Sermon: Bread for the Body, Love for the Soul (8/5/18)

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/user-781606354/bread-for-the-body-love-for-the-soul-8518

Scripture:
II Samuel 11:26–12:13a
Psalm 51:1–13
Ephesians 4:1–16
John 6:24–35

Let me start by being honest. Our Ephesians passage includes several statements that at first made me a little nervous. “Lead a life worthy of your calling, … making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit.” The gifts Christ gave were “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come … to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ... We must grow up … into Christ, … each part working properly, promoting the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”

I don’t know about you, but I read this and asked, “How?!”

How are we supposed to “measure up” to Christ? How are we supposed lead a life worthy of Christ? How are we supposed to build ourselves up to Christ?

And, moreover, doesn’t that sound like a rather strenuous life? Making every effort, working, and building—and all toward a goal that, honestly, seems pretty far-fetched.

Are we not born sinners? “I have been wicked from my birth,” David says, “a sinner from my mother’s womb” (Ps. 51:6). Are we not human? Do we not make mistakes quite often? Are we not in the habit of doing what we don’t want to do and not doing what we want to do?

Are we not the kind of beings that are liable to act like David acted? Though he was a great man, an earnest, devoted servant of God, he did obscene things, and then tried to cover them up, and then he had the nerve to pass judgment on another person who acted similarly. When Nathan tells him about the wicked man from his story, David says, “The man who has done this deserves to die,” for “he had no pity.” But did David have pity on Uriah? Did David have pity on Bathsheba? Does David not deserve to die for what he did?

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7).

And none of us could throw one, could we? We have all done something that we wish we wouldn’t have, something we wish we could take back. Maybe we’re even haunted by certain memories. I’m sure David was. I’m sure that later he thought of Uriah and couldn’t help but cringe, grabbing his face and shaking in shame and guilt.

Paul says, “All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). So how are we supposed to measure up to Christ? Surely, we don’t have what it takes, we finite sinners. Surely, we aren’t made of the right stuff. Surely, we don’t have the proper tools.

A confession in the Book of Common Prayer says, “There is no health in us.” If there is true, how can we build anything that isn’t futile or fleeting or weak?

But thankfully, there are more words in our passage than effort, work, build, and grow. There is another word, one that is absolutely decisive, one that changes the whole dynamic, including ourselves.

That word is: Grace.

Yes, Paul does say, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” but right after that he says, “they are now justified by [God’s] grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).

And in our Ephesians passage, the words “give,” “gift,” and “grace,” appear several times. It says, “each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, ‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.’”

Out of the abundance of God’s love, God shows us sinners mercy. He forgives us and gives us grace. David prays, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your lovingkindness” (Ps. 51:1), and God does indeed have mercy on him. He prays, “Give me the joy of your saving help” (v.13), and God does indeed give his saving help.

God is merciful and gracious. He gives us an abundance of gifts.

He gives us forgiveness. David prays, “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy Spirit from me,” and God doesn’t. In Christ, God willed from all eternity to be our God, to be with us. As Karl Barth liked to say, in Christ God determined once and for all that he would not be God without us.

And he did this even knowing our sinfulness. God is always Immanuel, God with us, regardless of our sin. God forgives us. In Christ, he refuses to cast us away or take himself from us. Instead, he draws near, he comes closer, and becomes one of us, so that we might become one with him.

God forgives us and God redeems us. David prays, “Blot out my offenses, wash me, cleanse me, purge me, purify me, create in me a clean heart, renew a right spirit within me.” And God does! God makes good things come from bad. God helps what is passed help. God transforms lost causes into glorious victories. He not only forgives our sins, but washes us clean, purges sin out of us, purifies our hearts, and makes us new.

God heals us.

It may be that there is no health in us, but Jesus made it abundantly clear that God heals the sick. He provides for those in need. We saw with the feeding of the five thousand last week that when Jesus sees people who are hungry, he is concerned for them and intends to feed them. And just like Jesus, God comes for the sick, for the lost, for the poor, for the outcast. He comes for those in need of a savior, and he comes bearing gifts. Whatever our need is, he comes to us with the proper gift.

You’re a sinner? God comes with forgiveness. You are sick? God comes with healing. You are hungry? God comes with food.

God meets us where we are at. We do not have to deserve anything. We do not have to measure up to anything. We do not have to climb our way to the top, or work our way up a mountain in the hopes of getting to our savior at the top. No, Jesus comes all the way down. He “descends to the lowest parts of the earth,” as it says in our Ephesians passage (4:9).

I actually hiked up a mountain recently. It was “Mailbox Peak” in Washington state. At the entrance of the trail, there was a warning sign. It read, “Mailbox Peak Trail is a very steep, wet, unmaintained, difficult, challenging trail. It is 2.5 miles one way to the top and gains 4,000 feet in elevation. Search-and-rescue teams are frequently called to this trail to assist distressed hikers. Please respect your own ability.”

