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April 27, 2003
Should Old Clothes be Patched?
Should Old Clothes be Patched?
Psalm 16 / Proverbs 15: 13-23
Luke 5: 33-39
April 27th, 2003
Every generation faces collisions between the new and the old. People of my generation, “baby boomers”, I think we’re called, are sometimes startled at you Y-generation folk. I walk on the Purdue campus on a warm Spring day and do a double take when I see what young men and women will wear in public. Students watch me walk by in my necktie and sport coat. “What a dinosaur!” Young fellows my age feel funny being thought of as dinosaurs. What I wear was quite a hit in the 1960s.
What’s going on is not really a collision between the old and the new, because what is new today is mostly a rehash of something old. In women’s fashions, necklines and hemlines are forever like a yo-yo, going up and down. Men warble between frumpy and tidy. Goatees and ear-rings were popular in Shakespeare’s day. What is old now once seemed new. What seems new was popular ages ago. As the observant and sometimes grumpy old preacher says in the Book of Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.”
These things came to mind as I pondered the collision between Jesus and the religious leadership of His day as described in the Gospel of Luke this morning. “Why do your disciples eat and drink when our disciples and John the Baptist’s disciples are known for fasting and praying?” Jesus was introducing something apparently new, challenging the popular religious practices of public fasting and public praying. Jesus and His disciples ate and drank with sinners, in fact.
Instinctively we imagine that we side with Jesus against the Pharisees who asked this question, but we are far more in the Pharisees’ camp than we realize. And we understand Jesus’ response to them far less than we realize.
The Pharisees’ question was very reasonable, given their understanding of the purpose of religion. The purpose of religion had developed considerably since God revealed His plans to Moses and the prophets. The great rules God gave Israel were not ends in themselves, just means to an end. They forgot.
The end, the goal of life with God was “fullness of joy.” It still is. The vocabulary of the Hebrew Bible is rich with words for joy, the goal of life with God. The psalmist wrote, “I will go to God my exceeding joy.” Ezra and Nehemiah told people not to weep when they heard for the first time the Word of God, “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” The prophet Isaiah proclaimed that “Jerusalem was to be a rejoicing and her people a delight.”
Jesus remembered that this was the goal of life with God, so He encouraged His disciples to eat and to drink when they were hungry and thirsty. It’s strange that they had to find the company of sinners to do this, but it was the sinners who invited them, and not often the religious leaders. Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”
Sinners in their sinning are often trying to find abundant life, joy. They’re not very wise, however, in their search. Most sins are bad stabs at joy. I wonder if Jesus went to sinners because at least they had the right idea, though they were going after joy in a way they’d never find it. Jesus found it easier to guide people to joy who still wanted joy, than to make some religious people want joy. What a joyless thing religion had become. So often it still is.
The life and faith of God’s people, Israel, didn’t go according to plan. Joy faded from the curriculum of the would-be righteous. In place of joy the negative aspects of religious duty grabbed center stage. Fasting, a sign of mourning, became an essential public act. Prayer, the communion of the heart with God, stepped from the serenity of the closet into the bustle of the Temple. Prayer became formal. Gone was the goal of joy, God’s intent for His people. What the Pharisees thought was the old-time religion, good enough for them, was a tiny fragment of the ancient way, put under a microscope, and then projected onto the big screen of life.
I remember what the prophet Jeremiah told his people 2700 years ago. “Thus says the Lord, stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” Then people replied to him, “We will not walk in it.”
Jesus remembered the ancient paths, the good way, where rest was available for the soul. When He invited people, “Come to me and find rest,” it was an invitation to the ancient path, the path wending its way to fullness of joy. But popular religion in Jesus’ day forgot that really ancient path.
How impressive the followers of John and the Pharisees were with their patina of sobriety, their long faces, all these evidences of how serious they were. They fasted, and people were aware of it. They gave up eating twice a week because they thought it was the right thing to do. When they fasted, they let God and other people know how serious they were. Why all this fasting anyway?
Mondays and Thursdays were fast days because it was on a Monday that Moses went up on Mt. Sinai to get the Law, and on a Thursday he came down. How careful they were to remember those two important days in Moses’ life! They fasted to remember when Jerusalem was destroyed, and when the first Temple was destroyed. They fasted when they prayed for rain. Though God gave us food to enjoy, not eating became a sacrament. Not eating became very important among seriously religious people.
Why didn’t Jesus and His disciples fast, they asked? The Pharisees really wondered. The disciples of John the Baptist fasted. Jesus fasted too, of course, when it was important. It’s just that He didn’t advertise it when He did. He began His work with a forty-day fast, all alone in the desert. He taught His disciples that they should fast to prepare for heavy responsibility. Fasting is an act of self-discipline that helps to bring focus to your heart and mind. Once when Jesus’ disciples could not cast out the demon from a little boy, Jesus told them “this kind comes out only with prayer and fasting.” He meant that they had been too casual in approaching such a demand as this. Big duties call for serious preparation.
But fasting and praying were preparations to be done in secret or they lost their power. Jesus said, “When you fast, don’t proclaim it by moping around. When you pray, get into your closet and be with God alone.”
The Pharisees who watched Jesus had no way of knowing whether Jesus or His disciples fasted, because they were looking for the outward signs of fasting—long faces, dowdy clothes. What was conspicuous to them was Jesus and His disciples eating and drinking with sinners. Good people don’t eat and drink with sinners, they thought. Good people perform religious exercises—like fasting.
Jesus surprised his pious critics by replying to their challenge about fasting, “You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?” What did that have to do with the question, they wondered. What wedding? What bridegroom? They may have thought back to the parts of their Bible that refer to Israel as God’s bride, but what did that have to do with Jesus and His disciples not fasting?
