Sunday, April 29, 2012

God is With Us

Psalm 23
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Shiloh Lutheran Church

 Bonaventure Broderick wanted to serve the Church. He was born in 1868, grew up in Connecticut, attended seminary in Maryland and then was sent to Rome, where he earned a Ph.D. and then a Doctorate in Theology. After being ordained to the priesthood, he was appointed to pastoral and teaching positions. He was well on his way to a successful career. After all, the Catholic Church doesn't send everyone for doctoral studies in Rome. They recognized his gifts and wanted him to develop and use them in the Church. He became an auxiliary bishop in Havana, Cuba, but after a short time the Cubans decided they didn't want an American bishop, so he was sent back to New York. But New York didn't need an auxiliary bishop either, so waited for a new assignment. He wrote to the Vatican and suggested that it might be scandalous for a bishop to be out of work, but the only response he got was "wait." So he waited and heard nothing more; after awhile, to support himself he moved to upstate New York and opened a gas station, which he ran for the next 30 years or so. He also wrote a weekly column in the local newspaper, but otherwise was not involved in public ministry. The Church, essentially, forgot that he existed. Eventually, Pope Pius XII asked Archbishop Francis Spellman to find out what happened to him. When Spellman finally tracked him down, he rang the doorbell and was answered by an older man in overalls "He said, ‘I'm Archbishop Spellman, and I've come to see if I can do anything for you.' The reply was, "Come in. I've been waiting for you for thirty years'" (Benedict Groeschel, Arise From Darkness, p. 69). He'd tried to be faithful and work within the system, but the Church had forgotten him. The Church had let him down. Those in leadership had dropped the ball and it had taken 30 years for someone to pick it up. Broderick was given a new assignment in the Church, but he died four years later. The message of today's Psalm is that God is with us and is committed to taking care of us all through our lives, through all different kinds of experiences. But the truth is that it often doesn't feel that way as we're living through it. What was Bishop Broderick thinking and feeling all those years as he ran a gas station, not using the gifts and training he had spent so much time developing? How could his life have seemed so promising and then have turned out like this? How was it possible that no one in the Church knew or cared where he was? I'm sure there were times when he felt that God had forgotten all about him.

This psalm describes God with two pictures. In the early part of the psalm, verses 1-4, God is described as a Shepherd. And, in verses 5-6, He is pictured as a gracious host. But the main idea, all through the psalm, is that He is present with His people. The words, "for you are with me," are at the precise center of the psalm. Excluding the superscription, "A Psalm of David," which was written hundreds of years after the psalmist wrote this prayer, there are 26 words in Hebrew both before and after these words. Hebrew poets liked to play with words in that way, so it seems likely that the author of this psalm puts these words intentionally at the center as a way of giving them special emphasis (see James Limburg, Psalms, p. 74).

God often comforts and reassures His people by reminding them of His presence. Isaac, the son of Abraham, may have struggled with fearfulness. I've often thought so, reading the brief account of his life in Genesis. At one point, after an especially difficult time, God appears to him and says: "‘I am the God of your father, Abraham...'. ‘Do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you" (Genesis 26:23-24a, NLT). When everything was going wrong in Joseph's life, the author of Genesis assures us: "The Lord was with Joseph and blessed him greatly as he served in the home of his Egyptian master" (Genesis 39:2, NLT). Later, after he'd been unjustly thrown into prison, the author says again: "But the Lord was with Joseph there, too, and he granted Joseph favor with the chief jailer" (v. 21). When Jeremiah was called to become a prophet, preaching a message which he knew would be unpopular, God reassured him with these words: "And don't be afraid of the people, for I will be with you and take care of you" (Jeremiah 1:8). As he carried on his ministry, Jeremiah often didn't feel like the Lord was with him. Preaching brought him nothing but trouble, and no one listened as he preached year after year. But he had this assurance from the beginning, and God was with him to the end, even during the dark times when he was ready to give up hope. Paul faced many difficulties during his ministry as an apostle; he was beaten with rods, flogged, shipwrecked; his ministry in Ephesus and Jerusalem led to riots. Most people would have given up in the face of such things. But while he was in Corinth, God reassured him: "One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision and told him, ‘Don't be afraid! Speak out! Don't be silent! For I am with you, and no one will harm you because many people in this city belong to me" (Acts 18:9-10, NLT). "I am with you." That's the thing this psalmist understands, and he puts it at the very center of the psalm, to give it prominence and emphasize it. God is with us and is committed to taking care of us all through our lives, even when the Church has forgotten us, as it forgot Bishop Broderick.

He reinforces this idea, in verses 1-4, by picturing God as a shepherd. Shepherds are responsible for the physical survival and welfare of the flocks under their care. One Bible dictionary points out that, "In comparison with goats, which tended to fend for themselves, sheep depended on the shepherd to find pasture for them..., Shepherds also had to provide shelter, medication, aid in lambing time, and provision for lameness and weariness. Without the shepherd the sheep were helpless" (ISBE Revised, vol. 4, pp. 463-64). Sheep are dependent upon the shepherd. So the point, in verses 1-4, is that God is dependable. He is with us. He won't desert us, because He is a good Shepherd, who cares for His sheep, knowing that we depend upon Him.

The psalmist lists some of the things that God, our Shepherd, does for us: 1) He leads us to refreshment and rest. Life in this world can be wearying. Sometimes we feel like we have been drained of all our resources, that we have nothing left to give. Our tendency, when we reach this point, is to draw back spiritually, to turn back to our own devices in search of replenishment. But when we do that, we usually find ourselves even more drained. When we're in need of restoration and rest, we need to turn to our great Shepherd, who will lead us beside quiet waters and restore our souls. We don't take a vacation from Him, we find rest in Him. He is the One who restores us.

2) Our Shepherd also leads us in the right way, He "guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake." Left to ourselves, we end up going the wrong way. Isaiah says, "all we, like sheep, have gone astray." We are in the habit of going astray, and we live in a world that tells us, over and over again, that the way we want to go is right, that we're not going astray at all. So we need to turn continually to our great Shepherd for direction. We do that, primarily, by immersing our lives in His Word and in prayer.

3) Our Shepherd keeps us safe during times of darkness. If you have an NIV Bible, you'll notice that the translators have a footnote with an alternative translation of the words, "valley of the shadow of death." The alternate translation is "the darkest valley." The editors of the New Oxford Annotated Bible offer the translation: "valley of deep darkness." The New American Bible reads, "Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil." This is a more common translation of the words in verse 4. For example, Psalm 44:19: "But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals and covered us over with deep darkness." Or Isaiah 9:2: "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light...." Why is this important? The psalmist isn't only talking here about times when we're facing death. This world is full of darkness, because it's under the shadow of death. Our times of darkness are connected with the reality of sin and death in this world. He's saying that God is with Him during all the dark times of life, those times when we think we've lost our way, when we feel like God has deserted us. At all those darkest times of life, God our Shepherd is with us, even though we don't feel His presence.

