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April 30, 2006
Faith After Easter
Micah 4: 1-5
John 20: 19-31
April 30th, 2006
Every year at Easter we celebrate an event that provides hope. Such a mix of matters come together on that glad day: not just the message of Jesus’ resurrection that will mean we and our loved-ones will come alive again never to die again, but also that lambs will snuggle close to lions rather than be digested inside them. Little children will play safely around cobras. Al Qaida will not kill. Suicide bombers will be a term without meaning. Darfur will be the name of a beautiful city in the Sudan.
So much hinges on the resurrection. Paul wrote, “If Christ be not raised, then we are of all people most miserable.” But why do we have to wait for so many good effects of the resurrection that seem promised now? Why does faith have to be, as the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it, “The evidence of things not seen?” I wonder if we have kept hidden evidence that we could be showing so that faith would not seem so hard for so many. Jesus taught us we would do greater things than He did because He ascended to the Faither.
A problem we sublimate by faith is the need for delayed fulfillment of expectations of God’s promise of a Peaceable Kingdom. There are goals God is accomplishing that are not now evident. But why must we wait for so much that God promises?
By contrast, when Edward Jenner in 1798 made known he’d invented a cure for the dread disease of smallpox, immediately the disease was kept at bay for anyone who had the inoculation he devised. One hundred thousand people in England were given the antidote to smallpox within three years, and they were immune to smallpox. After Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine and people were inoculated, polio became essentially a disease of the past. Kids today don’t know what iron lungs are.
As Paul wrote in the great “hope” chapter in the New Testament, Romans 8, “All creation groans, waiting for the adoption of sons.” Two thousand years nearly have gone by. Creation is groaning more than necessary.
We are reading together the Gospel of John these Sundays. I wonder if you noticed how within that first week after Easter so much of the agenda of the story of Church history was anticipated. Fear and disbelief, then the reality of Jesus’ presence even to doubting Thomas, because he saw Jesus’ hands and side.
”Peace be with you,” Jesus said. It was a peace which He had promised was “not as the world gives.” Peace as the world allows depends on good circumstances. Jesus’ peace comes no matter what. We talk about it but do we have it? His peace comes under His conditions. Inward obedience to His commands = trust in Him, leads to Jesus’ peace.
Then there was the “Great Commission.” “As the Father has sent me so send I you.” The disciples must have wondered what He meant because they were still paralyzed, not knowing where to go, what to say. Until then only Abraham was told to go somewhere and he did not know his destination. Later Jesus would give the marching orders with destinations —first Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, and finally everywhere with the Gospel. But the disciples did not understand all this on the evening of the first Easter.
They were not equipped by the Holy Spirit to do what Peter and Paul would later do in their spread of the Gospel throughout the Mediterranean world.
Then Jesus provided an anticipation of Pentecost. John tells us, “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (actually the Greek text does not say “The..) We read this and wonder how to put it together with the great event that took place fifty days later. It was at the Jewish feast of Pentecost that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the 120 disciples who waited in the upper room in Jerusalem. It was then that Jesus’ disciples received the Holy Spirit fully to great effect. So what happened here?
Thoughtful New Testament scholars have noticed how similar John 20: 22 is to the Greek translation of Genesis 2: 7. “God breathed into Adam’s face the ‘spirit’ (pnoen) of life and the man became into soulish life—eis psuchen zosan.” This is an awkward, literal rendition of the Greek of Genesis 2: 7, suggesting how people were distinct from animals. Many early Christians knew the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible well. So they would have noticed as they read John’s remarkable words, the similarity between what God the Creator did after forming Adam from the dust and what Jesus did here.
Now the disciples were a huddled group of powerless fellows. They were like Adam who lay there on the Garden of Eden’s damp earth, a limp man-shaped form until God breathed into his face the life of the soul. Only we of all the creatures in creation have God’s breath in us. And something similar happened when Jesus breathed into the faces of His disciples His life-giving breath.
At the moment John describes, Jesus’ disciples were not reading about what happened but receiving the impulse of Jesus breath. What was it like? Did Jesus sigh deeply and then exhale so they could hear it, so that they felt something new happening in them.
Whatever happened on the spot, it wasn’t long before they realized that a new creation had begun. The Apostle Paul still felt the energy of that breath of Jesus when he wrote, “If anyone is in Christ that one is a new creation; the old has passed, the new has come.” The new creation should be much more in evidence than it now is.
Still more happened on that Easter evening. Jesus pronounced those awesome words that make it clear why forgiveness is so important. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
You remember Jesus had taught them to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And He went on to say severely, “If you do not forgive others their trespasses neither will your father in heaven forgive you your trespasses.” Here Jesus described a fearful link between heaven and earth.
Here Jesus pronounced the final form of what has been called “The power of the keys.” In Matthew’s Gospel we read that early in Jesus’ days with His twelve disciples He said, “I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Here on Easter evening Jesus gave that promised key. This was a key that we still have.
I wonder to what extent the trials of the Church are due to all the sins that Christians retain rather than set free. I am sometimes overwhelmed at the impossibility of ridding the Church of the choking grip of mutual disregard. We retain sins and debts and trespasses that Jesus gave us the key to loose—if only we would. The consequences are evident in the powerlessness of the churches.