Now, I got to the top.

But getting there was no joke. It was indeed difficult and challenging. I checked our altitude every five minutes, in the hopes that we were almost there. About ¾ of the way up, while I was physically exhausted, I was mostly mentally exhausted. You look up and all you can see is trees. You look down and all you can see is trees. Rows and rows and rows of tall trees that block out the sky. For the most part, ascending the mountain, that’s all you see: trees, more trees, and yet more trees. It rarely gets more dynamic than that. And, mentally, that monotonous repetition is relentlessly tedious, and exhausting. And so ¾ of the way up, I hit a wall.

I was distressed. Fed up, really. Just stop with the trees already! Let me just get there!

Some people experience the Christian life in this way. They feel like they have to ascend a staircase to perfection. Do something good, and you take a step up; do something bad, and backtrack, you take a step down. It feels like every sin puts you farther and farther away from perfection, so that each good work is just making up for the last bad one. With that monotonous repetition, life itself becomes exhausting.

But Jesus does not ask this of us. I say again, Jesus comes all the way down the mountain. He meets us in the valley. He’ll descend “to the lowest parts of the earth.” He meets us where we are at, so that he might meet our need, so that, Paul says, “he might fill all things” (Eph. 4:10).

Our Bible passages today talk a lot about the body. David wants “a clean heart” (Ps. 51:11a). He wants God to wash him and cleanse him so “that the body you have broken may rejoice” (v.9b).

Ephesians talks about the church as a body, “one body” (4:4), the body of Christ. The gifts that Christ gave were for the “building up of the body of the Christ” (v.12), who is the head. Moreover, Paul says, “the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament … promotes the body’s growth” (v.16).

We see here an image of wholeness. One body, joined together in Christ, in peace and in love—healthy, “with each part working properly” (v.16). We all know what it’s like when some parts of our bodies are not working properly. We get colds, or indigestion, or headaches, or flus, or viruses, or whatever. We know that life is best when our bodies are healthy. And the same goes for the church, the body of Christ.

God is “above all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6). He is concerned with our hearts and our souls, but he is also concerned with our bodies. He wants to meet our bodily needs every bit as much as he wants to meet our spiritual needs. God wants to meet all our needs—bread for the body, and love for the soul.

God wants us to be whole and healthy, so that in our wholeness we might meet the needs of others, helping each other as one whole body of Christ, joined together by our faith and our hope.

In Christ, we believe in and hope for the resurrection of the body. People tend to think of eternal life as some disembodied state. Our soul is separated from our body at death and goes to heaven, which is some kind of bodiless, spiritual, and immortal existence.

But we don’t really get that idea from the Bible. That’s more of a Greek philosophical idea. The Bible preaches the resurrection of the body. Paul says in II Corinthians 15 that we are “sown a natural body” and “raised a spiritual body.” It is only that our earthly bodies are perishable, whereas they will be raised imperishable (vv.42–44).

And Jesus speaks of eternal food. The food we eat now perishes, but the Son of Man will give us “food that endures for eternal life” (Jn. 6:27). Moreover, the “true bread … is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (v.33). Just as we are bodies now, in need of sustenance and care, so we will be raised imperishable, spiritual bodies who live off the sustenance and care of Jesus Christ for eternity.

We are creatures of God, bodies created by God, with needs, dependent on God’s provision. That is our status. As Kathryn Tanner says, “We are here simply to be the recipients of God’s gifts.”

But, as we learned from David, the gifts that God intends for people are often hindered through sin. God’s gifts are stolen or withheld by selfishness and injustice. And so people all over the world go without shelter, or food, or care, even when God has given this earth for the good of all.

And so it is that among the gifts God are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, who equip the saints for the work of ministry (Eph. 4:11–12). The Greek word for ministry is diakonia, which is the same word for waiting a table. Ministry means service. The saints, meaning all who are in Christ, are intended to serve. Just as Jesus “did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28), so the saints are not here to be served, but to serve.

The saints are among God’s gifts to the world. We are supposed to be gifts to the world. As God meets our needs, so we should meet the needs of others.

That is the kind of life that is worthy of our calling. That is what it means to build up the body of Christ. That is what it means to mature and grow to the measure of the full stature of Christ, who, as we read a few weeks ago in II Corinthians, “though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that we through his poverty might become rich” (II Cor. 8:9).

You are a gift from God to the world. Be a gift to the world. Give gifts to the world. To quote Tanner one more time, “God may not need anything from us, but the world does.” So meet your neighbor’s needs. Meet the needs of the people in your world. Be humble and gentle and patient and peaceful.

In other words, love! Give bread for the body, and love for the soul, just as Jesus does. As Paul says, the body of Christ grows and is built up in love (v.16). So, “bear one another in love” (Eph. 4:2). “Speak truth in love” (v.15).

Not to measure up to a standard! Not to be perfect! Not to ascend some divine staircase! No. To be a Christian means to give because you have received from Christ, to serve because you have been served by Christ, to meet needs because your needs have been met by Christ.