Jesus illustrated His point by giving two illustrations. First, you don’t sew new patches onto old clothing because the new cloth won’t match the old—it won’t look any good. And the old cloth will tear when a new patch shrinks. Second, you don’t put new wine into old wineskins because the new wine will ferment and burst the old wineskins. Luke doesn’t tell us how the Pharisees responded to these two illustrations. Maybe they rubbed their heads. “Say what?” they asked.
What did Jesus mean? What Jesus meant then is as essential to life for us today as it was then. And the problem he addressed then is as modern as ever.
Jesus wasn’t calling for new religious practices at all. He said the old wine is best. Religion itself is only a wineskin, a container. The pendulum keeps on swinging back and forth in styles of containers. Christianity moves back and forth between very well ordered worship and free-form worship as if it’s the form that counts. We move between relaxed standards of behavior and Puritanism. Devout Protestants today do without a blush what devout Protestants in my youth considered sinful. What we need is the old wine, Jesus still says.
Some people nowadays are discovering the beauty of liturgical worship who once only knew looser forms. Other people who grew up with a beautiful liturgy discover the exuberance of freeform worship and dive in to the “new” way. A contemporary author has written a book about “Blended Worship,” that tries to mix the old with the new. But this is only toying with the wineskin.
When Jesus spoke of putting a new patch on an old garment, He may have been talking about our tendency of trying to improve our religion by trying on new styles of worship. What we need is not a rock ‘n roll band to replace the pipe organ, but to discover fullness of joy. When you try to stir interest in religion by jazzing up the service, it may appeal to some people and not appeal to others. But guitars and drums don’t guarantee us joy.
The joy Jesus felt and that He introduced could not be contained in the old wineskins of religion. He did not say, get rid of the laws of Moses. “I came not to destroy, but to fulfill the law,” He said. Jesus didn’t mean get rid of the moral law. Not a jot or a tittle of that would pass away either. He didn’t mean necessarily get rid of anything except the idea that we please God with long faces and routines of religion that we practice as ends in themselves.
What is joy? It is genuine gladness at being alive. It is looking forward to the day because of the sense of God’s blessing on life. Joy brings, unconsciously, a feeling of self-worth. It brings genuine esteem for others, genuine compassion for those who hurt. Joy is accessible to all personality types because all people want to be happy. Joy is happy. Joy is happiness that does not depend on favorable circumstances. Joy is anchored in the eternal God.
Some years ago an Episcopal layman, Keith Miller, wrote a little book called “The Taste of New Wine, in which he described a fresh movement that was sweeping across denominational lines, bringing life where life had faded from the church. In this movement the author found that “Christ is tearing out the partitions in people’s souls between vocation, church, and home and making a one room dwelling place for Himself in their whole lives.”
Though this book was written nearly forty years ago, it rings true still. The beginning point for the taste of what is really the old wine, the taste of joy waits until we are honest with ourselves. So long as we are satisfied with appearances, we will avoid the reality of joy. I have the feeling very often that we expect little more than appearances. And I sometimes feel as a pastor that my job is making sure that we keep up the appearances.
There are various kinds of approved appearances—some are theological, some have to do with life style and diet, some have to do with social life, or with appearances of philanthropy. We try to keep approved in the categories we think important.
Jesus wanted the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist to admit what they really knew, that keeping up the appearances was not good enough. It failed to find joy. “At thy right hand are pleasures forevermore,” their Scriptures told them. But their religion offered mostly a dull life, self approval with a lot of judgment toward others. Very little, if any, joy.
I would like to make four suggestions in conclusion this morning that aim at joy. First, I invite you to step out from the familiar comfort zone in which you now are and take a risk. In the congregation this morning are many different kinds of comfort zones. Step out from your comfort zone that leaves you a fallow Christian. Think honestly. Are you living as unto yourself, basking in self-approval, or are you self-consciously living for God’s glory and for the encouragement of others. Is there joy in your life--love of yourself, love of God, in the groove you have carved for yourself?
Second, begin to do something you have been reluctant to try. I invite you to come on Wednesday morning to pray with us. It will be worth it to you to set your alarm to join us. I am convinced that something rare will happen at Faith Church when Wednesday morning finds many of us here together, at some personal inconvenience, to pray together. You need the discipline of doing something that goes beyond your comfort zone. Begin the discipline of praying with us. Some of you need to risk being at an event whose only purpose is to pray.
Third, discover others in the congregation with whom you will share your life deliberately. Look around you this morning. Begin during the fellowship hour today. Invite another family to your home. Don’t wait to be invited. Take the initiative. Eat together around the table in your dining room or kitchen. Talk together. Pray together. Start a project of service together, something small, something useful. Read the Bible together. And, hard as it is, pray together—asking God’s blessing on your new fellowship. Keep it going. There is nothing less Christian than an isolated Christian. In this intimate fellowship begin to share your life with one another.
Fourth, begin a private life of private devotion. Discover your closet. And if you find this hard, give me the privilege of being a resource for you. This may be my most important usefulness to you.
God has good old wine to pour into us. Will you become a part of this venture of faith? Our Bible says, “Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the things God has prepared for them that love Him.” I am eager that you and I discover the things God has prepared for us.
