anyone find it interesting that somewhere in the early 30’s Jesus prophesied that not one stone would be left standing on another and that 30 some years later when the walls of Jerusalem were finally breached, a Roman general would give his troops the order not to leave one stone standing on top of another? 

            As Jesus makes this prediction the disciples asked Him to tell them when these things will happen and what will be the signs that they are about to be fulfilled.  The disciples wanted Jesus to tell them about the future, but Jesus’ answer didn’t address the future.  Rather He replied with what I believe is the most important teaching relating to our approach to the end times, and that is to BE ALERT.  The NIV tells us that Jesus said, “Watch out that no one deceives you”.  In the Greek, “watch out” is βλέπετε (blepete) which is a word that means to look carefully or to examine something in order to understand it.  This warning from Jesus is a call to be able to identify what is true.

            “Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many,” Jesus said.  In not choosing to answer directly the question that the disciples asked, Jesus is basically teaching us here that our focus should not be on the why or the when or the where, but rather on the who; to focus on the person of Jesus.

            A few years back, in a sermon that I preached, I told you a story about a gentleman who had become a Secret Service Agent.  He was hired to work in a division that investigated counterfeit money and so he was sent to school to learn about counterfeit money.  In the story, the agent said that he expected that, in the class, he would see all kinds of different counterfeit money, but to his complete surprise, the class consisted entirely of studying REAL money, and learning everything about it, from how it is printed to the materials that are used, to the minutiae of the design of the bills.  You see, the instructors knew that when you are thoroughly familiar with the real thing, the counterfeit becomes easy to identify.

            And so, the task presented to us in today’s passage is for us to become thoroughly familiar with the real thing.  When we have a thorough and intimate knowledge of who Jesus is and when we truly know the things that He teaches, then a counterfeit Jesus becomes easy for us to identify.  But if we lack this intimate familiarity with Jesus, we do run the risk of being deceived.  Because someone is going to come along who kind of sounds kind of right and who maybe kind of acts in a way that seems kind of right, and they are charismatic and a great speaker, and they say what we want to hear.  And the next thing you know, maybe we’ve turned and started to follow the wrong person; the wrong belief, the wrong theology, and now, our life is headed in the completely wrong direction.

            And so, you see, there is a very real and very critical purpose to our study of the Bible, and specifically to the study of the life, example, and teaching of Jesus.  Like the agent who diligently studied real currency in order to be able to identify that which was counterfeit, so it is that our study of the Bible leads us to an understanding of the genuine that makes the imposter easy to identify.

Next Jesus tells us that there will be wars and famine and earthquakes but that these are a part of what He called birth pains.  We can study the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Ezekiel and Revelation and we can try to make sense of the teachings and we can try to extrapolate information from the text in order to try to learn more about what is to come.  But please tell me this:  What do the years 1874, 1878, 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, 1984, 1988, 1994, 2011, and 2012 have in common?  Every one of these years are years that some prominent theologian somewhere predicted would be either the year of the rapture or the year of the 2^nd coming of Jesus.  To the best of my knowledge, none of them were. 

But, we have to realize that these predictions were made by intelligent and dedicated scholars and theologians who believed in the accuracy of their predictions.  In some of the years that I mentioned, followers of these theologians sold all that they had, gave all their money away, and impoverished themselves for what turned out to be a lie.  All because they didn’t recognize the counterfeit.  The last three of the years I mentioned were years where the predictions were made by a pastor and theologian who I used to listen to every day on my commute to work.  I thought, and still think, that his analysis of the scriptures was brilliant and inspired.  But for whatever reason his focus shifted from teaching the truth about Jesus to trying to predict the future.  He was wrong, three times, and it ended his ministry. 

Dr. Alyce McKenzie tells us that, “The message to [Mark’s] persecuted community is that they need to prepare to participate in Jesus’ suffering and eventual victory by maintaining their witness to the truth in difficult times. The text intends to give them hope and encourage steadfastness in the faith – in the face of challenges to come. To seek in this text a detailed schedule of the events of the end-time is to misunderstand its purpose, which is to encourage persistence in the present, not to peer into the future.” [1]

Did anyone happen to notice what Jesus said to the disciples as He was telling them about future wars and earthquakes and famines?  He said, “Do not be alarmed”!  In the face of coming disasters, Jesus desires to comfort us.  And He tries to do that by pointing us all in the right direction.  Pastor Jo Anne Taylor explains, “Christ calls us, first of all, to prepare our own hearts by paying attention to the presence of God and living in that presence every day.  Then, Christ calls us to encourage each other to be prepared, by meeting together as the Body of Christ.  And Christ calls us to walk with other believers in the kind of close fellowship that provides encouragement and accountability.  As we band together with a few trusted friends in Christ, we meet Jesus and keep each other faithful to stay prepared for His coming.  Finally, Christ calls us to share the gospel in meaningful and authentic ways. This is why we feed the hungry and clothe the naked and care for the sick and welcome the stranger and visit those in prison.” [2]

And so, if our ultimate purpose is to be witnesses to the truth.  What does that look like?  How do we make familiarity with Jesus the cornerstone of a faith that rejects the counterfeit and speaks truth to ourselves, to our community of believers, and to those who surround us?  The answer is, as Pastor Tailor said, that our truth is spoken through our actions.  When we love others, when we embrace the outcast and the refugee and the marginalized, when we become a strident voice for justice and fairness, when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless, when we emulate Christ we show the world what Christianity is truly supposed to look like.  And when we do that faithfully, not only are we teaching the world how to differentiate between the authentic and the counterfeit, but we are showing the world, and ourselves, the way to living the life that God has called us all to live.

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[1] Dr. Alyce Mckenzie, The Pony Under the Pile – Reflections on Mark 13:1-8, Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence blog

[2] Jo Anne Taylor, A Pastor Sings, Birth Pangs – Sermon on Mark 13:1-8

It’s Not Just About Money

November 10, 2024

            I know it’s stewardship Sunday, but you can relax.  I’m not going to preach the sermon on the amount. 

            Mark begins today’s story telling us that Jesus issued this warning about the Scribes “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!”.  Yes, many of the Scribes were prideful, and Jesus wanted us to know that that was not a plus, but there is more going on here than meets the eye.  The Jerusalem Talmud, a written collection of the Jewish oral law, stated “A person must greet one who is greater than he in knowledge of Torah”.  And so, the Scribes coveted these greetings in the marketplace because they were an acknowledgement of one’s intellectual superiority. 