You do not serve because you have been found wanting, or because you are impure and need to be made pure by doing good things. On the contrary, it is out of the wholeness that you receive from Christ that you are equipped and called to seek the wholeness of others.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon for the
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Old First Reformed Church
August 5, 2018

References:
Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 69.

Sermon: Knowledge of Christ's Love is Power (7/29/18)

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/user-781606354/knowledge-of-christs-love-is-power-72918

Scripture:
II Samuel 11:1 – 15
Psalm 14
Ephesians 3:14 – 21
John 6:1 – 21

When we read our Psalm for this morning, we are struck by a rather a hopeless picture: “All are corrupt and commit abominable acts; there is none who does any good. … Everyone has proved faithless; all alike have turned bad; there is none who does good; no, not one” (Ps. 14:1, 3).

When we read our passage from II Samuel, a similar picture emerges. Here, the great King David, the earnest man of God, God’s chosen one, takes a woman out of her rightful home, regardless of her consent, and has sex with her. When she becomes pregnant and he can’t cover it up by pretending it’s her husband’s child, he has her husband killed.

I Samuel 16 says that “the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon David” (v.13). David, it says, was “a skillful musician, a mighty man of valor, a warrior, one prudent in speech, and a handsome man” (v.18). And, indeed, he demonstrated that he was such a man. He was brave and fought Goliath with a slingshot when all the other men of Israel were too afraid to even go near him. Later, he was continually victorious in battle. And mighty warrior though he was, he was still merciful toward Saul, even when Saul was evil toward him.

All the while, he remained devoted to the living God. And God himself anointed David, and remained with him, and in II Samuel 7, God makes a covenant with him and promises to remain with him forever.

But it is only a few chapters later that we get to the passage we read today. Lust, promiscuity, adultery, murder. Are these really the fruits of David’s life? Surely, all are corrupt and no one is good, if someone like David can commit such abominable acts.

Have you ever been disillusioned by someone? Think of someone you have known for whom you had a lot of respect, someone who you thought quite virtuous, but who at some point did something that contradicted everything you thought. Maybe it was a family member, a mother or a father, maybe it was a pastor, or a close friend, or a mentor, or even a partner or spouse.

Whoever it was, it was someone great, like David, someone you loved, like God and the people of Israel loved David, someone you needed, like the people of Israel needed David.

But David was human, and he did a stupid thing—a thoughtless, inexcusable thing. A few things in fact. And there was no going back. There was no undoing them. And there was no way to reverse the effects his actions had on others.

What are we to make of it? What are we to say when we encounter such corruption? What are we to do when those we look up to fail us? When those we depend on abandon us? When those we have learned to revere and admire as beacons of light make horrible decisions? When those who we thought had godly, moral integrity reveal themselves to be corrupt and sinful? What are we to do? How do we not become jaded and cynical when that happens?

Thomas Merton says, “it is in the deepest darkness” that “the infinite God Himself becomes the Light of the darkened soul and possesses it entirely with His Truth. And at this inexplicable moment the deepest night becomes day and faith turns into understanding.”

Similarly, today, I want to say that to see corruption is not to see a refutation of God, for all corruption is matched and overcome by God’s righteousness. To see darkness is not to see the absence or the nonexistence of God, for all darkness is matched and overcome by God’s infinite light. Paul says, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).

All the corruption in the present state of things finds its limit in God, for whatever we think possible is far surpassed by what is possible for God; whatever we think is concretely decisive is far outweighed by the omnipotence of God.

We can see this from our Ephesians passage. The author points to intimate spaces—“every family in heaven and on earth,” “your inner being,” “your hearts”—and he highlights these intimate spaces as the spaces that God will fill “with all [his] fullness.” He lays out these dwellings, only to fill them to overflowing with the love of Christ, speaking of “the breadth and length and height and depth … that surpasses knowledge.” He sets up a container, only to have the love of God burst it open.

Our hearts are as small as our fists. In the grand scheme of things, what are hearts and our fists capable of accomplishing? What are our fists compared to the vast, expanding cosmos? What are our hearts compared to the irresistible forces of energy at work in the universe? We are dust, and to dust we shall return. We read in James chapter 4, “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (v.14). What can we really accomplish with our tiny hearts and our tiny fists?

But think of your heart in light of our Ephesians passage. Think of it less in terms of arteries and nerves and veins and all that fleshy stuff. Think of it as strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit. Think of it like a tree rooted in the rich, abundant, and strong soil of God’s love. How far could that tree grow? How many branches could it have? How many leaves break out of its shoots? How many other species of life could its nutrients sustain? How many fruits could it bring forth and offer to the world?

Or think of your heart like a tall building, firmly grounded and set on the foundation of God’s power. How high can it soar? How many stories can it sustain? What sights of far-off places are visible from its peak?