We hear much these days of the growth of mega-churches, but where is the evidence of the good effect of these vast gatherings? We preachers feel good if lots want to come listen. But to what end? Is there anything more to this than our fascination with bigness the illusion of being successful? Thousands of massed people who keep in their pockets the keys of the Kingdom, retaining sins they should loose, are of little use to the work of the Kingdom of God.
I was reminded recently that Islam is growing far faster than Christianity. Local Muslims may be about to build a mosque in our own town. The intensity of Muslim devotion is more impressive to many people than the limp devotion of Christians who claim to have the truth but have little muscle in their faith.
Is the reason for the lack of persuasiveness of our amazing Gospel of the love of God in Christ because we have disfigured the Gospel by our behavior? We have, as Paul put it, “the form of godliness but lack the power.” The power of godliness comes in acting God-like, mimicking Him “whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him.” Where is the mercy in the Church?
Was the reason for the immediate vitality of the early Christians that sprung loose at Pentecost, fifty days later, because they not only had Jesus breathed Holy Spirit on them but also that they used the keys of the Kingdom? They actually loosed the sins of one another, forgiving right and left. They discovered that “love covers a multitude of sins,” as Peter put it. Of course, there were moments when sin got its comeuppance. Annias and Saphira discovered the consequences of lying to God. But those were days when the Church increased rapidly. Why? We look back and wonder.
I sometimes wonder if Christians have talked and talked about these things assuming that only correct conversation is now possible. Indeed, I ponder how important it has become to speak of the great matters correctly, to retain orthodox theology, because it seems this is what we have to nourish the next generation. Our right views of God’s work must be repeated in good form to remind ourselves of what God has done. And all the while God waits to see what we will do with the power of the keys of the Kingdom Jesus gave to us.
I sometimes become disconcerted how much I speak of what Christians ought to be doing in their life together, loving, serving, and forgiving each other. I fear I sound like the ancient heretic Pelagius who taught that it is possible to do what God has commanded us to do. John Wesley has been criticized for his view of “Christian perfection,” as though he forgot we’re just forgiven sinners, all of us. But what is the point of that blessing with which I close every service? There I remind you what the God of peace can accomplish in us through the power of the risen Christ.
I was reminded by an Eastern Orthodox friend recently of John Cassian, the fifth-century French monk who wrote about the training of the inner man and the perfection of the heart. He was called “semi-Peglagian,” that is, that he had a half-way view of the necessity of good-works. While it is true that we all need the grace of God, God has not left us powerless. But we need training in godliness. It doesn’t come by saying, “Lord, Lord.”
We have inherited a view of the Christian life that has so stressed the grace of God that we have put into a parenthesis all that the Bible tells us about what we should and must do in response to grace. So that the reason why you and I linger with that assortment of dispositions that make family life and community life less than happy is that we have been taught that all that is of any good must come from God.
We have hidden in the shadows the gifts of grace that we are to use that require the full cooperation of our desire to please God in order to be useful. It is truly sad how Christians allow to grow the roots of bitterness that could be killed with a good dose of holy Round-Up—if only we used the Keys of the Kingdom of God that Jesus gave us. The keys are still in our pockets, waiting to be taken out and used.
But now back to John’s story of the week after Easter. Thomas had not been there in the locked room when Jesus first came to His twelve disciples. John shows us a picture of Thomas the man from Missouri: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Why did Thomas consider disbelief so needful? Thomas was an honest fellow. He would not tolerate living an illusion. Unless Jesus was alive, there was no hope. But then when he saw Jesus standing there before him, “My Lord and my God.”
And Jesus then pointed to you and me. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” It is helpful to know the honest, doubting Thomas believed because he saw Jesus alive. Jesus disciple Peter would later write, “Having not seen Him, you love Him and rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” But this rejoicing hinges on living out this new life that Jesus breathed into us. I wonder how we waste the breath of Jesus by making hypothetical His commands—by keeping in our pockets the Keys of the Kingdom.
What was faith in Jesus like after Easter? Very different than before. For one thing, now all those hints Jesus made about rising from death made sense. But more than this, the disciples no longer toddled along behind Jesus, just watching Him. Now they could do those greater things than He did because He went back to the Father. Jesus spread before them the means of this greatness on the evening of the first Easter. A new beginning, the breath of Jesus breathed into them, the keys of the Kingdom placed in their hands.
Let’s not waste what Jesus has given us—that we can use if only we will. Here is the secret of our joy, our growth, our usefulness. Let’s not waste what Jesus has given to us.
Let us pray: O Lord grant us to use that with which you have equipped us, to the glory of God and the joy and extension of the Body of Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
April 16, 2006
The Gospel According to St. Mary Magdalene
Hosea 6: 1-3
John 20: 1-2, 11-18
April 16th, 2006
I suspect that many of us here this morning have read Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code. If you have, as I have, your mind did a flip-flop when you noticed in the worship bulletin that I propose to speak about “The Gospel According to St. Mary Magdalene.”
Even though the novel is fiction that borrows from old legends and says things about Mary Magdalene’s relationship to Jesus that have no reliable foundation, we owe to her a debt of gratitude. Because, as we read this morning, it was this special woman who first announced those words that give us hope: “I have seen the Lord.”
This was the Gospel according to St. Mary Magdalene. Gospel means good news. It was good news. Her good news was, “I have seen the Lord.”
