When "What Everyone Knows" Is Wrong

Texts:  Psalm 138; Colossians 6:6-23

EVER SINCE WE'RE LITTLE, WE LEARN that certain things are true about life in this world.  Things like, "No pain, no gain," "There's no free lunch," and "You get what you pay for."   We learn that if we want to get ahead there are powers and authorities we have to keep happy.  It might be your parents, your teachers, your boss-- or if we're superstitious, maybe it's Fate or karma or the powers of nature.  The general rule is that you have to give to get, and that's just the way things are.  It's what everyone knows.

And these basic principles don't just apply to our livelihoods and lifestyles.  As children of this fallen world we're born with the conviction that it works the same way in the spiritual realm.  It's what everyone just knows.  Good people go to heaven.   Being good means doing good deeds.  Good deeds and the right kind of worship will earn us the favor of God, however we conceive him, her, or it to be.  And if we're good and do good deeds and worship our god or gods the right way, he, she, or it simply has to reward us with prosperity on earth and heaven, paradise, nirvana, the Elysian Fields, whatever we're looking forward to in the life to come.

It's ingrained into us that that's how things are.  That if we're going to be full and fulfilled we have to keep the powers that be happy and do, do, do.  It even distresses us to think otherwise.

But along comes Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and He says, "Relax.  Forget all that do, do, do.  Trust in who I am.  Rest in what I have done.  Stop listening to what "everyone knows" and live by My wisdom instead."

This message of our Lord Jesus Christ is the message St. Paul was bringing to the Christians in the church at Colossae nearly two thousand years ago, and it's the same message the Holy Spirit is bringing to us in His Word today.  It's a radical message, a message that contradicts everything the world teaches us and everything our gut tells us is true.  But when it comes to teaching and truth, it's always best for us to obey the voice of the Lord who is Wisdom and Truth, and as new creatures in Him we need to leave the conventional wisdom of this fallen world behind.

St. Paul begins our passage from chapter 2 of his letter to the Colossians with these words, "So then, just as you have received Jesus Christ as Lord . . . " Everything hinges on this.  If we don't know what kind of Lord Jesus Christ is, and how we have received Him, we'll never get loose from "what everyone knows" and walk in the freedom of Almighty God.  What kind of Lord is Christ Jesus?  He's the ultimate, mighty, and supreme Lord Paul wrote about in Chapter 1, in whom all God's fullness dwells, as we heard in the Call to Worship.  And how is He to be received as Lord?  Verses 1:22-23 says,

"But now he [that is, God] has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation-- if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel."

God willing, you received Christ as Lord not by doing anything, not even by repeating the formula of a prayer as if that were a kind of charm to make God save you.  No, you were reconciled to God by Jesus' death on the cross, and His blood was applied to you by God's doing alone. All you had to do was put your faith in-- that is, trust-- in the good news concerning what God had already done.  And as we know from elsewhere in the Scripture, even our ability to believe the gospel is a gift and work of God, and not something we have to or can work up on our own.

So if this is the case with you, if this truly is the Christ you received and how you received Him, then, you Christian of Colossae, you Christian of P----, continue, Paul urges in 2:6, to live, walk, conduct your life in Him.  As you live your life, may your roots of faith go down in Christ deeper than the most stubborn dandelion.  Let your knowledge of Him be built up higher than the tallest skyscraper.  Make sure that you are continually strengthened in the faith you have been taught, so you come to grasp more and more who Jesus is and the wonder of what He did to redeem you from sin and death, so you may overflow with thankfulness to your Savior and Lord.

Oh, yes, faith in Jesus is practical.  We aren't saved by what we do, regardless of what conventional wisdom says.  But neither can the word of Jesus that saved us just be a nice story that lives up in our heads and we forget about it most of the time.  We need by the grace of the Holy Spirit to be walking around continually in the wonderful new reality of God's work for us in Jesus Christ.

Why do we need this reminder?  Because, Paul goes on in verse 7, it's so easy for us to be taken
"captive again through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends upon human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ."

This phrase "basic principles of this world" carries several layers of meaning in the Greek, and you'll see it rendered various ways.  "The rudiments of this world" (KJV); "the elemental spirits of the universe" (RSV); "the elementary principles of the world" (NASV), to quote a few.  It mingles the ideas of rules to be followed, of facts about "the way things are," and of spirits or entities--"gods" as Psalm 138 puts it-- that have to be kowtowed to and placated.  The Holy Spirit wanted all these meanings to be included, so we His people will understand that nothing is to take the place of Jesus Christ as we live and serve Him in this world.