“The power of Christ at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”

You can see that this passage is particularly concerned with power. The author prays that the Ephesians “may be strengthened in your inner being with power,” and that they “may have the power to comprehend … and to know the love of Christ.” He makes clear that this power belongs to Christ, that it is ministered to us by the Holy Spirit, and that it can accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine.

And this power is demonstrated to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As Kathryn Tanner says, we see him suffer “the effects of sin – [he is] tempted, anxious before death, surrounded by sufferings of all kinds, [and located] in social conditions of exclusion and political conflict.”  Jesus encounters these effects, but, she continues, as the very Son of God, “he cannot be conquered by them.”  Because Jesus is one with God, when he encounters the effects of sin, he overcomes them, even as a human. In Jesus, a human overcomes sin and death. 

So Jesus approaches a large crowd, and he wants to feed them. But he encounters scarcity. “Not even six month’s wages,” the disciples say, “could buy enough bread to give all of them even a little bit! And we’ve only got five loaves and two fish! What are they up against so many people?” But the disciples don’t understand the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love. They don’t understand the power of the Holy Spirit. So they’re skeptical. Jesus encounters doubt and cynicism.

But Jesus, who is one with God the Father, ignores the disciples. And he ignores the scarcity. He gives thanks for the food, distributes it to all, and then says, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” He doesn’t even ask if there are leftovers, he just tells them to gather them up. Sure enough, there were leftovers. Twelve baskets full!

Jesus overcomes cynicism with faith, and scarcity with abundance.

He was rooted and grounded in God’s love, strengthened with the power of the Holy Spirit, filled with the fullness of God, and so he was able to accomplish more than is humanly possible.

And as we see in Ephesians, we are empowered to do the same through the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that united Jesus to God unites us with Jesus, and so with Jesus’ victory. Quoting Tanner again: “Christian lives reproduce in their own distinct way” Christ’s encounter with sin and death and his overcoming of sin and death.  Because Jesus did it, the Holy Spirit makes it possible for us.

So “do not be afraid,” as Jesus says in our Gospel passage. “Be not doubtful, but believing,” as he says in chapter 20. For with God, all things are possible.

Faith is the assertion that the present state of things is not ultimately decisive, that the status quo does not have the last word, that what seems impossible to us is not impossible to God. Even in the lowest, darkest, most hidden recesses of existence, the darkness dos not overcome the light.

John Calvin describes this element of faith beautifully. He says, “In the realm of faith the two apparent opposites—evidence and things not seen—struggle with one another and are united. … [God] promises eternal life—to those who are dead. He speaks of the blessedness of resurrection—to those who are compassed about with corruption. He pronounces those in whom sin dwells—to be righteous. He calls those oppressed with ceaseless tribulation—blessed. He promises abundance of riches—to those abounding only in hunger and thirst. God cries out to us that He is coming quickly to our aid—and yet He seems deaf to every human cry for help. What, then, would be our fate, were we not powerful in hope, were we not hurrying through the darkness of the world along the road which is enlightened by the Spirit and by the Word of God.”

Eternal life, resurrection, righteousness, abundance, and even God himself all strike us as impossible. The poor stay poor. Sinners stay sinners. The dead stay dead. These claims often seem so self-evident as to be unquestionable. They carry a strange, natural quality, a necessity that is somehow indisputable. We don’t quite know why, but they just seem obvious. The dead stay dead. The poor stay poor. Sinners stay sinners. Of course that’s the way it is. Of course.

So where is room for hope?

I heard a character in a TV show declare, “Hope is a tease, designed to prevent us from accepting reality.” In another TV show, a character says, “The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy … is to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually you’ll be dead.”

I admit, I have had plenty of times in my life when I have accepted such conclusions as inevitable. I know it all too well. But as Paul says, “the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” The fool says in his heart, “There is no hope.” “Have they no knowledge?” our psalmist asks.

And so Ephesians prays “that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith,” and “that we may have the power to comprehend … and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”

To know the love of Christ is to have the knowledge that surpasses knowledge.

Hope pours forth from God’s love. To know that God loves the world is to know that there is hope. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” God loves the world, so we will not perish. God loves the world, so we will have eternal life.

And as Paul says in Romans 8, “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? … Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Nothing can separate us from God’s love, so nothing can tear us away from our promise future. We are victorious in Christ. We are accompanied by the Holy Spirit, the power of Christ’s victory. We are never abandoned by the God who loves us with a love that surpasses understanding. 

So, “Be strong and courageous,” as it says in Deut. 31, “Do not be afraid or terrified … for the LORD your God goes with you, he will never leave you nor forsake you” (v.6).

“Do not fear,” Isaiah 41:10, “for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

God loves you. You, in all your complexity and difference and particularity. God loves the world universally, and God loves you specifically. You are never truly alone. You are never truly estranged. You are never truly an outcast, for you are, truly, always in the hands of God. As Psalm 27:10 says, “Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.” Even when you have no one around you, or when you don’t know anyone around you, God knows you. God knows you and loves you.

Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (12:6–7).

When it seems like there’s no hope, when everything around you contradicts the promises of God, when everyone around you doubts and says, “Not possible”—do not be afraid. Know that God loves you, that God is the refuge of the afflicted (Ps. 14:6), that he makes the impossible possible, and that he will restore the fortunes of his people. As God loves the world, so Christ will deliver, Christ will redeem, Christ will save.

This knowledge of Christ’s love is the power that defies all odds, that breaks open the present, overcomes all things, and makes a new world possible.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon for the
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Old First Reformed Church
July 29, 2018

References:
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1972), 135.
Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 27f.
Ibid., 29.
Ibid., 31.
Ibid., 56.

Sermon: You Don't Have to Die to Rest in Peace (7/22/18)

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/user-781606354/you-dont-have-to-die-to-rest-in-peace-72218

Scripture:
II Samuel 7:1–14
Psalm 89:20–37
Ephesians 2:11–22
Mark 6:30–34, 53–56

In two of our passages today, we encounter discussions of hostility, alienation, restlessness—how easy it is for our lives in New York City to display these traits. This city is notoriously alienating. Despite how physically close we are to millions of people every single day, our life situations have a strange way of promoting isolation.

We’re all little islands, lone wolves coming and going, hurrying and rushing, many of us returning to empty homes, or homes filled with roommates or family members every bit as tired and ready for bed as we are.

Yes, our lives are also often filled with restlessness. We get up early, rush out to our jobs or our classes or our events. We’ll go out for hours hurrying on foot to get to where we’re going as fast as we can, so we can get ahead—get ahead in our career, or just to get ahead of all the other people on the street not going as fast as we’d like them to.

Sometimes we are like the people in this Gospel story, with “no leisure even to eat.”

What could such lives result in but hostility? Maybe we’re hostile to strangers, cursing at them to get out of our way, or to do a better job, or to stop inconveniencing us. Or maybe we’re just silently hostile, thinking mean thoughts about the guy blasting music on the subway, or the girl walking in front of you who stops in the middle of the sidewalk just to look at her phone.

We are often in a hurry, impatient, restless.

It doesn’t help that the society in which we live assesses our value based on our work. “What do you do? What’s your occupation?” These are the questions we ask when we first meet someone. We tend to think an unemployed person is one who does not contribute to society. Work requirements are attached to welfare benefits. Distinctions are made between the deserving and the undeserving poor. “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” So work. Work harder. Work more.

And, unfortunately, for those of us who are socially active, our activism can be a contributing factor to our restlessness. In fact, activism can be an even more stressful form of work, as the stakes can be much higher than simply making money to provide for ourselves. Social changes can affect millions of people, and if we don’t resist bad changes and promote good ones, those people suffer indefinitely.

So come to this rally, canvas for that political candidate, join this party, go to that branch meeting, sign this petition, show your support for that issue, call your senators, and the list goes on. And every day brings us more issues for resistance.

I have seen up close that the culture of activism can be a very tense and stressful one. The stakes are always so high, and you are never doing enough.

At several rallies, I have heard people chant, “No justice, no peace!” And every time I feel a little uneasy about that particular chant. On the one hand, I certainly agree that there can be no lasting peace without justice, and that justice brings peace. One thing we look forward to as Christians is the day when all is made right, when justice rolls down like waters, and as a consequence, all creation lives in peace.

I also understand that the phrase is intended to be a message to authorities: We will not give you peace until you give us justice! And that is certainly a message I can get behind.

But at the same time, the chant makes me wary because it also seems to imply that there will be no peace for the activists until there is justice, as if to say, “We will not have peace until we have justice.” Peace is thus deferred to the future day of justice, and the present is perpetually defined by high stress work towards justice. That, to me, seems rather unfortunate.

I was at a museum exhibition last year, and on one of the art pieces there was a line of text that read, “workers of the world…*relax*.” This is of course a play on the Marxist rallying cry, “Workers of the world: unite!” Unite to fight for justice, resist the status quo.

Now, I do believe that we should fight for justice. I do believe that we should resist the status quo. I do believe that we should not be apathetic or idle. We shouldn’t be complacent or resigned. We should work toward the common good. We should resist and protest and canvas and call our senators, and all that.

But we find in our scriptures today an encouragement not to get swallowed up in the relentless hustle and bustle. We are encouraged to chill out, and maybe go off to a deserted place untouched by the fray of restless city life. We are encouraged to rest, to find an oasis of peace in Christ.

Setting aside time for rest is a declaration that our lives are not consumed by or defined by our work.

Jesus sees all our coming and going, our hurrying and rushing, our working and striving—and he looks on it all with compassion. It’s the kind of look someone you love gives you when they can tell you are distressed. Maybe you’ve had a long day at work, and you come home to a bunch of chores that need doing. When you start cleaning the dishes, you find yourself overwhelmed, and in quite a state. But in comes that someone. He or she sees your distress, and wants to relieve you. “How can I help?”