Abraham Kuyper was the prime minister of Holland, the founder of the Free University of Amsterdam, and he was also a theologian and a preacher. The first serious theological book I ever read was his book, The Work of the Holy Spirit. I was a fairly young Christian, and I felt guilty reading it. Everything I'd heard about theologians was bad; I'd heard that they weren't interested in living as true Christians but were only concerned with arguing and studying about insignificant details. I'd heard that Theology was irrelevant and divisive. But I forced myself to keep going, and I learned that the things I'd been told were false. Here's something I read in that book, on the work of the Holy Spirit as Comforter: "Comfort is a deposited treasure from which I can borrow; it is like the sacrifice of Christ in whom is all my comfort, because on Calvary He opened to all the house of Israel a fountain for sin and uncleanness. But a comforter is a person, who, when I can not go to the fountain nor even see it, goes for me and fills his pitcher and puts the refreshing drops to my burning lips" (vol. 3, ch. 22). When we're walking through the valley of deep darkness we can't see where we're going, and we lose sight of God's precious promises. We don't know where to turn for comfort. But we're not on our own. The Comforter goes to the fountain for us, fills His pitcher, and brings us the refreshment we so desperately need.

There is a great example of this from the life of Jeremiah. In the book of Lamentations, he is grieving over the fall of Jerusalem. The temple has been destroyed, and the people have been deported to Babylon. God's people have been subjected to terrible suffering and cruelty at the hands of the Babylonians. In chapter three we find him at the end of himself. "I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say, `My splendor is gone, and all I had hoped from the Lord'" (vv.17-18). He is overwhelmed with grief, and has given up hope even in God. Then, three verses later, he says this: "Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope; Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (vv.21-23). What brought about this change? Why did he call these things to mind? Was Jeremiah capable of reviving himself at this point? No, he was experiencing the work of the Comforter. The Holy Spirit has reminded him of the truth and has renewed his hope. The psalmist, in verse 4, is saying the same thing. God, our great Shepherd, is with us when we go through times of darkness. We're not on our own, and even when we lose sight of the truth, even when we lose hope, He comforts us with his rod and staff as our Shepherd. We are helpless without Him, like sheep without a shepherd. But He has promised to be with us always, even to the end of the age.

In verses 5-6, the psalmist gives us another image: he pictures God as a gracious Host, who shows hospitality to His people. Despite the peacefulness and confidence of this psalm, it's clear that the author is not having an easy time. He's weary and in need of rest and refreshment; he's going through a dark valley; and even in verse 5, when he's experiencing God's gracious hospitality, there are enemies present. God is with him and is committed to caring for him all through his life, but that doesn't keep him from facing difficulties.

The psalmist says three things in verse 5, all of which revolve around the comfort he finds in public worship: 1) "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies." God is giving him good things in the midst of his difficulties. His enemies have only evil in mind, but God is there, doing good things for him. That enables him to keep going. His enemies are speaking evil of him, telling lies about him, but God is blessing him in their presence, showing that He rejects their assessment of him. God isn't taken in by their lies. 2) "you anoint my head with oil." In Scripture, oil is a symbol of God's Spirit, and the anointing oil was used to set a person apart as a priest. The psalmist is anointed with the oil of the Holy Spirit, and he is part of a community of other people who have this same anointing. He's assuming a context of corporate worship. The table God prepares is not for him alone; it's for him as part of the body. It's in the context of corporate worship that he experiences this refreshment, in company with others who have also experienced the anointing of God's Spirit. 3) "my cup overflows." Jesus said: "‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.' By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive" (John 7:37-39). When we come to Jesus, as part of His body, He pours out His Spirit upon us, and we're able to say, with the psalmist, "my cup overflows." He prepares a rich feast for us, in the presence of our enemies.

Comfort is a great thing, but it's not enough to experience comfort in the present. We need assurance of God's gracious care in the future, and we need to know that life will not always be what it is now. We won't always be going through times of deep darkness which threaten to overwhelm us. We won't always be living in the midst of enemies. The psalmist takes comfort in the gracious care he's experienced from God, and it enables him to say this about his future: "Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Listen to how this verse reads in The Message: "Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I'm back home in the house of God for the rest of my life." Often the Psalmists complain of enemies pursuing them. But here the image is reversed. Goodness and mercy, beauty and love, are chasing after him, and they'll continue to pusue him all through his life.

Matthew's gospel begins and ends reminding readers of God's presence. At the birth of Jesus, he says: "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel'–which means, ‘God with us'" (Matthew 1:22-23). That's the meaning of Jesus' Incarnation: "God is with us." At the end of the same gospel, after giving the Great Commission, commanding the apostles to make disciples of all nations, Jesus gives this promise: "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Jesus is with us, even during those dark times when everything is going wrong and we can't feel His presence. He is with us even when those we've depended on have forgotten us.

God, our Shepherd, won't keep us out of the valley of deep darkness, but He will walk through it with us and His rod and staff will comfort us, often without our awareness of what is going on. We'll feel like we're on our own, like He's deserted us and is no longer blessing us as He has in the past. But somehow we'll get to the other side of the valley and we'll find that He was there all the time, and that we've gotten through only by His help. He is with us, watching out for us, carrying us when our faith is weak, seeking us when we lose our way, refreshing us with His presence at the times we least expect it.

In the light of all this, let's make it our aim to walk with Him, whatever else is going on in our lives. Pray this Psalm regularly. Pray this psalm, along with the rest of the psalter, and immerse yourself in God's Word, reminding yourself often of God's promises to be with His people. And be regular in corporate worship; when we gather together as God's people to worship, we're anticipating the worship we'll experience around God's throne in heaven. Even more, we're taking part in the worship that is happening right now before God's throne. The refreshment that God gives us when we gather in His presence anticipates the Marriage Feast of the Lamb: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.' He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!' Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true'" (Revelation 21:1-5). This is what we have to look forward to, and our great Shepherd is caring for us, watching over us, until we arrive safely in His presence. Let's make it the main business of our lives to walk with Him.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Responding to the Spirit, 2 Timothy 1:6-7

Count Zinzendorf was a contemporary of John and Charles Wesley. He was a German nobleman, who committed his life to the Lord and then looked for ways to use his wealth and position for the glory of God. In 1722, he took in a group of Protestant refugees who came to his estate seeking shelter. More followed, and soon his estate had turned into a thriving community. But when people from a variety of backgrounds are thrown together like this it usually leads to trouble. They started squabbling, as people often do when they try to live together, and eventually the disunity became so serious that the community itself was threatened.

And then God intervened: "... in 1727, five years after the first refugees arrived, the whole atmosphere changed. A period of spiritual renewal was climaxed at a communion service on August 13 with a great revival, which, according to participants, marked the coming of the Holy Spirit to Herrnhut. Whatever may have occurred in the spiritual realm, there is no doubt that this great night of revival brought a new passion for missions, which became the chief characteristic of the Moravian movement. No longer were minor doctrinal differences a source of contention. Instead, there was a strong spirit of unity and a heightened dependence on God. A prayer vigil was begun that continued around the clock, seven days a week, without interruption for more than one hundred years" (Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, pp. 70-71). As a result of this outpouring of the Spirit, the Moravians sent out more missionaries in twenty years than all Protestants and Anglicans had in the previous two centuries.