The Lord our God created the world and set its basic elements in order, but we are not to be subject to our chemical natures.  He created the angels and all principalities and powers, but we are not to fear them or worship them-- especially when they rebel against God and claim to be greater than or more relevant than He.  God Almighty established the basic rules of right and wrong and wrote them on the hearts of every human being, and He gave His people Israel the written Law to show them how to live in His presence.  But even the holy Law given to Moses is not the way to fullness and satisfaction in this world or the next.

All these things throw us back on ourselves for hope and peace, but there is no hope or peace there.  No, only in Jesus Christ does "all the fullness of the Deity live in bodily form,"  and only in Christ is fullness given to us.

By warning us against the "basic principles of this world" Paul draws an uncrossable line between both pagan practices and Jewish legalism on the one side, and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ on the other.  The church in Colossae would have faced pressures from both camps.

There would have been Judaizers telling them that to be real Christians they had to be circumcised and become Jews.  As you know, circumcision was a private sign of cutting oneself off from pagan gods and pagan practices and covenanting to worship the Lord alone.  But it bound a man-- and his affiliated household-- to obey all the Law and find his life and hope in it.  But now Christ has come, and He has fulfilled the Law for us.  Our circumcision is now spiritual, not physical, as Christ cuts off from us our old nature that could never please God.  Baptism is the sign given to us who have received fullness in Christ.  It is a public sign that our old sinfulness, our old allegiance to doing things our way has been buried in His tomb.  And our new selves have been raised with Him through faith in the power of God.

All God's power, all God's doing in Christ!  For "when you were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ."  Dead equals helpless!  This term "the written code" in verse 14 literally means "handwriting" and it carries the sense of a legal indictment against us.  And isn't that what the Law ended up to be?  The decrees and ordinances that expressed God's holiness became a writ that put us on trial and condemned us to death!  But Jesus Christ took our sentence under the Law and made it His own!  And in the process, He also dealt with the forces, the powers and authorities that had us locked up in fear.

We aren't in the habit of worshipping gods and goddesses identified with forces of nature.  At least, I hope we aren't.  But we can still be bound up in superstition.  We can still feel a compulsion to check our horoscope before deciding anything important.  We can still be pulled towards believing some prophet who claims to have a source of special spiritual knowledge separate from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and is revelation in His word.  But by the best divine irony in history, Jesus Christ as He hung on the cross dying for our sins made a public spectacle of all of that.  Even as He was mocked and ridiculed He turned the tables and showed how foolish and powerless all those so-called gods really were.

You as a man or woman redeemed by Jesus Christ are no longer held captive by the basis principles of this world!  You have been freed from the clutches of the elemental spirits of this universe!  Therefore, let your mind be free of false guilt and needless fear.  The Colossians were under pressure to observe the Jewish festivals and the seventh-day Sabbath.  No, says Paul!  Those things were only shadows and pointers to Christ who was to come.  Christ is the reality, hold on to Him!  Some people even today will claim to have special visions and revelations, and try to make you feel you're second rate as a Christian because you just go to church and hear the preaching and receive the sacraments and do "unglamourous" things like that.  Others will go on and on about their guardian angels, as if it were wrong to trust directly in God.  Ignore them all.   You're running a race greater than any Olympics; don't let anyone get you off track and disqualify you for the prize.  People like that, Paul says, are proving they have forgotten the identity of the Lord who has saved them.  Jesus is our only Head; we, His body the Church, keep growing only as we stay connected to Him.

You have died with Christ to the basic principles of this world.  So don't submit to living as if they still governed you!  Don't go thinking that God is going to save you or keep you saved by certain things you do and enjoy or don't do and enjoy.  Paul illustrates the problem in terms of the Jewish kosher laws, but all religions set up foods and practices that are artificially taboo, even if they are good in themselves.  For us in our day, it might be rules about alcoholic beverages or watching movies or what car we drive or whether we're ecologically sensitive enough.  All these things belong to this world, which is passing away.  They can't save us, and abstaining from them can't even make us moral.

We as Christians live in this world, but our reality is in Christ.  We feel pressure to conform to the rules of this world, but they have all been subverted and turned on their heads by Christ.  "No pain, no gain"?  Christ's pain is our gain.  "There's no free lunch"?  Christ Himself is our free lunch, and we feed on Him by faith forever.  "You get what you pay for"?  We get what Jesus has paid for, eternal life, and we no longer need to fear the death we deserved.  We no longer need to fear Fate or those nameless forces that seemed to be out to get us, for we have died in Christ to them all and they no longer have any power over us.