When I was a kid, I was in Bible Quiz for a couple years. We memorized whole books of the Bible, and then gathered once a week to be quizzed on how well we knew them. Now, I’m a perfectionist, so when I was in Bible Quiz, I took it very seriously, and tried to memorize everything perfectly, and answer every question exactly right. It was…incredibly stressful.

I remember one day I was in my room trying to memorize a passage from the book of Romans, and I just kept messing up. I would skip sentences on accident, or fail to remember the next sentence, or misremember a verse. I was quite flustered as a result, beating myself up for my deficiency.

It was then that my dad walked in. He saw me sitting on my bed, my eyes full of tears, with my Bible in my hands. He immediately looked concerned and asked, “What is wrong?” In a broken voice, I told him I sucked at memorizing, and he laughed and shot me a look of reassurance and grace. It was a smile with lightness behind it, unburdened by the load I was carrying. It said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s not that big of a deal.” And then he took me downstairs and encouraged me to put it away for the night.

Jesus wants to provide us with a similar relief. “Come to me, all who are weary or burdened, and I will give you rest,” he says, “for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28, 30).

In our Gospel passage, it says the crowds were “like sheep without a shepherd,” they were “coming and going,” with “no leisure even to eat.” They were hurrying on foot, rushing about the whole region. And Jesus had compassion on them. He wanted to relieve them of their burdens.

If you look at our Ephesians passage, you’ll notice a similar theme. The Gentiles were far off, alienated as strangers, oppressed by a dividing wall that kept them in hostility with others. They were in the world without hope and without God.

But Jesus had compassion on them. In Christ, it says, they are given reconciliation, and with reconciliation, peace. In Christ, all are brought together in the household of God. Hostility is overcome and wholeness is firmly established. We are given “the peace of God, which passes all understanding” (Phil. 4:7).

In Christ, we await new growth and abundance, the overcoming of suffering and evil, the restoration and reparation of all things—and not only the restoration and reparation, but the making new of all things. “The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the goat” (Isa. 11:6). The nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isa. 2:4). This is the reconciliation and peace that Christ accomplished in his victory over sin and death. It is this reconciliation and peace that we are promised in Christ.

One new humanity, joined together as a holy temple, a dwelling place for God. Peace.

You do not have to earn it. You do not have to deserve it. You do not have to work yourself to the bone to make it happen. Christ has done it all.

The good works that pour from our lives now are simply the fruits of the harvest that Jesus began. Jesus accomplished reconciliation, and so we reconcile with others. Jesus accomplished peace, and so we rest. Our success, our victory, and the fruits of our labor are ensured in Christ. We do not have to fret, we do not have to worry. We are free, free for justice, free for reconciliation, free for peace.

So in your freedom, rest. Make sure that you rest. Fit it into your schedule. Give yourself ample time to relax, to take life easy, to kick back and chill awhile.

It is in rest that we regain a sense of wholeness. Our burdens fall off our shoulders as we ease back and unwind. Rest gives us to time re-calibrate.

And with the wholeness we receive in rest, we won’t live tense, uptight lives. We won’t be impatient with those around us. We will overcome hostility, instead of being infused with it. We will be more forgiving, more patient, more understanding. As we receive mercy and compassion in rest, we share mercy and compassion in the wholeness that follows.

My favorite album of the year so far is called There’s a Riot Going On. It’s by the band Yo La Tengo. I think the title of the album refers to the hostile, tense, high stakes time in which we find ourselves today. But it isn’t a protest album. It’s not an album full of righteous indignation or the fury of resistance. In fact, it’s gentle, soothing, and compassionate—almost medicinal! It’s as if they band is saying, “There’s a riot going on. You need some rest.”

In a time fraught with tension and strife and bad news, we need some rest. And we can rest in the assurance of Christ’s victory over sin and death, in the assurance of reconciliation and peace which God established for us. In Christ, we are allowed to rest! You are allowed to rest!

It sounds funny to say it that way, but sometimes it’s exactly the way we need to hear it, because sometimes we don’t allow ourselves the time to rest.

I say again, you don’t have to die to rest in peace.

And I want to leave you with the following questions: What brings you peace? How can you find your way there? What is a restful practice for you? How can you introduce more rest into your life?

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon for the

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost 

Old First Reformed Church

July 22, 2018

The Tyranny of Satan and the Kingdom of the Spirit: Sermon on Mark 3:22–35

Mark 3:22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” 23 And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

28 “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters[a] are outside, asking for you.” 33 And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

It seems I have my work cut out for me. In this passage Jesus makes four very loaded statements. First, he says, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand” (v.24), which is a sermon on its own. One thinks of Abraham Lincoln quoting these words during the Civil War.

Then Jesus says, “no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered” (v.27)—a most intriguing statement, one I could preach sermons about all day given its revolutionary undertones.