Only John among Jesus’ disciples saw Jesus on the cross. The rest of them heard about it but saw Jesus last when He was taken captive in the Garden of Gethsemane. Maybe word came to them from John that Mary Magdalene was there at the cross. In fact, if we read just what our Gospel lesson tells us, and try to see into the minds of Jesus’ disciples at that point, all they might have thought was that Mary told them she saw Jesus on the cross. Did they think at first that she was just verifying that their Lord was dead? What kind of good news is that?
But the tone of her voice and the look on her face were not the tone and look you’d expect to see in someone overcome with grief. There was excitement written on her face. “I have seen the Lord,” meant, “I have seen Him alive.” John tells us then that Mary told them what Jesus said to her—about ascending to the Father. They remembered how Jesus prayed, saying “Abba, Father.” It rang true what she said.
You and I know Mary meant Jesus was alive because we know the Easter story already. But Jesus’ disciples didn’t know what we know. And here I find the first remarkable aspect of the human story of the First Easter. The disciples believed Mary. Why did they believe her?
I have wondered the same question when I read the story in John 4 about Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Men believed her when she spoke of Jesus. Her reputation was more clouded than Mary Magdalene’s.
Mary Magdalene, Luke tells us, was one of several women who had been healed of evil spirits—seven of them, in fact. Somehow worse things have been imagined of her, that she was the woman caught in the act of adultery, or that she was the sinner woman of the streets who anointed and wept over and kissed Jesus’ feet as he reclined at dinner one evening, but all we know for sure was that Jesus had delivered Mary Magdalene of seven demons.
But the Samaritan woman Jesus met at the well had a well-earned reputation. She had been married five times and was living with a sixth man to whom she was not married. Her reputation as a woman was pretty grim. But when she went back to her town and said of Him, “Can this be the Christ?” men followed her back to Jesus. They believed her. Why?
It is the question that comes to me when I see the disciples’ response to Mary Magdalene. Why did they believe her?
Is it not so that the disciples believed Mary Magdalene as Samaritan men believed the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well because the witness of these two women had a credibility that went beyond cultural definition? The encounter they had with Jesus made an impression on their faces, on their tone of voice, so that it was unmistakable that what they said was true. There was no reflex that said, “Excitable women, you know!” There was no cynicism that pointed back to their reputation and said, “Consider the source!” People believed these two women in what they said about Jesus because their encounter with Him was evidently real. It spoke from their depths that they had seen Jesus.
This is the first thing that grabs me about the first announcement of the Gospel from the lips of Mary Magdalene. She was believable because she had a real encounter with Jesus.
Later on the same kind of experience made Jesus’ fearful disciples believe Saul of Tarsus. This man whose reputation was black with dried blood as an insatiable persecutor of Christians compelled belief when he spoke of Jesus crucified and risen because he saw the Lord. He said as Mary Magdalene said, “I have seen the Lord,” and it was believable because the encounter with Jesus on the Damascus’ road changed Saul of Tarsus from a persecutor of Christians, from one who hated the Jesus he did not know—into the Apostle Paul—who said, “I am crucified with Christ.”
Happily, the list of those who saw Jesus alive is very long. The list came to include even men whose witness tradition said was worth listening too. So Peter and Matthew and the other disciples, and five hundred more saw Him, so that the Good News began to spread, “The Lord is alive.” And it has reached us two thousand years later so that we believe it.
But not all who hear about Jesus believe in Him. Islam is growing more rapidly than Christianity. I wonder if part of the reason for this is that it is possible to spread the rumor of Jesus’ resurrection as a religious story, to climb aboard the train of those who say it happened, without having had an encounter with Jesus personally.
Christendom, seen from one angle, is a vast cultural system under the influence of the Gospel story. But you and I know well that much has happened in Christendom that is shameful. The story of Christianity is full of stories that make us cringe. There is a difference between being part of the cultural system called “Christendom,” and having a personal relationship with Jesus.
You and I cannot see Jesus, so it can’t be the same for us as it was for Mary Magdalene. But if you have seen yourself realistically, how self-centered you naturally are, because everyone of us is, and recognize what the effects of self-centeredness are, and you look up at the cross and ask why Jesus suffered there—and realize it was so that you don’t have to bear the responsibility, the guilt of self-centeredness, it is impossible not to be filled with gratitude to that Jesus who hung on the cross.
As Charles Wesley put it in his wonderful song, “Died He for me who caused His pain? How can it be?” If you have realized what Jesus did out of love for you, and you feel beginning pangs of gratitude inside, you have begun to have the kind of encounter with Jesus that Mary Magdalene had. And if you let that gratitude start to take control of your life, it will be evident in you, so that if you speak softly, gently, and graciously about Jesus, people will believe you too.
It all began with Mary Magdalene who said, “I have seen the Lord.” She was believable not just because the truth of her encounter with Jesus was stamped on her face but also because she had been devoted to Jesus since well before His death.
And here I find the second remarkable aspect of the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene. Not only was she believable because she saw Jesus after He rose from the grave, but also because there was a momentum of devotion to Him that everyone who knew Jesus well knew existed between her.
She is the first lesson by example we find in the Gospels of what it is like to be devoted to Jesus, and what are the effects of such devotion on other people.