Many of the scribes were engrossed in this aggressive pursuit of the approval of people.  These Jewish authorities wanted to be important and wanted to be recognized as being important.  The Apostle Paul often used the phrase “Puffed up” to describe a self-important person.  And this is a fitting description of these Scribes.  But it wasn’t just the arrogance and pride of the Scribes against which Jesus spoke.  Jesus also said that the Scribes were “Shamelessly cheating widows out of their property”.  Dr. William Lane teaches us that, “The Scribes lived primarily on subsidies, since it was forbidden that they should be paid for exercising their profession.  The extension of hospitality to them was strongly encouraged as an act of piety; it was considered to be particularly meritorious to relieve a Scribe of concern for his livelihood.  Many well-to-do persons placed their financial resources at the disposal of Scribes, and it was inevitable that there should be abuses”.  [1]

In ancient times, widows and orphans were society’s most vulnerable members, and God’s concern for, and the command for us to care for the most vulnerable, is one of the primary themes of the Bible – both Old Testament and New.  In fact, the Bible directly addresses God’s care for widows at least 80 times, with orphans and foreigners usually being included in those passages as well.  An apocryphal first century CE document called “The Testament of Moses” says of the Pharisees and Scribes that “They consume the goods of the poor, saying their acts are according to justice, while in fact they are simply exterminators”. [2]  The Rev. Chelsea Harmon spoke of the mistreatment of widows when she said, “Historical evidence suggests a number of ways scribes interacted with (and could take financial advantage of) widows:  Though it was forbidden, many took payment from widows for providing legal assistance.  While serving as lawyers, some cheated on the wills or mismanaged the widows’ estates.  Some scribes were known to take advantage of, and freeload upon, the hospitality offered to them by widows.  Certain scribes were in the habit of taking payment and promising to make intercessory prayer for widows (i.e., making it a business transaction).  And if a widow could not pay, there were known cases where scribes literally took the widow’s home as payment for services rendered.  [3]

By all outward appearances, these Scribes were devout and pious men.  There is no question that, by and large, they were meticulous in following the Jewish Law.  But for those who were self-aggrandizing, for the cheaters and the swindlers, and the heartless among them, they were the whitewashed tombs about which Jesus spoke; beautiful and well maintained on the outside but filled with impurity and filth on the inside.

            Mark continues his story, providing us with a contrast to the story of the Scribes in the story of the widow making her offering in the temple.  Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem was set up in concentric rectangles.  The outside rectangle was the Court of the Gentiles, and all were welcome there.  Within the Court of the Gentiles, separated by a wall with large gates was the Court of the Women, and all Jews were welcomed in the Court of the Women, both male and female.  But it was forbidden under penalty of death for a Gentile to enter the Court of the Women.  Within the Court of the Women were three other courts, but in today’s story we are going to focus on the Court of the Women, because that is where our story unfolds. 

In the Court of the Women, there were twelve Shofarot or collection boxes.  They were shaped like a Shofar, or a ram’s horn, hence the name.  The small, or mouthpiece, end of the Shofarot was at the top, and that is where you dropped in your coins (remembering that there was no paper money in the first century).  The wide, or bell, part of the Shofarot was at the bottom and was where the coins were collected.  The opening of the Shafarot at the top was small to prevent people from being able to reach in and take coins out of the box.  Picture the coin slot on a piggy bank and you get the idea.  And so, when making your offering, because the opening was so small, you could only drop in a few coins at a time.

            With this in mind, Mark is telling us a story about Jesus watching the different givers in the temple.  And as Mark describes the wealthy making large donations, we can draw a mental picture of a person standing at one of those Shofarot for a really long time, dropping coin after coin after coin into that slot.  Jesus had just finished talking about how the Scribes loved to make ostentatious displays to gain attention and approval, but it wasn’t just they who were in the people pleasing business.  These large donors would have attracted a lot of attention, as everyone would hear the clink, clink, clink of the coins as they were dropped one, after another, after another, into the collection box.

            In the midst of all of these folks making donations, a widow approached one of the Shofarot and dropped in two One Lepta coins.  In first century Palestine a denarius was a day’s wage for a common worker.  The Lepta was worth 1/128^th of a day’s wage, or what a common laborer would earn in about 3 minutes and 45 seconds of work.  In today’s economy, 2 Lepta would be about 97 cents.  Jesus commented to His disciples that “this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.  For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

            As we stop to think about today being Stewardship Sunday, we recognize this passage as one well suited to a discussion about giving generously.  But today I would really like to go beyond the platitudes about faithful giving and really focus on what is going on here, because we do no justice to this story if we don’t look beyond the obvious.  The first thing I would like to do is call attention to a slightly misleading translation.  The NIV tells us that the widow, “Put in everything—all she had to live on.”  But the original Greek says that she gave “ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς  (Holon ton bion autes),  and this translates as literally “her whole life”.  She gave her whole life.

            There is a picture of some Greek coins in the bulletin insert.  The Lepton is the one at the bottom right and is listed as being 3 mm wide.  For comparison’s sake, a modern US dime is about 18mm wide.  And so, I suppose it is possible that, when the widow dropped these two coins, they barely made any noise at all.  And yet Jesus recognized her gift as the greatest of all because her gift was the gift of her entire self.

            Ordinarily, when we think about this passage, we tend to identify similarities between ourselves and the Scribes and ourselves and the widow.  We probably don’t find much in common between us and the Scribes, whose focus is on status and prestige yet who violate God’s law by mistreating the most vulnerable among us.  Pretty low bar, right?  Maybe we find the widow a somewhat better match, but when we look at the story in this way, we run the risk of feeling guilty if we don’t feel like we measure up to the faithfulness of the widow, and we might run the risk of feeling a bit self-righteous if we feel like we surpass the righteousness of the Scribes.  So instead, I would like for us not to focus on comparing ourselves to either the Scribes or the Widow, but to think of ourselves as being the gift itself.  What would we look like if we were the entirety of the gift?

            I have spoken often about how our faith is a matter of the condition of our hearts.  When we ourselves are the gift, our hearts will dictate to us what that means.  To begin with, the heart that belongs to God is sensitive to the needs of the community.    The heart that belongs to God recognizes a need and acts to fill that need as their circumstances permit.  And I have to say that over the years, this church… this congregation has been positively awesome at recognizing and filling needs.  Through difficult times of building issues and income deficiencies and declining membership, this congregation has been amazingly faithful to step up and provide as needs arise, and I thank God for that faithfulness, and consider myself privileged to be a part of a congregation whose faith runs so deep. 