Let us pray: O Lord, pour into us the refreshment you hold ready in your hand. Grant to us the taste of new wine. Grant to us the joy that you offer those who love you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2003
The Gladdest Day in History
The Gladdest Day in History
Psalm 18: 46-50 / Job 19: 23-26
Luke 23: 56b-24: 12
April 20th, 2003 (Easter)
Several times in recent weeks I’ve told friends who were about to turn fifty years old that they were entering the best decade of life. You really young people might think that ridiculous, but I think I’m right. For a lot of us at fifty the face is still recognizable as the kid in high school. But you’re wiser than you were at eighteen. So for ten years you have as much of the best of both worlds as you can get in this life: some maturity, with a body still somewhat youthful.
Whether you understand or agree with me on this score, you all know it’s true that we change over time. And it’s not all physical change. Life experiences change us. I attended my 30th high school reunion a few years ago and came away thinking I’d not go back to another one. I saw much more than that the super-athletes didn’t look very athletic still, and that the cheerleaders weren’t all narrow as an arrow still where high school girls often are. Classmates I remembered to be fun-loving I found guarded and cynical. I saw sad faces where I remembered happy faces. I also saw that some of the geeky, social misfits had blossomed into charming personalities, my best friend, for example.
I saw how the trajectory of certain kinds of personalities play out. Some cocky kids developed courtesy, while others became the adult version of a not very winsome teenager. I saw a few girls I remembered as shy and friendly who had unfolded into beautiful, kind woman. We change.
The change is sometimes painful. Not a few people reap what they did not sow; life brought bewildering hard knocks. They need the patience of Job to make it. Job needed the patience of Job, in fact.
The passage from the Book of Job we have come to associate with Easter from Handel’s “Messiah,” finds this ancient victim of terrible circumstances at the end of his rope. We use the term “Job’s comforters” for friends who get preachy when bad times come. Job’s friend, Bildad, the Shuhite—whom we used to call the shortest man in the Bible—tells Job he earned his problems. “the wicked . . . are thrust into a net by their own feet.” As the prophet Isaiah said, “Woe unto the wicked, it shall be ill with them. They will receive the consequences of their deeds.”
Sometimes this is true, but it wasn’t true in Job’s case. And it’s not always so for you and me. And it’s never comforting in the time of your deepest distress that someone tells you, “You sowed the wind, now you’re reaping your whirlwind.” You deserve what you got.
Job responded to his boorish comforter. “It’s not true.”
I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth,
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God.
Whereas Job surely meant that eventually someone would come along to vindicate him, to prove that he did not earn the bad things that happened to him, Christians have read this and recognized something much more than that. In his misery Job said something more significant than he could have dreamed possible. The Hebrew word for “redeemer” goel, has come to mean The Redeemer—Jesus. God guides the growth of meaning of words. At a time when the doctrine of the resurrection was not full-blown, Job speaks as though he understands fully the doctrine of the resurrection. “In my flesh I will see God.” But it was a plea to a righteous judge, a fair judge who would prove Job did not earn his suffering.
Christians very early after Jesus’ resurrection read the words Job blurted out in his time of suffering, and God comforted them through these words. Jesus was the ultimate Redeemer. And every time we hear that beautiful soprano aria in Handel’s “Messiah,” –“I know that my Redeemer liveth,” our hearts echo “Amen,” looking back at that first Easter morning. Jesus was the Redeemer of whom Job spoke. This Redeemer who was dead came alive. Our Redeemer lives, and so we sing, “Because He lives I can face tomorrow. . . Life is worth the living because He lives.”
But what happened to Jesus’ body at the resurrection, and what will happen to us when we are raised with Him at the final resurrection? Why do we talk as though the resurrection is such an exciting thing? Why do we want “eternal life” anyway? We think of death as a sad thing, but very often death is a release, a kind thing. Come with me to the nursing homes on Sunday afternoons. You’ll know what I mean for sure. John Henry Newman prayed so eloquently,
O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over and our work is done. Then of Thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.
The resurrection was far more than Jesus’ body coming alive again. Though it is obvious that Jesus’ body came back to life. Let’s be clear about that. His heart was beating; His lungs breathing. He was able to eat, to be touched. It was no apparition that Mary Magdalene saw outside the tomb on Easter morning. Peter ran to see. Jesus’ body wasn’t in the tomb because only dead people are inside tombs.
But Jesus was not only alive now, He had been changed—not just from death to life but to a new quality of life. The Gospel of Mark tells us after His resurrection Jesus appeared in “another form.” His mortality put on immortality. As Paul spoke of us, so it was of Jesus, “This mortal must put on immortality.” What is immortality? It’s far more than hearts beating forever.
On the first Easter God did not turn the one-way street from birth to death into a two-way street. That would only mean moving backwards towards infancy, an endless boomerang of birth to death.
But I do remember that Jesus taught us that we have to retrace our steps to infancy in one way and be “born again.” When Jesus taught that, Nicodemas, a learned Jew, was puzzled. “How can anyone get back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” How can we start all over this way? He took Jesus a lot more seriously than many Christians do.
Some folk talk a bit glibly about being “born again.” God certainly had much more in mind than it seems many people have in mind when they say “born again Christian.” When God talks about making all things new, He means it. You and I recognize the difference between something new and something old. You don’t make an old car new with a paint job. And you don’t slap a Jesus-label on the old life and make it a new life.
The Apostle Paul recognized that though he was “in Christ,” though Jesus forgave his sins, and in this way he was new—newly forgiven, newly adopted into the family of God—there was a lot of the old in him. A battle now raged inside him. “The good that I want to do, I don’t do. What I don’t want to do is what I do.” It’s that way for you and me, even if we have trusted in Jesus for forgiveness of our sin. Even though you can say, with confidence, “I am God’s child because Jesus paid for my adoption,” a lot needs to happen in you and me before we’ll look like a new product. If you’re alive, you struggle incessantly inside. We need the resurrection to end this struggle. Never brag you are a born-again Christian. You only demean the Christian life every time you don’t look like a new creation.