Brothers and sisters, everyone wants to feel satisfied, to be fulfilled, to experience fullness in their lives.  Everybody knows how to get that-- that is, they think they do.  But in this case, what everybody knows is wrong.  No, bad people don't go to heaven, but our God has found a way to make bad people good, through no effort of their own.  For in Christ lives all the fullness of Almighty God in bodily form, and by His cross His fullness, power, triumph, and joy are ours.  Live each moment of each day rooted and built up in Him, keep on being strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and may your thankfulness overflow towards God for doing for us what we could never do for ourselves.  Amen.

Where Weakness Wins

Text:  1 Corinthians 1:18 - 2:5

WELL, TONIGHT'S THE SUPER BOWL, AND it's too bad the Steelers aren't in it.  They just weren't strong enough or smart enough or healthy enough to make it to New Orleans.  It's a real disappointment, but that's the way it works in this world.  To get to the big game you have to be smart and fast and accomplished, and that doesn't go just for football, but for all areas of life.  To really succeed, it takes smarts-- or, shall we say, wisdom-- and it takes strength.  Weaklings and fools need not apply

But in our Scripture reading for today, we have the Apostle Paul extolling the virtues of weakness and foolishness.  What's going on?  Have we been wrong all along about how the world runs?  Does he want us to see that in this life it's the weak fools who really win?

Not at all.   But St. Paul isn't talking about the game of this earthly life.  He's talking about a game that's much, much, bigger than that.

When it comes to understanding the Scriptures, the first rule is "Context, context, context".  That means first of all how the verse or passage works in the book its in and in the Bible as a whole.  Then it means understanding the historical and cultural context of the passage, what it would have meant to its first readers.  After that, we can begin to apply God's eternal Word to ourselves.

So even though you have the Scripture readings projected up on the screen, I hope you won't stop opening the Bible in the pew or bringing your own Bible to church and having it open during the sermon.  It will help you understand the context of what's being preached.

So what's the context of our reading from 1 Corinthians?  First and foremost, its context is the entire Bible, and entire Bible is the record of how God the Father brought salvation to a lost world through His Son Jesus Christ and how the Holy Spirit applies that salvation to the ones He has chosen.  As Jesus taught the disciples on the road to Emmaus, all of Scripture is about Him.  The first letter to the Corinthians is in the New Testament, which deals with how God brought the good news of Christ's salvation to the world and how His church worked through what that would mean in their lives.  In this letter the Apostle Paul responds to some misunderstandings that had come up in the church at Corinth, so they could live before God and with each other in a way that glorified the Lord who had saved them.  And the immediate context for what we read today starts at verse 10 of chapter 1 and goes all the way to the end of Chapter 4.  It has to do with wisdom and foolishness, weakness and strength, and being united in Christ instead of divided like those in this fallen world.

So if you do have your Bibles with you, I ask you to look over at verses 11 and 12 of chapter 1.  There Paul writes,

My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.  What I mean is this:  One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas [that is, Peter]"; still another, "I follow Christ."

Over in chapter 3, verse 5, the Apostle writes,

What, after all, is Apollos?  And what is Paul?  Only servants, though whom you were called to believe-- as the Lord has assigned to each his task.

All right, what does this have to do with strength and weakness?  Just this: In the 1st century Grecian world, the teams (you might call them) that were the most looked up to and admired were not always the wrestlers and runners and chariot racers.  They were the schools of the philosophers.  The philosophers were the wise ones who could teach enlightenment and help you gain the ideal life in this world and in the next.  Now, these schools weren't like a college classroom with a professor up front lecturing.  Rather, think of a group of men (and a woman or two) gathered in a shady colonnade in the market place discussing and debating the latest ideas on wisdom and the ideal life.  The different schools of philosophy didn't agree on this, and so of course there were divisions between them.  Which one was the wisest?  Which one made the strongest, most noble case?  It was important to the Greeks.    Even the lower classes looked up with envy and admiration to the philosophers.

Before they were saved, the Corinthians might have said, "I admire the Stoics"; or, "I favor the Epicureans"; or "I follow Pythagoras."  But now, listen to them: "I follow Paul!" and "I follow Apollos!"  They were treating the Good News of Jesus Christ like just another worldly philosophy and seeing the apostles as leaders of different, opposing schools.  They were quarrelling about who was the wisest, the strongest, the best!

We don't have that exact problem in our day.  But sadly, we do have Christian leaders who will take their stand on some secondary point of doctrine, like social justice or worship styles or women in ministry, and insinuate that those who don't feel the way they do on it probably aren't saved.  We have everyday ordinary people-- maybe ourselves, God help us!-- breaking up into factions of one, each picking and choosing what bits of Scripture we'll emphasize and worshipping a Jesus of our own making.  As we can tell from verse 17, this partisan spirit threatens to empty the cross of Christ of its power.