When we hear stories like this, if we have any concern at all about following Jesus Christ, we instinctively respond, "I wish something like that could happen here, among us." If God poured out His Spirit among us, surely we wouldn't have the kinds of struggles we have. It wouldn't be so hard to get up in the morning for prayer; or we wouldn't have to drag ourselves to church on Sunday morning; surely it would be easier to get along with one another if we had an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our midst. It's a good thing to long for more of God's presence in His Church, but there's also a problem with this way of thinking. God doesn't always choose to work in such a dramatic way. In fact, experiences like the one at Herrnhut are exceptional in the history of the Church. The truth is that God has given the Spirit to His Church; the Spirit is present among us already. God has already done something. He poured out His Spirit on the Church at Pentecost. He is already at work. So our most urgent need is not for God to do something new, although it would be wonderful if He did; the greatest need is for us to respond to what He's already done. God has given His Spirit, and He now calls us to walk in obedience, to cultivate His presence, to avoid grieving or quenching Him, to make it our aim to walk in step with Him.

When I was a young Christian, I spent lots of time praying, crying out to God asking Him to take over my life and then waiting for Him to do it, fully expecting that He would completely overcome me and begin acting through me. But nothing like that ever happened, and as I continued reading the New Testament I saw that I was looking for the wrong thing. The Holy Spirit doesn't bypass our will. My expectations were really more in line with the New Testament picture of demon possession; demons take over their victims, but God calls His people to respond to Him in loving obedience. He empowers us to keep in step with Him, but He values our personality and individuality; He doesn't want to take over our lives, He wants to empower us to become the people He created us to be.

But this doesn't happen automatically. We can grieve the Spirit by our disobedience; we can quench the Spirit by our desire to remain in control of things. And we can also neglect the Spirit by being so caught up in our lives that we don't cultivate His presence, or don't have time to exercise the gifts He's given us for the good of the whole body. Paul is aware of this danger, so he reminds Timothy: "rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands." John Chrysostom was a 4th century preacher (the name Chrysostom means "golden tongued," a name he was given because of his great ability as a speaker). Here's something he said in a sermon from this passage: "For it requires much zeal to stir up the gift of God. As fire requires fuel, so grace requires our alacrity, that it may be ever fervent.... For it is in our power to kindle or extinguish this grace.... For by sloth and carelessness it is quenched, and by watchfulness and diligence it is kept alive. For it is in you indeed, but you must render it more vehement, that is, fill it with confidence, with joy and delight" (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IX, p. 232). If we're negligent, if we're just drifting along, or if we're completely caught up in the details of life in this world, the Spirit's presence will tend to become less and less apparent; eventually we'll look no different than those in the world who know nothing of the Spirit's presence.

The first quality Paul lists, in verse 7, is power. The NIV, along with most English translations, translates spirit with a small s, which suggests that Paul is referring not to the Holy Spirit, but to general qualities: "God hasn't give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of...." They translate this way because there's no general article in the Greek, so the original reads "spirit," not "the spirit." But even so, there are good reasons for understanding this as a reference to the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in the New Testament, power, love and self-discipline are qualities that we receive from the Holy Spirit. Verse 7 is closely tied to verse 6 (notice that verse 7 begins, "for God did not give us...."); and verse 6 is talking about the gift of God that Timothy had received through the laying on of Paul's hands, a clear reference to the Holy Spirit. A few verses later, in verse 14, Paul instructs Timothy to "guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us." Throughout this passage, Paul isn't thinking about a general spirit or attitude, but the Holy Spirit living within those who belong to Jesus Christ. Gordon Fee paraphrases Paul's idea in this way: "For when God gave us his Spirit, it was not timidity that we received, but power, love, and self-discipline" (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, p. 227).

Jesus' promise to the apostles, which was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost, was that they would receive power through the Holy Spirit. For example, in Luke 24: "And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high" (v. 49). Or Acts 1:8: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." The power of the Holy Spirit would enable them to be witnesses. Before the day of Pentecost, the disciples were huddled in fear, hiding behind locked doors because of their fear of the religious leaders. They were gripped by a "spirit of timidity." But after they received the Holy Spirit they became bold witnesses who were willing to suffer for the sake of the gospel.

That's what Paul is reminding Timothy about. He's saying, "don't be like those who profess to believe but are too timid to speak the truth." In John 12 we're told that even during Jesus' public ministry many of the Jewish authorities believed in Him, but they weren't willing to talk about it: "Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God" (vv. 42-43). The Spirit empowers us, enables us to overcome our natural timidity, our natural reluctance to be in the minority. Paul assumes that if Timothy is faithful he will suffer; in verse 8, he says "Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God." He's reminding Timothy that the Spirit has been given, and that He enables us to speak faithfully and to endure suffering graciously and with patience.

But Paul isn't only talking about power. The people we associate with power in this world are often people who are willing to crush others to get what they want. They're ruthless and self-centered; they've learned to manipulate and overwhelm others in the pursuit of their goals. Paul wants Timothy to remember that the power given by the Holy Spirit is full of love. It's a power driven by the love of Jesus, who laid down His life to rescue us from our sins.

The people who wrote the New Testament had access to four different words for love, but only two are of importance to us right now. The first is philia. In English, Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love), and philosophy (the love of wisdom) are derived from this word. This is love for those who are closest to us. The natural affection that we feel for our loved ones is philia. It is also the love we feel for those who have similar interests, those we enjoy being with, our friends. This is the spontaneous love that comes from our hearts. The second word, the one Paul uses here in 2 Timothy, is agape. This is the word used of the greatest commandment, or of Jesus' new commandment when He says "love one another." This word, in Classical Greek, meant "to prefer," especially in reference to the gods preferring one person over another. It's a "love that makes distinctions, choosing its objects freely.... It is active, not self-seeking love" (TDNT, p. 7). In Classical Greek, this word was very rare. But the translators of the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old Testament, thought it was the best word available to express God's faithful love for His people.

To illustrate what His love is like, God tells the prophet Hosea: "Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord" (Hosea 1:2). So Hosea obeys and marries Gomer, but awhile later we find that she has continued to be unfaithful and is no longer even living with her husband. The Lord speaks to Hosea again: "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods..." (Hosea 3:1). The Lord loves the Israelites, though they have been unfaithful to Him, though they have turned away to worship other gods. Through the prophet Isaiah, a contemporary of Hosea, God says to His unfaithful people: "‘Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,' says the Lord, who has compassion on you" (Isaiah 54:10).

Jesus is the supreme example of this love. Just before He went to the cross, He said to His disciples: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.... Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:9, 13). But He goes even further than this. Paul says in Romans 5: "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:6-8). We were powerless, helpless, ungodly, sinners; Paul goes on to say that we were God's enemies. And while we were in that condition, in the greatest act of love in history, Jesus laid down His life for us. Paul is reminding Timothy that the Spirit who empowers us enables us increasingly to model Jesus' self-giving love, even in the face of suffering.