But we all know that discipleship is not just about our resources.  Discipleship is truly about “ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς, the giving of the whole self. It’s about the giving of our time and our efforts, it’s about the contributing of our ideas and our voices, it’s about taking on the tasks that keep the church functioning.  And it’s about reaching beyond these walls to be the hands and feet and voice of Jesus as we seek to do our part to bring the Good News of the Gospel to the world. 

We had a birthday party for my son, Joe, when he turned three.  There were a dozen or so kids in my back yard, and one of the children decided that he wanted to play with one of the toys that my son had received as a gift.  When my son tried to retrieve the toy, the other child clutched it to his chest and responded “No!  It’s MINE!”  I guess in the mind of a three-year-old, possession is 9/10^ths of the law, but clearly the toy wasn’t his.  We live in a world where people often tend to cling tightly to their possessions, and not without reason, but sometimes forgetting the fact that our whole world belongs to God.  Have you ever had a time when you had trouble letting go of something that was not yours?  I know I have.  So, maybe it’s not just three-year-olds who believe in that “9/10^ths of the law” thing!  Psalm 24 tells us, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and all who dwell therein”.  As Christians, we all know intellectually that we are merely stewards of God’s possessions, but to know that at a transformative level, to know that at a level that affects not only our thinking but our actions, that is very, very, hard. 

I seriously did not want to talk about money today. What I want to talk about, and what I have been talking about for months now, is the giving of ourselves to God.  God knows us better than we know ourselves.  The Bible tells us in Hebrews that we do not serve a God who is unable to empathize with us, because Jesus experienced life in every way, just as we do.  God is not unaware of our struggles.  He fully understands our finances and our time constraints and our strengths and weaknesses, and please believe me when I tell you that God will never ask from us what He knows that we are unable to give.  But The Message translation of 1 Peter 4:1 says, “Since Jesus went through everything you’re going through and more, learn to think like him. Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way.”

If we ourselves are going to be the gift, and of course God Himself is the recipient of our gift, then the question is not “how much are we going to give?” But rather “how are we going to give much?”  How can we present the gift of ourselves in such a way that we honor the personal commitments with which God has blessed us, covering the costs of family and domicile and food and heat and lights, while at the same time honoring God and the community of faith with which God has blessed us also?  Believe it or not, there is actually a simple solution.  If we ask, God will be faithful to answer.

As faithful children of God, let us each seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and ask God to tell our hearts to dictate what it means for US to be the gift.

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[1] William Lane, The Gospel of Mark, Pg. 441

[2] The Testament of Moses 7:6-7

[3] Rev. Chelsea Harmon, Mark 12:38-44 Commentary, CEPreaching.org website

The Greatest Commandment

Sermon November 3, 2024

            Do we have any Bible geeks here?  Does anyone know how many commandments rabbinic tradition recognized in the first five books of the Bible?  There were 613!  Of these, 365 were negative, or “don’t do that”, and 248 were positive, or “do this”.  Some of these commandments were considered by the rabbis to be “light”, the violation of which was thought to have minimal impact, and some were considered “heavy” and violating these “heavy” laws could carry some significant consequences.  In light of all this, it isn’t too hard to understand how some of the teachers of the law might have wondered which was the most important commandment, and indeed discussions of the relative importance of various commandments abound in the rabbinic literature of the second Temple era.  And so, it’s not surprising in the least that the Teacher of the Law in our reading today would have approached Jesus with the question that he asked. 

            This Scribe, or teacher of the law (And these descriptions can be used interchangeably) heard a discussion between Jesus and the Sadducees discussing the resurrection.  This discussion happened just before our reading today, and in those verses, the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection, asked Jesus a hypothetical resurrection question which Jesus answered, and which our Teacher of the Law friend believed that Jesus had answered wisely.  And so, this Scribe, having recognized the wisdom of Jesus’ answer decided to ask Jesus a question himself, but unlike a lot of the questions asked by the Jewish religious authorities, this question did not appear to be intended to trap Jesus or to set Him up for something.  It appeared to be a question posed of genuine interest.  And the question that he asked was “what is the greatest commandment”?  Since this was a hotly debated topic among his peers, and given the fact that Jesus had 613 commandments from which to choose, the Scribe was probably deeply curious as to what the wisdom of Jesus’ answer might be.

            Verses 29 through 31 in today’s reading tells us that “Jesus answered him “The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.   Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these”.  What Jesus said here, He paraphrased from two different verses from the Hebrew Bible.  The first half, the part about loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, is taken from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and is actually a prayer called the Shema.  A Jew will recite this prayer twice a day, once upon waking up in the morning and again before going to bed.  The second part of what Jesus said, the part about loving your neighbor, is paraphrased from Leviticus 19:17-18. 

            After Jesus said these things, something truly remarkable happened.  We are so accustomed to the animosity that the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law exhibited towards Jesus, that when this Scribe answers in a complimentary way, it is almost shocking.  The Scribe said to Jesus, “Well said, teacher.  You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.  To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”  Not only did the Scribe agree with Jesus and commend Him for His answer, but the Scribe also shows a remarkable understanding of the fact that loving God and loving others takes precedence over the Jewish sacrificial system. 

            We’ve spent a few months in Mark now, and the tension between the Jewish authorities and Jesus has been one of Mark’s primary themes.  Mark’s purpose has been to explain to his readers that the Pharisees have basically lost the plot.  They have become so focused on behavior; the ACT of obeying the Law, that they have lost sight of the fact that it iss not about what they do, but about who they are that matters to God. 

They seem to have misplaced a few Bible verses, like Jeremiah 7:22-23 that says, “When I brought your fathers out of Egypt, I said nothing to them about burnt offerings and sacrifices.  I gave them only this command: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you will be my people. Walk entirely in the way I commanded you to walk, so that it may go well with you.’” Or perhaps they have forgotten verses similar to this that can be found in Isaiah or Malachi or Psalms, or Ezekiel.  Or maybe, somehow they missed out on the passage in 1^st Samuel that says “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.”  The Pharisees and Teachers of the Law have failed to see how the Law is really about the condition of their hearts, but our Scribe friend today seems to have it figured out.  And Jesus is appreciative of the Scribe’s answer.  “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Jesus tells him. 