Why is that?  Because, as we read in 1:18, "[T]he message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

Again, is Paul getting ready to tell us that weakness and foolishness is the real, true way to triumph in this earthly life?  Not at all!  Rather, he's telling us that what God has done for us in Christ has nothing to do with the world or its strength or wisdom at all!  He quotes from Isaiah 29:

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; 
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

The wise ones of the Jews said the way to salvation-- that is, the way to power and glory with God-- was by making an effort and perfectly keeping the Law of Moses.  The wise Gentiles, especially the Greeks,  said it was through philosophy and enlightenment.  But God confounds them all with the fact of the cross, with a stripped and beaten Man hanging in agony on a shameful instrument of execution.  How foolish that seems to the unbelieving world?  Who could ever believe that one Man's death as a low, despised criminal could be the one and only way to divine fulfillment, happiness, and peace?  Through its wisdom the world could never know it.  If we thought about it ourselves for a thousand years we could never imagine it.  Even today, we have people in the church, in our denomination, who say the Cross of Christ is foolishness and we should forget all about it if we want to bring in the kingdom of God.  If you read news articles online or watch YouTube videos, you'll see how many people make fun of the idea that salvation from sin comes only through Christ and Him crucified.  The idea that we need to be saved in the first place makes them laugh even more.  Not only is the cross not obvious, it goes against everything the world knows is true.

But, as Paul says in 1:25, "[T]he foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength."  By the weakness and foolishness of the preaching of the gospel of Christ dead and risen again for our sins, God the Holy Spirit brings into our lives eternal wisdom and never-ending strength that we could never have imagined before He came and transforms our hearts and minds.

But how can we know this is true? Well, Paul says to the Corinthians, look what has happened to you:

Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.  But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are . . .

Does Paul want them to start feeling proud of their lowliness?  Does he want them to compete for the title of Most Humble the way they've been competing over whose party is the greatest?  Certainly not!  Besides, the slaves and laborers of the Corinthian church knew there was nothing grand or glorious about their lot in life.  It was a dead-end, miserable existence.  Rather, if they should ever doubt the greatness of the cross, he wants them to think like this: "Hey, you know, that's right.  I'm only a slave.  I could never go near those groups of philosophers in the marketplace, except maybe to wash their feet.  I could never learn the path to enlightenment.  But here I am and I know the truth of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the universe!  To me, a mere slave, the eternal Creator has given the gift of speaking in tongues!  My fellow-slaves and I can prophesy in His name!  We can heal people and cast out demons!  We can do all these amazing things the greatest philosophers never dreamed of doing, and it's all because of what Jesus Christ did for me when He died on that cross over outside Jerusalem."  If God can transform our lives like that by the cross, don't you think He could cause the cross to become the means of transformation in the first place?  Or to put it the other way around, since God was able by the out-of-this-world foolishness of the cross to raise up His church in power and wisdom, can't we see how able He is to transform and glorify you and me?

Why did God do it this way?  Why go so opposite to what the world desires and expects?  The answer is in verse 29.  God wants to make sure that no one on earth can boast before Him.  He wants to make sure that none of us can say, "Here I am, Lord, standing in blessedness before Your throne,  because I made the effort and earned it!" or "Sure, that was all my idea, how to get myself saved."  No, Christ and Christ crucified alone is our wisdom from God, our righteousness, our holiness, and our redemption.  If we're going to talk big about anyone's greatness, let us magnify the amazing greatness of the Lord.

It was to forestall any human boasting that, when Paul came to preach the gospel in Corinth, he made every effort not to sound like one of their hero philosophers.  He didn't claim to have special, hidden, higher wisdom and he didn't use the eloquent rhetorical devices the great lecturers would use.  Paul knew the Corinthians' yen for human strength and wisdom, and he wanted to distinguish the gospel from all that, so the transforming power would be that of the Holy Spirit alone.  So, he says, "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified . . . so that your faith might not rest on man's wisdom, but on God's power."

"I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."  That is the message of the gospel.  That is the message of all the Scriptures.  Of course there are other things we need to know about God's dealing with us.  We need to know about God's righteousness and our sin.  We need to understand our need for a Savior.  We need to learn how to live our lives in thankful service to the Lord who has saved us.  We need to know about His return and how His righteousness and justice will prevail over all creation.  But the central thing is and must remain the cross, that foolish, weak, and shameful thing Jesus Christ submitted to one day outside Jerusalem.

