Everlasting Light and Terminal Darkness

Texts: Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

WHENEVER I GO TO PREACH AT a new church, someone always asks, "How many pairs of glasses do you have!?"

And I generally say, "I’m not sure. Three or four with me today?"

Then they ask, "How come?"

Well, it’s got to do with an eye operation I had when I was in seminary. My eyesight got so bad I could hardly see to read. The operation was pretty successful but my eyesight changes during the day. So I keep various strengths of cheap glasses around, so I have the magnification I need when I need it.

But I’ve noticed something. If the light is good, I don’t need my glasses to be quite as strong. If I’ve got good light, sometimes I can read with no glasses on at all.

I’ve noticed something else, especially right after my operation twelve years ago. There was a period of a day or two when I was effectively blind. It wore off, of course. But during that period, I couldn’t stand the light. I had to keep the shades drawn in my seminary dorm room. I couldn’t go outside. I had to keep my eyes shut or wear dark sunglasses if I had to venture anywhere any sort of light might be.

So which is it? For someone who has difficulty seeing, for someone who is blind, is light good, or is it bad?

That’s the problem St. John presents in our gospel reading today. But John isn’t talking about physical light. No, he’s talking about the light of God.

More than that, St. John is talking about God Himself as Light, about Jesus the eternal Son of God as the Light of the World. Do we see Jesus the light of the world as a cure for our spiritual blindness? Or does His light glare on us and make us shut our eyes and turn away? Or worse, do we think we ourselves have all the light we need and consider Jesus actually to be darkness in our lives?

The passage begins, "As he [that is, Jesus] went along, he saw a man blind from birth."

Notice that: Jesus saw the blind man. He didn’t just register him as an object in the landscape and keep on going. The eyes of His mind and His heart saw this poor man, and He stopped, and focussed His attention on him, and so His disciples stopped and actually saw the man, too.

That’s what light does. It shines on people and things. It illuminates them so they can be seen. Jesus the light of the world shone His attention on this blind man so the disciples could see him, too.

But the disciples didn’t quite see, not yet. "Rabbi," they asked, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The way they saw things, tragedy or physical handicap had to be God’s direct punishment for sin.

That’s how we humans reason. Bad things happen to bad people. Or at least, they should. Our moral vision is naturally limited. We think it’s all about individuals getting what they deserve. We don’t envision that when God acts upon this fallen world, He’s operating on a much bigger scale.

So Jesus begins to open His disciples’ eyes and ours, even before He goes to work on the eyes of the man born blind. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," Jesus says, "but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him."

But isn’t that unfair on God’s part? Maybe even cruel? Here’s this man, he’s of age, which means he’s at least twenty years old, probably a lot older. All he can do is beg. He can’t do a man’s work for a man’s wage. He probably suffers torment from the street kids and the Roman soldiers. He can’t read the Torah. His handicap excludes him from the Temple! Come on, Jesus, is God some kind of sadist that He’d make a man suffer like that just He can display His works?

But we’d be blind to see things that way. Evil and darkness are in the world, brothers and sisters. We let them in when our first parents turned from the light of God in the Garden of Eden and we confirm their decision every day. Evil and darkness are all around us, and God has every right to make use of them to display His goodness and light. In fact, whenever God overcomes the present darkness and demonstrates that He is good and He is Light, He opens our eyes to that coming day when His goodness and His light will triumph for us and evil and darkness will be no more.

That was Jesus’ purpose in all His ministry, to reveal the light of God against the backdrop of this dark world. Do you think Jesus preached and healed just to make individuals feel better? Was He a walking motivational seminar and one-man mobile medical clinic? I tell you, no. Every word He spoke, every healing He ministered, went to prove that the light and power of God were breaking into the world and overcoming the powers of darkness and evil. Jesus in the flesh then and Jesus in the Spirit now is the Light of the world. He shines the light of God against the blindness and darkness of this world, that the darkness may flee and God’s character and activity may be seen by all.

On that day with the man born blind, Jesus did the work of the Father who sent Him. He made mud from the dust of the ground and His saliva, put it on the man’s eyes and bade him go wash in the pool of Siloam. Using the dust of the ground, Jesus created sight out of nothing for this man. What does that remind you of? It’s just as it was at the beginning of the world, when He, working as part of the holy and blessed Trinity, made creation out of nothing and made Adam from the dust of the earth.