            There is enormous depth in what has just happened here.  In pairing these two different passages from two different places in the Hebrew Bible, Jesus has revealed the connection between loving God and loving others.  Our response to the first command to love God is exhibited in our love for our neighbors, and when we love our neighbor, we are actually exhibiting our love for God because we are showing our faithfulness by obeying His commandments.  The apostle John echoed this thought in his first letter when he said, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For whoever does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?  We have this commandment from Him: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”  Dr. Mark L. Strauss further explains, “Those who truly love God will also love those who are created in His image.  Furthermore, those who love God are reckoned as His children and so reflect His divine nature, which is pure love”.  [1]

            And now returning to our story, Jesus goes even further.  In declaring these commandments to be greater than all the others (All 613 of them), Jesus helps us to understand the fact that a heart that is filled with God’s love seeks to follow all of God’s commandments, not out of a desire for reward, or out of a fear of reprisal, but simply because the inclination to follow God’s commands in an integral part of who they are. 

The heart that loves God is generous, because the heart that loves God is unwilling to accept others being hungry or homeless, and so seeks to fill those needs as circumstances permit.  The heart that loves God is compassionate because the heart that loves God is unwilling to accept others being hurt or mistreated, or marginalized, and so, we love and care for those who the world disdains.  The heart that loves God is gracious because the heart that loves God is unwilling to ignore the fact that every single person bears the image of the Living God, and so, we forgive and restore those who have fallen or have lost their way. 

You’ve heard me say before that the Law is not a list of rules and regulations to be followed.  The Law is a description of what the human heart is supposed to look like.  Timothy Keller said, “When Jesus said that all the laws boil down to ‘love God and neighbor’, He is saying we have not fulfilled a law by simply avoiding what the law prohibits, but we must all do and be what the Law is really after – namely, love.” [2]  And the Jewish philosopher, Philo, spoke about this also when he said, “[These two are the most important laws].”  [The] regulating of one’s conduct towards God by the rules of piety and holiness, and [the] regulating one’s conduct towards [others] by the rules of humanity and justice.” [3]

            This is one of the primary lessons that Jesus came to teach.  Being a disciple of Jesus means having a heart that looks like His heart.  To follow Jesus means to imitate Him; to love as He did, to care for others as He did, to passionately pursue justice, fairness, and righteousness as He did, and to give our selves in service to others, just as He did.  Paul tells us in Romans 13:8-10, “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.  The commandments, ‘’You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: ‘’Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law”.  Warren Wiersbe says, “If we love God we will experience His love within and will express that love to others.  We do not live by rules, but by relationships, a loving relationship to God that enables us to have a loving relationship with others.” [4]  This is what it means when I say that when we truly have God’s love within us, we will follow God’s commandments without even trying, because not to follow those commandments would be foreign to our new nature in Christ.           

            And along these same lines, there is another truth buried in today’s lesson.  One of the interesting things that we find in studying today’s verses and comparing them to parallels in Deuteronomy and Matthew is the fact that the things with which we are called to love God are named differently.  Our Mark reading tells us to love God with ‘‘Heart, soul, mind, and strength’‘, but when we look back at the original Deuteronomy passage we find that we are to love God with ‘‘Heart, soul, and might’‘, and when our Scribe friend quotes the Deuteronomy passage he replaces ‘‘mind’‘ with ‘‘understanding’‘ and omits ‘‘soul’‘ entirely.  And in Matthew, we are told to love God with heart, soul, and mind.  These words don’t only vary in the English translations, the differences are present in the original languages also. 

            And so, there are two observations that I would like to make about these discrepancies.  First is the interpretations of the words.  While we, in the twenty first century, interpret matters of the heart as being emotional issues, in the first century, the heart was the center of the will.  Where we interpret soul as the inner being, in the first century the soul was the seat of affection.  The mind was understood pretty much the same then as now, being the center of intellect and strength, and while our meaning of power is shared by the first century readers, for them it also carried a component of aptitude or ability.  And so, taking all of these passages together, we might choose to translate this as ‘‘Love the Lord your God with all of your will, all of your affection, all of your intellect, and all of your abilities.  Or, as Pastor Daniel L. Akin said, ‘‘The heart speaks to the emotions, the real me on the inside.  The soul speaks to the spirit, the self-conscious life.  The mind speaks to our intelligence and thought life.  And strength speaks to our bodily powers, perhaps even the will.” [5]

And all of this ties in to the second observation, which is, no matter which body parts we assign to this passage, its true meaning, and the reason that different words having been used in different passages are inconsequential, is that what we are really being taught here is to love God with everything we are and everything we have.  The simple truth is, God deserves no less than all of us.  And if we circle back to Jesus’ naming of the two most important commandments, we find that we are also called to have the same all encompassing love that we have for God, for others as well.

I know, I make this sound like it is easy.  But we all know that it is not.  However, it’s important to remember that Christ-likeness is not a destination, but a journey.  It is something that we will never fully receive until the day that our faith becomes sight.  But while we are on this journey, we have the extraordinary opportunity to touch the lives and the hearts of others by loving as Jesus did.  WE can be the person who makes a difference in someone else’s life by showing them God’s love and by teaching them the incredible good news of the Gospel.  Let us seek to be the people who do that.

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[1] Dr. Mark L. Strauss, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Mark, Pg. 542

[2] Dr. Timothy Keller, Mark, Pg. 163

[3] Philo, The Special Laws, II, 15:63

[4] Warren Wiersbe, Be Diligent, Pg. 142

[5] Daniel L. Akin, Exalting Jesus in Mark, Pg. 288

Turn the Other Cheek

Sermon October 27, 2024

            “It was a slap in the face”.  What do we think when we hear that phrase?  How do we, in the twenty-first century United States interpret that?  Interestingly, our first thought when we hear this phrase isn’t one of physical violence.  Our first thought is that of a rude awakening, a dismissive gesture that is intended not so much to injure physically, as to injure emotionally.  Because the majority of the time when we use this phrase, we use it idiomatically.  We are not actually talking about a physical assault; we are talking about something that someone said or did that caused discomfort or emotional pain.  In her hit song “You Oughta Know” Alanis Morissette said “It was a slap in the face how quickly I was replaced.  Nobody actually hit her, she was commenting on something that had happened that was hurtful to her.  And the fact is, this idea of a slap in the face being a dismissive and scornful act is not at all new.  The first century inhabitants of Israel would have understood this in a very similar way.

            Our lesson today talks about how Christians are to interact with other people, particularly… difficult people.  We begin with a very familiar Bible quote, and as is the case with many widely known Biblical quotes, I believe that the majority of those who hear or repeat the phrase, misunderstand the actual, Biblical teaching behind it.  The phrase is “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”.  It is a phrase that many folks believe is a justification for violent retribution; if you are going to hurt me, I am going to hurt you.  However, if we look at the original verse that’s found in Deuteronomy 19 in context, what we discover is the fact that this verse is directed only to courts of law.  This is not an individual authorization for people to take the law into their own hands, it is part of a group of instructions to judges and officials to help them to administer justice effectively and appropriately. 

