April 1, 2012 Palm/Passion Sunday

Mark 11:1-11

  ¹ As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, ² saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. ³ If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’” ⁴ They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, ⁵ some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” ⁶ They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. ⁷ When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. ⁸ Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. ⁹ Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,“Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” ¹⁰ “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”   ¹¹ Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

The Passion Story - Mark 14:1-15:47

“Not What Was Expected”

Jesus was not what was expected by the people of Israel who had waited so long for their promised Messiah so they crucified Him within the same week they hailed him as King.

They were looking at Him as their great political Messiah; he was coming as a King whose kingdom was not of this world.

In His kingdom peace (“would that you know the things which make for peace”)  comes not by being the most powerful but by loving enough to suffer for others.  (Phil 2:8)

It is to serve rather then be served and to give one’s life as a ransom for many.

The disciples (nor the crowd) didn’t understand that the Messiah must die.  The thought is both repulsive and enraging for them; this is not what they expected: a king riding into Jerusalem on a donkey!

God , the incomprehensible God, did things not necessary or expected of God.  He took exception to our way of doing things and sent his Son to be a servant,

”to humble himself and become obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”  (Phil 2:8)

On April 25, 1958 a young Korean exchange student was killed by hoods in Philadelphia.  The city cried out for vengeance; the parents wrote from Korea:

“Our family has met together and we have decided to petition that the most generous treatment possible within the laws of your government be given to those who have committed this criminal action...In order to give evidence of our sincere hope contained in this petition, we have decided to save money to start a fund to be used for the religious, educational, vocational and social guidance of the boys when they are released...We have dared to express our hope with a spirit received from the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ who died for our sins.”

It is often in the unexpected expression of love and concern that God comes to us, or works through us, even as God did through Jesus.

This is our God, the unexpected one, who comes to us, as Albert Schweitzer wrote,

 “...as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside He came to those who knew Him not.  He speaks to us the same word; ‘Follow me!’  and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time.  He commands and to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toil, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”

The struggle to grasp that Jesus must die to show the power of God's redeeming love for all of us, even for Jesus,  is expressed by Nikos Kazantzakis in "The Last Temptation Of Christ"  (pp. 386,387)

"Jesus lifted his eyes into the light.  He had turned pale.  He squeezed Judas's arm and clung to him.  "There they are!" he whispered, terrified.  "They've filled the air!"

"Read!" said Judas, who was also trembling.

Panting, Jesus began hoarsely to spell out the words.  The letters were like living beasts: he hunted them and they resisted.   Continually wiping away his sweat, he read: "He has borne our faults; he was wounded for our transgressions;l our iniquities bruised him.  He was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.  Despised and rejected by all, he went forward without resisting, like a lomb that is led to the slaughter."

Jesus spoke no more.  He had turned deathly pale.

'" don't understand!",  said Judas, standing still and shifting the pebbles with his big toe, "Who is the lamb being led to slaughter?  Who is going to die?"

"Judas," Jesus slowly answered,  "Judas, brother, I am the one who is going to die."

"You?" said Judas, recoiling.  "Then aren't you the Messiah?"

"I am."

"I don't understand!" Judas repeated, and he lacerated his toe on the stones. 

"Don't shout, Judas.  This is the way.  For the world to be saved, I, of my own will, must die.  At first I didn't understand it myself.  God sent me signs in vain: sometimes visions in the air, sometimes dreams in my sleep, or the goat's carcass in the desert with all the sins of the people around its neck.  And since the day I quit my mother's house. a shadow has followed behind me like a dog or at times has run in front to show me the road.  What road?  The Cross!"

March 25, 2012 Fifth Sunday in Lent

John 12:20-33

    ²⁰ Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. ²¹ They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” ²² Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.

   ²³ Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴ Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ²⁵ Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

   ²⁷ “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. ²⁸ Father, glorify your name!”

   Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” ²⁹ The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

   ³⁰ Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. ³¹ Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. ³² And I, when I am lifted up^[a^] from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³ He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

"Life Is Found By Losing It."

To “hate” ones life does not mean that life is bad; something we just have to put up with until we get to heaven, where life will be good.

To “hate” ones life means to not be so hung up on myself that I can’t live.  I can’t risk and fail and try again.  I can’t ever be in a down position, needing forgiveness, needing to lean on someone.  It means to dare die in order to live.

Jack London:  “ I would rather be ashes than dust.  I would rather my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than in should be stifled in dry-rot.  I would rather be a superb Meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.  Man’s chief purpose is to LIVE, not to exist.  I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.  

I shall use my time.”

Life is found by losing it; by risking giving it up, giving it away.  

As one commentary put it:

“He that so prizes his life, (and the Greek work here means excessive love of life), that he cannot let it out of his own hand or give it up to good ends checks its growth and it withers and dies; whereas he who treats his life as if he hated it, giving it up freely to the needs of others, shall keep it to eternal life.”

Ironically, in this text, the word hate opens up for us what we would expect love to do.

It enables us to love as we are meant to love; not just our own lives, but all lives.

“We Wish To See Jesus”

We come here to see Jesus.  To “know the Lord” and have his law of love written on our hearts.  We would see Jesus so that faith becomes a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives.  This is what preaching is all about - young pastor found a note on pulpit one Sunday morning after months of inflicting his advanced theological knowledge on the congregation:  “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

To see Jesus is to have to open our hearts to hear what we cannot hear and believe what we cannot understand or comprehend.  It is to let our hearts be filled with the law of God, which is a law of love until we can no longer be self-righteous about anything.  Even so that this very law cannot become a burden for those who don’t fit in or a source of self-righteousness for us.  i.e. using Bible to condemn homosexuals.