You and I have seen religious fanatics of many kinds. A fanatic may be defined as someone who doubles his efforts when he has forgotten the cause. Christian history like the history of every religion is filled with fanatics who torment their bodies, or who hate those who are different than they are, or who devise odd ways of living that they imagine are essential to their cause.
Now we see in Iraq and Palestine a kind of Muslim fanaticism that curdles the blood. We’ve even seen on the Purdue campus Christian witnesses whose oddness is repulsive Those who stand with placards with hateful words do no good. But Mary Magdalene’s devotion to Jesus had none of this oddness.
There was a personal quality in her devotion to Jesus that looked very much like a deep friendship. Because this is what it was. This was unique in her day. In those days it just was not done. Whereas you and I live in a culture where men and women can be friends, it was not so then. I am grateful for you women and men who are beloved to me. Though it is evident in the Gospels that Mary Magdalene was close to Jesus and this was unheard of culturally, we read no hint of criticism either of Jesus or Mary.
So John did not blush to report Easter morning as he did. Mary’s first instinct when she realized that the man who spoke to her outside the empty tomb was to say “Rabboni,” which means, “My rabbi.” I imagine the love, the intensity of her tone of voice. And then she moved toward Jesus to hold him. This is the intensity of affection in a deep friendship.
In the Gospel of Philip that was found with other early Christian writings found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt fifty or so years ago, we read of Jesus’ affection for Mary Magdalene in words that are unseemly to us. But merely from the four Gospels in our New Testament we can’t help but notice that there was a deep friendship between Mary and Jesus.
This tells us something about life in the community of Jesus, as it ought to be because this is how it was with Jesus and those who loved Him.
Indeed, a great part of the believability of the Gospel today hinges on the evident affection of people in the community of faith. A church in which people do not evidently love each other will wither and die. A church where people evidently love each other will thrive. The centripetal force of loving each other is powerful.
Why did thousands believe in Jesus at Pentecost? Did it have anything to do with the unity in heart and mind of those who spoke of Jesus’ death and resurrection, under the impulse of the Holy Spirit? And did the Holy Spirit have this kind of access to the personalities of these people as they spoke of Jesus because they were of one heart and mind?
And might it be that what any congregation needs as the prerequisite to the kind of growth that matters is evident affection for one another?
Did not Jesus tell us that people would know we are His friends if we love one another? So that Church growth that really matters hinges not on programs and buildings or sparkling, dynamic personalities in the pulpit but on the believable witness of people who have evidently had a personal encounter with Jesus and who love one another.
Is it evident we love one another? Is it evident that your engagement and mine is not with that cultural thing called “Christendom,” but with Jesus—having looked at Him from the foot of the cross in gratitude? And having looked at Jesus the gratitude we feel to Him spills over into love instead of judgment of one another. This is very attractive to see.
This morning the first Bible reading was from the ancient prophet Hosea. I chose this passage because Christians from of old saw it as one of the key prophecies of Jesus’ resurrection: “On the third day he [God], will raise us up.” We are raised with Christ, Paul wrote. There is such refreshment in the whole tenor of these few verses. There is affection in the prophet’s tone of voice, “Come, and let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his going forth is sure as the dawn. He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”
Some of us here today need very much to return to the Lord. Some of us need the refreshing shower of a rain as fell last night. You have maybe heard things that stir a longing in your heart for an encounter with Jesus that you sense will arise from the gratitude you begin to feel. You long to be part of a community where love abounds, where the tensions and strife of daily life are exchanged for what your heart needs.
I urge you to act on what you feel. Let gratitude to Jesus replace whatever religious notions you might have had—as you’ve compared this or that approach to religion and in bewilderment turned away from them all. Let affection follow your gratitude. If this comes hard determine to forgive those who have offended you no more than you have offended them. Let it become your habit of life. This is the Gospel delivered to us by Mary Magdalene.
Come; let us return to the Lord that he may heal us. Let us pray: O Lord we return with your servant Mary to the cross and look up; and we come with her to the tomb and say, “Rabboni,” my teacher, my friend. Help us too to see the Lord, to love Him and to love one another. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
April 13, 2006
We Would See Jesus
John 12: 1-8, 20-21
Maundy Thursday
April 13th, 2006
We got back last night from our trip south to celebrate the life of my mother, and then to lay her beside my father in a grave in a cemetery between orange groves in mid-south Florida. The gravestone is so modest. The real memorial of their lives lives on elsewhere in the hearts of many whose lives they touched.
I had a lot of time to think as I sat behind the wheel of our Ford.
First, let me say how grateful Bonnie and I are to you for your out-pouring of affection to us in this solemn time of our lives. You have underwritten the Post Office budget for this year in buying so many stamps to mail the deluge of cards we received. We do thank you.
As I drove those 2500 miles or so in the past few days I pondered two of the stories of Jesus' life as His Passion-time drew near. Twice we see Jesus involved in demonstrations of care that are enormous clues to what is central to Christianity. The first of these demonstrations of care is described in the opening verses of John 12. Their Mary of Bethany lavishes on Jesus' feet an outpouring of costly ointment of pure nard. The second appears in John 13. There Jesus gets up from the table in the course of a meal and does something as unusual to His disciples as what Mary of Bethany did to Him. He, the Son of God, their Master, their teacher, their Lord, got down on his knees before each one and washed their feet. In both cases everyone watched aghast at what was going on.