Not only is this an instruction to judges and officials, but we find that in a passage in Leviticus 19 personal retaliation and retribution is specifically condemned.  Leviticus 19:18, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.“  Interesting!  The presumption here is that you have just been wronged in some way, and yet we are told that our response to that injury is to love our neighbor.  And this is coming from the OLD TESTAMENT!

Getting back to the verses in Deuteronomy 19, we find that the verse about an eye for an eye is actually a limiting verse, meaning that judges are called to make sure that punishments fit the crimes.  Judges are called in this verse to sentence without mercy, but what they are not called to do is to issue a sentence that is more severe than the original infraction.  So, counterintuitively, this verse is actually designed to protect the accused from excessive punishment.  And understanding the fact that this verse is meant for judges and officials, combined with that Leviticus passage that we just read, we are able to see that the Bible is emphatically not telling individuals to take retribution into their own hands. 

And as an aside, this is a perfect example of the fact that no verse of the Bible can be taken on its own.  Every verse, every word in the Bible, needs to be understood in the light of the witness of the entire Bible.  When we read Deuteronomy 19:21, “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” And we pay no attention to the context, or that passage in Leviticus condemning personal retaliation, it would be very easy for a person to take violent retribution on someone and then claim it to be Biblically sanctioned, but as we have just seen… the Bible doesn’t support this at all.  So extreme care must be taken any time we try to justify something Biblically.  One of the first things that I learned in my Seminary Old Testament classes was the importance of filtering everything that we read in the Bible through the lens of the law of love.  That is, does this teaching spring from a heart that loves God and loves others?  And is this teaching consistent with the love exemplified by the life, teaching, and example of Jesus?  If the passage, as we understand it, doesn’t pass this test, then we are failing to understand the text in its original intent, and we certainly shouldn’t be using this text in its misunderstood form to justify behaviors.

            And now I will get off of my soapbox and get back to our lesson.  As Jesus repeats the “eye for an eye” phrase, He follows it with the instruction not to resist an evil person.  And then He tells us that “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”  And here, I think an explanation is in order, lest we misunderstand what is being taught.  The Bible is not telling us not to defend ourselves.  On more than one occasion, the New Testament tells us that the disciples carried swords: almost certainly for self-defense.  Exodus 22 has a lengthy discussion about protection of personal property and the rules relating to self-defense, so the Bible is not asking us not to defend ourselves.  But if we are not being asked not to defend ourselves, what ARE we being asked?

            Well, let’s think about this for a moment.  First, let me state that for first century Jews, a person’s left hand was not to be used for anything except for unclean tasks.  In fact, for a Jew to gesture with the left hand meant they would be excluded from the community for 100 days.  So, Jews would, for all tasks that didn’t require both hands, use their right hand exclusively.  So… picture this… you are facing me.  And you are about to slap me in the face, and you are going to slap me on my right cheek.  How are you going to do that with your right hand?  In order for you to hit me on the right cheek, you would have to be hitting me with the back of your hand.  This would not be a slap that was intended to injure me physically.  It would be a dismissive and disrespectful act intended to “put me in my place”.  So, this verse is not telling us to endure physical abuse, it is telling us not to respond with violence to an insult, but rather to endure the insult in the interest of promoting love and peace.  To turn the other cheek to someone is to invite them to express their anger towards you physically in a way that is not demeaning.  In other words… to stand tall; to make a statement that, as one bearing the image of the Living God, you are to be treated as an equal, not as a nobody.  And at the same time saying that regardless of what another may choose to do, you will show them that you will respond to their unkindness with kindness, to their hate with love, and to their violence with peace.

            Jesus continues with His teaching.  ‘If anyone wants to sue you and takes your shirt, hand over your coat as well.’  First century attire would have consisted of an undergarment, an overgarment, referred to here as a shirt but was actually more like a tunic or a dress (for lack of a better way to describe it), and a cloak or overcoat.  The Law states in Deuteronomy 24 that if you take someone’s cloak as collateral, it must be returned to that person before sunset, as the coat was necessary to keep one warm in the cold of the night.  So what Jesus is saying here is for His followers to offer more than what is required.  To give up both your shirt and your cloak would leave you standing there in court in your underwear.  But if you have lost a lawsuit and have been required to give up the shirt off your back, offer more than what is required in the interests of love and peace.

            Jesus next tells us that, “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.  Roman soldiers were permitted, by law, to conscript anyone they wished to carry their equipment for one mile (well, actually for one thousand steps).  Jesus tells us that, in the interest of love and peace, we should go beyond that which is required and carry that equipment for 2,000 steps instead.  If you are watching the TV show “The Chosen” (and if you are not, you should really check it out!) there is a great scene where Jesus and the disciples are accosted by a group of Roman soldiers and forced to carry their equipment.  The soldiers rudely put their helmets on Jesus and the disciple’s heads, give them heavy packs to carry, and treat them all with abject disrespect.  When they reach the 1,000-step limit, an argument ensues as Jesus informs the soldiers that they will all be continuing to carry the equipment for another thousand steps… the soldiers are understandably a little wary about this offer, as if it is a trap of some sort, but Jesus explains Himself in a very loving and compassionate way, and so they continue to carry the soldiers equipment.  But during the next thousand steps the demeanor of the soldiers changes.  Most of them take back their helmets and their treatment of Jesus and the disciples becomes much more respectful.  The writers of the show did an extraordinary job of expressing the thought that is the foundation of today’s lesson, that kindness and a willingness to do more for another than is required is an extraordinary way of promoting peace.

            Jesus ends this part of our lesson by saying, “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”  In a world where people tend to cling tightly to that which is theirs, Jesus calls for generosity as the believer recognizes the needs of others and seeks to fill those needs as circumstances permit. 