When Jesus came out of the grave on Easter morning, He was a new product. All that He emptied Himself of in His Incarnation was restored. He was no longer limited by space and time. He appeared now here, and now there. He broke bread and ate fish, but there was something strangely different about His body. He passed through doors and walls at will. He then disappeared in front of His disciples, rising mysteriously into the clouds. These were signs of something very different about Him. He didn’t do these things before He died.
What happened when Jesus rose from death? We only have hints of what happened in the New Testament. But we can draw some conclusions about ourselves from these hints that give us hope. Faith is a venture of hope. Trusting that Jesus rose from death opens wonderful vistas.
First, we can trust that when we rise again from death, which will happen for us all, we will be recognizable still as us. As Jesus was recognizable as Jesus, so you will be recognized as you.
The Apostle Paul tells us that when we are raised, “We shall be changed.” “This mortal body shall put on immortality.” If you and I had to keep on getting older and older, with every flaw maturing indefinitely forever, I could think of nothing more miserable than eternal life. We have only so many teeth to lose, only so many eyes to lose sight, only two knees … It would be eternal hell. But we will be changed, making eternity everlasting joy in our bodies.
Second, the longings we have for truth and beauty will be fully satisfied. In the Gospel of John we read of Jesus, “We saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” What is visible grace? We recognize hints of this when we see unusual beauty. What Glenn Sparks described to me of the cathedral in Salamanca, Spain—which was too grand for him to find words—is a step in the direction of visible grace. What I remember of the Taj Mahal in the moonlight comes to my mind as visible grace. But the cathedral in Salamanca and the Taj Mahal can be destroyed by a bomb or by an earthquake. They are not lasting. In the resurrection you and I will not only see Someone who epitomizes visible grace, but we will be like him.
You may have a hard time believing this, and those who know you best may agree with you, but when God made you, He created something very exquisite, very remarkable, very beautiful. Take away all that diminishes you, and you would be startled by your own beauty. In the resurrection you will be startled by your own beauty, but rather than this making you arrogant, your beauty will be accompanied with perfect truth—and you will think of your Creator with a thrill, rather than merely of the beauty He created.
In Handel’s “Messiah,” one of the most beautiful, gut-twistingly glorious choruses has the choir singing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power and riches, and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” These words are drawn from the Book of Revelation 5, where we hear “the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands singing with full voice.” All these have things in the right perspective.
Last Sunday afternoon a number of us listened to the exquisite Russian music the Bach Chorale Singers offered. It was as glorious as I’ve ever heard. I don’t know when I’ve heard more heart-wrenching beauty. I wanted the music to go on and on, but 5: 30 PM came, a mere one and one half hours after this wonderful choir began to sing, and it was over.
I thought, what a parable of life. Every joy is over too soon, far before we want it to. No joy is complete. But in the resurrection, the joy I anticipate will be fulfilled. We will not come to 5: 30 PM and feel like a pin has punctured the balloon.
Then I realized that if the music had kept on and on, not only would the choir have grown weary of standing, and their voices of singing, but my mind would have drifted too. We come to a point of diminishing returns in our possibilities of enjoyment. This is a defect the resurrection will erase.
All life’s joys suffer from these two problems. They end too soon. Our capacity to enjoy them dwindles. But in the resurrection, this will change.
Third, We will lose our capacity for remembering grievances. One of the most touching aspects of Jesus’ ways with His disciples after He rose from death was that He forgot the offense of their forsaking Him. Peter would have reasonably expected to go to the bottom of the class of Jesus’ disciples for denying Him three times in a row. Jesus promoted Him to the top of the class.
Paul wrote, “Then we shall understand even as we are understood.” Can you imagine a time when all of us will understand even as we are understood? Can you imagine eliminating the cross-fire of judgmental thoughts that criss-cross every marriage, every home, every church, every neighborhood, every town on this planet? Can you imagine knowing from the body language, from the look in the eye of everyone you meet that every offense you have done was not only forgiven, but “understood” in the best possible light. So that you are freed from all guilt, all remorse—every stain of conscience removed! What Jesus felt after He rose again, will be what will characterize us all—because of Jesus’ resurrection.
Fourth, we will know the difference between what is important and what is not. Jesus pointed out the foolishness of the rich farmer building bigger and bigger barns when his harvests increased. The crops he harvested were meant to feed people. He thought their purpose was to make him richer. Then he died. Jesus asked, “How many truck loads of that grain did he take with him when he died?” When you pause to consider, how many griefs do you bring on yourself by treating as important what is not. Perhaps you are now absorbed in something either wrong or silly, and it’s doing you in. You’re making yourself and others miserable. This will end in the resurrection. What a release that will be!
So how should you respond to the promise of the resurrection? Perhaps there are things going on in your life now that don’t make you very happy. Maybe you’re disgusted with yourself, or disgusted with others. Maybe you’re not well. Maybe you’re afraid that something bad is going to happen to you. Maybe you cannot escape feelings of guilt for something you did in the past. There is hope.
I believe that the miseries we suffer now have a purpose. The anxieties you have may convince you that you have to look somewhere besides yourself to find release. We say, “You’ve got to start thinking outside the box.” When you ponder what I have tried to describe of the resurrection of Jesus, it’s thinking outside the box. All Jesus did was for your sake, to bring you hope, to offer you the promise that everything you dread about life will one day be resolved. Doesn’t it seem appropriate just to say “Thank you, God.” You can’t take it all in, but try. Don’t get modest and say, “I don’t deserve it.” That’s true, of course, but our ideas about deserving and God’s ideas about deserving aren’t the same.