Before all else, we need to realize how through it He has given us God's nobility, wisdom, and strength.   Whatever you do, especially whatever you as a church, be it the most routine meeting or fellowship dinner, do not ignore the cross, or depart from it, or forget its power.  For if you do, you'll wander blind in your human weakness and you're bound to lose.  If the preaching you hear from this pulpit gives you the idea that the Christian life is something you live by your own wisdom or strength of character, it is leading you to failure.  If any so-called Christian author would lead you away from the cross by reducing Christ's death to a mere good example, reject his or her false wisdom and return to the wisdom of God recorded in Holy Scripture.  Keep your eyes focussed on Him who in foolishness and weakness died for you.  He is Christ, for you the wisdom of God and the power of God.  And when it comes to a contest between the strength of man and the weakness of God, the weakness of God always wins.

"But They Laughed at Him"

Texts:    1 Corinthians 1:18-25; Mark 5:21-43

        PEOPLE LAUGH AT GOD THESE days. How absurd that anyone should believe in a Deity we've probably "just made up in our own heads."  We reply that our God could be seen and heard and felt when He lived on earth as the Man Jesus Christ, but the unbelieving world thinks that's a terrific joke.  How could a man be God in human flesh?!  How could one Man's death deal with the problem of our sins?!  Most hilarious of all, where do we Christians get off saying that people have any sin problem in the first place?  People laugh at Jesus, and they laugh at us.

    Maybe if we could go back in time and walk with Jesus in Roman-occupied Israel, we'd find that nobody laughed at God like that.  Everyone would respect Jesus and take Him seriously.  After all, Jesus was the Messiah, the Holy One of God.  And as His disciples, people would respect us take us seriously, too.  No one would dare to laugh, or say that Jesus-- or we ourselves-- was a fool.

    But we know that's not true.   We know it from our Scripture readings this morning.  Just as now, people in the 1st century had no trouble laughing at Jesus and laughing at Christians.  Why?  Because from this fallen world's point of view, Jesus seemed to go about His work in a very foolish way.  He didn't do things the way that was prescribed or expected.  Not even the religious people approved of what He did and why He did it.  Jesus deliberately went around turning things upside down.

    Now, not always.  In our reading from St. Mark's gospel, we see Jesus surrounded by a large crowd.  That's the way it was supposed to be--the famous rabbi, with the crowds hanging onto His every word.  And suddenly through the throng comes the respected Jairus, a ruler of the local synagogue, beseeching Jesus' help.  The man's little daughter is dying-- please, Rabbi, come and heal her.  Ah, yes, the high and respected ones look up to Jesus.  That's right.  And Jesus goes with the man to heal his daughter.  That's the way it's supposed to be, too.  And the pressing crowds enthusiastically come along.

    But what's this?  Suddenly Jesus stops dead, looks around, and asks, "Who touched my clothes?"  Even His disciples think this is an odd thing for Him to say.  Good grief, Lord, the people are all crowding against You!  Why ask who in particular touched Your clothes?  Jesus' modern detractors would say this proves He wasn't really God, because God knows everything, so Jesus should have known who had touched Him. They fail to comprehend what God gave up to become a Man, and so they laugh.

    But that day in the crowd by the Sea of Galilee, nobody was laughing.  They waited, and out of the crowd crept a woman who fell at Jesus' feet.  You can imagine the whispers that would have flown from ear to ear.  "Heavens!  Isn't that Hannah bat Itzak?  Doesn't she have some sort of bleeding trouble?"  "How dare she appear in public?"  "How dare she touch the Rabbi, even His clothes!"  Then, "Blood!  Blood!  Unclean blood!"  Nobody's pressing around Jesus anymore.  They've all drawn themselves and their garments back, lest they be rendered ceremonially unclean, just like this afflicted woman.

    And under the Old Covenant law they were right.  Back then our worthiness to approach God in worship depended upon our following certain rules of ritual cleanliness.  Why isn't Jesus following the Law and avoiding this woman?  Doesn't He know her history?  And even if He didn't before, He does now, because she tells Him of her twelve years of bleeding and suffering and isolation.  Does He draw back in horror?  No!  Jesus looks on her with compassion and says, "Daughter, your faith has healed you.  Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."  Sorry, Jesus, it doesn't make sense!

    Besides, Jesus, what about poor Jairus and his dying child?  Even while Jesus was still talking to the woman, men from the synagogue ruler's house came and reported that his daughter was dead.  No call for Jesus to come now.  Maybe if He'd ignored that unclean creature He would have been on time, but now, forget it.

    But Jesus won't forget it.  He tells the grieving father, "Don't be afraid; just believe."  What an odd thing to say!  But Jairus doesn't laugh.  He goes with Jesus, along with Peter, James, and John, back to his home where his daughter lies dead.  Already at the door the hired mourners are at work, weeping and wailing in honor of the dead child.  Jesus, really, isn't it too late?