In these two deeds the heart of the Christian life is demonstrated. In the first we see what it looks like to really love Jesus. In the second we see what it really looks like to serve in Jesus' name. Both demonstrations are anything but token acts. Martha, Lazarus, and everyone in the house at Bethany knew that Mary was devoting loving attention to Jesus. She stood near to him, opening and applying with her hands from His ankles to His toes this ointment that everyone knew was extremely expensive.
What she did was offensive to those with an eye to financial responsibility. It was also offensive to those who had a less exuberant idea of how to love Jesus.
What Jesus did to His disciples was offensive to Peter, we know, because he protested. But we have reason to suspect every one of the disciples felt something very awkward was happening, to have the Lord of Glory washing their dirty feet, drying them carefully with a towel. This was such an unseemly act that disciples of Jesus ever since have continued the tradition of embarrassment at it.
A few small sects of Christians have done as Jesus said to do, and the Pope too on Maundy Thursday. But nearly every one else has balked at taking the command of Jesus that we do for one another as He did, even though the grammar of these verses in John 13 could not be more clear. "If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you."
Some years ago I wrote an article on "The Ignored Sacrament" and sent it to that very Reformed publication, Theology Matters. I laid bare that our idea of a Sacrament is something Jesus specifically commanded His followers to do, e.g., Baptism and the Lord's Supper . . . and washing one another's feet! The article was mailed back to me by the Bible-thumping folk at Theology Matters with comments to the effect that they probably wouldn't publish a piece like this. We Reformed types don't do this. Why? Uh . . . They are not the only Reformed Protestants whose idea of the authority of Scripture has boundaries set by custom.
We have replaced the exuberant demonstrations of genuine affection given to us in the Gospels for tepid gestures that try to hide what actually seethes beneath the surface in our communities. If our exhibit of love for each other is what Christian life together really is, then there is little to advertise worth the notice. If singing words we mostly do not really mean in our hymns is the most exuberant form our love for God takes, it is unclear why we should proclaim the Gospel.
But we should proclaim the Gospel, and in doing so dare to discover among ourselves the way of life it offers. It is a life of unending gratitude. It is a life of obedience prompted by gratitude. It is a life of love that demands a focus. Since we cannot see and touch God, this love requires other people to absorb the love we long to give to God. This is the joyful Good News we have to offer, that is offered us in the Gospels.
Each of the Gospels has a parallel to the story of Mary anointing Jesus' feet with precious ointment. Matthew 26 and Mark 14 have an unnamed woman anointing Jesus' head rather than His feet in a home in Bethany near the time of His Passion. Mark, the first Gospel to be written, tells us that Simon the Leper invited Jesus for dinner, a kindly act of friendship. But it is the woman who steals the show. She comes to Jesus as He reclines on the couch, as was the custom in those days at dinner in well-to-do homes, and breaks open an alabaster flask containing "ointment of pure nard, very costly."
Alabaster is a stone-like material. She did not take off a lid from the flask, but broke open that sealed bottle. There was the sound of breaking as well as the smell of that ointment in the room. And Jesus sat there quietly, absorbing her affection as the men in the house stared in disbelief.
Matthew tells us much the same, leaving out that the ointment was "very costly." But we get the idea that it was expensive from the same report of His disciples protest at this extravagance. Both Gospels report that Jesus said of this woman's deed: "Wherever the Gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her." Why? What do you suppose is so important about what she did that it should be reported everywhere and every time the Gospel is told?
I have the hunch that Jesus wanted it to be clear that telling Jesus, "I love you," for real involves a lot more than singing pretty songs about Him. It involves a lot more than saying we believe the warp and woof of our orthodox theologies, or offering token religious acts here and there, now and then, when it fits into our packed schedules. Really loving Jesus from the heart will prompt a costly deed that may even look offensive to those with a lesser regard for Him. And Jesus gave us a hint that maybe if we intend to serve Him, to care for Him, unless it is done with such exuberance, it hasn't really been done at all. From Matthew 25 we learn that the ones who are to receive this exuberant care comprise a circle very wide, including all those we see who are in need—the imprisoned, the naked, the hungry, the thirsty, all those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." How consuming a thing it really is to be a Christian.
Luke's Gospel places a like encounter with a loving woman earlier in Jesus' ministry but adds details explaining why there was such an outpouring of affection to Jesus. There we're told it was a "woman of the city, who was a sinner." And look what this sinner woman of the city did: "standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment."
I can just see the Committee on Ministry of the Presbytery starting to squirm. Indeed, everyone watching this happen squirmed, except Jesus. As Jesus' host, Simon watched this uninhibited demonstration of affection on Jesus' feet he thought to himself: "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner." He said this to Himself, but his thoughts were plastered all over his face. Jesus said to Simon, "Simon, I've got something to say to you." And then Jesus told the parable of the two debtors, one who knew he owed a little and one who knew he owed a lot. The creditor forgave them both. Jesus asked Simon, "Simon, which debtor do you think loved the creditor more, the one whose small debt was erased or the one whose large dept was erased?" Of course, Simon replied that the latter had more reason to be grateful.
Then Jesus hit the punch line of His story with a jackhammer. "Simon, when I came into your house you gave me no water to wash my feet, but this woman wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment." Jesus went on to say something to Simon that echoes through time, if we will hear it.