            In speaking of our passage today, Pastor Brent Kercheville said, “You will notice in each of these illustrations we are seeing our rights being voluntarily revoked. We do not say, ‘I have a right.’ We give up our rights for others. In Christ Jesus we do not say that we have a right. Personal sacrifice replaces personal retaliation-just as Jesus showed us in his own life.  This is the big idea: we do not make our rights the basis for our relationships with others. Be prepared to take a lowly position as a humble servant. Be prepared to sacrifice your rights for a life of following Jesus. Be prepared to pay the price of imitating Jesus.” [1]

            Being a peacemaker is not an easy task.  It requires a willingness to place the needs of others ahead of our own needs.  It requires us to be meek.  But I would like to take a moment to define Biblical meekness, because I don’t think it means what we might think it means.  Meekness, in the Greek, is πραΰτητι, (prauteeti) and in first century Greek, πραΰτητι is a word that was used to describe a horse that has been trained.  Biblical meekness does not mean being powerless or weak, Biblical meekness means to have great power, but to have that power under the control of a master.  We have this great power within us, but it is not a power to serve ourselves.  It is a power to serve others.  Pastor David Guzik of Enduring Word tells us that when we serve others, when we do more than the Law requires us to do, “That is sacrificial Christian love, and it is radical, but it transforms the world when we express it”. [2]

            And this… this is our mission.  We are called to be disciples.  We are called to allow the Spirit to transform our hearts into hearts that reflect the love of God.  And when our hearts reflect the love of God, the world will see His love for them, exemplified in us.  And in the process of reflecting this love, we will find that we are able to form deep connections with people in ways that would just not be possible otherwise.  And not only are we able to create these deeper connections, we are also able to reach some people with whom we may not see eye to eye, and with whom we would never be able to establish a dialogue in any other way.  But reflecting God’s love in our words and actions results in our being peacemakers.  Because God’s love promotes peace and understanding.  God’s love residing in our hearts leads us to be people of empathy and kindness, and to the world, those traits are both compelling and unifying.

            Mother Teresa once said, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”  We need to be touching the lives of others with the love of God.  And we need to be doing that praying that the love of God will touch their hearts as well, because when it does, it creates one more little oasis of peace in this world.  And the more of those little oases that we can create, the more we will accomplish in fulfilling our role as God’s peacemakers.

            Amen.

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[1] Sermon:  Matthew 5:38-42, Sacrificing, Brent Kercheville

[2] Enduring Word, David Guzik

Sermon June 25, 2023

Who… was your favorite teacher?

And why?

Did anyone have any trouble coming up with a favorite teacher? 

Of course not, everyone has a favorite teacher.  My favorite teacher was George Hoffman.  Some of you may know him, he was the band director at Monmouth Regional for quite some time, including the three years that I attended there.  Mr. Hoffman was, quite simply, the best teacher I ever had.  And it’s curious that I should think that.  I moved to New Jersey from Ohio the summer after my freshman year in high school and the band program at the school that I was blessed to attend in Ohio was perennially one of the best bands in the state.  Monmouth Regional?  Not so much.  But here is the thing about Mr. Hoffman.  For those of us in the band who were serious about music, and there were a few of us, Mr. Hoffman would have moved heaven and earth to give us the opportunity to become the best musical version of ourselves that we could possibly be.  He was a great educator and mentor, he was encouraging and supportive, and he was persistent in pushing us to be our best, and that’s why I think he was such a great teacher.

I would imagine that many of us have similar experiences with our favorite teachers.  Tell me, was your favorite teacher widely liked in your school?  It’s OK, you don’t have to answer, we are Presbyterians, after all.

So, as I said before, the Monmouth Regional band was rather average.  Without going into a lot of the things going on in the school system that directly contributed to the quality of the band (or lack thereof), most of these things were not in Mr. Hoffman’s control, but nevertheless there were a few students, and probably a few parents as well, who didn’t think very highly of Mr. Hoffman because they blamed him for us not having a better band.  As for me, well, for the first time in my life, I, usually a rather marginal student at best, was the teacher’s pet.  And so, I occasionally found myself defending Mr. Hoffman from those who didn’t share my enthusiasm for what I felt to be the depth of his skill set, and I suppose it makes sense that some of those of a differing opinion didn’t think very highly of me either.

In today’s Gospel lesson we read “Students are not greater than their teacher, and slaves are not greater than their master.  Students are to be like their teacher, and slaves are to be like their master.  And since I, the master of the household, have been called the prince of demons,the members of my household will be called by even worse names!”  Jesus warned the disciples plainly that, because of the opposition to Him and His message, the disciples should expect opposition as well.

It’s probably pretty easy to understand why the band director of a less than stellar band program may have his detractors, but to a world that is accustomed to hearing at least the basics of the Gospel message and that mostly views Jesus (if not always His followers) in a positive light, it may be a little harder for us to understand why Jesus faced such opposition.  Well, two thousand years after the fact, it’s hard to see just how revolutionary Jesus’s message was. 

The priests of Jesus’s day had over a thousand years of religious tradition and regulations covering nearly all of life’s daily routines.  Their job was to instruct and lead the people into the following of the traditions and the minutiae of these regulations, and to them, Jesus was making a mockery of their faith. 

The priests, especially the Pharisees, were deeply committed to ritual purity, to meticulously following the laws both written and oral, and if you didn’t follow those regulations to the letter, then you were “unclean” and a “sinner”.  On Bible.org, Bob Deffinbaugh gives us this description of the Pharisees “(T)he Pharisees… were a religious party.  The word “Pharisee” literally means “Separatist”, the name given to them by their opponents because of their “holier than thou” haughty attitude.  Their supreme aim was to strictly follow both the written and oral law.  They looked down upon the common people who did not have the slightest chance of fulfilling the complex requirements of the Law.  However, the common people admired the Pharisees as representing the ideal followers of Judaism.”

It was those who didn’t “have the slightest chance” of fulfilling the law that were embraced by Jesus.  His association with, and acceptance of, these “sinners” made him unclean in the eyes of the Jewish authorities, and worse than that, Jesus regularly admonished the leaders over their lack of care and concern for those whom they had rejected, the ones that Jesus referred to as “the least of these”.  Jesus flouted the law to which the priesthood was so deeply committed, failing to follow prescribed hand washing rituals before meals, healing on the Sabbath, which the religious authorities considered to be prohibited work, touching lepers, and allowing Himself to be touched by a bleeding woman, all of these things rendering Him “unclean”, and in the eyes of the religious authorities, a “sinner”.

But by far, the biggest problem that the authorities had with Jesus was the fact that Jesus, on multiple occasions, identified Himself as being one with the Father.  In Mark 2 Jesus healed a paralytic who was let down through the roof of a house.  When Jesus healed him, he didn’t say “get up and walk”, He said “Your sins are forgiven”.  The religious authorities were outraged because only God can forgive sin.  In John 5, when the Jewish authorities questioned Jesus as to why he healed a man on the Sabbath, Jesus said “My Father and I are always working”, equating Himself with the Father, which the authorities believed was blasphemy.  In John 8 Jesus, speaking of Abraham, said to the people “Before Abraham was even born, I AM”.  Though the “I am” statement may not mean much to us in our time, His Jewish audience would have instantly recognized the fact that Jesus used the name “I Am” which is the same name with which God identified Himself to Moses at the burning bush.  In John 10 Jesus said to the religious authorities “The Father and I are one”, and before the Jewish Council in Matthew 26 Jesus said, “In the future you will see the Son of Man, seated in the place of power at God’s right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven”.  To those who understood what Jesus was saying, there was no doubt that Jesus was claiming to be Messiah.