The third quality is self-discipline. The word Paul uses here is difficult to translate. The NASB renders it as "discipline" but suggests, in the margin, "sound judgment" as an alternative. When translators offer alternatives like this, they're saying that they can't find just the right word in English. J.B. Phillips translates it as "a sound mind," and in The Message it simply reads, "sensible." Both ideas, of sound thinking and self-discipline, are suggested by the word. William Barclay gives these two descriptions: "the sanity of saintliness"; and "control of oneself in the face of panic or of passion" (The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Revised Edition, pp. 144-45). The general idea seems to be sound judgment, or sound thinking, that affects the way we order our lives in this world.

During my early Christian life I was involved with the charismatic movement. We were intensely aware of the Holy Spirit, but most of the people I worshiped with were hostile to doctrine and theology. They associated these things with the "dead letter;" what really mattered was having an experience of the Holy Spirit. This attitude was so prevalent that when I first started reading theology I struggled with feelings of guilt; I had a nagging sense, in the back of my mind, that I was doing something wrong, that I was getting off track. I'm thankful that Paul includes this word in his list of qualities that are given by the Holy Spirit. A large part of Timothy's ministry was resisting the influence of false teachers who were undermining the gospel. Paul begins his first letter to Timothy with this exhortation: "I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine" (1 Timothy 1:3). Near the end of this chapter in 2 Timothy, Paul says, "Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us" (vv. 13-14).

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. He enables us to hold firmly to the gospel, without getting sidetracked by false teaching. He brings into our lives, not only love and power, but also sound thinking. And that sound thinking affects the way we live; it isn't just in our heads. It leads us to order our lives in response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit brings into our lives "the sanity of saintliness," an understanding that leads us to become "imitators of God," as Paul says in Ephesians 5:2.

Timothy was a naturally timid person. This is clear in both of the letters Paul wrote to him. He was young, and likely to be intimidated by those who were older and more forceful. Being put into a situation where he had to resist false teachers would have been difficult for him. So Paul wants him to remember that "God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a Spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline." He'd been given all the resources he needed to fulfil his ministry.

But it wouldn't happen automatically. So Paul reminds him to be diligent, to "fan into flame the gift of God," this God who had given him "a Spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." How do we do that? How do we cultivate the Spirit's presence in a world that constantly undermines His influence? We deny ourselves–we say "no" to natural tendencies (not our personality, but the sloth that prevents us from stirring ourselves to obedience) – then we go on to walk under the Spirit's direction. Paul says in Galatians 5: "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." We walk in the Spirit by looking to Him, inviting Him into every area of our lives and seeking to live under His Lordship.

John Stott has a good description of how this works: "This will be seen in our whole way of life–in the leisure occupations we pursue, the books we read and the friendships we make. Above all in what older authors called ‘a diligent use of the means of grace', that is, in a disciplined practice of prayer and Scripture meditation, in fellowship with believers who provoke us to love and good works, in keeping the Lord's day as the Lord's day, and in attending public worship and the Lord's Supper. In all these ways we occupy ourselves in spiritual things. It is not enough to yield passively to the Spirit's control; we must also walk actively in the Spirit's way. Only so will the fruit of the Spirit appear" (Only One Way, p. 154). We cultivate these qualities Paul lists – power, love and self-discipline – by saying "no" to our own lethargy and timidity and by seeking to walk daily in active obedience to God's Word, trusting in His power to enable us to bear witness, in both our words and actions, to the suffering of His Son on behalf of this lost world.











Thursday, April 12, 2012

Denying Ourselves to Follow Jesus, 2 Timothy 1:3-7

Several years ago, I met with a friend who wanted to learn how to grow as a disciple of Jesus. At the beginning of our time together he informed me that, although he wanted my advice, he really didn't want me recommending any books (he knew me well enough to know there was some danger of that). He said to me, "I have to read all the time at work, and by the time I get home I'm ready to do something else; so I don't want to do any reading." I agreed to this, because God deals with us differently; not everyone benefits from reading in the way I do; discipleship is a matter of learning how to follow Jesus with the personality and gifts He's given us. But as we continued talking, it seemed to me that, because of his personality and gifts and the point where he was in his Christian walk, he needed to do some reading. So, near the end of our conversation, I encouraged him to think about doing a very moderate amount of reading each week for the benefit of his spiritual life. I suggested that if he would read a page or two a day, he would be feeding his mind with something of spiritual value, and that I thought this would help him. So he did that, because he really was committed to doing everything he could to grow as a Christian. And the interesting thing is that he went way beyond what I had in mind. He started reading regularly for spiritual benefit, not because I dragged him into it, but because he tried it in a very moderate way and found it so helpful that he wanted to do more.

The point of this is not that everyone needs to enter into a program of reading, because it really is true that God has made us all differently. Not everyone will find the same benefit in a reading program that this man did. The point of the story is this: Christian discipleship requires stirring ourselves to do things that go against our natural inclinations. It means taking ourselves in hand and saying, "it doesn't matter whether I feel like doing this or not; I'm going to do it, because God calls me to." Timothy, it seems clear, was a naturally timid person, so Paul reminds him to kindle afresh, or fan into flame, his spiritual gifts, knowing that God would enable him, by the Spirit's power, to overcome his natural timidity. But doing that would mean stirring himself, going against what was natural to his personality.

It's a good thing to be aware of our differences in temperament. I've known many people who struggled for years to have a consistent devotional life but failed again and again. The problem wasn't that they were unwilling to stir themselves to obedience; they did that. The problem was that the tools they were given didn't fit their personality, and what they needed was help in cultivating a life of prayer that was more suited to their natural temperament. They were willing to exert the necessary effort.

But we're often tempted to use our temperament as an excuse for disobedience. We say to ourselves, "I just don't have that kind of personality," and then we rationalize our lack of growth in Christian discipleship. Jesus said: "Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). Notice that He doesn't say, "whoever goes in for this sort of thing; any among you who have the kind of personality that enjoys laying aside your own desires and walking in the way of the cross...." He says, "if you don't follow me in the way of the cross you cannot be my disciple." This is not a matter of temperament; it's a matter of obedience. Just before He says this, Jesus tells a story about sending out a dinner invitation: "Come; for everything is ready now." But, He says, "they all alike began to make excuses" (vv. 17-18). They all had important, pressing things to do, which prevented them from responding to the call. No doubt they felt a pressing need to do the things they were doing; maybe they couldn't imagine that it was possible to lay those things aside right then. The invitation came at an inconvenient time. They had too many important things to do. But it wasn't a problem of temperament; it was a problem of disobedience, and Jesus ends the story with these words: "none of those who were invited will taste my dinner" (v. 24). Following Jesus is a matter of obedience to His call on our lives (our lives which He has bought with a price) and it always leads us to deny ourselves, to do things which go against the grain, things which we really don't feel like doing.