God loves you with a love beyond description because God made you. God created you. You are the work of His hands. Your body is a work of infinite wisdom and skill, with parts working together day after day over the years in harmony. Your mind may have become occupied with a lot of useless and painful thoughts, but it has the capacity to burst with delight, when it is occupied with worthy subjects. This is all God’s doing. The purpose of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection was to restore you to God’s exquisite design when He drew up the blueprints for you.
Paul called Jesus “the first fruits.” Jesus lived, died, and was raised, changed from mortal to immortal, changed from sorrow to joy, changed from limited existence to possibilities no Hollywood special effects artist can imagine. Jesus was the first installment of what you and I will be.
Be thankful that this is so. Then take the obvious step of accepting from God what you can only receive by faith, by simple trust.
Will you let my prayer now lead you to pray? O Lord, thank you for Jesus and for His resurrection the first Easter morning. Thank you that He came alive for me. Help me, who finds trust very hard, to trust in Him. Help me to go from this place today trusting Him. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2003
Jesus’ Storms Jerusalem’s Gates
Jesus’ Storms Jerusalem’s Gates
Psalm 21 / Zechariah 9: 9-10
Luke 19: 29-40
April 13th, 2003
When we put side by side Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem with our soldiers’ triumphal entry into Baghdad, there’s not much to compare. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey colt, accompanied by some unarmed disciples. The palace of the Roman governor, Pilate, was quite safe. There was no body count showing that Rome was no match for heaven. Within a week Jesus was hanging on a cross, His body racked with pain. Yet we refer to the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
Jesus put great stock in that day. He said, as some protested at His disciples’ palm waving and singing, “If these were silent, the stones would shout out.” What was inscribed in stone that day, we read today, remembering Easter morning would follow soon.
This morning we will try to understand something about God’s idea of winning—because you hope you will win in the game of life. God has planted eternity in our hearts, but what we see when we look around can appear grim. We look down the pike from the vantage point of that Palm Sunday and what do we see?
In 300 years, barbarian tribes were pounding the borders of the Roman Empire. A little more than 400 years later Rome was in ruins, while the faith of Jesus was gradually, quietly, influencing Western society so that hospitals emerged from monasteries to care for the sick—there had never been hospitals before. Universities blossomed to study God’s creation—there had never been universities before. Agriculture developed in the lonely monasteries that evolved in out of the way places. Agriculture allowed many people to be fed who would have starved. Look at your grocery shelves today and thank Jesus for His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
But we know the Western world is far from perfect. War, we hope, will someday go the way of the Medieval torture chamber, slavery, religious persecution, and every other curse. But we are far from this. Our prison population numbers more than two million, not all of whom committed the offense they were convicted of. Injustice is an awful curse. We, who think things should happen quickly, that our oak trees should grow as fast as mushrooms, can’t see how God is winning at all when so much is going so wrong.
But God began the serious business of winning on Palm Sunday. Remember, with God a thousand years are like yesterday when it is past, or less than that, a watch in the night. Where do you fit into His plan, you wonder.
You and I have some ideas about winning, of what life is like at its best. We place a very high importance on the present moment and on outward circumstances. It matters to you that your country is strong n__, that our economy is vigorous now, that your wages are secure now, that your health is good or at least well protected. It matters to us that our children have bright economic prospects, that they will marry well—and be happy. And we like it when the Boilermakers win. These things matter maybe more than we’d like to admit. When we sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” these are what we have in mind.
But God’s interest in us goes much deeper, and God’s projects are far-reaching. For that matter, our desire is much deeper too, and far reaching if we could only find our depths. We want not only to live well but to have significance. We mistake momentary fame for significance. Our society heaps financial rewards often on the least significant, but most famous. We call “celebrities” people who are famous for being famous, rather than for the richness of their contribution to life. They create a haze, a smokescreen to keep us from seeing what is important and lasting. The outward circumstances of our lives are like a smoke screen we can’t see through to get to matters of the heart. So God works on that smoke screen, taking away our sense of security in what is not lasting. Alzheimers disease reveals how feeble, how delicate are our brains. Our vaunted intellectual pride plummets after a small chemical infiltrates the brain. Recession shows the weakness of our proud currency. In what can we trust? Our money proclaims, “In God we trust” ––perhaps as an unintended reminder that we can’t trust in money.
Let’s get back to the first Palm Sunday when God penetrated our smokescreen, our illusions about winning.
It is hard to see that Palm Sunday brought any kind of triumph at all. Jesus came helplessly into the grasp of all His enemies. In a way it was like Tennyson’s description of the “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” in the Crimean War—when England and France fought Russia over the holy places in Jerusalem. It was six hundred men galloping to their death before Russian “Cannons to the left of them, cannons to the right of them, cannons in front of them.” Tennyson wrote:
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
That charge brought a tragic and futile loss of life. Was Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem like the Charge of the Light Brigade?
Even though Jesus was crucified a week after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the claim of triumph has never faded. Every year we hold a Palm Sunday service, with joyful music. And it is not like an Iraqi news minister, the fool in the deck of cards, claiming there were no coalition troops in Baghdad.
What kind of triumph did Jesus enjoy? There is oddness about Jesus’ triumph, but we sense something big was going on. My dear fellow Christians it would be so helpful if we could come to grips with Jesus’ odd triumph, accepting it as our own.