Then Jesus says perhaps the most frightening thing he ever said: “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (v.29).

And, finally, when his family calls for him, Jesus disrespects them by ignoring their call and saying, “Who are my mother and my brothers? … Here are my mother and my brothers!” (v.34).

And I have to preach on all this!

First, we have the issue of Satan, or, more ominously, “Beelzebul.” Beelzebul most likely refers to the Hebrew words “Baal” and “zebul,” meaning “Baal the Prince.” Baal is the quintessential opponent of the God of Israelites in the Hebrew Bible, and so it makes sense that he would equated with Satan.

It also makes sense that the name Beelzebul, “Baal the Prince,” is used here, since “ruler of the demons” could also be translated “prince of the demons.”

Now, I want to hold the discussion of the “kingdom divided against itself” statement for later. For now, I want to go straight to the “strong man” line.

“No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man.”

Okay, who is the strong man, and what is his house?

Well, from context, the strong man is Satan and the house is Satan’s house. And in the version of this story found in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus precedes this statement by saying, “if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). The Spirit is thus the one that enters the strong man’s house and plunders his property, and this happens when demons among us are cast out. So, Satan’s house is among us, on earth.

Saying so goes along with other parts of scripture, for the Gospel of John calls Satan “the prince of this world [who] will be driven out” (John 12:31); and Ephesians speaks of “the ruler of the kingdom of the air.”

Satan is among us.

Saying this, I am obviously saying something very troubling, but I’m not saying anything you don’t already know. The news shows it to us every day. The world is undeniably subjected to the worst injustices, and evil’s pervasiveness and prevalence are all too apparent to us.

The strange statement is not that Satan is president, but that Satan will be driven out! That the kingdom of God comes upon us through the Spirit! That the Spirit enters the house and ties up the strong man! That the kingdom comes upon us here and now! That the Spirit is among us, driving out Satan here and now! These are the strange statements. This is the good news, the gospel, which you don’t often see in the newspaper.

So, what we are dealing with in the Gospel, with Jesus Christ, is the deposing and driving out of Satan’s rule on the earth. As Walter Benjamin wrote just before he died under Hitler’s conquest of Europe, “The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, but comes as the subduer of Antichrist.”

For we don’t want to escape to another world. We don’t want to abandon ship and go somewhere else. We want justice here on earth! We want wrongs to be made right. We want wounds healed. We want evil rulers overcome, and righteous judgment for the wicked. We want justice to flow down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

I think of refugees. Uprooted, displaced, homeless, and yet in a certain sense “saved,” delivered from oppression. Is this the salvation for which we are to hope? With our home overcome by tyranny and our salvation found in displacement and homelessness?

No, of course not. True salvation could only be the restoration of home, the reinstatement of the homestead, the security of our livelihood and well-being, and the removal of the threat of hegemony.

This is also the case in personal situations. I think of my family. I could tell you some crazy stories about my family. In fact, you could collect the worst horror stories from ten other families, and I bet they would still be difficult to compare to the witch’s cauldron that is my own family history!

There have been many days where I’ve ended up sitting on a couch, after some fight between family members, or after some shocking family, where I have felt so at a loss for how to help, and so disillusioned, and so dumbstruck, that I have seriously wanted to leave them and not deal with it anymore.

But, ultimately, I don’t just want out. I don’t just want to relief, to be released from the situation. No, I want restoration, wholeness and peace for my family.

The Gospel would be insufficient were it only a promise of escape. It might be good news, but it wouldn’t be the best news. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, however, is the best news, because it is not just about relief and escape, but it is also about transformation, revolution, redemption, healing, and resurrection.

This is what we are promised in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit comes not only as deliverance from the tyranny of Satan, but as destruction of Satan’s tyrannical order, and as the inauguration of a wholly new order of love and peace.

And I think this is why…

blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the only unforgiveable sin.

Now, I should say that this is a most contested statement. No one knows what Jesus really meant by it—which is troubling since it seems incredibly important! It is among the most enigmatic and troubling statements of Jesus that were recorded, and the interpretations of it abound. That said, one interpretation that I am particularly compelled by comes from—and this will surprise no one—Karl Barth.

Barth says that by calling the Holy Spirit “an unclean spirit,” the scribes were calling, “the clean unclean, the holy unholy, the good bad, life death, the kingdom of God the Kingdom of Satan. … And in so doing they had automatically excluded themselves from liberation, from the new aeon, from the proclamation of forgiveness and salvation and the reception of both, [they had excluded themselves] from all hope.” (Barth, CD IV.2, 231f.)

If you close off reality, if you shut out any possibility of something totally other than what you see, if you look at the person driving out the old and bringing in the new and say, “He’s out of his mind” (Mark 3:21), then you have accepted, dignified, and justified the status quo. To do that is to become the enemy of the Gospel, because it is the status quo that Jesus sought to transform. It is the prince of the status quo that needs to be driven out and tied up.