Timothy's great danger is not his natural timidity, but the sin of sloth. When we hear the word "sloth," we usually think of laziness, but that's really not what sloth is. Here's a definition: "The root of sloth and that which makes it sinful lies in the will. Sloth is an infectious evil that poisons the will so that there is no motivation – no passion – to act. Sloth is the cause of the self being overly protective of one's time and energy.... Sloth persuades the will to make no effort... expend no energy. Sloth says, ‘It's not worth it.' Sloth makes that which is of ultimate importance seem not worth the effort" (David Hall, The Seven Deadly Sins, p. 57). Sloth destroys our motivation to do that which is most essential. Some of the most slothful people I've known have been workaholics, because they were using work to escape from other things God wanted them to do. They weren't lazy; they were slothful. Work, for them, was the path of least resistance, and they were able to rationalize what they were doing: "work is a good thing, and after all, I have a family to support." Sloth prevents us from acting in response to God's call in our lives. We make excuses for ourselves, like the people in Jesus' story, but the truth is that the sin of sloth is destroying us. That's why sloth is one of the seven deadly sins; it undermines the work of God in our lives. God has given Timothy the resources he needs: "a Spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline" (notice that two of these are also listed as fruits of the Spirit), but sloth would prevent him from stirring himself and acting on what he knows to be true.

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon, to his nephew, Wormwood, advising him on how to destroy the life of God in his victim. In one of the letters, the human victim has just experienced spiritual renewal and repentance. Here's what Screwtape says about it: "The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel" (pp. 60-61). As long as he doesn't do anything, as long as he doesn't follow up on it, the "little brute" can wallow in his repentance all he likes and the demons will be pleased. As long as he doesn't act on it, his repentance is imaginary, because true repentance involves a change of direction, turning around and going the other way. Following Jesus is a matter of obedience, which always leads us to deny ourselves and walk in the way of the cross. If we don't deny ourselves and follow Jesus in concrete acts of obedience, our repentance is imaginary, and our discipleship is also imaginary.

One of Timothy's great resources in the life of faith is the gift of remembrance. Paul speaks of remembering four times in this short passage. He remembers Timothy in his prayers and is reminded of Timothy's tears the last time they parted. He is reminded of the great heritage of faith that Timothy inherited in his family, and then he reminds Timothy to stir up his spiritual gift. Paul isn't engaging here in nostalgia. He's not being sentimental; he's reminding Timothy of things that will help him stay on track.

One of the hazards in the life of discipleship is forgetfulness. We see, over and over, in the Old Testament, that Israel wanders from the path of obedience because they've forgotten all the great things God has done for them. So God raises up prophets who remind them of the truth. The prophets aren't primarily concerned with predicting the future; their primary function is to remind Israel of God's call on their lives. Peter, at the beginning of his second letter, lists several qualities that are necessary to discipleship, and then he says: "For anyone who lacks these things is nearsighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins" (1:9). Then he says, a few verses later, "Therefore I intend to keep on reminding you of these things, though you know them already and are established in the truth that has come to you" (v. 12). Forgetfulness is a serious danger, so Peter is committed to reminding them of the things they already know. That's the primary purpose of preaching: to remind us of who we are and who God is.

But, having said all this, we need to see also that following Paul's counsel is not going to make Timothy's life easier. In all likelihood, it will lead him into more trouble. Paul isn't giving Timothy a formula for success; he's urging him to a life of faithful discipleship. This is important to remember, because I talk to many people who assume that if they follow the Lord He will protect them from trouble and suffering. They say, "well, I'm keeping my end of the bargain, so God should keep His." And then, when they encounter suffering in one form or another, they think God has let them down, that He hasn't been faithful.

At first glance, verse 7 may seem to give some support to this way of thinking: God has given us "a spirit of power...." It sounds great, doesn't it? We like the idea of having the Spirit's power in our lives. Surely that power will enable us to live successfully in this world; otherwise, what's the point of it? But it's always important to look at the context to see what the authors of Scripture are saying. Listen to what Paul says in the next verse: "Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God." There's the same word, power, in the very next verse. In telling Timothy that God has given us "a spirit of power," Paul is reminding him that the faithful exercise of his gifts will very likely lead to suffering, but the power of God will enable him to bear suffering patiently, following the example of Jesus, our suffering Savior. Paul is calling Timothy to follow Jesus in the way of the cross, but he's saying, "you won't have to do this in your own strength, for God is with you and will give you the power to bear with it graciously as a disciple of Jesus Christ."

The Puritans have been unfairly caricatured in our popular culture as stern, sour moralists whose greatest worry was that someone might be having a good time. The term "Puritanical" stands for everything our society hates. But the Puritans, in reality, were people who sought to order their lives in relation to God. They were the evangelicals of their day. They stood for godliness and a heartfelt commitment to the Lord in every area of life, and they did so during very difficult times. But they didn't experience overwhelming success: "The Puritans lost, more or less, every public battle that they fought. Those who stayed in England did not change the Church of England as they hoped to do, nor did they revive more than a minority of its adherents, and eventually they were driven out of Anglicanism by calculated pressure on their consciences. Those who crossed the Atlantic failed to establish new Jerusalem in New England; for the first fifty years their little colonies barely survived. They hung on by the skin of their teeth. But the moral and spiritual victories that the Puritans won by keeping sweet, peaceful, patient, obedient, and hopeful under sustained and seemingly intolerable pressures and frustrations give them a place of high honour in the believers' hall of fame, where Hebrews 11 is the first gallery." (J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, p.23) They were faithful, godly people, but they were not successful in accomplishing their outward goals. We need to be careful about assuming that we can measure the work of God on our own terms. When we insist on measurable success, we settle for something less than a genuine work of God. The Puritans remind us, as Hebrews 11 does, that it is dangerous to assume that godliness will lead to success. But they also remind us of the great value of "keeping sweet, peaceful, patient, obedient, and hopeful under sustained and seemingly intolerable pressures and frustrations." God is honored when we bear witness to His power in this way, because this kind of obedience – obedience in suffering – bears costly witness to Jesus Christ.

But none of this comes naturally to us. Christian discipleship requires stirring ourselves to do things that go against our natural inclinations. And we cultivate that kind of obedience by the small choices we make every day. I encourage you to be intentional in practicing self denial in the coming week. Say no to yourself once a day in some significant way. Drag yourself out of bed a little earlier in the morning, so that you can spend some time in prayer (whether you feel like it or not). Quit working a little earlier, so you can spend some time with your family. Do someone else's work for them, as an act of service in the Lord's name, so that they can do something they want to do. Give up something you really want, as a way of freeing yourself from the bondage of things. Let go of the need to always get your own way. Drag yourself to church on Sunday morning, no matter how you feel. Turn off the TV and spend some time in prayerful meditation on Scripture. The possibilities are endless. It's in seemingly small acts of self denial that we begin to let go of our self-centeredness and cultivate the habit of stirring ourselves to do things, in Jesus' name, that go against our natural inclinations.

Or, on the other hand, it's in refusing to do these sorts of things that we demonstrate the truth of what is in our hearts. When we do that, our problem is not personality or temperament; our problem is disobedience. God knows the secrets of our hearts, and He won't be taken in by all our excuses. If you're feeling like you want to defend yourself, don't do it. God is calling you to repentance, and His call is a gift of grace and mercy. Humble yourself before Him, cry out for mercy, and ask Him for grace to begin ordering your life in sacrificial obedience. In the concrete acts of our daily lives, we are either being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ or we are being hardened in our disobedience. May He stir our hearts to follow Him in the path of discipleship: "for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline."

