Worth Repeating

Texts: Psalm 136; Romans 8:31-39

       O GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD, FOR He is good:
        for His steadfast love endures forever.

Is this a statement worth repeating?  Our spiritual ancestors the ancient Israelites thought so.  All through the books of Kings and Chronicles, at times of celebration at the Jerusalem temple, frequently when the armies of the Lord go out to war, we read of this call and response being made between priest and people. It stands as a confession of faith for the Old Testament church.  And since the Lord's church is one church, it is a confession of faith for us.  The Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever.  This is a confession we should take upon our lips daily.  We should find it marvellously worth repeating. 

    But what happens when the goodness of the Lord seems to fall short?   What if we feel that His love isn't exactly steadfast, or not exactly what we'd define as love?

    I was moved to preach on these two passages a couple weeks ago, long before a hurricane called Sandy began making its way up the Atlantic coast.  Around here we got off pretty light.  But elsewhere--!  Even now there are still people in New York and New Jersey who are cold and hungry and suffering.  They have no heat and no running water and they're short of food.  Ordinary people just like us in a terrible situation.  What if that was us?  Would we still be able to respond, "His steadfast love endures forever!"?  Would we want to?  Today's readings teach us that not only should we want to, even in the worst of circumstances, but through that same steadfast love of God, we can.

    The first step is to understand what this steadfast love is.  It goes way beyond a feeling or preference, it includes the active kindness and mercy of God toward men.  The word is hesed, and it describes how God is in Himself and also how God behaves as He reaches out to us in grace and favor.

    But here's our problem: We get the idea that if somebody loves us they should give us exactly what we think we want right now, whether it's the best thing for us or not.  And if he or she doesn't give it, it means they don't love us after all.  This attitude can make it hard for us to repeat that "His steadfast love endures forever!"

    I hope you and I aren't so childish as that.  I pray the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to see that God shows His steadfast love towards us first and foremost in giving us a relationship with Himself, in allowing us to catch even the reflection of His greatness.  The psalmist proclaims,

        Give thanks to the God of gods,

and

        Give thanks to the Lord of lords.

Think of it!  Only we among the creatures are made in His image.  Only we are privileged even dimly to recognize who He is. The animals, the rocks, the trees: they worship God in being what they are, but they are totally unaware of the splendor and majesty of their Creator.  But Lord God has granted that we should see His glory, and in His love He has enabled us to enjoy Him in worship.  This is a privilege that nothing can take away from us, for God in His splendor always remains God.

    But as we see from verse 4 through 9, this loving God is more than great in Himself, He is also the Doer of wonders who made heaven and earth and all that are in them.

    And that includes us.  Our very existence is proof of the Lord's steadfast love!  He didn't have to create us.  He wasn't forced to give life to you or me in particular. We breathe and inhabit this earth out of the loving mercy of the Lord, and this should call forth our thanks-- even when that existence is threatened, because even in danger our lives are in His loving hands.

    For He knows our trouble and frailty.  Our God is not a wicked king who takes delight in being a tyrant over his subjects.  Our Lord is a God who shows His steadfast love in saving His people.  Verses 10 through 15 speak of the Exodus of Israel from Egypt.  That was the great founding event in the history of the Old Testament church. At the Red Sea God displayed His power and salvation right there in human history and forged the Hebrew people into the nation of His choice. A Jewish friend recently asked me how we could know that the God of the Bible exists.  I reminded him that the God of the Bible has actually acted in loving acts towards real people in real time to real effect.  As a Jew this friend isn't particularly faithful to the Scriptures, so I don't know how much my reminder convinced him.  But for us who are under His New Covenant, these verses about Israel's salvation from Egypt should move us to thanksgiving, for they remind us of the greater salvation the Exodus looked forward to.

    For as great as God's victory was over Pharaoh and all the gods of Egypt, even greater was the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ when He triumphed over sin, Satan, and death on the cross of Calvary.  As wonderful as God's love was when He safely brought His people Israel through the Red Sea, even greater was His love when He brought His Son through death to resurrection.  This was love shown to us, for we know that when Jesus rose from the dead, all of us who were chosen in Him from the foundation of the world were raised with Him as well.

    God shows His steadfast love for us in salvation.  But like the people in Staten Island and Queens, we want to be saved now and saved the way we want to be saved.  We can't judge those storm victims for being in the state they're in.  Even if they had evacuated, they couldn't have gotten far and they'd still be in dire straits.  And who of us can really visualize a fifteen foot tidal surge slamming up and washing away homes and taking out the power supply?  But when it comes to my sin and your sin and the sin of all mankind, we must judge ourselves.  I must give thanks for God's lovingkindness in salvation, because I myself am a sinner who needs to be saved.  No, none of us is Adam or Eve who first rebelled against God in the beginning.  But every day by my human nature and by my sinful acts I follow in my first parents' footsteps and I am covered in guilt.

    And so are you, and every human being who ever lived.  We do not deserve God's steadfast love or His favor.  In fact, it was the sin of mankind in Adam that disrupted creation so that superstorms like Sandy are so terrible and devastating.  In our chapter from Romans if we read verses 19 to 22 we see that creation was subjected to frustration and is in bondage to decay, because of the sin of mankind.  God in His steadfast love decreed that the creation should not be freed until we His elect are revealed as His glorious adopted sons.

    And this is what God has predestined us to be.  Our God doesn't merely rescue us and let us go where we will; He also guides us to our new home in Him.  This is what we see in verses 16 to 22 of Psalm 136.  Especially significant are the verses about the defeat of Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan.  We can read their stories in Numbers 21.  The Israelites always knew they were going to have to fight the Canaanite peoples on the other side of the Jordan.  But Sihon and Og ruled on the east side of Jordan, and both of them attacked Israel with no provocation.  Oh, no!  Do we see terrible situations coming at us like that and conclude that God's love isn't steadfast and doesn't endure forever?  No!  That's when we like Israel stand strong in the power of the Lord and trust His steadfast love to help us overcome the foe. 

    Verse 23 and 24 tell us how even after Israel entered the Promised Land there were still times when, due to their disobedience and sin, they suffered humiliation and attack by their enemies.  But even then God's merciful love towards them prevailed and He saved them again and again.  And that's how God acts towards us who belong to Him through Jesus Christ.  In His steadfast love He keeps on forgiving our sins and redeeming and repairing what we destroy in our own foolishness.  It is worth repeating: "His steadfast love endures forever!"

    Let us never forget: God's salvation isn't something we deserve, it's something we need.  And in God's perfect timing, there it is for us!  Even as we cry out "How long, O Lord, how long?" we can also affirm that His steadfast love endures forever, because our God is a God who keeps His promises.  Did you know that the Lord told Abraham that his descendants would be oppressed for four hundred years in Egypt, and then He would save them?  Four hundred years!  All that time, God was working out His perfect plan, making the conditions just right.  It was the same in the centuries before Jesus won our salvation on the cross.  But what about all those who died before Moses?  Who died before Christ?  God's loving kindness extends to them as well.  All whom God has chosen are included in His great salvation, no matter when they lived and died.  The One who made the moon and stars is capable of seeing to that!  And one thing we must learn and hold onto: The salvation of God is not limited to this earthly life.  Its goal and purpose is to bring us into His presence in the life of the world to come.

    And so in the midst of storm and trouble; yes, even as "the nearer waters roll; while the tempest still is high" we can respond "For His steadfast love endures forever!"  Because we know that God in His grace and wisdom is working all things out for our salvation; and not only for our salvation, but also to make us holy and wholly glorified in Jesus Christ.

    For as we read in our verses from Romans 8, it is actually in the midst of trouble and persecution that we can lift up our heads and repeat that "His steadfast love endures forever!"  For above all we see His love displayed in His Son Jesus Christ, who suffered trouble, persecution, and death for our sakes.  The loving Father God who has saved us from our sins will certainly not let us be overcome by those who hate and harm us because of our salvation!

    It is sad, tragic, even, that so many Christians have been falsely taught that as soon as you ask Jesus into your heart all your troubles will be over.  And when trouble comes, they conclude God doesn't love them or isn't faithful, and they fall away.  Our unbelieving enemies sneer at us on the strength of this lie:  See, they say, your God isn't so powerful or loving after all!  Will we listen to their trash?  Will we let their attacks and taunts make us doubt the steadfast love of the Lord?  When we suffer  "tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword" for the sake of Christ, shall we conclude that all this means that God has forgotten us?

    No!  "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."  It is no mere mantra or affirmation when we repeat that God's "steadfast love endures forever"; we know it's true because of what Jesus Christ did for us.  In Him God is totally, irrevocably, and lovingly for us, so who or what can be against us?  He has given us His Son Jesus Christ!  What an immense and unfathomable act of enduring love!  Truly, "His steadfast love endures forever!"

    And lest we falter, lest we forget, our Lord has given us this sacrament of the Lord's Supper.  Here at His Table we have physical elements that we can see and touch and taste.  Here God confirms that just as surely as we take this physical food into our bodies for our nourishment, just as surely His Spirit nourishes us with the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ our crucified and risen Lord, to the nourishment of eternal life.  Brothers and sisters, as you partake of this holy meal, remember that no matter what happens, God's love is faithful.  For

    . . . neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.  So give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.  And let God's people repeat: "For His steadfast love endures forever!"
   

Clean and Whole

Texts:    Leviticus 13:9-22; 45-46; Mark 1:40-45

    WHAT WOULD IT HAVE BEEN like to have been one of God's ancient chosen people?  As an Israelite you'd experience the overwhelming joy of knowing that the Creator God of heaven and earth was your God.  You'd enjoy the prosperity and blessing He'd bring you.  You'd be able to trust Him to fight your battles with foreign powers.  You could hear His very words from the mouth of His prophets.  No other nation had such blessings and privileges.  How wonderful it must have been!

    On the other hand, with all those privileges you'd have heavy responsibilities.  Or perhaps I should say, you had one great heavy responsibility:  As an ancient Israelite, from the time you were old enough to understand, it was up to you and to all of your fellow Hebrews to be a testimony to the nations.  Since the Lord God was your Father, all Israel together was the son of God on earth, and you were expected, as a nation and as individuals, to live up to the image and character of the Lord God Himself, that He might be glorified on earth and all nations be blessed through you. 

    God spelled out exactly how you were to reflect His image and glory, in the Law given to Moses on Mount Sinai.

    There were three parts to it:  the moral law, which defines how people everywhere should treat one another and themselves; the civil law, which laid down how Israel was to govern itself as a nation; and the ceremonial law, which dictated how the Israelites were to relate to God and glorify Him on this earth.  The ceremonial law went beyond how and Whom you worshipped.  In pretty much everything you did your life was to be a proclamation of the wholeness, purity, and integrity of the Lord.

    The creed of God's people Israel was this:

    Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).

The whole purpose of the ceremonial law was to present Israel to the world as a people who reflected the perfect oneness and unity of the Lord our God.  They were to be holy as He is holy.  Pure as He is pure.  Clean and whole as the Lord is clean and whole.

    So, no wearing clothes made out of more than one kind of  fiber.  No sowing your field with more than one kind of seed.  No plowing that field with two different kinds of animals under the yoke.  No violating the integrity of your skin by getting tattoos or cutting yourself as a sign of mourning for the dead. No eating of beasts that wouldn't be acceptable to God as a sacrifice.

    Why?  Because mixture and confusion was a sign of the sinful brokenness of this fallen world.  Your daily life had to stand against that and testify to the pure and undivided character of God.

    As an Israelite you might think, "I don't totally understand all this, but it's something I can try to do.  Just like I can do my best to avoid sin by keeping the moral law."

    But then you'd come to the commands set forth in our reading from Leviticus 13.  And read that if any of God's people should break out with a defiling skin disease, and the priest should determine that it is
chronic and spreading, then that person is to be ostracized from the community.  As it says in 13:45-46,

    Anyone with such a defiling disease must wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!'  As long as they have the disease they remain unclean. They must live alone; they must live outside the camp.

And possibly you'd think, "How is it my fault, or the fault of my family, if any of us should contract a disease like this?  I'd never choose to have running sores break out all over my body!  I'd never ask to have my skin go all flaky and scaly all over!  Why must I be separated from God's people?  Why must I cover my mouth as if I were mourning for the dead?"

    That'd be easy to answer if the Bible really was talking about leprosy, what today we call Hansen's disease.  True leprosy eventually eats the structure of your extremities away and it's terribly contagious.  You could understand why a Hansen's disease sufferer would be permanently quarantined.  But this isn't what is being described in Leviticus.  Archaeological evidence from the ancient Middle East shows that true leprosy wasn't prevalent there till the fifth century after Christ.  It occurred from time to time, and the ancient Greeks had a word for it, elephantiasis.  The word lepra or lepros, which we find in our Mark passage, refers to other sorts of diseases affecting the skin.  Same with the Hebrew word tsara'at, the term Moses used in Leviticus.  Here's where the 2011 updated version of the New International Version is a real improvement.  This word tsara'at doesn't necessarily mean a skin disease that is infectious, but it definitely signifies one that is defiling according to God's ceremonial law.

    So, what skin diseases could get you ostracized from the camp and later the towns of Israel?  Given the descriptions in Leviticus, it'd be conditions like favus, a disease prevalent in the Near East and northern Africa that affects the scalp.  Or chronic psoriasis.  Or eczema.  Yes, the same skin diseases some of you may have struggled with.  Talk about "The heartbreak of psoriasis"!  Not only would you be perpetually unclean, so that you were excluded from worshipping God at His Tabernacle, any undiseased person other than the priest who touched you would be rendered temporarily unclean, too.

    You'll notice in verses 12-13 of our Leviticus passage, that if a person's skin disease spreads so that he turns white all over, the priest can pronounce him clean.  It wasn't the disease itself that excluded a person from the presence of God, it was the visible confusion and unwholesomeness evident on his skin.  The Lord's people were to be holy, clean, and whole outside as well as in, inside as well as out.  They were to be visible models of the purity and wholeness of God, and an Israelite walking the streets with his skin red and white and flaking where he should be a nice even brown would testify instead to sin, degeneration, and death.

    And it's true, no one would choose to look like that.  But when it comes down to it, none of us chose to be infected with the sin of Adam, either.  None of us woke up one day and said, "Hey, I think I'd like to be dead in trespasses and sins!"   We were born into this fallen condition-- but we can't claim innocence.  Because every day by our own sin we confirm that we go along with it.  Under God's covenant with Israel, psoriasis and other chronic defiling skin diseases were a sign of the inward, inborn sin of mankind breaking out and flaunting itself on the outside of a person.  They proclaimed the broken, unwholesome, unclean state of this world that sets itself against the purity and oneness of the Lord our God.

    It seems very hard and even unfair, the fate of the person with a defiling skin disease under the Old Covenant.  But in His holiness God had an eternal plan and purpose that would be fulfilled through the Law working in His people Israel, a plan that would more than justify the discomfort suffered by any human being on this earth, a plan that would bring restore all who were cast out and heal all who suffer from the mortal disease of sin. God called Israel to be His son on this earth, to grow up to reflect the integrity of His holiness.  We know from the Scriptures that the Jews failed miserably at this task.  We know from our own hearts that if we'd been in their position, we would have miserably failed, too.

    But at the right time there came a Man from Nazareth, a Man born of an ordinary woman of the house of David, of the people of Israel, yet conceived by the Holy Spirit and so born without sin.  From the very start of his gospel our writer St. Mark proclaims this Man Jesus to be the Son of God.  Jesus Christ will succeed where Israel failed.  He will be the One who truly reflects God's cleanliness and wholeness standing against a defiled and sin-broken world, and through Him the purpose of Israel will be fulfilled.  This Man Jesus was not merely whole and clean and holy in Himself, He had the power to impart wholeness, cleanliness, and purity to others who were in every sense filthy and defiled.

    And so in verses 40 through 45 of Mark chapter 1 we read how a man suffering from one of these defiling skin diseases, not necessarily leprosy, approaches Jesus, probably in the countryside outside one of the villages of Galilee.  He's heard about Jesus' power to heal, but he hasn't dared come into town and join the crowd waiting around Jesus' lodgings.  He falls to his scabby knees and begs, "If you are willing, you can make me clean."

    St. Mark writes that Jesus is filled with compassion.  It's not that Jesus feels sorry for the man because he is excluded from society and heals him so he can go back to his home and family.  No, Jesus feels for him from the heart because this sufferer is excluded from the household of God by the defilement of sin, and his skin disease is only a symptom of that estrangement.  Jesus replies, "I am willing."  He touches the man-- actually touches his loathsome flesh--and He declares, "Be clean!" and by the creative power of His word He makes it so.  By this mighty work of mercy Jesus shows that He is in His own flesh the One who is eternally whole and clean, the One Whom no contact with evil can defile, the One Who makes the broken whole and before Whom defilement flees.

    But until the New Covenant is sealed in His shed blood on the cross, the Old Covenant is still in effect.  So Jesus orders the cured man to go to the priest and offer the sacrifices Moses ordered for those who were cleansed of defiling skin diseases.  We can read about those sacrifices and the ritual of making them in Leviticus 14.  They were, as Jesus says, to serve as a testimony to all the people of what God had done in His mercy to make the broken whole and the impure clean.  But the healed man does not head for Jerusalem to make the prescribed offerings.  No,  throughout the countryside he spreads the news that God was at work in Jesus of Nazareth, that here was a Man who could touch a leper and cleanse him and not Himself be defiled.

    As Mark writes, this was fame Jesus wasn't seeking, and it made it impossible for Him to minister in the towns any more.  But it didn't matter: People streamed out into the wilderness to hear Him and be healed by Him, no matter were He might be.

    Brothers and sisters, for the ancient Jews skin diseases were only an outward sign of the sin that defiles us all from the heart.  If we appeared to each other the way our sin makes us appear to God, no horror movie special effects could depict the terrors we would see.  But Jesus Christ was and is the only-begotten Son of God who was willing to take the loathsomeness of our sins on Himself on the cross, even though for awhile it caused His Father to turn His face from Him.   He atoned for our sins and wiped them out totally so that we might be clean.  In the place of your old brokenness and defilement, Jesus Christ gives you His wholeness, His purity, His integrity.  And now when God turns His face towards you, He sees the glorious and holy face of Jesus Christ, the new Israel, His beloved Son who is the perfect image of the Father's righteous splendor.

    This promise is for you and your children and for all the Lord our God shall call.  If you have never trusted in Jesus Christ, repent and turn to Him now, and He will cleanse you from your sins and give you His righteousness.  If you have turned to Him in faith and are sealed to Him in baptism, keep relying on His saving health day by day.  The old earthly nature within us is still defiled and diseased, and it fights against the wholesome new heavenly nature Christ has put within us.  But day by day, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are becoming more and more conformed to the image of Christ.  More and more we are being revealed as citizens of the New Israel whom Jesus shed His blood to create.  Just like the Israelites under the Old Covenant, we New Covenant believers are called upon to reflect the wholeness and purity of God in the midst of a degenerate and defiled world.  But be encouraged: Jesus by His power has cleansed us, Jesus by His power will keep us, and Jesus by His power will present us clean and whole before the God who is His Father and our own.

    Now to him who has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation, be praise, honor, majesty, and power, now and forever more.  Amen.

Finding Meaning Under the Sun

Texts:  Ecclesiastes 1:1-11; Romans 8:18-27

   DO YOU EVER FEEL YOU'RE drowning in a sea of futility?  That no matter how hard you try, nothing you do in life really matters?  That it's not just you and your life than's meaningless, but all of creation besides?

    If you've never felt that way, give God praise.  But if you're like most of us ordinary mortals, you know there's times when there seemed to be no point to anything in the world. Back in the 1940s, a whole philosophy was formulated around this idea.  It was called Absurdism, and it taught that if you wanted to be happy in this life, you'd better stop looking for meaning in it.  Just enjoy yourself the best you can, because you and  everything else living is headed for death anyway. 

    Intellectuals in the mid-20th century trumpeted Absurdism as if it were something new.  But it's not.  It goes back to the days of King Solomon and the book of Ecclesiastes.  There we read how a man could reach the summit of earthly wealth, pleasure, and accomplishment, and still cry out that everything was meaningless, utterly meaningless under the sun.

    The book of Ecclesiastes is Holy Scripture and we must take it seriously and apply it correctly.  Thank God, so is St. Paul's letter to the Romans.  Like Solomon, Paul has something to say about futility in the world, but his conclusion is very different from Solomon's.  Why?  What does Paul know that Solomon for all his wisdom overlooks?

    Some Biblical scholars dispute that King Solomon actually wrote Ecclesiastes.  But even if it turns out that he didn't, the whole book is written from Solomon's point of view and matches Solomon's life experience.  So we'll assume he is the author.  In verse 1 of Ecclesiastes 1 the he introduces himself as "the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem."

    There's an absurdity right there, in light of he says in the rest of the book.  Over the centuries, the title "son of David" became an expression of hope for Israel.  It's shorthand for the promise that God gave King David that a son in his line would always be king over God's people, and even if the Lord should have to punish him for his sins, ultimately the throne of David would be established before the Lord forever.  The Jews came to understand that some sort of immortal Son of David would sit forever on that throne, and His coming would mark the fulfilment of all God's purposes in heaven and on earth.  But here we have Solomon, a man actually begotten by King David, and he has no such hope. He looks forward to no promise, and he takes no joy in the present life God has given him under the sun.  "Meaningless! Meaningless!" he cries out.  "Everything is utterly meaningless!"

    From verse 3 he critiques human activity.  What good do we humans get out of all the work we do?  Sure, you can enjoy the fruits of your labor for awhile, you might even enjoy the work itself sometimes.  But then you die.  So what was the point?  In verses 9 and 10 he takes a shot at those who try to find purpose in invention and innovation.  Are you hoping to invent something new to astonish the world?  There's nothing new under the sun, the Teacher says, it's all been done before.  Are you striving for fame and glory after you're gone?  Well, good luck, he says in verse 11.  Not too many years from now and no one will remember you've even lived. What's the point in life?  Where's the fulfilment in it all?  There isn't any!  "‘Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher, ‘Everything is meaningless!'"

    We can dispute Solomon's take on these matters.  But the point isn't whether he's strictly accurate or not.  What we need to understand is that he's observing how things are "under the sun."  That is, how things are in this natural world where we humans are born and toil and finally die.  In the cosmos of "under the sun," God is present, but in a distant way.  He is not immanent in Ecclesiastes: that is, He's not God-with-us.  He's more like a landlord who collects the rent when it's due and watches to make sure you're not trashing the place.  But you'd never have Him in for a cup of coffee-- God is in heaven and you and all your meaningless fellow-creatures are on this earth, separated from Him in your mindless futility.
 
    And nature doesn't help.  In chapter 2 Solomon writes of planting vineyards and groves, gardens and parks.  But he found it was all a chasing after the wind.  He found no meaning in the order he'd imposed on nature.  With that being the case, spending time out in wild nature with all its danger and chaos wasn't going to bring him peace and fulfilment.  Solomon was not the kind of man who'd insist that one could worship God out in the woods better than in the temple in Jerusalem.   No, even without storms and floods and natural disasters, creation only served to mock human futility. "Generations come and generations go," writes the Teacher in verse 4, "but the earth remains forever."  That's no comfort to him.  It's like saying, "We mortal men and women all die-- grandparents, parents, and children-- but it doesn't affect the earth.  Creation doesn't care."  Regardless of what we humans do, the sun goes on rising and setting, the wind keeps on blowing, the rivers keep flowing down to the sea, and the sea is never full.  What's the point of it?  Everything is futile and absurd under the sun.

    St. Paul, like Solomon, admits that just now creation is the very image of futility.  In fact, you might say he begins with a situation that is even worse.  Solomon is physically comfortable, well-fed, and in control.  He's "king in Jerusalem."  But Paul and the Christians he writes to are too often poor, they're suffering for their faith, they're the oppressed in Rome.  Nevertheless, Paul begins verse 18 of chapter 8 with the words, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us."  What glory?  We'd best go back to verses 16 and 17 to answer that. 

    There it says,

        The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

We are children of God, by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ!  We do have a purpose and a goal in this life!  And not just us, the whole creation is included in this promise of glory and hope.

    We see from the text that by "creation" Paul means "nature" not including humanity or the angels.  For humanity is the sons of God who will be revealed, or those who remain sons of the devil, as we read in Ephesians chapter 2.  The creation is mentioned in contrast to the sons of God who will be revealed, and those people who aren't among the sons of God aren't anxiously waiting for this revelation, they don't care or they actively hate the idea that someday we will be glorified in Christ and Christ will be glorified in us.  And creation does not include the angels, for the fallen ones have no such longing, and the blessed hosts of heaven were never subjected to futility, as it says in verse 20 that creation was.

    But when was creation subjected to futility?  If we go back to Genesis chapter 3, we read how after our first parents sinned, God put a curse not only on them, but on all creation.  He decreed that it should be subverted from its original state, so that the ground brings forth thistles and weeds far more easily than edible crops and only with wearisome toil can we bring good out of it.

    I purposely read the Romans reading out of the New Revised Standard Version, because of this word "futility" in verse 20.  It translates the Greek word mataiotes, which means emptiness, futility, purposelessness, transitoriness, and frustration.  The NIV uses this last term, frustration, which is good.  But it leaves the impression that if nature tried a little harder, it could reach meaning and fulfilment as it now is.  But in the curse God blocked the creation from reaching its appointed goal.  No matter what happens in nature or how beautiful and well-designed it is, without our redemption it still is ineffective, it cannot fulfil the purpose God originally planned for it.

    And in God's inscrutable providence,  that curse will ultimately turn out to be a blessing for us, whom God is redeeming by the blood of Jesus Christ.  Remember, in the beginning God gave the man and the woman dominion and rule over all of nature.  We became the head of creation, its vice-regents and representative. Then we rebelled against God and fell.  God could have kept nature perfect and removed it from under us.  But instead He chose to maintain the spiritual and physical ecology we have with this earth and all its creatures.  Despite what Solomon believed, nature is not some alien entity disconnected from us.  No, it's very futility proves that it is still connected to us.

    In His mercy to us, God willed that like us, creation might look forward in hope to the day when all things find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ.  Right now nature, like us, is in bondage to decay.  On the last day, nature, like us, will be liberated and will enjoy the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

    Meanwhile, Paul says, the whole creation is groaning together in pains like that of a woman birthing a child.  Yes, nature struggles.  Yes, there are fires, floods, earthquakes, tornados, droughts, and other natural disasters.  Nature is not what it should be.  It's not what it was created to be.  But its travail does not prove its meaninglessness; rather, those very struggles point to the renewal and rebirth God promises when we are revealed as His adopted sons and heirs.  Even when nature seems most hostile against us, the Scripture teaches us to see it as our fellow-sufferer.  And like it in its brokenness we, too, groan with longing for day of the redemption of our bodies.

    Yes, our bodies.  We will be fully redeemed only when our physical bodies are made new and we share in the life-giving resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Not till then will our full adoption be in effect.  Nature is material and for it to share in our glorification, our new bodies must be material.  This bodily resurrection is the hope in which we were saved.  This is the promise the Holy Spirit testifies to even in the worst of our struggles with the seeming futility of this present age.

    This is why Christians in a tornado-ravaged city like Joplin, Missouri, could gather to praise and worship God a week after their lives seemed utterly ruined in last month's tornado.  That's why churches in Japan can joyfully share the gospel along with food and clothing in the wake of March's earthquake and tsunami.  Unbelievers don't understand how this can be.  They mock the people of God for being delusional, for not seeing how pointless and absurd life under the sun really is.  But they don't see that God is at work even in the midst of creation's futility. The groaning of nature is great, but our God is greater.  Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of David has come into the world.  On the cross He suffered what seemed to be the most senseless, meaningless death that a human being has ever known.

    But death, decay, and futility could not hold Him and He rose triumphant from the grave.  Death, decay, and futility cannot hold us, who are called by God to be revealed as His sons.  And death, decay, and futility will not hold God's creation, which will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  The labor of creation will not be in vain.  God will see that nature finds its fulfilment in us, as we find our fulfilment in Him.

    Solomon failed to see this, because he was focussed only on life "under the sun."  True, in this world we are subject to frustration.  We do go through periods when everything seems so pointless we don't even know how to pray.  But with St. Paul we affirm that is not all there is.  God has brought heaven to us in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He lived as one of us, He died our death, and He rose again that we might share the life of the only-begotten Son of God.  Even now God the Holy Spirit is here with us and in us, bringing meaning where we find no meaning and hope where we see no hope.  He intercedes for us, He prays in us and with us, He groans with us even when creation itself seems to be falling into chaos.  According to the will of God He intercedes for us, His saints.  And the will of God is this: That we, His children, and all creation shall be brought to glorious fulfilment, according to His gracious promises in Jesus Christ our Lord, to the honor and praise of His name, now and forever.  Amen.

The Great Physician's Diagnosis

Texts: Ezekiel 36:22-32; Matthew 15:1-20

WE'RE A VERY HEALTH-CONSCIOUS nation. One way we raise health awareness is by dedicating certain weeks or months to some disease or other. Like, February is National Heart Month. So all through every February the Heart Association runs public service announcements urging us to take care of our hearts. You'll hear about the symptoms of heart attack and heart disease and congestive heart failure, and always you'll be urged to go see your physician to get checked out if you're experiencing any of these.

In the same spirit, how would it be if a nonprofit action group-- let's call it the Church-- would run a PSA something like this (cue the ominous music and the caring and serious announcer):

"Sluggishness in doing good. Rebelliousness against God. Evil thoughts. Evil deeds. Murder. Adultery. Sexual immorality. Theft. False testimony. Slander. These are all symptoms of Hard and Dirty Heart. Think you don't have any of these symptoms? That's a sure sign of Pride--the most dangerous symptom of all.

"100% of all people everywhere are infected with Hard and Dirty Heart, and without treatment, the condition is 100% fatal.

"But there is hope! Make an appointment with Jesus Christ the Great Physician at your local church this coming Sunday. He has the medicine to cure Hard and Dirty Heart and make your heart clean towards God and soft towards your fellow man. Don't delay! Remember, without Jesus Christ, the death rate is 100%. With His treatment, your cure is 100% guaranteed!

"This announcement has been brought to you by the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church."

Think that'd go over on KDKA or Froggy 104? Or would the listeners think it was over the top?
They shouldn't. And we shouldn't. Of all health awareness announcements, it's the one where we can be assured that the statistics are totally accurate and the advice is sure.

Jesus Christ is known as the Great Physician. That's largely because of His healing ministry when He walked this earth. But even more, Jesus is the Great Physician because He's the only one who can diagnose our basic human sickness-- without error or mistake. He's the only doctor who can deliver an absolutely effective cure.

And every last human being is or ought to submit to His care and be His patient.

When you're a patient, you're the one being acted upon. The physician is the agent. He's the one giving the medicine, running the tests, performing the surgery. Now today, we're urged to be "partners" in our medical care, and not just patients. And to a great extent that's a good thing. But there comes a time when you're a patient, pure and simple, and there's no arguing about "partnership." When you're under anesthesia, you're not cooperating with your surgeon, it's all up to him or her.

If that's so for our human physicians, how much more is it true for the Great Physician, Jesus Christ, the Son of God!

Our reading from Ezekiel should open our eyes to the truth of this. The Lord God of Israel, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is speaking to the exiles in Babylon. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, He's also speaking to us. Notice this: all through this passage it's all about the Lord and what He will do and why He will do it. He will show the holiness of His great name. He will take His people out from among the nations and bring them back into their own land. He will make them clean. He will put His Spirit in them. He will cause their land to be prosperous. And so on and on. The Lord God is the Great Physician of His people Israel, and the only role they have as His patients is to loathe themselves for their disease, for their sins and their detestable practices.
There's a joke that goes, "What's the difference between God and a surgeon?" Answer: "God doesn't think He's a surgeon." Well, here in Ezekiel 36, the Lord God begs to differ. He is Israel's surgeon, and He's taking on their case strictly for the sake of His holy Name. With a human physician that would be insufferable. For God, it is only just and right. He alone is worthy of all honor, glory, and praise. The universe will be healthy and whole only when every creature gives God the worship due His name. But here, God's own chosen people have caused Him to be blasphemed among the Gentiles. The pagan nations were saying, "Ha! The Lord God of Israel, He isn't much! He took on that miserable people, He gave them His laws and covenants and put them in that fine and fertile land. And all they've done is disobey Him and make Him look weak! Those people were so bad, He couldn't keep His promises to them and had to kick them out of their promised land! He must not be so holy as He claims!"

Do we think we're better than our ancient ancestors the Jews? We don't dare. How often do unbelievers say that kind of thing about Christians today? Is the Lord's name profaned in the world because of our hard and dirty hearts? I'm afraid too often, it is.

But the Lord our God is holy. He is able to cure Israel of their deadly disease, and He is able to cure us. And He will do it, not for our sake, but for the sake of His holy Name, so all the nations round about, so all the unbelievers who doubt His power will know that He and He alone is the great and Sovereign Lord.

The Great Physician diagnoses our problem and its cure in verses 25 and 26. He says, "I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols." The Pharisees in Jesus' day were concerned to the point of panic with ritual uncleanness: God Almighty is concerned with the dirtiness of our thoughts and deeds. Our hearts and minds are filthy with idols and their worship. True, we don't physically bow down to idols of wood and stone. But we're still idolaters. You know what idol every one of us worships every day? The idol of Self. It's the idol Satan set up in the hearts of Adam and Eve way back in the Garden of Eden, and we humans have been burning incense and making sacrifices to Ourselves as gods and goddesses ever since.

The Lord knows we need to be cured of the dread heart disease of Self and Sin, because it's 100% fatal. The Lord says in verse 26, "I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

Think what it means to have a heart of stone. Can a heart made of stone beat? Can it pump blood through the body to keep it alive? Can it feel compassion towards its neighbor? Can it swell with joy towards its Lord and Creator? Can a heart of stone even be alive? No, no, no, no, no, and no! A heart of stone is dead. A heart of stone can do nothing, simply nothing to change or soften or cure itself.

And a heart of stone is what every man, woman, and child ever born on this planet starts out with. We all are born hard-hearted and unclean, caring only about ourselves and what will make us happy and fulfilled. And if anyone else gets in the way, watch out!

Our only hope is the merciful intervention of the Great Physician. Our only help is the Lord God making us His patient and giving us a new hearts of flesh instead of our old hearts of stone.

And here is the good news! The operation doesn't depend on me or you! The Holy Spirit comes to us while we are still dead in our sins and makes us alive in Jesus Christ. God Himself takes all the initiative, He does all the work, God in Christ suffered all the pain. The Word of God is the Great Physician's scalpel that cuts away our disease. The shed blood of Christ is the medicine that washes out our impurities and makes us healthy and whole.

The new heart God promised the house of Israel in Ezekiel 36 is the same one He gives to us-- it is the new and clean heart of Jesus Christ Himself. His heart is the one that makes us alive. His heart is the one that now beats in us with compassion towards our neighbor. His heart is the heart in us that we lift up with joy, thanks, and praise towards our Father in heaven.

Some people might say, "I don't want the new heart of Jesus Christ in me. I'm offended because God says He's going to save me only to vindicate His own holiness. I'm insulted because He says there's nothing special or good or deserving in me that forces Him to come and cure me. I'm going to be saved on my own terms, or not at all!"

Oh, you silly human! Don't you realize that you can't be saved on your own terms? Don't you understand that when the Great Physician operates on you for the sake of His holy Name, that's the best and most wonderful thing He can ever do for you?

The benefits of God's surgery were wonderful enough under the Old Covenant: Plentiful crops, prosperous towns, plentiful livestock, and a burgeoning population. Under the New Covenant in the blood of Christ, it's even better! We have gained nothing less than eternal unity with the holy heart of God! For now for Jesus Christ Himself keeps God's laws and decrees within us. Jesus Himself, by His new and clean heart working within us, does in us what is pleasing towards God, and brings us every blessing of obedience.

But there is still one big problem, of course. Our new and true heart is the heart of Jesus Christ, yes. But our old dead, dirty, stoney hearts keep wanting to push Jesus aside and go back to running the show. They tell us all sorts of deadly lies about how things can be. And here's the deadliest lie of all: It's when our old sinful hearts whisper, "Hey, I've got it under control! Jesus has saved you, but now I can handle it by myself! I can keep God happy with you. I'll just use Jesus as a Good Example and make sure you keep all the rules about how to be good and acceptable to God, no sweat! Whaddya say?"

This is a lie from the pit of Hell. This was the false cure the Pharisees were perpetrating in Jesus' day. They thought they were the nation's spiritual physicians, but their prescription was all wrong. They thought people could be holy before God by following outward rules. Wash your hands a certain way before you eat! Set up a trust to send all your spare cash to the temple fund, even if it means Mom and Dad will starve! No, you can not haz cheezburger--that's milk and beef in the same meal! The Pharisees were pushing all these outward practices like magic pills to make the people pleasing to the Lord. They'd totally forgotten that the outward laws and ordinances given through Moses were always about what a person was like on the inside. It was always about having a clean and loving heart before God and man. The ceremonial laws were never supposed to be a substitute for true inward spiritual health. But that's what the Pharisees had made of them.

Jesus calls the Pharisees "blind guides." He could've called them "quack doctors," too. He told Peter and the other disciples not to follow them, and He tells us, His modern-day disciples, the same thing. We don't need rules and regimens for holy living, we need the radical heart surgery performed exclusively by the Great Physician, Jesus Christ.

Once Jesus has done His work in us, the only follow-up directive is for us to wholly rely on Him. He is in us, by His Spirit, living His pure life of obedience within us and through us. Always, continually, refer all your troubles, all your temptations, all your fears back to Him and His finished work on the Cross. He will make sure that the fruit of a clean heart, like pure thoughts, affirmation of life, faithfulness, sexual purity, respect for others' property, truthfulness, gracious speech, and every other virtue-- that all these will proceed out of you without your being able to stop them!

For Jesus did not save you then just walk away. No, He sustains His new life in you by the power of His Holy Spirit. He ministers to you by His means of grace; that is, by the preaching of His holy Word and by partaking in His Holy Sacraments. Maybe you'd never thought of Holy Communion as a health tonic. But it is. Here at the Lord's Table Jesus feeds us with His body and cleanses us with His blood. Here our hearts are lifted up to Him and we and all His saints are joined more closely to His eternal life. Here we are filled with a new sense of what our Lord did for us when He died for our sins on Calvary and what He keeps on doing for us, day after day after day.

Believe the Great Physician's diagnosis. Accept the new heart He died to give you. Live in the joy of His Holy Spirit. Jesus lived and died and rose again to make Hard and Dirty Heart a disease of the past. In humility and thanksgiving, for the sake of God's holy Name, come, receive the Cure He offers you, and be healthy and whole, alive and utterly, joyfully clean. ________________________

Image via http://wordle.net/

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Texts: Isaiah 5:1-7; Galatians 5:16-26; Luke 20:9-19

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

You hear that line, you probably think of the nursery rhyme:

Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.

A nice little verse to teach the children, right? But many traditional nursery rhymes started out as the sung version of political cartoons. This one is most likely about Queen Mary Tudor.

Mary was the elder daughter of Henry VIII, who split the Church of England off from Rome. By the time Mary became queen, her younger half-brother Edward VI had been working several years to make England thoroughly Protestant. But Mary was Roman Catholic to the core. Whatever it took, she was going to return England to the Pope and what she saw as the True Faith of the Roman Catholic Church.

But the majority of her subjects disagreed. To them, she was "quite contrary"-- she was trying to reunite them with Rome when they wanted the Reformation. And she was making of England a strange garden. Again there were silver bells: the restoration of the pomp and ceremony of Roman Catholic liturgy, especially to the bells that are rung when the priest is said to be turning the bread and wine into the physical body of our Lord Jesus Christ. There were cockle shells: Cockle shells were the souvenir badge of someone who’d made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela in Spain in order to gain forgiveness of his sins. Protestants did not believe in pilgrimages to earn forgiveness. Catholics did.

And Queen Mary planted the "pretty maids all in a row." Some say that refers to the graves of all the Protestant martyrs she caused to be executed. Others say it’s a grim reference to the torture device called the iron maiden. However it was, Bloody Mary sowed quite a crop in her day, and the result was bloodshed, confusion, strife, and economic disaster.

That’s what happens too often when we human beings start sowing our gardens in this world. But when God Almighty plants a garden, then all will be well, right? Any songs about His gardening work will be songs of joy, correct?

Or maybe not.

Children sang of Queen Mary and her disastrous garden in the streets of Tudor England, but long before that, the prophet Isaiah was singing a song of the Lord God and His tragic vineyard in the temple courts of ancient Jerusalem.

How did God’s vineyard grow? Not so well, actually.

The Lord has planted it in an ideal spot with the richest soil. He’s dug the ground and cleared it of stones-- no obstacles are going to hamper the roots of His vines! He’s chosen the best vines available and surrounded it with a hedge and a wall to keep the wild animals out. He's built a watchtower to keep a lookout for thieves, and a winepress that's waiting to receive the grapes at harvest time. The Lord God has followed all the best practices of viticulture-- but instead of sweet, juicy grapes, all He gets is stinky-sour little marbles.

As Isaiah sang his song of the Lord’s vineyard, his hearers would agree, yes, there was something very wrong with those vines. The owner of the vineyard was sorely cheated. Somebody really should pay. But by the end of the song, they’d have to realize that they were the rotten, fruitless vines. They and their countrymen were the cheats, the ones who would pay:

"The vineyard of the Lord Almighty
is the house of Israel
and the men of Judah
are the garden of his delight."

At least, they were supposed to be. But the Gentile nations could have pointed their fingers at Judah and sung,

O God of Israel, God of Israel,
How does your vineyard grow?
With oppression and strife and cheapness of life
And murderers all in a row.

But the Lord didn’t plant His vineyard that way! He’d lavished every advantage on Israel and Judah! I’ve read that the only difference between a wild sour grape vine and a cultivated sweet one is the work of cultivation. If a wild vine is cultivated, it doesn’t stay wild. And if a people are graced with the Law and favor of God, they shouldn’t stay godless and self-centered. But the Lord looked upon Judah, the garden of His delight. And where He expected the fruit of justice, He found murder and bloodshed. Not just the murder of the dark alley, not just the slaying of the helpless wife by the drunken husband, but so-called "legal" murder: judges sentencing the innocent to death: the rich cheating the poor out of their houses and lands and turning them out to starve and die. The Lord reached out His hand for the fruit of righteousness: right relationships, kindness and consideration between family members and neighbors, and true worship towards Himself, but pulled it back in horror when it touched nothing but the slugs of oppression, misery, and distress.

The Lord says through the mouth of His prophet, "What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?"

The answer, of course, is nothing. So what will God do?

He will give His people what they deserve for their sins. He will prune them through war and devastation, ruin and exile. He would no longer let them think that He does not demand justice, righteousness, and every fruit of virtue in His garden. He would no longer let them mistake His grace for indulgence and His mercy for approval of their crimes and sins.

About 700 years after Isaiah, another Prophet sits teaching in the temple courts in Jerusalem. It is Jesus of Nazareth, and He, too, sings of God the Beloved, and how His vineyard grows. This time, it seems there is fruit for the Lord to enjoy-- if only He can get what He is due.

For after the Lord purged and pruned His people in the Babylonian exile, He led them back home and planted them again in their own land. He set leaders over them, tenant farmers who were to cultivate the people and lead them in the ways of the Lord. They were to teach the people the Law and see that they bore fruit worthy of His name.

But a long time passed. And priests and scribes and teachers of the Law who were the tenants of the Lord’s vineyard forgot why they were there. They claimed allegiance to their Landlord and His Law, but they got more and more tied up with how they thought things should be. They began to look on God’s people as their own, to prune and cultivate and feed upon as they saw fit. They didn’t appreciate interference from outside, even from God Himself!

In this they were only following the bad example of religious and civil leaders from Isaiah’s time and before--and since. It’s what happens any time that the caretakers of God’s vineyard focus on doing their own will under the cover of God’s name instead of on doing God’s will in God’s name.

So when God the Landlord sent His servants the prophets to claim the fruit of godliness, righteousness, and justice, His tenants did them violence and sent them back with no grapes, only the strange red fruit of blood and wounds.

Jesus knew His hearers would be scandalized in the Owner’s behalf, just as Isaiah’s audience was. Jesus also knew they’d be ripe with fury when they realized His song was about them. At the climax of His parable, He describes a crime against God the Landlord that hadn’t been committed yet but would be soon-- the slaying of the Owner’s own Son who was sent to collect the fruit of the vineyard on His behalf. Did the teachers of the law realize that Jesus was talking about Himself? Whether or not, they seemed very eager to prove they were capable of the enormity He accused them of.

For their crimes, the doom of the tenants is the same as the doom of the bad vines in Isaiah’s song--death, destruction and loss.

That’s how it is. When God lavishes care on human beings, He expects and deserves worship and obedience in return. When God invests anyone with a sacred trust, He expects and deserves that that leader shall render up the fruit of it whenever God requires. God has a right to expect that His vineyard shall grow and bear fruit and be taken care of very, very well.

But we’ve seen that that very seldom happens. It’s not God’s fault. It’s not even a particular problem with the Jews. It’s how things are with humanity in general. The best of us given the best of advantages cannot come up to God’s righteous expectations. It’s the sinful nature and its natural selfishness. It’s the worm of original sin working away in our hearts.

Didn’t God realize that about us when He planted His vineyard? Of course He did. But both our Lord and His prophet Isaiah are speaking on our human level. We’re made in His image and we’re responsible for what we do and are before the Lord. In particular, God’s chosen people from Old Testament Israel to the 21st century church are responsible for bearing good fruit for God. Especially, we who claim the name of our Lord Jesus Christ are the vineyard of the Lord in these latter times. We are the garden of His delight. As Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, we’re to bear the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. God expects and deserves nothing less from us who have been redeemed by His grace.

If I were a preacher of a certain type, I’d start exhorting you under the pain of the fire of hell to work really, really hard to bear all that good fruit. I’d say you’d better hurry up and work on it, or you won’t inherit the kingdom of God, you’ll get the other place. But that’d be stupid. That’d be like--

Well, it’d be like the sweet pepper plants in my garden. I have four of them, but only three have set on any fruit. The fourth one has plenty of flowers, and a nubbin or two, but no peppers worth speaking of. Well, what if I were to go to the store and buy some green peppers and tied them to that plant with string? Wouldn’t work, would it? They’d just rot.

Or what say I go buy some artificial peppers at the craft store and hang them on the plant? Yeah, right. Try eating that in your salad!

It’s the same way if we try to bear the fruit of the Spirit by our external effort. It’d all be fake. It’d all be rot.

So what are we supposed to do? How can our gardens grow?

By remembering whose gardens they are. Remember: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are the fruit of the Spirit. They are the virtues and obedience that God Himself gives. They are the fruit we bear when He has given Himself to us in His Son and we are joined to Him. "Live by the Spirit," St. Paul writes, "and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature." In other words, you will bear the fruit the Lord desires.

We have to get it the right way around. If you say, "If I do this I will live," your fruit will be false and rotten and you will die. But if your mind is, "I will live by the Spirit and so do this," that is peace and pleasure and fellowship with God.

The key to it all is Jesus’ words in John’s gospel, chapter 15. No human being, Jew or Gentile, could ever be the fruitful vine that the Lord requires. No human being, that is, except the God-Man, Jesus Christ. He is the true vine whose fruit is righteousness and justice. We bear fruit only when and if we are connected by faith with Him. And no human leader or vinedresser can truly take care of God’s garden the way God Himself does by His Holy Spirit.

What does this look like in everyday life? I’m learning it’s primarily a matter of faithfulness. It’s putting ourselves under the authority of Scripture and letting the Holy Spirit its Author interpret it to us, and not our own desires.

It’s a matter of union and connection: Union with God in Spirit-led prayer and connection with fellow-believers who can encourage us to keep in step with the Spirit, even when it seems hard.

And it’s a matter of attitude. It’s the Spirit reminding you that Jesus has already borne the perfect fruit of justice and righteousness and that He wants to bear it in you. It’s remembering that Jesus obeyed God perfectly in all He said, thought, and did, and trusting Him to work out His obedience in you. It’s feeding on the most precious fruit that ever hung on a vine or a tree, the fruit of the broken body of our Lord Jesus Christ, dead on the cross for our sins and raised glorious, whole, and shining for our life and exaltation.

Don’t believe it when people tell you that the bad fruit of the sinful nature can be sweetened up by prosperity, education, and good examples. If that were the case, ancient Israel would never needed a Messiah. If that were the case, modern America would have no need for a Saviour now.

But Israel needed Jesus the Christ and so do we. And He’s here, by His Holy Spirit, ready to give you life, ready to cause you to bear fruit, ready to make your garden grow: to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Clothed and in Our Right Minds

Texts: Galatians 3:22-29; Luke 8:26-39

EVERY TIME YOU GET DRESSED, DID you know you’re making a theological statement?

You could be dressing for work or for a party. But whenever you put on a decent, suitable set of clothes, you’re agreeing with God that’s He’s right about the sort of creature you are and what you need from Him.

Back in the Garden of Eden, people didn’t need clothes. Adam and his wife Eve were created naked, and they felt no shame. They had nothing to be ashamed of! They lived with God in sinless innocence. Their relations with one another were those of pure marriage. They lived in harmony with creation, and didn’t need to be protected from it. Their unashamed nakedness was a sign of their openness and freedom with their Creator and one another.

But then, Adam and Eve sinned. They cast off the one restraint God had put on them, not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and tried to get wisdom and knowledge He had forbidden them to have. And when they’d been "made wise," what did they find out? That they were naked! And that suddenly, it was something to be ashamed of. So they tried to make themselves clothing out of fig leaves, and they hid from the Lord God that evening when He manifested Himself in the Garden.

But the clothes they made for themselves weren’t adequate. Adam and Eve’s efforts didn’t cover what’d gone wrong between themselves and God, between the man and the woman themselves, and between humanity and nature. The Lord God made garments of animal skins and clothed them Himself. That covering wasn’t just for their bodies; it was symbolic of the covering that needed to be made for their sin.

When we human creatures wear clothes, we’re acknowledging we’re not sufficient unto ourselves. Without clothing, we’re naked, cold, defenseless, and vulnerable. We’re at the mercy of the elements and other people. To be stripped naked is to be violated and shamed.

But even when the weather is perfectly fine, even when there’s nothing to fear from those around us, the fact that we go around clothed testifies that our human freedom and innocence are gone. Things aren’t the way they should be between ourselves and God, and between ourselves and others. We really do have something to be ashamed of. Not just our bodies, but our thoughts, our emotions, and our inclinations need covering and restraint.

But occasionally you’ll hear of people who don’t believe that. They say there’s nothing wrong with human nakedness, and to prove it, they go out in public with nothing on just to prove they can. I recently read about bike riders in sixty different cities around the world who rode naked two weeks ago, to quote, "Protest oil dependency and showcase your gorgeous self-love." Well, you know, it’s that "gorgeous self-love" that got us in the mess we’re in. People do things like that to assert their freedom, but they don’t realize that we’re not morally free. We operate at the whim of our sinful desires, unless God steps in and overmasters them. Deliberately to go naked is really to rebel against God.

So it’s significant in our reading from St. Luke that the demon-possessed man has not worn clothes for a long time. He is a demonstration of the ultimate rebellion. He has cast off all restrait from society and God and opened himself up to control by God’s enemies, the demons.

When did it start for this man? Maybe when he was a boy he rebelled against the influence of his parents and teachers. Maybe as a teenager he started dabbling in dark mysteries and the occult. Maybe he got involved in alcohol abuse and sexual sin. But in the name of self-expression, he cast off morality, social structure, his home, his clothing, and his sanity. In the name of freedom from God and His rule, this poor man ended up possessed and hounded by his demons, driven naked to live like a wild beast among the tombs.

He was so possessed, so enslaved, that he no longer had any identity of his own. It’s not just that we don’t know his name; that’s common for people whom Jesus meets and heals. It’s that in verse 29, Jesus commands the evil spirit to come out of him, and he cries out, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!"

Who’s this "me"? This man of Geresa doesn’t know Jesus of Nazareth. He doesn’t know Jesus is the Son of God Most High. He doesn’t know our Lord has power over the demons of Hell!

But the demons do. And they won’t let the man answer for himself. Naked, bleeding, living cold and crazy among the tombs, this poor fragment of humanity no longer has any self to answer with.

Now here’s something that never fails to amaze me: Every time there’s an encounter between our Lord Jesus and a demon, it’s always the demons who are quaking and afraid. Jesus is always the one in control. Jesus asks, "What is your name?"

Can this man be called back to a sense of himself? Or has his personality been stripped away from him as thoroughly as the clothing and fetters he couldn’t help but shed?

"Legion," is the reply. (A legion was a Roman battalion of 4,000 to 6,000 soldiers). No, there seems to be nothing left of what once was a human being.

But the legion of demons know that’s about to change. With Jesus there, it has to change. And they beg and beg Jesus not to send them into the Abyss, to the Lake of Fire prepared for the Devil and his angels, where they will be naked before the wrath of God for all eternity. The demons have more sense than a lot of us human beings! They didn’t want to be unclothed!

So they beg Jesus to allow them to go into the herd of pigs feeding nearby, and we know the result. Sorry, you stupid demons, you’ve just driven the pigs mad, they’ve rushed down the hill into the lake and drowned, and it’s off to the Abyss with you, after all.

Do you feel sorry for the pigs? Or for the swineherds? Surely, it was a terrible economic loss. Though if they were Jews who owned them, they had no business investing in pork! But let’s not miss the point of what Jesus has just accomplished. There were witnesses to this scene, not just the disciples, but also citizens of that region. It was important for them to have proof of what Jesus can do. It’s one thing for a priest or a healer to say, "Demons, be gone!" The demons might lie low, then break out against their victim worse than ever after the exorcist has departed the scene. But when the exorcist says, "Go!" and immediately a peaceful herd of pigs goes thundering down the hillside, you know the cure is effective. The demons are really gone.

By the time the people in the town and from the countryside gather, there the man is, no longer possessed. He’s sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind. Jesus has restored him to a right sense of who he is and who God is for him. For the demons, it was "God Most High," the old pagan name for the distant all-powerful great Spirit who was only to be feared. But now, the man knows Jesus, come to minister God’s love and mercy to him. He was free in a perverse way when he raged naked among the tombs, breaking off his fetters. But now Jesus has claimed him for His own, now he belongs to Christ, and he’s never been so free in his born days.

How do the people of that region react to that? They’re overcome with fear at Jesus and what He’d done. It wasn’t just about the pigs. The thing that scared them most was the change He’d worked in that one man.

It can be scary when Jesus gets ahold of someone who used to be really bad. If we know somebody who’s really out there, who’s really wicked, who’s really far gone, we can say, "Well, I’m not like him! I must be okay." But then, Jesus makes a shocking, radical change in the wicked person’s life. He or she truly becomes good, pure, and merciful. We see up close and personal what the power of Christ can do, and all our own excuses for our own attitudes and behavior start to look pretty shabby. We’re forced to see how poor, rebellious, enslaved, and unclothed we really are.

That’s hard to face. "Jesus, go away," we say. "I want to celebrate me and my gorgeous self-love. Stop scaring me with the idea of my guilt and shame. Stop shaming me with your white-hot goodness." We hug to ourselves the rags of our good works, or our social position, or our nice temperament, and try not to see that we need Jesus to deliver us and clothe us in His righteousness, too.

When I was first exploring my call to the ministry, I submitted the usual written material about my understanding of a pastor’s duties, my sense of call, and so on. My senior pastor at the time was theologically liberal, and he objected to the orthodox, Biblically-based way I’d put things. I still remember sitting in his office and having him tell me, "You have to get rid of all that religious baggage and stand naked before God!" I wish I knew then what I know now: That none of us can stand naked before God. That if we did, the blazing fire of His purity would consume us right away.

No, the only way we can stand before God, the only way we can sit at Jesus’ feet, is if we’re clothed and in our right minds. That is, if we are clothed with Christ Himself. Until Jesus Himself clothes us, we are prisoners of sin, prisoners of our rebellion, prisoners of our enormous, raggedy self-love. As we read in Galatians, until Jesus clothes us, we are prisoners of the roles and categories the world puts upon us: Jew vs. Gentile, slave vs. free, male vs. female, rich vs. poor. But when Jesus clothes us with His redemption and righteousness, there’s only one category for us, and that’s beloved child of God and heir to His blessed promises in His only begotten Son.

St. Paul says that these promises are given to those who believe. Believe what?

Ah, there’s the sad, joyful, and astounding part. We must believe that the perfect, eternal Son of God laid aside the garment of His own power in heaven and permitted Himself to be clothed in a body of human flesh. We must believe that in that flesh He condescended to be taken captive, stripped naked, and nailed to a tree, to gasp out His life’s breath in agony and shame. That just as God slew those animals to make skin coverings for Adam and Eve, Jesus the Lamb of God shed His blood to provide the covering for our sins. That just as those pigs died to prove that the demon-possessed man was free, Jesus took on our uncleanness to deliver us from sin and the Devil.

We must believe that Jesus in His perfect purity and obedience totally defeated the powers of Hell, that He burst the prison house of death, and rose to glorious and everlasting life.

And we have to believe that Jesus did all that for us, to restore to us the joy and fellowship that Adam our father and Eve our mother knew with God in that long-lost garden.

But not to walk naked. Never again to walk naked. Rather, to be clothed with Christ, sitting at His feet, in our right minds, blessed, confident, open, and free. In His name, I invite you, put on the garment of His love, and be at peace.