Those who know how much they have been forgiven will be much more grateful than those who think they have little need for forgiveness. The reason why this story is to be told wherever the Gospel is explained is twofold: First, a reasonable faith in Jesus starts with massive gratitude. We have been forgiven enough sin that merits hell, and have been given in exchange, heaven. But the second point I think Jesus wanted us to notice was important too: If we know and believe we have been forgiven much it is normal to even be a bit extravagant in expressing our thanks. To whom? We can't see Jesus, so express this gratitude to those you can see. Let the Christian community seethe with affection. Let the Christian communities brim with the kind of life that happens when really thankful people get together.
For the most part how minimal, how token are the expressions of gratitude we offer. Who, watching us would say, "It is obvious that he/she is grateful to Jesus." Somehow the idea of exuberant thanks has become lost, but whenever we see it, it catches our notice.
One of my favorite movies expresses this extravagance of gratitude as the core of the story. "Babbett's Feast" tells of a French woman, a chef with the highest skill in culinary arts, who for reasons I didn't quite understand had to flee her country. She went to Denmark and was taken in to serve in a small Christian sect. For years she cooked and cleaned. Then she won a lottery for which she had bought a ticket when she lived in France. Suddenly she had a windfall of money. What would she do with it? For reasons I don't understand she asked to prepare a feast for this small sect. She used her newly found wealth to buy the most costly ingredients for a meal, to be served on exquisite china, silver ware and crystal glasses. The napkins were of the finest linen. The feast cost all she had won. As we watch the solemn guests of this little sect eat this meal slowly they realize that something extraordinary was before them. But what I noticed had little to do with the response of those who enjoyed the meal. It was the meal itself that struck me.
It struck me as an example of the quality of thanks we would be delighted to offer to God if we caught the idea of real gratitude. It struck me that since we can't see God, since we can't see Jesus, the only ones on whom we can shower this gratitude is one another, and on the needy of this world. If only we got the idea!
We need to rediscover the idea that apparently was lost not long after Christianity began in the days after the Resurrection. Mary Magdalene caught the idea, and I want to speak of her on Easter morning. What if we were to replace that undercurrent of mutual blame and discontent with one another with an outpouring of gratitude to God—extended to the only ones it is possible for us to see! "What if," two words we could so easily exchange for "This is how we are." And then what would be the appeal of the Gospel?
But the love that reflects true gratitude easily evaporates from our life together. In the first of seven letters the risen Christ addresses to churches in one of the early heartlands of Christianity, the Lord says, "I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men . . . but I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first . . . If you do not change I will come to you and remove your lamp-stand from its place" (Revelation 2: 2-5).
I have the feeling that the Lord looks at our subtle orthodoxies and says, "I have this against you; you have lost the love you had at first." And, despite how we may have resisted the "acids of modernity" that have tampered with the careful orthodoxies that have evolved in the Apostolic train, we who live out such loveless Christianity might well expect to hear Him say to us, "I will come to you and remove your lamp-stand from its place."
How might we recover the love that once was the chief characteristic of the Christian faith and of the life together of Christians? How can we rediscover genuine gratitude? How can we unfetter our inhibitions in making it clear we love one another as the way to show God we love Him?
Some Greeks came to Phillip, one of Jesus' disciples, and said to Him, "We would see Jesus." This is what people have in mind that come to Faith Church from outside. They come here looking for Jesus. What do they see? Supposing they saw us reflecting the exuberant love of the women who anointed Jesus' feet with costly ointment? We cannot do it to Jesus, but we can reflect that love in the place where Jesus said we must—to one another. How are you doing? How are we doing? It is this that Maundy Thursday asks us to ask ourselves? "A new commandment," Jesus said, "I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you." How are we doing? How are you doing?
Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, whom Mary loved with a costly gift with unhidden affection, help us to love you in the way you would have us love you. Grant that we may see Jesus in the face of one another, and in the faces of those Jesus loved, whom others did not love. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Posted by faithpres at 07:30 PM
April 02, 2006
The Discipline of Jesus
I Kings 19: 10-14, 19-21
John 1: 35-51
April 2nd, 2006
This morning I want us to think about the discipline of Jesus.
Discipline sounds like such a harsh word. It means punishment, doesn’t it, what happens after you’ve messed up? It makes us think of “spare the rod and spoil the child,” of a red-faced dad with a switch in his hand standing over a cowering child. Maybe more gently it reminds you of sitting in the corner for a “time out” when you were naughty. At worst it makes us think of our crowded prisons filled with Americans caught and disciplined, punished for violating the American way in one way or another, learning in prison what it is harmful to know. What unmitigated sorrows multiply from our worst ideas of discipline!
But the discipline of Jesus is very different. “My yoke is easy, my burden is light,” Jesus taught. “Come, learn of me.” Discipline comes from the word “disciple.” The Greek word for disciple is mathetes—one who learns.
Jesus’ disciples learned by watching Him. For three years they watched Jesus’ every move. We rarely read of Jesus scolding the disciples. He scolded a couple of them for wanting to be top dogs. He scolded Peter once pretty severely. But maybe if I asked you if Jesus scolded His disciples you’d say, “I don’t think so.”