Sunday, April 8, 2012

The Gospel of Life, 2 Timothy 1:1-2

Note: I began a sermon series on 2 Timothy in 2005, shortly before I left Perkiomen Valley Brethren in Christ Church.  I never finished the series but have recently begun studying it again, because of my interest in the book.  Over the next several weeks I will be revising and posting the sermons I preached in 2005 and then will be writing and posting new ones (which I probably won't be preaching at any time in the near future).  This is the first sermon in the series.

In the few times I've played chess, one of my weaknesses has been that I'm anxious to get the first moves out of the way. In those initial moves, it doesn't seem like the game has really started, and I want to hurry up and get everything out onto the table. I've heard, from people who play well, that those initial moves are crucial and often determine the outcome of the game. But I've never cared enough about chess to learn to take advantage of those first few moves. I've struggled with a similar weakness, though, in reading the letters of the New Testament: my first impulse is to skip quickly over these opening verses. After all, Paul says similar things in all his letters: he identifies himself at the beginning, since the letter is being written on a scroll and it would be tedious for the person to go all the way to the end just to find out who the letter is from; he says who the letter is intended for, and then he usually says some words of blessing. There are minor variations, depending on who he's writing to, but the opening verses of his letters sound pretty-much the same, and I instinctively want to get past this and hear what he really has to say. But, as in the opening moves of a chess game, these opening verses are important and often give us some indication of what is to follow.

Awhile back I began praying through this letter. I use a four-step process in praying scripture, which slows me down and helps me stay with a passage long enough to let it sink into my heart. The first step, after praying and committing the time to the Lord, is to read the passage out loud, very slowly, several times. The object is not to get through the material, but to listen attentively to each word, so I go very slowly (which means I can't skip over these words of greeting). As I read slowly, over and over, I move naturally to the next step, which is meditation. I begin to see connections with other things that are said in Scripture; I start to see connections with my own life, things that God is calling me to do or reminding me about. This leads to the next step, which is prayer, and I begin praying in response to the things I'm seeing in the passage. I may, at this point, only be two or three words into the passage, but I continue praying until I've finished responding to what I've heard so far, then I move on, reading, meditating and praying in response to the Word, for the rest of the time I've set aside. And then, at the end, I'll read slowly through the whole section I've read and then sit silently in God's presence, being attentive to Him. So the four steps are 1) read, 2) meditate, 3) respond in prayer, 4) contemplate, sit silently and attentively in God's presence in the light of what you've heard. I recommend this to you as a way of allowing the words of Scripture to sink more deeply into your hearts. Today I'm going to point out some of the things I noticed as I was praying through these verses. I'll go through them phrase by phrase, they way I encounter them when I'm praying a passage of Scripture, as an illustration of how the process works.

First, Paul begins by identifying himself as "an apostle." An apostle is someone who's sent out as a representative. The word means, literally, "one who is sent out," and the stress is on the sender, not the messenger. Paul isn't speaking in his own name; he's speaking in the name of the One who sent him. Right away, we see that Paul, one of the truly great intellects of the ancient world, has been humbled. As an apostle, he has authority in the Church, but that authority has strict limits. He has no authority whatsoever to enforce his own will. He has authority only as a servant of Jesus Christ, an apostle by the will of God. Earlier in his life, Saul the Pharisee had chosen his own career. He'd been well-trained under the famous teacher Gamaliel, and he tells the Galatians "I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors" (1:14). But he'd made a mess of things. In his zeal he had tried to destroy the Church and had found himself fighting against God, the One he thought he was serving. Humanly speaking, he was a great success, but he was succeeding at the wrong thing; he was going in the wrong direction. Paul, who years before had been a gifted, promising young Pharisee, has been humbled. He no longer speaks in his own name; he's an apostle by the will of God.

But he goes on to say what his apostolate is about: he's an apostle "for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus." One way of looking at Scripture is to see it as the story of the fulfillment of God's promise. That promise was made, initially, right after Adam's fall into sin, when God said to the serpent, who had deceived Eve: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel" (Genesis 3:15). The promise is given more clearly to Abraham, when God tells him "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3). And then, throughout the rest of Scripture, the promise is developed and restated until it's fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the end of the book of Revelation, we're given a glimpse of the final completion of God's promise of life in the new heavens and new earth. That's what Scripture is primarily about. It's not an instruction manual for living a successful life, although there is much wisdom in the Bible that can help us in learning to order our lives in obedience to God. But Scripture is primarily about the fulfillment of God's promise of life.

Paul's apostleship is rooted in this promise. In his earlier life, he had thought he was being faithful to the traditions of his ancestors. But when he became a Christian, when he saw Jesus face to face, he didn't throw away this connection with the past. He didn't say, "I can see that the whole problem is that I've been following traditions instead of cultivating a relationship." Paul, over and over again, stresses that his hope is rooted in God's promise to Israel. He tells the Jews in Rome: "it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain" (Acts 28:20). Paul's problem wasn't that he was trying to be faithful to the traditions of his ancestors. His problem was that he didn't understand what those traditions meant. He didn't understand that God's promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, that it was all meant, from the very beginning, to prepare the way for Jesus.

And that promise is "the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus." The gospel is a message of life, not only of forgiveness. In contemporary Evangelicalism, we tend to focus primarily on the problem of guilt; because sin has made us guilty, our great need is to be forgiven. And this is part of the gospel. But it's not the only part. The gospel is not only a message of forgiveness. Through Adam, death came into the world. We live our lives in this world under the shadow of death. But Jesus has tasted death for us and is now risen from the dead, triumphant over the powers of death. We are united with Him in His risen life. The gospel is a message, not only of forgiveness, but of life. That's why I dislike so much the slogan, "Christians Aren't Perfect; Just Forgiven." It's certainly true that Christians are not perfect, but it is not true that Christians are "only forgiven." Christians share in the risen life of Christ; we've inherited the promise of life.

But we have life only "in Christ Jesus," not apart from Him. It's only in coming to Him, and remaining in Him, that we have life. He is the source of our life. Paul calls Him "Christ": the anointed, chosen One of God, who fulfills all the promises of the Old Testament. All the promises point toward Him, and everything now either looks back on what He did in the past or forward to what He is going to do in the future. But He's not only Christ; He's "Christ Jesus." The promise of life is fulfilled in this particular man, the Son of the Virgin Mary, who grew up in Nazareth, worked for most of his adult life as a carpenter, ministered publicly for three years in first-century Palestine, was crucified under Pontius Pilate and then rose from the dead on the third day.

All this is contained in Paul's identification as an apostle. Paul's life is no longer his own. He's like John the Baptist, who said: "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). He had been a very successful Pharisee, but then he had seen Jesus face to face. Now he identifies himself as "an apostle," one sent out as a representative, carrying out a ministry not of his own choosing, but "by the will of God," and without any message of his own, but "according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus." Paul lost his life in the gospel pattern that Jesus laid down: "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39). In losing his old life, he entered into eternal life: "and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3).