To see Jesus we may well have to include those we do not want to include and not use the Bible as a weapon against them.  Sin is not seeing Jesus in those who are afraid to live in the open, and it is condemning those who do not fit my lifestyle.  Sin is first of all - my self righteousness.

To see Jesus is to “learn obedience through suffering”.

Suffering is holy ground - always.

Jesus suffering was his hour of glorification,  glory means the “veiled -yet- evident presence of God.”  Suffering often is a means by which the veiled -yet-evident presence of God is impressed upon us, enabling us to learn obedience in a way which is deep and painful and holy.

Douglas John Hall -” God and Human Suffering”, pp 112,116,117

To see Jesus is finally to follow him as a servant; and learn who He is.

"He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake side, He came to those men who knew Him not.  He speaks to us the same word: "Follow thou me!"  and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time.  He commands.  And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is." 

Albert Schweitzer-"The Quest for the Historical Jesus"

March 18, 2012 Fourth Sunday in Lent

John 3:14-21

¹⁴ Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

   ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

 “The Gift Of God”

One of the most difficult truths for us to handle is that it is...”by grace that we have been saved through faith; and this is not our own doing, it is the gift of God...There is nothing here to boast of, since it is not the result of our own efforts.”  Eph. 2:8,9

We like to boast of how we have God in our control, as one ‘good’ Christian said recently,  “God doesn’t hear Jewish prayers” - as if we know and control who God listens too!

When God becomes predictable, God also becomes impotent!

Grace means that  God loves the person who first said, “God is dead.”  

God has compassion for the person who rejects him.  

For God’s primary concern is that we allow God to love us, to save us, to touch our hearts and change our living; to rescue us from our ability to self-destruct!  

God makes it easy for us, as with the Israelites of old.  Just look and you will live!  Just look at Jesus and live!  God wants us so badly that if we just give him the least little excuse, God will shower his grace upon us and call us his own!  God is the waiting father!

God also trusts that once this gift of grace hits home, things will start happening in our lives.

For the person who truly lives by grace is the last person who can be judgmental towards others.  That is simply a contradiction which leads to hypocrisy of the worst kind.

The line God draws is not a judgment line, but a grace line.  To cross that live is to live in love and forgiveness.  Faith is crossing that line and letting God have at you!

It is looking at Jesus, and living.

“This Is How Believing Works”

Sometimes the most common or familiar is the most difficult to hear, see, experience in a new and living way. This is true when we come to words such as today - “By grace you have been saved...”  “For God so loved the world...”

There is more to this then just hearing it again in the same way.  Believing in Jesus is a lot more then saying I believe.  As verses 19-21 indicate, it is coming to the light of God’s truth, wanting it, yearning for it, searching for it, welcoming it when it comes;  when it comes, as it always will,  in human form.

This means that those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord should be the first to welcome the liberation of the black man, first to struggle with those who are struggling for then own identity, the first to listen to the other side. 

To welcome the light of God’s love into our lives is to open ourselves up to all the evil which is within us...our greed, selfishness, bigotry, envy, jealousy, lust, pride.  It is to have it all out in the light of day.

Woman in NY: “If you’re not interested in the rats in my apartment, I”m not interested in your Jesus.”

Judgment words on me;  it exposes me rather then giving me reason to condemn others.

First act of faith is to confess often that I love darkness more then light.

This leads to true forgiveness and the good deeds which follow; as I then live in the light of God’s love and share it with others - not judgment but compassion.

AA is a good example of this dynamic at work.

March 11, 2012  Third Sunday in Lent

John 2:13-22

¹³ When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. ¹⁵ So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

¹⁸ The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

   ¹⁹ Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

   ²⁰ They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” ²¹ But the temple he had spoken of was his body. ²² After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

“Remembered...and Believed.”

I memorized the 10 commandments and meanings by the 5th grade.  I knew them better then, than I know them now.  Yet I know them better now than I ever could have then.  For I have gotten them wrong enough times to begin to know what they might mean and are all about.  

The people in the temple where getting it all wrong.  That is why Jesus drove them out.  They were mixing greed with worship, and all but destroying worship.  

We get it wrong often.  We start to get it right when we have something to remember...

that I am loved with a relentless love

that I can be defeated but now destroyed

that I can blow it, but not lose it.

A key word in finally getting it right is  “remember”.

The disciples understood this experience after the resurrection and they remembered.  Then they got it right.

It is the same for us.  We get it right finally, when we remember the grace and forgiving love of a God who never gives up on us and never forsakes us.  A God who’s love never dies, and who’s dazzling grace always is.

“Jesus, the Intruder”

Jesus had two faces.  He was “meek and lowly in heart”;  and  “he looked at them with anger”.  (Mk 5:5)  He was gentle but not anemic,  as when he called Herod a “fool” or told Peter “Get behind me, Satan!”

Nor was He anemic when he cleansed the temple.  He was a violent intruder, disrupting their comfortable little set up.  It must have been a wild scene!  The disciples must have been stunned, even embarrassed.  The people likewise.  

Jesus was not always an easy person to be with.  For example, when he said:

   “Leave the dead to bury their own dead; for as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."  Lk. 9:60

   “No own who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”   Lk. 9:62 

   “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or                     

            daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”    Mt. 10:37, 38

This may sound harsh and in some ways it is.  It is also an expression of God’s awesome love which will not let us off easy, but expresses itself even in punishment for sin.  It is as Luther prayed, “Ah, God, punish us, we pray Thee...but be not silent...toward us.”

Jesus, would be an Intruder in our lives, harsh though it may seen, to awaken in us our need for a Savior, and then Jesus would be the Savior we need.