Jesus’ first disciples watched Him intently. For three years they listened as He spoke to all kinds of people and they learned how to speak from listening to Him. For three years they learned by osmosis not only what He said but also how He said it. What Jesus said and how He said it were a winsome combination. They called Him “Teacher.” He was a great teacher. How remarkable that Jesus started with twelve in a three-year course and ended with eleven; the one that dropped out flunked himself. For three years these learners had their natural personalities gradually molded to reflect the character of Jesus.
When Jesus was ready to leave He told them, “Continue to do what you’ve seen me do.” From then on the best of them said as Paul put it, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” Here’s how Christians are to learn, by imitation.
This is the Christian way, to imitate Jesus, to learn of Him. What is your idea of the Christian way? Sometimes we disagree over what is the Christian way. We have looked around a lot and we have looked in the mirror a lot to get our ideas about being Jesus’ disciple.
Each Sunday I remind you how it is. “The God of peace [will] make you perfect in every good work to do His will.” I repeat this each week for a purpose. I hope we get the idea.
But this will come after we’ve watched Jesus a minimum of three years, actually for a lifetime. Just keep on watching. Come here on Sunday morning to watch and hear. Come together in your home studies to watch and listen. Begin your day with your Bible open; listen and watch. Somehow, defective as we are, we’re also to learn from watching one another. In one way or another “The God of peace will make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing to the Lord.”
This wonderful saga, unfolding here and everywhere that Jesus is preached began as we read of it in the Gospel of John this morning. Jesus had been standing in line to be baptized by John the Baptist. John recognized who Jesus was, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
When John pointed toward Jesus his followers recognized it was really Jesus from whom they wanted to learn. So they transferred to Jesus. The first two disciples of John to move to Jesus were Andrew and Simon.
We know very little about Andrew, though he apparently came to have wide influence. The St. Andrew’s cross, the saltire, is one of the national flags of Scotland.
When Jesus saw Andrew’s brother Simon, He changed his name right away, “You shall be called Cephas,” the Aramaic word for stone. In Greek Cephas meant Petros or Peter, which means rock, the name we know for this burly fisherman-disciple. What do you think Simon thought as he heard Jesus continue to call him Cephas, “rock?” Me? A rock? Me? Impulsive me? A rock? Time after time, day after day he heard Jesus call him “Cephas,” rock, until he began to believe it and act like it.
Some have thought that the name Simon was a Greek form of the Hebrew name Simeon. But my classical dictionary tells me that Semon, which is how the word is really spelled here was the Laconic form of the word themon which means “heap.” What does this suggest? A heap? A little mound of dirt? A pile of sand? Whatever, we have no doubt what rock means. From now on Simon “the heap” would be Peter the strong, firm as a rock.
Then Jesus found Philip, a fellow whose parents named him after the father of Alexander the Great, Philip of Macedon. In those days parents chose names not just because they liked the sound. Did they want Philip to be a great leader? First he became a great follower, a disciple, a learner of Jesus. We know little about him. We wonder if he is the one mentioned in Acts 8 who taught an Ethiopian dignitary to trust in Jesus. Later in Acts we read of Philip, the evangelist whose daughters became evangelists too. They are called prophetesses. They spoke of Jesus too.
Then evangelist Philip found Nathaniel and told him, “We have found him of whom Moses and the prophets spoke.” But Nathaniel scoffed, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said, “Come and see.”
Jesus liked what he saw in this skeptical fellow. “Look, an Israelite in whom there is no guile.” That is, “this skeptical guy is a straight shooter.” It is Nathaniel who first said to Jesus what He hoped all his disciples would learn after He was finished with them.” “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Jesus said remarkable things to this skeptical fellow. What variety we see among the first four people Jesus chose to learn of Him. None of them were yet called Christians. That would come much later. All they had was their own names but they looked intently at Jesus. A pretty good way to start. But we must move on.
Bert read to us this morning from I Kings 19 about Elijah the great Old Testament prophet. It is a remarkable passage in which we see a very discouraged man. He feels alone. He looked at the people of Israel and saw they had forsaken God’s covenant, torn down the altars, killed the prophets with swords, and only he was left--alone. From Elijah pastors have coined the term “Elijah complex,” for those who are worn out and think the ministry is a futile life.
But from Elijah we learn the wonderful lesson of what to listen for from God. How many Christians who felt alone and wished God would speak to them have read verses 11-12. Elijah went up on a mountain to hear from God. A strong wind blew, and then came an earthquake, but God was not in either the wind or the earthquake. Then there came fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire came a still, small voice. And when Elijah heard that still small voice, he wrapped his face with his jacket in humility. He knew God had spoken in that small voice. Maybe the voice said, “I am the Lord, do not be afraid.”
When I read of this quiet, small voice with which God reassured Elijah I think of how Jesus taught His disciples. His voice was gentle and He did not carry a big stick. We don’t know much about Elijah. He pops onto the stage of Israel’s history a grown man. We read that he was a Tishbite, but you ask, “What’s a Tishbite?” It means he came from Tishbe—wherever that is. But it doesn’t matter where he came from, who his parents were—just as it does not matter for you or me. What mattered was his name.