    But our Lord says, "Why all this commotion and wailing?  The child is not dead but asleep."

    But they laughed at Him.  From every reasonable point of view, they had a right to laugh at Him.  You didn't need to be a professional mourner in that day to know what a dead body looked like.  The girl was dead.  Enough with the sick jokes, Rabbi.  You make us laugh.

    But Jesus isn't working from human reason.  He's working from the wisdom of God.  He isn't bound by the limitations of human strength, He's filled with the strength of God.  Jesus isn't controlled by the powers of death, He Himself is the everlasting Life of God.  He can confound all human expectations.  Taking the child by the hand, He commands, "Talitha, koum!" or, in English, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!"  And this twelve-year-old child gets up, walks around fully alive, and ready for something to eat.

    What?  Who is this who by the speaking of His word can restore life in what was dead?

    It is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man.  He is the Savior of Israel and hope of the nations, great David's greater Son.  He came in fulfillment of all the ancient prophecies, but even those who claimed to be waiting for Him didn't recognize Him when He came and laughed at Him as a fool.

    In Jesus' day, good religious Jews were expecting God to act to save them, through a human Messiah.  But God chose to come to earth Himself, as the Man Jesus Christ, fully human and fully God.   Can our human minds get around how this can be?  No, but the mind of God can and did make it happen.  And so Jesus lived and served among us, and demonstrated His full humanity by accepting our limitations.  He was willing to be like us, getting hungry, thirsty, and tired.  He accepted that at times His Father would hide some things from Him, such as the identity of the woman who deliberately touched Him in the crowd.  But He was also eternal God, with power over life and death, whose very clothes carried the power to heal those who reached out in faith.

    But then Jesus was hung on a cross and killed.  Now where was the glorious divine kingdom He was supposed to bring?  The Romans mocked and the Jewish authorities scoffed.  They laughed at Him as He hung there.  Where were all His godlike pretensions now?

    But we know what happened on the third day.  God the Father vindicated His Son by raising Him from the dead.  God had the last laugh.  What a reversal!  See all the wisdom and disdain of the world turned upside down!

    But amazing as the resurrection is, as much as it upsets everything we assume about the way things are supposed to be, the cross of Christ challenges our worldly assumptions even more.  For as St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, to those who are perishing-- that is, to all who do not believe in Jesus Christ-- the message of the cross is foolishness.  For what was a Roman cross but a mark of defeat, death, and shame?  To be hung on a cross meant disgrace and weakness, the end of everything you stood for and the end of you.  But God in Christ took that shameful instrument and made it the only sign of the world's hope, glory, and life.  The only sign, I say, because God in His wisdom and power has ordained that only through the cross of Christ can anyone anywhere gain access to Him and enjoy life everlasting.

    The unbelieving world laughs at this.  It laughed in Paul's day and it laughs in ours.  Everybody knows you're in charge of your own salvation, say those who are perishing.   First century Greeks insisted that intellectual enlightenment was the way to union with God.  The Jews of that day were waiting for Jesus to do a miraculous sign that would come up to their standards.  Make all the Romans suddenly drop dead in the streets, perhaps.  And in our time, it's common wisdom that if there is a God you please Him by obeying the rules and making sure your good deeds outweigh your bad!  You're laughed at if you say otherwise.

    But God our Father steadfastly points all mankind to Christ and Him crucified.  All the derision, all the disdain of the world cannot change the eternal fact that it's only through the broken body and blood of Christ that anyone at all can be saved.  Just as Jesus took the corpse of Jairus' daughter by the hand and called her spirit back into her, so the Holy Spirit of Christ entered into us while we were dead in trespasses and sins.  He raised us up in God's strength and enlightens our minds with God's wisdom.

    And so, brothers and sisters, the world may laugh at Jesus and it may laugh at you, but let the cross of Christ be your unchanging message and your eternal hope.  On this good news we take our stand unshaken, even when so much that is good is being torn down and denigrated, even when laughter at the crucified Christ comes from the heart of the church.

    But what if those who laugh and scorn are those we love?  What if our friends and family call us fools and worse for trusting a dead and risen God?  We do them no favors by compromising God's truth to make them feel better about their worldly wisdom.  Stand firm in Christ; love them, pray for them, be always ready to give a reason for the divine hope that is in you.  Remember, there was a time when you, too, couldn't believe that Christ's death was enough to save you, maybe a time when you didn't think you needed to be saved.  The Holy Spirit made you wise with the wisdom of God; He can raise and enlighten and enliven those you care for, too.