We read from the prophet Zechariah this morning, as we often do on Palm Sunday, because the Gospels quote Zechariah foretelling Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Zechariah lived at a time when the people of Israel were not winners. They were in exile, scattered throughout the ancient world. Away from Jerusalem, away from their Temple, the Jews longed to be home. Oh that Jerusalem might regain its lost glory!
But it was more than homesickness. “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” a pious Jew wrote. Could you sing, “He leadeth me, O blessed thought,” in a prisoner of war camp? “What e’er I do, where e’er I be, still ‘tis God’s hand that leadeth me,” seems much better to sing when God seems to be leading you from success to success.
Things did not go well for the Jews. But the problem was deeper than their exile. What had become of God’s promise to King David, “I will establish your line forever, and your throne as long as the heavens endure?” Where’s your promise, Lord? Are You still as good as Your word? The Jews had reason to wonder if all their established confidence in God was a house of cards. The most devout put it modestly, “God has hidden Himself.” Some Jews said, “There is no God after all.” The psalmist told these disillusioned atheists, “The fool says in his heart there is no God.”
Devout Jews trusted that the promise of God to Abraham extended his blessing through all time. At least the prophets remembered it was a promise of blessing to all nations. How could this promise of universal blessing be kept if Israel, God’s special people, were scattered throughout the countries of the earth? Their sacred city was destroyed. The Temple, where God chose to live on earth, was a pile of rubble. When the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, Baghdad had all the muscle and God’s people were helpless. Where was God in all this?
Seventy years passed, and the Jews could not forget from what heights they had fallen. In this difficult time God chose Zechariah, living in what we would now call Iran, to speak to the Jews. “Thus says the Lord of hosts; return to me . . . and I will return to you. . . Do not be like your ancestors.” He told them, “Your ancestors deserved this exile.” “The Lord has dealt with us according to our ways and deeds, just as he planned to do.”
It must have been very hard for Zechariah to talk straight talk to his people. Who likes to hear when you’re down, “You got what was coming to you.” The first order of business for God’s people was to get their hearts right. It still is. In the short-run, all that you and I can handle, has to do with the state of our hearts.
The heart is private. I recently saw a picture of my innards. That’s what I’m like inside?! Yuk! But our hearts are even deeper than that. The Jews, just like you and me, thought more in terms of outward circumstances than of the importance of the heart. It is possible to drift along with outward circumstances going smoothly, while the heart is gradually decaying. We seldom take inventory of our hearts until things go wrong.
The quality of life in ancient Israel had gone down hill fast from the beginning. The time came when they were not recognizable to themselves or to God as His people. But they still claimed to be God’s people. It was like our slogan, “In God we trust” that even an atheist has on his dollar bill.
But their claims to be God’s people didn’t matter much when idol worship was as common in their towns as it was among the Philistines. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. Injustice made of the courts a mockery. Sexual morality was a joke. Sinful meant “fun.” God let Israel’s heart-sickness take its course, and the nation fell.
In exile the Jews remembered from what they had fallen. The people who heard Zechariah knew he was right. But it’s so hard to get serious about matters of the heart. Long habit has inertia.
Zechariah spoke God’s message to his people as they struggled to keep motivated in rebuilding the Temple, “I have returned to Jerusalem with compassion; my house shall be built in it. . . my cities shall again overflow with prosperity.” It sure didn’t seem like this was true. What did he mean when he wrote, “Rejoice. . . shout aloud . . . your king comes triumphant and victorious?”
Two truths emerge as I think of Zechariah’s message in light of Palm Sunday—one truth we can act on in the short run, one truth we can trust for the long run. First, that God expected holy living from his people. No matter where they lived in exile or in Jerusalem, God wanted them to return to Him freely, from the heart. God still sees His people this way. We dare to think we are included as His people. It matters how you live now. We are not just a bundle of nerve endings and appetites. It matters how you live. You and I are called to live holy lives. The idea sounds strange today. Holiness has come to seem an option, not a necessity for a Christian. What’s your life like?
Second, God’s triumph in Jerusalem would not be in the ordinary way, nor as fast as people wished. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit says the Lord of hosts.”
Lois read for us this morning, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion . . . Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious . . . riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Triumphant? Victorious? We see God hinting at the unusual way He would defeat Israel’s enemies, and fulfill the promise He made to King David. “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.” It would be a conquest of love rather than war. War spawns more war. Defeated people seek revenge. But love conquers all. Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem had no hints of belligerence. It was ostentatiously gentle. It was God’s power muted. And the muted love of God triumphed in Jesus. How so, you wonder. Well, remember the Cross. We now sing “Lift High the Cross.” We have a slight sense of its power. Remember what all claim on EASTER –– Easter’s triumph too is muted.
One of the blessings of life we are taught from the past is that success in life is not always what it seems at the moment. On Palm Sunday it was as it is now –– “We have not yet experienced God’s fulfilled plan.” Patience, endurance, waiting were essential to Jesus’ life. They are still essential to living the Jesus-life. Jesus does not apologize that the life of following Him has so many resemblances to his life –– that we too must wait, and bear with the purifying power of longing for God’s big triumph over sin and death.
Throughout His life, Jesus kept before Him, “My will is to do the will of my Father in heaven.” And He followed that course of life to the end. And who will deny the success of Jesus’ life. A time will come when “every knee will bow to him, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” And they will do so happily, cheerfully, radiantly. There will be more joy then, that we can understand, than there was on Palm Sunday that people could not understand.