This message that Jesus was bringing, this Gospel of Good News to the poor, releasing of the captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the coming of the year of the Lord’s favor, this astonishingly Good News, because it was announced by a human, was interpreted by the religious authorities to be the height of blasphemy.  And this is the message that the disciples were called to bring to the world.  Is there any wonder that the disciples were persecuted?  And yet in spite of the difficulty and the persecution, the disciples love for Jesus, and the disciple’s “fear” of God, was such that not bringing His message to the world was never an option. 

You may be wondering why I said “the fear of God” please allow me to make an observation about this phrase.  In the Greek, the word is θεοσέβεια and it is not a word that bears the meaning of being afraid, but rather it is a word that means reverence.  The Gospel is not something that we share because we are terrified of what will happen if we don’t, or because we hope to gain a reward if we do, the Gospel is shared, by the disciples and by us, out of our devotion to God.

Like the disciples, we carry this message because of love.

Our Gospel lesson today is a difficult one:

“Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword.  ‘I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.  Your enemies will be right in your own household!  “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.”

It’s hard to read this passage, especially for folks who are family oriented, which is probably most of us.  It seems kind of harsh, doesn’t it?  But, contrary to how we may read this, this passage is not telling us to turn our backs on our families.  You see, there is a little gem almost hidden in the midst of our Gospel lesson today.  Verse 32 “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven”.  Is this something that you want for yourself?  How about your family?  If we read a little further in our passage today in verse 40 we find Jesus saying “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  Do we want Jesus welcoming our family?  You bet we do!  This seemingly difficult passage isn’t about abandoning our families.  On the contrary, this passage is about loving our families so much that our priority is not keeping peace in the family by not “rocking the boat”.  Our priority is to live our faith before our families; to be the witnesses that we are called to be to the world before those who are the most important to us. 

Now I know the idea of witnessing carries some pretty bad connotations, and please understand that this isn’t a call to be obnoxious.  We’re not here to knock on our family member’s doors and hand out tracts.  Nor are we called to be judgmental, trying to identify the sin in the lives of our family members and tell them how to correct them.  Sharing our faith should be a gentile thing.  There’s a saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.  “Share the Gospel, use words if necessary”.  Our lives are our best witness.  Living a life of love and grace before the world will speak louder than pretty much any words we may think to say.  This thought is illustrated beautifully in one of my favorite quotes from Madeleine l’Engle that I love and repeat often.  “We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

What our passage is telling us today is that, if our families oppose us, love them, and be a faithful witness anyway.  If our families are unkind to us, and we suffer their slings and arrows, love them, and be a faithful witness anyway.  If our families choose to ignore us or to belittle us, love them, and be a faithful witness anyway. Even if our families abandon us, love them, and be a faithful witness anyway.

God loves us with an amazing, extravagant, gracious, all-encompassing love.  If the world fails to understand that, it’s because they don’t see enough of His love reflected in the lives of those who profess to follow Him.  Let us be those faithful witnesses.  Let us be the people who do show that love to the world… and to our families.

What’s Wrong with “What Must I Do”?

Sermon October 13^th, 2024

            It is very possibly the single, most often inaccurately quoted verse of the Bible.  So common is the misquoted version of this verse, that it has become a part of popular culture, and yet I think that most people don’t realize that what the popular version of the verse says is not what the Bible is actually teaching.  How many have heard the phrase, “Money is the root of all evil”?  It IS common, isn’t it?  But that is not what the Bible is teaching. The quotation, in context, from 1^st Timothy 6 is this, “The LOVE of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  This Bible teaching isn’t about the evils of money, it is about the evils of the LOVE of money.  You see, there is nothing wrong with having money.  There is nothing wrong with having a lot of money. 

The Bible is full of very faithful people who were wealthy.  Genesis 13:2 tells us that “Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.”  Job had 7,000 head of sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen… he was extremely wealthy, and yet God said about him that, there is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”  Two weeks ago, we heard that “Solomon made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones”.  Joseph of Arimathea was wealthy, and in Luke 8 we read about Joanna and Susanna who supported Jesus financially from their own resources.  So, there are plenty of instances of wealthy and faithful people in the Bible. 

Money is most emphatically not the problem here.  The problem occurs when the love of money supersedes the love of God, or the love of others.  And you actually don’t even have to HAVE money for money to be a problem, because you can love having money, you can love acquiring money, and you can even love attempting unsuccessfully to acquire money.   So, like so many other things that we have learned about over the last few months, this also is a teaching about the condition of the heart.  In our story today, Jesus teaches us how this all works.  And it’s an interesting story, so let’s get started.

            Those familiar with this passage call it the story of the rich young ruler, but all Mark tells us is that a man came running up to Jesus and knelt in front of Him.  We find out that he is young because Matthew tells us that, and we find out that he is a ruler because Luke tells us that.  And as far as his being rich is concerned, all three synoptic Gospels tell this story, and all three wait until the very end of the story to tell us that he’s rich.  Anyway, this man knelt before Jesus and said, “Good Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”  Rather than answer the question, Jesus begins by asking a question of His own.  “Why do you call me good?”  Jesus said, “No one is good except God alone”.  At first glance, this seems like an odd way for Jesus to respond.  I mean, what exactly is He saying?  This verse has been used by some as an argument to deny the deity of Christ, but Jesus is not implying here that HE isn’t good.  Rather, Jesus is setting the stage for the answer that is about to come.  But I can’t answer this question until I answer another one.

            Jesus continues, “You know the commandments: Never murder. Never commit adultery. Never steal. Never give false testimony. Never cheat. Honor your father and mother.”  The man replied, “Teacher, all of these I have done since my youth”.  This man, earnest though he is… is approaching Jesus with the assumption that he can somehow earn his way into heaven.  And so, before Jesus even answered the question, He had made a statement about goodness.  And the reason that He made that statement was to preemptively challenge the man’s assumptions.  If the man hoped to gain entry to heaven by earning it with his personal goodness, well, if only God is good, where does that leave him?  If goodness is a prerequisite for heaven and only God is good, then the man has a problem.  Dr. Mark L Strauss explains, “Jesus nullifies the man’s assertion about his own goodness before he has made it and sets up the conclusion that no one can merit God’s salvation”. [1]  And so, Jesus has set the stage for a very important lesson on God’s grace, and at the same time, a very important lesson on idolatry. 