    Jesus Christ came to earth as God in human flesh, to die and rise again that we might be raised by the power of God.  The Supper here spread confirms this reality to and in us.  Come to our Lord's Table and eat and drink unto eternal life.  And laugh, brothers and sisters, laugh, no longer in derision, but in holy, exalted, and overflowing joy.  Amen.

Glory Reflected, Glory Obscured

Texts:    2 Corinthians 3:7 - 4:6;  Mark 9:1-13

    SOMETHING I'VE NOTICED THESE past few years, and I'm sure you've noticed it, too, is how people like to leave their Christmas lights up all year round.  Now, they don't call them Christmas lights.  But you know what I mean.  The little white lights that stay lit in the trees outside buildings all summer.  Even more, the artificial evergreen trees in offices and homes that change decorations depending on the season.  Now it's a Christmas tree, now it's for Valentine's, now it's decorated for Easter, now for Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. 

    But always with lights.  Always with ornaments that glitter and shine.  Always echoing the glory that is Christmas.  We like glory.  We don't want it to fade away.   So we decide to keep the pretty lights burning all year round, and maybe the hope and optimism and sense of wonder and possibility will keep going, too.

    It's right to associate Christ and His birth with light and glory.  All of Jesus' life was glorious, in Who He was and what He did and in Who and where He is today, risen and glorified at the right hand of the Father.  Since that's true, it's hard to understand the gospel of Mark has so much about the glory of Jesus being hidden or concealed.

    From the first verse, we, the Christian reader, know that this Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.  We read how John the Baptist came in the Spirit and power of Elijah, proclaiming that soon One would come who would baptise with the Holy Spirit.  And how when Jesus was baptised by John, the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit descended on Him like a dove, and the voice from heaven declared, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." 

    Isn't that glorious?  But immediately we see that same Spirit driving Jesus into the obscurity of the wilderness, to be tempted.  We hear Jesus forbidding the demons He cast out to talk about who He is.  Even though people in the villages are thrilled with His miraculous healing power, He won't remain there and soak up the fame.  Jesus heals a leper, and charges the man not to tell anyone what He, Jesus, has done.  Jesus teaches in parables, and tells His disciples that He does so in order that those outside of His followers would not be able to understand.

    Yet He keeps on performing miracles that could only be done by the finger of God alone.  Jesus, why all this obscurity?  Why not just come out and proclaim who You are, that you're the Messiah, the Holy One, the glorious promised King and Ruler of Israel?

    Then one day, near Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks His disciples, "Who do people say I am?"  And Peter answers, "You are the Christ."  (St. Matthew gives us more; in his gospel, we read that Peter went on to say that Jesus is the Son of the living God).  Well, at last!  Now would be the time for Jesus to declare His Messiahship all over Galilee and Judea, to march into Jerusalem and take up His crown and reign.

    But no.  After Peter confessed the truth about who Jesus was, our Lord strictly charged the disciples not to tell anyone about Him.  More than that, He began to teach them that He would suffer many things and be killed by the chief priests and scribes!  And He told His followers, not just the Twelve but also those in the crowd, that if they wanted to be His true disciples, they had to be willing to follow Him to crucifixion, too!  Where's the glory now, Jesus?  Why must it be so hidden, so obscured?

    But as Jesus was teaching His followers that they must be willing to suffer the most demeaning of martyrdoms for His sake, He added this amazing statement, which we find in verse 1 of chapter 9 of Mark's gospel:

    "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power."

Which is to say, "Yes, many standing here certainly will drink the cup of martyrdom for My sake, but some of you before that will see that the kingdom of God has come with power."

    That is, something will open their eyes and they will see and understand the power and glory of God's kingship, where it had been obscured before.

    Six days later, Mark tells us Jesus took Peter and the brothers James and John up to a high mountain by themselves.  And there He is transfigured before them, appearing in garments blindingly white, beyond any earthly power to bleach them.  Moses and Elijah appear and confer with Jesus, Moses being the one to whom God gave the Law on Mount Sinai, and Elijah being the mightiest of the miracle-working prophets.  This, indeed, was a vision of the kingdom of God having come with power.  Why shouldn't Peter respond in awe and worship?  Why shouldn't he want to build all three of them tabernacles, where they could shelter, where God Most High could be adored in their holy presence?

    But this was not God's plan.  This was not the final demonstration of His power and glory that He meant to reveal.  A cloud overshadowed them all; the glorious scene was obscured, and a Voice said, "This is my beloved Son: listen to him."