There is a saying I used to hear quite often, “Only one life, t’will soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” This is a clue that we can partly understand. We can see that a life lived in obedience to Jesus somehow looks better, even when momentary financial, health, or other struggles come. The victory of Palm Sunday came first in Jesus’ obedience to the will of His Father. The long-range victory waited to come. We still wait to see its full measure. But in the meanwhile, ride your life in majesty. Quietly, privately, live as though the most important thing of all is doing Jesus’ will. Then you will be winning in the way that matters now. And you will share in the joy of Jesus’ ultimate victory when that time comes.
Let us pray: O Lord, thank you for Jesus, who was faithful unto death. Thank you that He rode into Jerusalem that day, and was triumphant over my sin and death. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2003
The Very Imperfect Disciple of Jesus
The Very Imperfect Disciple of Jesus
Psalm 15 / Isaiah 41: 8-13
Luke 5: 27-32
April 6th, 2003
It would surprise me if at least some of you did not share my experience as a young fellow when the neighborhood kids got together to play touch football, or softball, or basketball. The two best players would be captains. They chose who would be on their teams. The best players would be chosen first--quickly, then you’d see the selection process slow down. The gears of grace moved very slowly as reluctantly, clumsy little Todd got chosen, and then Richie, who couldn’t catch. Maybe you were one of the kids chosen first, maybe you weren’t. If you couldn’t catch a ball well and run fast, maybe you got used to being chosen, reluctantly, last. Maybe you heard the captains say, “We’ve got full teams. You get to watch or you can chase foul balls.” If you weren’t very good, you felt very lucky to be on the team.
A lot of us kids went to Sunday School where we learned about grace, unmerited favor, but here it was entirely a merit system. You earned your rights in neighborhood sports. The merit system doesn’t stop with childhood sports.
It’s the custom to choose the best students for the university, the best employees for our company, the best singers for the choir, and so forth. The colleges that can report how small a percentage of their applicants get admitted add to their prestige. The choir for which you must audition has highest reputation. Human society loves the idea of grace, but it operates by merit. How can it be else? We live in a highly competitive market place.
People who can’t compete, who need too much grace, gradually sink farther and farther down. Some people end up walking the streets, standing in lines to get a free meal at a rescue mission. Those who queue up for a free meal feel cast off from God and people. It’s remarkable how many people feel God has cast them off. Some of you feel this way, maybe more than I realize.
You worked hard for your education, but there was no job waiting for you in your field. Disappointment of this kind affects more than your income. You wonder if God has cast you off.
Some of you have health problems that leave you in pain much of the time. Persistent pain is tiring and demoralizing. You wonder if God has cast you off.
Time is going by and your financial situation has dipped to a precarious plateau. You thought your investments were going to carry you through your old age. But your security is shrinking with the stock market. A lot of people are losing their jobs now as their employers buckle under the strain of our weak economy. Maybe you’re afraid that the economic whirlpool in our country is going to suck you under. What embarrassment. What dread. It feels like a sin to have financial problems in wealthy America. Has God cast you off?
Some people who once stood happily before me, joyfully making their marriage vows, have had their marriages turn sour. They are on the threshold of divorce. Some have suffered divorce. Embarrassment. Failure. You didn’t dream of this when you were a child. You never thought you’d be in this situation. God has cast you off, you think.
The prophet Isaiah spoke for God to Israel in a period of their history when they felt like they’d been cast off by God. They were in exile, a captive people, prisoners of war. They knew they deserved it. It was because their ancestors had succumbed to low-life living. There is a special kind of ignominy that comes with falling from a position of privilege. How painful it is to realize you deserve what you got.
But Isaiah told them, the Lord says, “You, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen … I have chosen you and not cast you off.” I wonder what people in exile thought when they heard the prophet tell them this, “God has chosen us? He has not cast us off?” Yes, they once had been God’s chosen people, but that was long ago. It’s hard not to feel cast off by God when you’re in exile, and your Temple is in ruins. And you deserved what you got. What was God up to that the great prophet should say still, “I have chosen you. I have not cast you off”?
This morning we just read how Jesus chose His fourth disciple. Levi was a living, breathing type of ancient Israel. Ironically, his name was the name of the most sacred tribe in Israel, the one from which priests were chosen. He was a Levite. The other name by which we know this man, Matthew, was an honored name in recent Jewish history. It was the name of the one who led the revolt against the cruel tyrant, Antiochus Epiphanes, in the second century BC. Mattathias was the father of Judas Maccabeas, who led the Jews to a one hundred year kingdom of their own.
But this Levi, or Matthew, was a detestable tax farmer. He made his extravagantly good living by leaching on his own people, charging them more than they had to pay the Roman government in taxes and pocketing the difference. And it was legal, even though immoral. He may have been rich, but he had an unenviable reputation. He was a devalued Levite, a preacher fallen from grace.
Customarily, when walking by the tax booth, a decent person would look the other way. Whom we despise we ignore. Shunning is the reward we give to those we condemn. But Jesus passed by this shunned man and not only looked him in the eye but said, “Follow me.”
Remember, this is the Son of God talking, the Second Person of the Godhead, the holy Creator of heaven and earth become flesh. This is perfect Man, who had never sinned, talking with a big-time sinner. This is the Big League Super Star choosing fourth a guy who couldn’t catch. The fourth person Jesus chose to follow Him, to bear the Gospel of salvation to the rest of the world, was a sinner by birth, by habit, and by trade who brought shame to the name Levi.
We are accustomed to thinking that grace is undeserved favor. We remind ourselves that we are saved “by grace, not by works, lest anyone should boast.” We love to sing “Amazing Grace.” But wasn’t Jesus over-doing it a bit in choosing a wretch like this from the priestly class? And Jesus wasn’t just saying to this man, “God forgives you. Go and sin no more.” Jesus was choosing one of the Twelve Apostles, who would be the very foundation for the next wave of God’s work in redeeming a fallen world. Amazing grace? Or poor judgment?