To refuse to let the Spirit drive out demons, to reject the new in favor of the old, is to reject transformation and healing, redemption and forgiveness, and so to give yourself up to evil and injustice. What could be worse? What could be more hopeless?

Now, practically speaking, what does it mean to close off reality, and how do we not do that?

Well, let me give you an historical example.

In Nazi Germany, so-called German Christians defended Naziism by appealing to a Lutheran doctrine of “orders of creation,” which states that God instituted several orders that separated society into different facets: the church, the state, and the household.

They used this doctrine to say that the German Volk, meaning people, and their race were orders of creation, divinely instituted by God, and meant to be protected as such.

They said, God put me in this nation, with this people, this “blood and soil,” and that means I should be able to act in the best interest of my people, my race, my nation—even over against the interests of other people, other races, other nations.

In other words, the German Christians gave themselves a divine sanction to say that they and their people were more important than others. Other people could now become their enemies, and fighting them became the will of God.

So let me break it down:

First, the status quo was justified. They said, this people, as it is, was divinely instituted by God.

Second, they shut themselves off from other people, saying, I am not responsible for them, but rather, for my own people first.

Third, they were now free to make other people their enemies, whom they had to fight in order to protect their own Volk.

When Barth was writing theology, he made it a special point to critique the German Christian theology, saying that no one could tie God’s will to their particular people, their blood and soil.

For Jesus, he said, “all human orders are [old garments] or old [wineskins], which are … quite incompatible with the new cloth and the new wine of the kingdom of God.” (CD IV.2, 177)

He said that those who give divine favoritism to their own people confuse the status quo “with some necessity of nature,” and he said, “this is in truth a demonic caricature” of God’s will. (The Epistle to the Romans, 50)

And what’s more, he says Jesus, in passages like ours, practically subverted the present order instead of justifying it. When the crowd tells Jesus, “your mother and your brothers and your sisters are calling you,” Jesus’ response speaks volumes: “Who are my mother and my brothers? … Here are my mother and my brothers!” (v.34).

He implies that his natural family ties, his flesh and blood, are not ultimate; they do not make a decisive claim on him. Rather, the people before him are his mother and his brothers and his sisters.

In other words, you are not just accountable for your family, your people, your blood. Jesus certainly wasn’t. He came for the sick, for the outcasts, for the rejected and the neglected, not simply for his own people. And he told us to love our enemies.

And, here, I will now discuss the statement about a divided kingdom.

“If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.” Our world cannot flourish if we are divided, if we stick only to our people and stand against “them” and “people like them.” And I’m not just referring to our particular families. In truth, our families are often the ones we are estranged from.

No, I am referring to our friends, our comrades, those to whom we attach ourselves because we share political views, theology, preferences, likes, dislikes, etc. I am talking about the allegiances we form, and the people we reject.

Luther criticized works righteousness, but a friend of mine at Union criticizes the tendency among progressive toward what he calls, “woke-righteousness.” Because we are “woke” and “they” are not, we feel justified in shutting them out, or shutting them up. We justify ourselves, as we are, and stand against those, who Jesus says, are our brothers and sisters.

Now, I’ll be honest, I really struggle with this. I have family members who I can’t talk to about certain things, particularly about politics, because they say things that are, in my mind, wrong at best, and ugly and hateful at worst. And so I often find myself thinking that they’re not even worth talking to.

And I have to say, I don’t know exactly what crossing that divide is going to look like. At St. Lydia’s, we’re starting to explore that as we try to make connections with more conservative congregations, but I don’t know what exactly it is going to look like.

But I will say, I have been convicted by the Gospel, convicted by passages like these, where I am told who my brothers and sisters are, and that we cannot be divided, or else we face certain destruction.

Faced with this crisis, we cannot justify ourselves. To justify ourselves would be to risk shutting off the world and dignifying the status quo—it would be to risk rejecting the Holy Spirit.

We must let ourselves be troubled by Jesus’ example, and troubled by the Spirit’s call to embrace not just our people, but our larger family, the family of the world.

Only as troubled Christians can we open ourselves up to the Spirit, who challenges us and casts out our demons.

And only by opening ourselves up to the world can we invite the Spirit to enter the house and bring to destruction the tyranny of the devil, so that God’s new world may come.

Preached at St. Lydia's Dinner Church

February 2018

The 23 Best Films of 2017

23. Landline

22. Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

21. The Disaster Artist

 

 










20. The Lego Batman Movie

 








19. Get Out

 







18. Personal Shopper

17. The Square

16. The Big Sick

 

 






 
15. mother!

 











14. Lady Bird 

13. Detroit

12. Baby Driver

 










11. Blade Runner 2049 

10. The Florida Project

 

 






9. I, Tonya

8. A Ghost Story

 










7. Molly's Game 

 







6. Dunkirk

 









5. Good Time 

 







4. The Beguiled

3. Phantom Thread 

2. Lady Macbeth

 











1. The Killing of a Sacred Deer