    Listen to Jesus, you disciples of His, for He has something even more hidden and even more glorious to reveal to you.  When the cloud lifted, Jesus only was there.  And as they came down the mountain, He charged the three disciples not to tell anyone what they had seen.  He had wanted them to get this glimpse of His unveiled glory, but they were not to go about proclaiming it.  They weren't to give the other disciples and the crowds the idea that this revelation was the kingdom of God having come with power.  So they were to keep it hidden, obscured-- until the Son of Man, that is, Jesus, had risen from the dead.

    Risen from the dead.  What could that mean?  If nothing else, it meant that Jesus had to die.  How could this be, if Jesus indeed was the Christ and the long-expected King?  And what about the prophecy that Elijah must come first, to be the King's forerunner and prophet?

    Jesus assures them that Elijah-- in the person of John the Baptist-- has come.  And they-- the authorities-- beheaded him.  And the Son of Man, Christ the King, must suffer many things and be treated with contempt?  Coming down that mountain road, Jesus left Peter, James, and John with more questions than they started out with.

    Only in Jesus' death and resurrection is the obscurity cleared away and the mystery revealed.  The glory of Christ is His cross, and His power is the victory He won there over sin, Satan, and death.  It's something we never could have imagined, but now that God has done it, we can see that Christ's work of salvation for us and in us is indeed the kingdom of God come in glorious power.

    St. Paul spells it out for us in our reading from 2 Corinthians.  He speaks in verse 7 of the ministry of death coming with glory.  By this he refers to the Law, given to Moses on Mount Sinai.  The Law of God itself is great and glorious.  It reflects His truth, His purity, His righteousness and love.  It gave the pattern for the kind of people the Israelites were to be, to reflect His image in the world.  But in the end, the Law brought death, because it went to prove how weak, sinful, and inglorious we sinful humans are.  We break God's law, and we are broken on it.

    Yet it was glorious!  So glorious, that whenever Moses came out from God's presence, his face reflected God's glory, and he had to put a veil over his face and obscure it, so the people could bear to be around him.

    But, Paul says, that glory, the glory of the old covenant under the Law, was passing away.  By its very nature it was doomed to blind human eyes to God's plan for our salvation.  For the Law is all about our doing good, our being righteous, our trying to live up to God's standards-- or lowering them to our standards, when we fail.  Isn't that the normal human way of getting in good with God?  We feel we have to earn it.  We're convinced we have to strive to achieve our place in heaven.  "No guts, no glory!" is the motto.

    But in Christ, all that is taken away.  In Christ, we see the glory of His cross and what He did for us there.  In His resurrection and ascension we see that God the Father has put His stamp of approval on the deeds of His beloved Son, and in His gracious will we share the glory of Christ.  Like the kingdom of God, we have not fully arrived.  As we are made more like Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are brought from one degree of glory to another.  And this is not our doing, it is always thanks to the work of Christ on what seemed to be a very inglorious cross.

    So, with Paul and his companions, we do not lose heart.  There is much in our culture that criticises Christians, that says we are fools, that claims that we're in the dark and it's the unbelievers and skeptics who have the light of wisdom.  Even in the Church there are many who say that the gospel message of the cross is outdated, that it's veiled to the world and therefore we should discard it and give the world something they can understand.  Some so-called pastors (I've heard them called "goat-herders") would rather spend an hour telling funny stories about themselves instead of five minutes preaching Christ, because it draws a crowd.

    Sadly, the gospel is obscured to those who are perishing in this world, for Satan, the god of this world blinds their minds and keeps them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.  But there was a time when that was true of us, too.  And the obscured glory of God is brighter and stronger than the blatant so-called glory of Satan and this world, and His Spirit was strong to enlighten our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

    Peter, James, and John had the privilege of seeing Jesus gloriously transfigured on the mountain with Moses and Elijah.  We by the Holy Spirit have seen the kingdom of God having come with power in our own lives, though Jesus' death and resurrection.  Like the first disciples, all of us still have times of darkness and obscurity to go through, before we shall see our Lord face to face.  But let us not lose heart.  No, we won't lose heart, we won't be discouraged, because the glory of Christ shines within us and His Spirit keeps us.

    One thing more, and I'll close.  To share in Christ's glory is to share in His obedience.  Often we're told to do and dare great things for Christ, and we feel down and disheartened because we're not out in the field as missionaries or evangelizing so as to convert hundreds every day.  How glorious that would be!  Maybe I exaggerate, but you know the pressure.  We can't do that! we think, so we just go back to the obscurity of our everyday lives.  But maybe our everyday lives are exactly where Jesus wants us to glorify Him.  It's in our daily work, our relationships, our ordinary struggles and joys that we take up our crosses and follow Him, and it's there that we in ourselves truly see the kingdom of God having come in power.

    For we follow Jesus Christ and reflect His glory, the glory that can never fade, tarnish, or pass away.  Amen.