Levi, may I suggest, “felt very lucky to be chosen for Jesus’ team.” He was so thrilled that he dropped everything to follow Jesus. But first, he invited Jesus to dinner. In effect, he said to Jesus, “Follow me first!” And Jesus followed Levi into his house. Levi invited all his friends, other tax collectors. He also invited others from town whose rejection by ordinary good people gathered them into a society of their own miserable kind. They had a great banquet.
Often we will have a banquet to celebrate a success. Purdue’s basketball teams will soon have banquets to celebrate the exciting seasons they just finished. But at this banquet that Jesus shared with Levi, they celebrated the end of Levi’s career as a tax collector. He was burning his bridges at that feast.
How suggestive it is that here we see Jesus early in His ministry breaking bread with tax collectors and sinners. Here Jesus was demonstrating the nature of the Church against which the gates of hell could not prevail. It seemed that Jesus had opened the gates of hell to invite the people who deserved hell as His chosen friends.
It was the kind of company in which a rabbi should not have fit at all. And Jesus’ antagonists among the good people in town noticed. They asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” I wonder if it was obvious when Jesus went to Levi’s home with all these moral rejects that He was not preaching at them there. That was one of the problems the Pharisees had with Jesus. Not only did He eat and drink with sinners, He enjoyed their company, and they enjoyed Him. He should have made them squirm by preaching to them. How else do we correct the erring than by lecturing them?
Jesus drank with them and ate with them and spoke with them about things that endeared Him to them. Jesus was gracious! It seemed improper to be gracious. The psalmist may have written of God that “His mercy endureth for ever,” but mercy must have its limits, we believe, on the practical plain of life. What right did Levi and his tax-collector friends have to receive mercy?
As Jesus spoke with these tax collectors and sinners the level of their conversation must have raised. They found unseemly the crude things they have spoken before. Now they found themselves talking of their children, of their grandchildren, of their love of country. They no doubt felt at liberty to ask Jesus questions. As they realized that Jesus was not there to condemn them, the conversation turned to the kinds of things that make the grace of God believable. Jesus liked them. They could feel it. And love lifted them up!
Was it in a setting like this that Jesus told the story of the prodigal son, after someone asked Him, “How can you be eating with us?” The love of God became believable when Jesus loved them. I wonder how many people went away from that meal with the seed of God planted in their souls, and they were changed.
Now we feel harshly towards these Pharisees that chided Jesus. We read the Gospel lesson and we’re supposed to hiss when they come on stage. We read that Jesus came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. We understand that “righteous” here is a code word for people who think they are righteous—the Pharisees. The “righteous” is the kind of person who prays so everyone can hear, “I thank you I’m not like this other guy, an adulterer and unclean.”
We can understand that Jesus came to call sinners to repentance, but where do we fit into the picture? We have been called to righteous living. Every Sunday you hear me close the service with the benediction, “The God of peace . . . make you perfect in every good work to do His will.” Isn’t there something odd about putting the tax collectors up on a pedestal, and demeaning people who try to do better than that? Didn’t even Levi and perhaps some of his sinner friends become righteous after encountering the grace, the kindness of Jesus? Did Jesus have it in for people who try to be good?
I have other questions that arise from what Jesus said. In a day of so much religious controversy, when many voices claim to be right, does not becoming a champion for truth put us in the place of the Pharisees whom Jesus found wanting? The Pharisees set out to be right, to guard God’s law. They did not set out to become hypocrites---and all of them were not hypocrites by any means. But there is a natural tendency for moral earnestness to change into feelings of moral superiority. Moral rectitude slips into pride, and pride demolishes the very state of heart that God looks for. The righteous think God is lucky to have them on His team.
It is a humble and contrite heart that God looks for. As a little boy who doesn’t catch very well feels immense gratitude when he’s chosen for the neighborhood ball team, and as a tax collector feels immense gratitude when He’s invited by the Son of God to follow Him, so you and I are living in a state of grace and need to remember it is God’s kindness to us that has given us a place on his team.
The moment you start congratulating yourself that you are right, you’re losing touch with Jesus. The moment you self-confidently ask for a signing bonus, you’re losing touch with Jesus. We never, ever reach the point that God is lucky to have us on His team.
When you sit at the Lord’s Table this morning, remember it was your sin that made Jesus’ death necessary. I will remember this too. Jesus does not ask us to remember this in order to push us down and make us feel miserable, but to keep a sense of proportion. And if you understand how much you needed Jesus’ death for your sake, perhaps you will be goaded to ask how you can live out your gratitude to Jesus. Live out your gratitude.
I wish we knew how Levi’s life turned out. Maybe it was just as well we don’t get to follow the lives of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles because then we’d maybe get our priorities skewed. We’d venerate them too highly, or perhaps be disappointed in how they turned out. We know that Judas didn’t do too well. Maybe others of the disciples didn’t do too well.
But these matters are beside the point. Jesus loves sinners. Jesus loves the worst of sinners. Jesus doesn’t ask us to think ill of ourselves, just realistically, so that we can be grateful for grace. Levi was forgiven an awful lot, and he must have been very glad. The rest of his life he spent as an Apostle, someone sent out for Jesus. Jesus has forgiven you and me an awful lot. Live out your gratitude to Jesus.
I wonder what your life would be like if you felt very fortunate Jesus chose you to be on His team. I wonder what Faith Church will be like when we take in how lucky we are to be on Jesus’ team.
O Lord God, thank you for the kindness of Jesus. Help us to live out our gratitude to Him. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)