Elijah’s name was his message. Elijah meant, “My God is the Lord.” Every time people said his name they heard, “My God is the Lord.” His name was important to hear because most people in Israel no longer worshiped “the Lord.” The Lord was how we refer to the name of God, YHWH. Most people found the way the Lord had taught through Moses far less attractive than the ways of the people that surrounded them.
People then were like people now, influenced by what they see, by what’s going on around them. Ever since the days of King Solomon who brought foreign deities to Israel along with his multitude of wives, the people of Israel had ample opportunity to compare the ways of God with the ways of the surrounding deities. And quite frankly, the ways of the Lord could get boring and burdensome. And Baal worship had some pretty alluring elements to it. This worship could get pretty spicy, in fact. In fact, it could get as alluring as spring break in Cancun. There was more to it than this, but for reasons we don’t understand Israel faced the steady downward pull of other gods than the Lord.
So Elijah’s job was to live before Israel saying every time he told his name, “My God is the Lord.” Without priests to help him worship right, all by himself he tried to live the way God had taught his people long ago through Moses. And it got very tiring.
It’s always hard to go against the grain. It’s wearying. It can be very lonely. Elijah often felt under attack. In fact, he was under attack and had to hide. In many ways his life was just like Jesus’ life, who faced opposition in many ways as He tried to live the way of life God had revealed through Moses. It was a way of life much more than it was a system of sacrifices and ritual observances. The ways God taught through Moses had as their goal to re-form people inwardly.
We haven’t time to explore this here. Instead we pass to the end of the story where Elijah finds a fellow who was plowing a field with twelve pairs of oxen. This fellow had an important name. Elisha meant, “My God saves.” His name was a message to Israel as much as Elijah’s was. Elijah invited Elisha to follow him. Elisha replied, First let me go back and say good-bye to my parents. Not only that, he sacrificed the oxen he had been plowing with. No longer would he be a farmer. He would continue what Elijah had begun, difficult as this life would be. There would be no turning back.
There is a song we used to sing that is in our green supplemental hymnal, #37, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back. Though none should join me, still I will follow. No turning back. No turning back.”
We often think of Jesus’ call of His disciples and Elijah’s call to Elisha as images of being followers of Jesus. And in thinking this way we are both right and for most of us, wrong.
Few of us will be called to leave our way of life when we set out to learn from Jesus. Not very many of us are called to sacrifice our oxen as Elisha did, to drop our nets and leave our boats as Jesus’ disciples did to follow Him. If you are a teacher, or a doctor, or a sales person, or if you work in a factory, deciding to follow Jesus does not mean quitting your job. In fact, just the opposite. You start to learn of Jesus right where you are and show right where you are what Jesus is like. Maybe it will take three years before you start to get the hang of it. Three years of looking at Jesus. Three years of listening to Him. At least three years of focusing on Him, using every means available to learn of Him—right where you are. In this we are mostly unlike Elisha and the disciples of Jesus.
But there is a way in which everyone who will learn of Jesus is like His disciples, like Elisha who followed Elijah. If we are His disciples, there will be no turning back. In one way we drop our nets, we sacrifice those oxen with which we were plowing—which means that we are occupied differently than we were before. But we will stay where are and learn of Jesus where we are.
A problem we all face is that the word “Christian” is used very commonly and rather without precision. But suppose that one used the word “pianist” in the same way. Suppose that it was popular to call oneself a pianist without even trying to learn to play the piano. Suppose a fashion got going of calling oneself a pianist so that the land was filled with “pianists,” but only a few people had any interest in playing the piano. Some of my piano teacher friends tell me that there are would-be piano players who don’t like to practice. And it’s no fun to teach or listen to a wannabe piano player who doesn’t want to practice.
And you cannot be a Christian without practice either. Practice what? Practice saying Christian-sounding words? Practice chumming with people who think as you do? Practice what? This is the problem we face. Jesus said, “Come learn of me.” Jesus said, “You are my friends if you do what I have commanded you.” But we have said, “I find practice hard, so I’ll not do it. I’ll call myself a pianist without practicing. I am a Christian even if I don’t really want to be a disciple—a learner.”
If we have begun to learn of Jesus even our names will remind people of the Lord. For a lot of people in the marketplace the term “Christian” may even draw disdain. But when they say the name of people who have begun to learn of Jesus, their name suggests the same thing that Elijah’s name suggested: “My God is the Lord.” If you are learning of Jesus, and show it, then your name will stand for what Elisha’s name stood for, “My God saves,” because it will be evident—something about you has been healed—your personality, your character is in process of being healed. “John,” “George,” “Sandy,” “Carol” will be names that have a connotation you give—if you are learning of Jesus.
“Come learn of me,” Jesus said. Perhaps it was Priscilla who blessed early Jewish Christians, “The God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, through the blood of the everlasting covenant will make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight.” And as this is happening, and if this is happening in you, then you are learning of Jesus—that is, you are a disciple of Jesus.
Perhaps we should think of ourselves not as Christians but as disciples—but not as a technical denominational title. What am I? I’m a learner, a person in training, a person looking at Jesus, the Author of my faith. What are you? I pray you are a learner, a person in training. Let us be a people in training, looking at, listening to Jesus. Let us learn of him. This is the discipline of Jesus—to learn of Him and thus to prove that we are disciples.
Let us pray: O Lord Jesus, make clear to us who cannot now see you what is your way that we may learn of you and so prove to be your disciples. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM