Exercising Good Judgement

Text:  Luke 12:54-13:9

WE ALL FACE DEADLINES IN life.  In school or at work, the time comes when the project or assignment is due and it's time for it to be assessed.  Someone's going to come and judge your work, and will you pass the test?

But what if you don't know when the deadline is?  Or maybe, what if you claim you don't know when the deadline is?  Is that any excuse?  Or will the judge come and tell you you had all the information you needed; you should have been ready, you should have known?

Most Christians know that Jesus Christ is returning at the end of time to judge the living and the dead and to inaugurate His heavenly kingdom.  But we may not know that one of His most important roles during His time on earth was that of Old Covenant judge.  He came to wind up the old way of relating to God, based on works, and to bring in the new way, based on faith in Him.

The sayings of Christ in our Luke reading today are primarily addressed to the Jews of Jesus' time.  But we, too, can take warning from what He says, and be ready.

Our Lord is teaching the crowd.  He draws an analogy with the weather.  "When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It's going to rain,' and it does."  The people of the day are really good at interpreting the appearance of the earth and sky.  So why don't they know how to interpret the present time?

What is Jesus referring to?   It goes back to the days of Moses.  God called His people Israel out of the land of Egypt and chose them as His own nation.  At Mount Sinai God gave the Law.  The Law, beginning with the Ten Commandments, was more than just a list of dos and don'ts; it was the Covenant between God and His people.  It drew a picture of what they were to be like in order to please Him and to be worthy to call Him their God.

We know what happened, don't we?  The Covenant of Sinai was broken more than it was kept.  God's people frequently behaved worse that the pagan nations around them.  But the prophets of God always foretold the time when a new and more perfect covenant would be made between God and Israel.  A time was coming when the Promised One would appear, the Messiah, and He would perfectly keep the Covenant.  He would be the perfect Israel, and would embody the obedience that God demanded.  But this would be a time of cataclysm and change.  When He came He would put to judgement the disobedience of the people, and prove who was worthy to enter into the kingdom of God and who was not.  John the Baptist said what this one would be like.    He predicted, "One more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.  He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

We know that when Jesus came He did not carry the program of God's covenant judgement as far as John the Baptist expected.  This was due to God's mercy, to give the full number of God's elect among the Gentiles the chance to come in.  But Jesus by His coming did exercise covenant judgement upon Israel.  And as He speaks to the crowd, He judges their tendency to fool themselves about God's times and seasons.  They knew the prophets, they knew what was to happen when Messiah came.  It was as clear and certain as the rain clouds rising in the west and the wind blowing from the south.  But they wanted to deceive themselves about the implications of what was happening.

They should stop deceiving themselves and exercise right judgement.  For the time was coming when the sin of the people would be judged.  Jesus gives the analogy of someone going before a magistrate.  The scenario is that of a civil lawsuit, and the idea is that you, whom Jesus is addressing, really are guilty of harming your adversary.  The point is clear-- Israel has broken God's covenant and He has the right to satisfaction.  So don't deceive yourself and think that when judgement comes it'll be all right.  No, repent now, be reconciled now, for when the day of judgement comes it will be too late and there will be no help for you.

Jesus wants His fellow-Jews to understand that judgement is coming, it's imminent, and they deserve it.  But there are always people who want to concern themselves with other people's sins and other people's judgement, in an attempt to make themselves feel better about their own situation. So we hear that at that time, as Jesus was teaching these things, there were some who mentioned to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  This was a famous incident involving a power play ruthlessly executed by Pontius Pilate.  You have to wonder if this situation was brought up so the people present with Jesus could comfort themselves with the idea that  well, at least they hadn't done whatever those men did!  Jesus knows this is exactly where they're coming from, which is why He asks then if they thought those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because this horror had come upon them.  Yes, of course they thought that.  At least, they hoped so?  But no!  They were no worse!  "But unless you repent, you too will all perish."  Not necessarily by the hand of the Romans, but in whatever way God will in His judgement ordain.

And if people are going to bring up cases, what, Jesus says, about those eighteen people who died when the tower in the Siloam district of Jerusalem fell on them?  Was their guilt greater than that of anyone else in Jerusalem?  Absolutely not!  "But unless you repent, you too will all perish."

Why?  Because the time of judgement is at hand.  The time is coming soon when God will settle His scores with disobedient Israel, and the only escape will be to repent of their sins and throw themselves on the mercy of God.

To drive home the point, Jesus tells a parable regarding a fig tree planted in a vineyard.  Both the vineyard and the fig tree were well-known Scriptural images for Israel, and the expectation of fruit was a standard analogy for God's expectation of righteousness and good works from His people.

And now the One who has the right to look for those good works has come, but doesn't find any fruit.  For three years He's been coming and hasn't found any.

It's tempting to think the three years mentioned in the parable might refer to the fact that it's now towards the end of His three-year ministry.  But God had been looking for good fruit from Israel; that is, covenant faithfulness, for a whole lot longer than that.  The crowd listening to Jesus knew that if a fig tree was going to bear fruit, it'd do it in three years.  The owner of the vineyard has the right to expect fruit from this tree, but where is it?  All it's doing is taking up room in the vineyard.  Why not cut it down?  But the gardener asks for more time for the failing fig tree.  Jesus doesn't want us to go overboard with identifying the people in the parable with particular members of the Holy Trinity.  The point is that the fig tree, that is, God's Old Covenant people, are being given another chance to bring forth righteousness before God.  It's one more year in the parable; in real life the time may be even shorter.  Jesus' hearers had better not take any chances when it comes to themselves.

We know from history that judgement came upon the Jewish nation in A.D. 70, when the Roman legions under Titus marched in and destroyed Jerusalem, including the temple and its walls.  Judgement was complete and terrible.

But what about us?  Is it good judgement on our part to ignore the will of God and behave however we want, because we're covered by the grace of Christ?  Not at all!  It's true that our new covenant in Him is sealed by His blood and righteousness and not by sacrifices we might offer or deeds we might do.  But we, too, are called upon to repent, to exercise good judgement and depends on Jesus utterly.  For as the writer to the Hebrews says,

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.  For if the message spoken by angels was binding [that is, the covenant of the Law given on Mount Sinai], and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?

The cross of Christ brings us mercy that covers the sins of all who believe.  But we cannot expect our Lord to overlook the sins of anyone who takes His mercy for granted and presumes upon His righteous judgement.

Not only in this season of Lent but all year round, let us flee to Christ for forgiveness and safety in the day of reckoning.  For the day is coming when Christ surely will return.  Can we stand with confidence in that day?  Let us do the deeds that belong to repentance, not because we think we can put God in our debt, but because we are humbly grateful for what Jesus our Savior has done for us.  For He is the righteous Judge who surely will come, but He is also the Lamb of God on whom judgement fell that we might escape the judgement we deserved.  He has paid the uttermost penny for us; He is the fruitful fig tree that national Israel could never be.  So exercise good judgement and trust in Him and Him alone.  For then, when He, the Good Judge, comes to judge the living and the dead, you will be able to stand before God in confidence and joy, trusting in Chris and His merits, and giving Him praise and thanksgiving throughout all eternity.

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.

Christ's Resurrection and You: Who Is Your Mother?

Texts:  Galatians 4:21-31; John 21:15-19

THERE'S A STORY ABOUT A little boy, maybe four or five years old, who goes Christmas shopping with his mother.  The store is crammed with customers, and he loses her in the crowd. The child looks around desperately.  He sees a woman with her back to him, wearing a blue coat.  Oh! His mother was wearing a blue coat!  That must be his mom!

    The little boy runs up to her and grabs her by the belt of her coat.  Whew, he's safe!  But she's busy and distracted and he can't get her attention, so he just holds onto that belt for dear life.  Eventually, the woman pays for her selections and makes her way out of the crowded store, the little boy in tow.  Out on the sidewalk, the woman notices the pull on her coat belt.  "Mommy!" she hears a little voice say.  She turns around-- and the child bursts into tears and wails, "You're not my mommy!!"

    Oh, dear.  We have to hope that if and when this happens in real life, the nice lady would take the boy back into the store and help him find his real mother.  But nice and helpful as she might be, as nice and helpful as babysitters and teachers and aunts might be, they are not your mother, they can never take the place of your mother.  A normal child knows who his mother is, and he looks to her for guidance, for teaching, for counsel, for nurture, for protection, and yes, for discipline.

    It's important for us children of God the Father to know who our mother is, too, for nobody and nothing can take her place, and only she can guide, teach, counsel, nurture, protect, and discipline us up to everlasting life.

    Trouble is, too often we children of God fail to recognize our mother.  We latch onto mother substitutes and follow them to spiritual disaster, even to perdition, if that could be possible for the elect.  As a Christian, it's important that you know: Who is your mother?

    This is the problem St. Paul confronts in the fourth chapter of his letter to the Galatians.  The members of the Galatian Church had forgotten who their true mother was.  You could say that the whole epistle is Paul is trying to wake this church up to the danger that's gotten them into.  At the very start he says

    Paul, an apostle-- sent not by men or from man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead--

Paul writes in the authority of the resurrected Son of God.  He speaks in the power of the gospel of Christ dead and risen again.  This is the gospel that gave us birth into new life with God in Christ.  In it we gain the freedom of God's household (as we read in the first part of Chapter 4).  This good news is "not from men nor by men."  For what human being could ever conceive of an actual living, breathing, walking-around personage dying, and then, all by Himself, under His own power, rising from the dead?    The resurrection put the final seal on the new covenant God had always intended to make with mankind.  It made good on all the promises the Lord made so long ago to Father Abraham, that through his seed all nations would be blessed.  The Holy Spirit Himself had enabled the Galatians to believe and accept that Christ's blood had been shed for them, and that now they were justified through faith in Him alone.

    All this was on their spiritual birth certificate, you might say, and yet now they were doubting their identity in Christ.  Maybe they needed something else to guide, counsel, and nurture them.  Maybe they should follow what those men who came from Jerusalem said, and be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses like good Jews!

    And Paul can only shake his head in frustration and say, "You foolish Galatians!  Who is your mother, anyway?"

    Which brings us to our passage in Chapter 4.  Here Paul compares two mothers, Hagar and Sarah.  You know the story from Genesis.  God promised Abraham a son from his own loins.  For years nothing happened, and Abraham and his wife Sarah grew older and older, till the time of childbearing had passed her by.  So Sarah and Abraham decided to help things along a little.  After all, doesn't God help those who help themselves?  They utilized a device prevalent among their Hittite neighbors, for a wife who was barren to give one of her maidservants to her husband to be a surrogate mother.  The child would count as the wife's own offspring and everything would be acceptable and legitimate according to the rules of  the time.

    You know what happened next.  Hagar, the Egyptian slave woman, got pregnant and proceeded to make herself insufferable.  She pushed it so far that Sarah punished her and Hagar ran away into the desert.  But she returned and bore Ishmael, Abraham's natural son.  Then in God's good time, He miraculously enabled Sarah and Abraham to make a baby together.  As it says in the Letter to the Hebrews, "And from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore."  The birth of Isaac was literally life from the dead!  But Hagar and Ishmael didn't appreciate the wonder God had brought about.  Ishmael mocked and persecuted his little half-brother, and so it was the Lord's will that he and his mother be sent away. 

    As it happened, Ishmael fathered a great nation of his own, the Arab people, but in Galatians Paul wants us to see how these two mothers and their sons are metaphors for the choice we have to make.  Who is our mother?  Is it Hagar, whose son was born in the ordinary way?  Or is it Sarah, who bore her child from the deadness of her womb by the resurrection power of God?

    I'm still working away at the family tree for my mom that I mentioned last week, and for a time I had a certain 4th great-grandmother down as the daughter of her own sister-in-law.  That's what comes of having sons named after their fathers.  So how did I make that mistake?  I took the word of several different websites that said that Mary was Catherine's mother.  Never mind that the dates didn't make a bit of sense, that's what they all said.  And for awhile, I believed it.

    The voices of this world unite to tell you that Hagar is your mother.  Hagar is human effort making us acceptable to God.  Hagar stands for us making things happen in our own time and by our own effort, instead of being patient and waiting for God to keep His promises.  If you're nice enough, if you give enough to charity, if you follow the rules-- especially God's rules!-- He'll accept you as His child and take you to heaven when you die.

    To claim Hagar as your mother is to reject the power of Christ in His resurrection.  It's to reject Him as the fulfillment of all the promises made to Abraham.  The men who were travelling throughout the Roman world trying to convince Gentiles they had to be circumcised were known as "Judaizers."  Their goal was to make sure that good Christians also became good Jews.  They didn't realize or didn't care that the covenant that God made with Moses at Mount Sinai was only provisional.  That all the ceremonies and sacrifices looked forward to the slaying of the perfect Lamb of God on Calvary's cross.  And that now that He, Jesus, is risen, there is no more need for Gentiles to convert to Judaism to be pleasing to God. In fact, all Jews need to welcome Jesus their risen Messiah in order to be the chosen people God always intended them to be!

    Hagar represents the old covenant of Law, but Sarah represents God's new covenant of grace, shown to us in the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  We, too, have been born by the power of the Spirit.  We, too, are children of promise.  We are sons and daughters of the free woman, Sarah, and we share in the inheritance of God our Father through our Lord Jesus Christ.

    That is, if Sarah is your mother.  That is to say, if you accept that you are a child of God solely by His own life-giving power.

    In the same way, we must also choose whether our mother is the Jerusalem here on earth, or the Jerusalem that is above.  Remember that in the first century, Jerusalem was still the site of the Temple.  It was where the animal sacrifices were made.  It was where the men of Israel had to go to observe the appointed Feasts, like Passover and the Day of Atonement.  It was the heart of Jewish religious observance, the place where forgiveness of sins was to be found-- until the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ.  As Jesus said to the woman of Samaria,

    "A time is coming when you will worship God neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. . . . A time is coming and now is when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth." 

    Now that Christ has died, risen, and ascended into heaven, the place of our worship is in heaven with Him who is Spirit and Truth.  It is our mother the heavenly Jerusalem, which is above, and is free.

    But does that mean God has left us motherless here on earth?  By no means!  For the Scripture makes it clear that the Jerusalem above represents the Church of God in all her perfection.  In Revelation 21 it says, "I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband."  In Ephesians 6 we read that husbands should love their wives "as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, . . . to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless."  The Jerusalem above is the perfection of God's covenant people, His Church, and if you are in Christ through faith, she is your mother.

    To many, that's strictly a Roman Catholic concept.  And really, we have to avoid the idea that "the Church" is just the pastors and the presbytery and the General Assembly and not all of us gathered here as the body of Christ Sunday after Sunday.  But even we Protestants need to recognise the Church as our mother, for it is to her that God has entrusted His Word and Sacraments, that through them we might be guided, taught, counselled, nurtured, protected, and disciplined.  John Calvin says in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, that "the Church is she into whose bosom God is pleased to collect his children, not only that by her aid and ministry they may be nourished so long as they are babes and children, but may also be guided by her maternal care until they grow up to manhood, and, finally, attain to the perfection of faith. What God has thus joined, let not man put asunder (Mark 10:9)": to those to whom he is a Father, the Church must also be a mother. This was true not merely under the Law, but even now after the advent of Christ; since Paul declares that we are the children of a new, even a heavenly Jerusalem (Gal. 4:26).

And so our Lord Himself commanded the Apostle Peter on the shore of the Sea of Galilee to demonstrate his love for Christ by feeding His lambs, taking care of His sheep, and feeding His sheep.  Whatever else the leadership of the Church does, they must make sure that saints old and new are constantly being fed with the pure milk and the solid meat of the word of God.  Following their example, we must all teach and encourage one another, loving and caring for one another for the sake of our Elder Brother, Jesus Christ.  That's the only way we can grow up to be like Him.  There are many who think they can be Christians on their own, without being connected to any visible church.  But the Scripture utterly denies that this is possible.  You are either incorporated into God's covenant assembly, or you are still out in the desert, clinging like Ishmael to the robe of Hagar your slave woman mother.  You are either miraculously born of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, and incorporated into His body by baptism, or you are dead in your trespasses and sins.  You can seek your own spiritual food and starve, or be richly nurtured by the hand of the mother God has given you.

    Who is your mother?  Your mother is the new covenant people, sealed in Christ's blood.  Your mother is the assembly of the children of God, given new birth by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Your mother is the Church, the heavenly Jerusalem, the spotless bride that God has foreordained you to become.  Nothing can take her place.  Today and every day let us thank our earthly mothers for all they have done for us. But even more, let us thank and praise our Father in heaven for caring for us and loving us through His Church, our mother who is free. 

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Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.