Next, Paul identifies Timothy as "my dear (or beloved) son." Paul's love for Timothy is obvious in this letter. But I wonder what Paul would have thought of Timothy before, when he was still Saul of Tarsus, the strict Pharisee. After all, Timothy hadn't even been circumcised when Paul first met him. Paul was a dogmatic, fanatical Pharisee, and Timothy's father was a Greek. I doubt that Saul of Tarsus would have found anything at all in common with someone like Timothy. But the gospel of life reconciles people who are alienated from each other. Death separates us from God, from one another, and even from ourselves. But the gospel, the promise of life in Christ Jesus, restores us into relationship.

God has revealed Himself in Scripture as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three Persons in One God. God exists eternally in relationship. Personal relationship is in the very fabric of creation. We don't live in an impersonal universe, we live in a creation that breathes the personal life of its Creator, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is not only important as a theological truth; it's important for knowing how we live our lives in this world. We were created in God's image, and part of what this means is that we were created to live in relationship.

Paul's conversion led to much rejection. His former friends and associates hated him and even sought to kill him. He experienced much loneliness as an apostle. But that's only part of the story. His alienation from the world of death was directly connected with his entrance into the kingdom of life. In the Church, he was given a family. In the Church of Jesus Christ, as people in fellowship with the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we begin the life of the future kingdom of God while we're still here in this world. We enter into relationships which will continue for ever. Because of the "promise of life in Christ Jesus," Paul is able to address Timothy as "my dear son."

And then, in the second half of verse 2, Paul pronounces a blessing: "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." The source of the blessing is "God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." In the gospel, God becomes our Father. For some people, I know this isn't a welcome idea because their worst nightmare would be to discover that God is like their earthly father. Those who've grown up with abusive, small-minded, mean-spirited, or emotionally distant fathers naturally struggle with this idea of God as our Father. The best way to approach this is to understand that God is everything fathers were intended to be; He is the model of perfect Fatherhood. When we see abusive fathers, we know there's something desperately wrong; they're violating their calling, misusing their God-given authority and privileges for their own advantage. We see that and we instinctively recoil from it. For a father to abuse his position is desperately wicked, because he's not only harming his children; he's also defacing the image of God. We need to acknowledge that for what it is and then go on to cultivate the knowledge that God is everything we wish our fathers had been and infinitely more – because even the best fathers fall short. He is, to absolute perfection, our Father. If you want a picture of how He treats His children, look at Jesus in the gospels, because He is the "image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1). And Christ, His perfect Son, becomes our Lord. In submission to His lordship, in laying down our lives at His feet, we experience His blessing: "whoever saves his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it."

Paul sums up this blessing with three words: "grace, mercy, and peace." The word translated "grace" is often translated as "gift." The promise of God comes to us in the form of a gift, which both gives us access into God's presence and begins the process of healing the effects of our lostness. Grace brings us into God's favor and begins transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ. Paul says, in Romans 5, that we are standing in grace. Our whole relationship with God is permeated by a sense of givenness; the promise of life comes to us in the form of a gift which sets us free to become the kind of people God created us to be.

Mercy is being given the opposite of what we deserve. We are guilty, because of sin, but God has shown us mercy in Christ. God has shown us mercy, and He continues to show mercy. Paul is saying to Timothy, "may you continue to experience, in abundance, the mercy of God." And because we've experienced grace and mercy, we're no longer estranged from God. We're at peace with Him. That's the point Paul makes at the beginning of Romans 5: "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." He's not talking here about a feeling of peace, but the reality of being at peace with God, no longer being at war with Him. Then, because we are at peace with Him, we are able to experience inner peace, the "peace that passes understanding" (Philippians 4). Our relationship with God has been healed by the promise of grace and mercy, and we are now at peace with Him.

All this – Paul's conversion and apostleship, the relation between Paul and Timothy which causes this to be the most warmly personal of all Paul's letters, and the possibility of a life characterized by grace, mercy and peace – all of this is rooted in the "promise of life that is in Christ Jesus." The gospel is not a cheap ticket to heaven. The gospel is a message of life that puts us on the path to becoming the kind of people God created us to be. In the gospel, we are incorporated into the life of the Holy Trinity, we are restored in our ability to live in relationship with one another. We begin the life which will reach its fulfillment in the new heaven and new earth. We don't experience it in its fulness here, but what we experience in the "grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord" is the life of eternity: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." May God enable us to hunger and thirst for more of this life and to live in the light of that day when we will see Him as He is, He who is the fulfillment of all our deepest longings.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Mark 15:33-39
Palm Sunday
Shiloh Lutheran Church

I used to backpack with some friends in a place called Hoover Wilderness Area, just outside the northeast corner of Yosemite National Park. To get there from northern California, we had to drive to Nevada then enter from the eastern side of the Sierra mountains. The elevation when we started hiking was about 8,000 feet or so, and the trail climbed steadily to Virginia Pass, at 10,500 feet. It was a tough way to begin the trip. We lived at sea level and weren't used to the altitude, and as we got closer to the pass, there were always several disappointments. We'd see a point up ahead that we thought was the top, so we'd push ourselves to get there, only to look up at another high point a seemingly impossible distance away. Climbing mountain passes is like that; you can never be sure where the top is until you actually arrive, and along the way there will be times when you think you're nearly there, only to discover that there's more climbing to do.

Today is Palm Sunday, the day we celebrate Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. If we were reading about this event for the first time, we might think that this is the "peak." Everything seems to be falling into place. The people have finally "gotten it." There have been some difficulties, but now they've recognized Jesus for who He is and are welcoming Him as their King, the promised Messiah. If we were there, watching Jesus enter Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, we would be likely to conclude "the kingdom is about to begin. Everything we've been waiting for is happening." Even the Pharisees are thinking this way, although they aren't happy about it. When they see the crowds at His triumphal entry into Jerusalem they cry out to one another, "You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him."

But in John's gospel this high point in Jesus' popularity is preceded immediately by His anointing for burial (chapter 12). Jesus knows what is coming as He enters Jerusalem. He isn't taken in by all the excitement. He knows that things are going to turn around very quickly. He enters Jerusalem at the beginning of the week in triumph, being welcomed as the King; but by the end of the week He is being taken outside the city and crucified as a common criminal. The cry on Palm Sunday is "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." But the cry on Good Friday is "Away with Him; crucify Him." The joyful welcome of Palm Sunday is followed very soon by the profound alienation and rejection of Good Friday. That's why Palm Sunday is also called Passion Sunday. The triumph of Palm Sunday is followed, in only a few days, by the Passion.

I've mentioned, in the past, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book that has no obvious connection to its title. Robert Pirsig and his son, Chris, are on a motorcycle trip across America, and in the context of telling the story of their journey, Pirsig engages in philosophical reflections. As they ride through the sparsely-populated Western states, he comments on loneliness: "It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much. The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance...." (pp. 321-22). We saw something similar on the ship Logos when we arrived in southern France. A missionary who lived there came and told us that one of the most pressing problems was loneliness, people living in apartment complexes who never spoke to their neighbors. They were surrounded on all sides by lonely people who had no connection with one another. It's psychic distance, a sense of alienation, that leads to loneliness.

There's a reason for this sense of alienation. Listen to Paul's description of the Ephesians before they heard the gospel: "remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:12). Their basic spiritual condition was alienation: "without Christ," "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel," "strangers to the covenants of promise." Outsiders, people who don't belong. And, even worse, "having no hope and without God in the world." Their basic spiritual condition was alienation, he says. That's what the Fall has brought into this world: because of sin we're alienated, separated from the purpose of our existence. And Jesus, on the cross, has entered into our alienation. He's become one with us in our experience as people who have no hope, who are without God in the world. That's what this cry of dereliction, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is about. Jesus is experiencing the full force of the alienation that is ours in this fallen world.

For Lent, a few years ago, I read Richard John Neuhaus's meditations on the last words of Jesus from the cross, Death on a Friday Afternoon. Neuhaus says that we see the truth about our lives by looking at Christ: "The ancient Christian fathers spoke of the Christ event as the ‘recapitulation' of the entire human drama. In this one life, all lives are summed up; in the eternal present of this one life, the past is encompassed, the future is anticipated and the life of Everyman and Everywoman is most truly lived. ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,' he said. Not a way among other ways, not a truth among other truths, not a life among other lives, but the way of all ways, the truth of all truths and the life of all lives. Recapitulation. It means, quite simply and solemnly, that this is your life, this is my life and we have not come to our senses until we see ourselves in the life, and death, of Christ" (pp. 4-5). If we want to understand, and come to terms with, the alienation we feel living in this world, the place to begin is by looking at Jesus on the cross, crying out, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" In this cry of dereliction we see the truth about ourselves; by nature we are aliens and strangers, people who don't belong, without hope and without God in the world.

First, let's talk about what Jesus is experiencing. This subject is shrouded in mystery. We can't comprehend what it meant, in psychological terms, for Him to be both fully divine and fully human at the same time. We can't grasp what it meant for Him, as the perfect Son of God, to enter into our lostness. But we can at least say this: on the cross, Jesus is overwhelmed by darkness. The darkness that covers the land from the sixth till the ninth hour corresponds to the condition of His heart. He's experiencing profound spiritual darkness, a "darkness that can be felt."

Walter Wangerin, a Lutheran pastor and writer, has a wonderful series of meditations for the days of Lent. If you're looking for something to use during this season next year, I recommend it. It's entitled Reliving the Passion. He has a great description of what is happening to Jesus on the cross: "It is against him that heaven has been shut.... He has entered the absolute void. Between the Father and the Son now exists a gulf of impassable width and substance.... This is a mystery, that Christ can be the obedient, glorious love of God and the full measure of our disobedience, both at once. But right now this mystery is also a fact. And the fact must seem to last forever. Hell's horror is that it lasts forever. And this, precisely, is the bitterest drop in the cup: that, crying down eternity unheard, separated absolutely from God – from the God he cannot help but love even still – Jesus is in Hell. The darkness that covers Jerusalem from noon to the middle of the afternoon, is no less than the damnation of the Messiah, who wails and gnashes his teeth in an utter solitude from now (so it must seem) unto eternity. Hell is eternal. And he has descended into Hell" (p. 126). Jesus, at this moment on the cross, is in utter darkness; He's experiencing complete alienation from the Father. He's tasting, in full measure, the experience of being "without hope and without God in this world." He has, in the words of the creed, "descended into Hell."

Second, notice how Jesus responds. He's experiencing profound alienation; His whole being is enveloped in darkness. How does He respond to this experience? He prays; He cries out to the Father, who's withdrawn His presence. But there's more than this. He prays with words from the Psalms. The beginning of Psalm 22 becomes a vehicle for crying out in the darkness. Have you ever wondered why Jesus puts these words into the form of a question? He knew this was coming. He told the disciples ahead of time that this was going to happen, and in the garden He surrendered to the will of the Father, saying "not my will, but yours, be done." And now He says "why have you forsaken me?" The words are in the form of a question because He's taking them directly from the psalm. He's spent His life praying the psalms as part of the synagogue worship, and now that He's in darkness He uses these words that perfectly express the cry of His heart.

Several years ago I visited a man in the hospital. He'd been afflicted with one health problem after another and was at the end of his rope. He said to me, "I just don't know what to pray any more." Every time he tried to pray, he found that he didn't have anything to say; he didn't have words to express the cry of his heart. He was experiencing darkness and confusion. So I recommended praying the psalms, and he responded with disgust, "I thought we were supposed to pray from the heart." I answered, "pray these from your heart; they'll give voice to some of the things you don't know how to say." The psalmists cry out to God from the whole range of human experience, and by praying the Psalms we train ourselves in a language for prayer. Jesus' example here encourages us in the regular practice of praying the Psalms. In His time of greatest need the words were there on His lips, because He had been praying these things all His life. Pray the Psalms regularly, but especially pray them when you're going through times of darkness. They'll help you say things in God's presence that you otherwise wouldn't know how to say, or maybe wouldn't even have the courage to say.

The third thing to notice is the outcome. In verse 37, Mark says that Jesus "gave a loud cry and breathed his last." He doesn't say what that cry was. Luke tells us that Jesus used another prayer from the Psalms: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46, quoting Psalm 31:5), and in John's gospel Jesus cries out: "It is finished" (John 19:30). Jesus has finished the work the Father has given Him to do, so He lays down His life and breathes His last. And then, because He's finished the work the Father gave Him to do, Mark says: "And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom" (v. 38). The function of that curtain was to limit access into God's presence. The only person allowed behind that curtain was the high priest, and even he was only allowed there once a year. It was a very graphic symbol of our alienation. The tearing of the curtain tells us that the way into God's presence has been opened. The barrier that stood between ourselves and God, keeping us out of His presence, has been removed.

Jesus tasted all the horror of the world's alienation from the presence of God, and by experiencing our alienation He's opened the way for us to be dis-alienated. He's opened the way for us to be reconnected with God and with the purpose of our creation. Earlier in the sermon I quoted from Ephesians 2:12, where Paul says that our condition was that of aliens and strangers, "without hope and without God." In the very next verse, he says: "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13). In Christ we've been brought near. One of John Michael Talbot's early songs has the line, "No longer strangers; no longer aliens; now we are citizens with the saints in the kingdom of God." He entered into our darkness, so that we who were far away from God, cut off from His presence, could draw near to Him in confidence that He will accept us willingly. We're not strangers and aliens any longer.

That's what we're celebrating during this Lenten season, and it comes into the clearest focus in the events of the coming week. Spend some time this week meditating on the suffering and crucifixion of Christ. We're headed toward Easter and the Resurrection, but let's not rush ahead. We haven't yet reached the peak. By reflecting on the events of Holy Week, we're able to enter more deeply into the joy and wonder of Easter Sunday. We're able to come home into God's presence because of what Jesus did on Good Friday; He entered and endured the full weight of our darkness and lostness. Because Jesus hung on the cross, crying out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" we're able to enter freely into the Holy of Holies, as the author of Hebrews reminds us: "And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven's Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. This is the new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred curtain, by means of his death for us. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God's people, let us go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him. For our evil consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water" (Hebrews 10:19-22, NLT). Since the barrier has been taken away, let's come boldly and confidently into God's presence, knowing that He will receive us willingly. Whatever we may feel at any given moment, the truth is that in Christ we are no longer strangers and aliens; in Christ we are citizens of God's kingdom.