            Now, following the story, we don’t yet know that the man is wealthy.  And yet, did anyone happen to notice anything unusual about Jesus’ response?  With the Ten Commandments, the first four commandments speak to the relationship of God’s children, with God, and the last six commandments speak to the relationship of God’s children with one another.  Here, Jesus lists only those commandments that relate to our relationships with others.  And in naming the commandments, Jesus moves honoring one’s father and mother from the beginning of the list to the end, but that isn’t the unusual thing that I am looking for.  Did anyone happen to notice that Jesus has replaced “do not covet” with “do not cheat”.  The Greek here is ἀποστερήσῃς (aposterēsēs) which, according to the Bill Mounce Online Greek Dictionary means “To be unjustly withheld, to cheat or defraud.”  Why do we think that Jesus changed the wording of one of the commandments? 

            Well, the man is already rich.  He is probably able to buy almost anything he desires, but as is so often the case with the wealthy, it’s likely that what he really covets… is more.  The Old Testament prophets spoke often and vociferously about economic injustice.  Amos said, “They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.  They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.”.  Micah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea all specifically condemn the economic exploitation of the poor, and so it appears that what Jesus is doing here is identifying covetousness as manifesting itself in fraudulent means of acquiring more wealth.  In other words, do not allow that which you covet, to cause you to cheat another, in order to gain it.  One needn’t look far today to see examples of this principle at work in the schemes, influence buying and corporate malfeasance that can sometimes characterize the ultra-wealthy.  This is not something that is new.  In fact, archaeologists have found letters written by ancient merchants warning them not to do business with specific other merchants because they couldn’t be trusted.  The LOVE of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

            Returning to our story, our rich young ruler said, “all these [commandments] I have kept since I was a boy.”  Next, Mark tells us that, “Jesus looked at him and loved him.”  And then, the most unimaginable thing happened.  This man had humbled himself by falling at Jesus’ feet and had asked a question that showed concern for his spiritual condition.  The man was on the right track to be sure, but Jesus knew the condition of the man’s heart and cut straight to the issue.  “One thing you lack,” [Jesus] said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”  And then, Mark tells us that, “At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.”  The NIV uses the word “sad” for the Greek word “στυγνάσας” (stygnasis).  The NRSV uses the word “shocked” but in Mattthew, that same word στυγνάσας is used to describe the dark and threatening sky before a storm.  This is actually a word of despair. 

            The man was actually presented with an opportunity to follow Jesus, personally.  A chance, not only to be gifted a place in God’s kingdom, but also to learn directly from Jesus how to live a life of eternal significance.  Who knows what might have happened in this young man’s life, or the impact he may have made for future generations?  But he walked away in despair because his wealth was more important to him than having a relationship with the Living God.  Interestingly, the man had said that he had followed all of the commandments since he was a boy, but in this one moment, Jesus showed him how he had failed at the very first commandment, “Thou shall have no other Gods before me”. 

            Timothy Keller said, “The rich young ruler had come to the right person: Jesus.  He had asked the right question: How do I inherit eternal life.  He had received the right answer: Honor God and follow Jesus in complete trust like a little child.  Sadly, he did not respond correctly, and he walked away from the only true source of eternal life.  When Jesus called the young man to give up his money, the man started to grieve, because money was for him what the Father was for Jesus.  It was the center of his identity.  To lose his money would have been to lose himself.” [2]

            Jesus, turning to the disciples, said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”  Mark tells us that the disciples were astonished, but then Jesus doubled down on His comment, saying “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

            It was a common Jewish perspective that wealth was a sign of God’s blessing.  Deuteronomy 28 begins with a long section explaining how the faithful will be blessed by God, and Proverbs 10:22 says flat out “The blessing of the Lord brings wealth”, so it stood to reason, at least for the disciples, that those who were wealthy were recipients of God’s blessing.  But at this point, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that Jesus, once again, turned the wisdom of this world upside down. 

            So, let’s take a moment to recap and see what exactly Jesus is teaching here.  “Why did you call me good?” Jesus asked.  “Only God is good”.  There is nothing that we can do to earn our way into heaven… nothing.  The standard that would have to be reached to attain goodness is entirely and completely unreachable.  Our rich young ruler friend couldn’t earn his way with his actions or his wealth.  What was required was for him to place God first, above all else.  Or… to give up his life for the sake of the Gospel.  Sound familiar?  Dr. Mark L. Strauss again, “Salvation comes not through human effort or meritorious work, but rather through the renunciation of self and dependence on God – becoming like a child.” [3]  And so, today’s lesson ties in with what we learned last week about the ways in which one must enter God’s kingdom as a child. 

            But there is just a bit more to our lesson today, and the remaining part of our lesson is steeped in the Good News of the Gospel!  After Jesus’ comment about the camel and the needle, the disciples asked in incredulity “who then can be saved?”  Does anyone remember how Jesus answered?  “With [humans] this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” 

            My friends, salvation is a gift, freely given by a loving and compassionate God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and yet delights in us because He alone knows what it is that we are capable of becoming.  God calls us, woos us, and loves us completely and relentlessly.  He will never turn from us or abandon us, and He removes our sin from us as far as the East is from the West.  In exchange, He asks for nothing but our love and devotion.  So, can our rich young ruler friend eventually be saved?  Of course he can, because what is impossible for humans is easy for God.  But remember my question about what our rich young ruler friend might have become?  Though saved, his reward in heaven would be minimal, because what he gave was minimal.  Can the thief on the cross next to Jesus be saved?  Absolutely!  In fact, Jesus personally invited him to paradise.  And we also can stand on this precious promise that what is impossible for us is easy for God. 

            Peter spoke to Jesus and said “See, we have left everything and followed you”.  Jesus’ response to Peter is a response to us as well.  “No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.  But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

            Romans 8:28 tells us, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  Those who stand on this promise know that the riches of this life are insignificant compared to the riches that God has in store for those who trust Him.

            Oh! And that part about the first being last and the last being first?  Remember that the one who is greatest in the kingdom of God is the one who is a servant to all.

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[1] Mark L. Strauss, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Mark Pg. 440

[2] Timothy Keller, King’s Cross, Pg. 132

[3] Mark L. Strauss, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Mark Pg. 448