Only God could do a deed like that. Only God could create sight where there was only blindness and bring light where chaos and darkness have reigned. God is Light, and Jesus displays that He is God when He works and creates as the Light of the World.

St. John tells us that the blind man obeyed. He made his way to the pool of Siloam, he washed, and he came home seeing.

Glory, glory, hallelujah! All the neighbors were struck with awe and wonder and could do nothing but praise the name of God!

Uh, no. The blind man’s eyes were opened, but the neighbors’ eyes were still closed. They couldn’t "see" the miracle Jesus had done. They tried to make out that it just a case of mistaken identity, that the healing never happened at all.

We suffer from the same blindness, don’t we? God works in the world and we can’t see it or we refuse to see it. I’m not talking about being sceptical of claims of modern-day miracles. We should always check such claims against Scripture and what we know of how God works. No, I’m talking about our refusal to see the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the life of the church. When the light of God breaks in, when He begins to give our friends new eyes for His Word, or when He begins to expand the vision of some in the church to new modes and opportunities for ministry, the natural thing is to cover our eyes and say, "Oh, no, that isn’t God at work. We’ve got everything under control here. The Lord can’t possibly be showing us anything new!" We’ve got our own light, we firmly believe. It hurts to open our eyes to the God Who is Light. But until we do, we’re blind men sitting in darkness.

The man who used to be blind can’t deceive himself that way. He knows the facts by personal experience. He was blind, and now he can see. He won’t be budged from the truth, even when the powerful and influential Pharisees get hold of him and grill him without mercy.

In fact, as the Pharisees’ understanding grows darker and more willfully blind, the spiritual eyes of this poor man are opened more and more, until at last he can recognise Jesus and worship Him as Messiah and Lord.

This is the work of God alone. Here is this beggar, blind from birth, never able to read the Law and the Prophets, and he can better see the Light of God at work than all this conclave of scribes and theologians who’d been wearing their eyes out poring over the scrolls since they were teenagers. He knew that God doesn’t listen to sinners. He knew that God listens to the godly person who does God’s will. He knew that it took the creative power of God to open the eyes of someone born blind. Not only did he know it, but when these truths were demonstrated in his own life, he saw them and embraced them.

The Pharisees knew all these things, too. But they couldn’t see it when Jesus displayed His goodness and godliness in the blind man. They had to go on regarding Jesus as a dangerous Sabbath-breaker. As a good-for-nothing of dubious origin-- as they say, "we don’t even know where he comes from"--meaning, "We don’t know who his father was, because we know it wasn’t Joseph the carpenter of Nazareth!" The Pharisees condemn Jesus as a sinner, blaspheming against the name and will of God. Jesus the light of the world is shining right in their faces in the person of this healed man, and they cover their eyes and refuse to see!

This is ironic, and tragic, and sad. The Pharisees knew that God is Light. They should looked at Jesus’ healing of this man and rejoiced that Jesus the Light of the World had come to take away the physical and spiritual blindness of His people. But all they can do is take a giant legal candle snuffer and try to make the light go away. They are the true blind ones, who hide from the light because it hurts their idea of who they are and what they believe God to be. They sit in the darkness and call it "light" and insist theirs is all the light anyone can ever need.

But let’s not throw rocks at the Pharisees. Because we’re all like them in our natural condition. We’re all born spiritually blind. We were all born in the dark. And like the Pharisees, like all of sinful humanity, we all thought we could see. As St. Paul says in Ephesians, "For you were once darkness." We were once dead and asleep with our eyes firmly closed, blocking out the light of God, who is God’s own Son, come into the world. We each of us thought we had the truth about God and what He wants from us and we resented any attempt by anyone to illuminate us to His true character and will.

But now, Paul says, we are Light. How? Because of our great knowledge? Because we’ve worked really hard and fanned into flame some mystical spark of divinity inside ourselves?

No, we are now light in the Lord. Christ has shined upon us. He has opened our eyes. He has brought us out of darkness into His marvellous light. We couldn’t heal ourselves; He healed and saved us out of His own goodness and sovereign love.

So let us live as children of light. Thanks to Him, we’re no longer those who close our eyes against the Light because it hurts us to change. Rather, we’re those whose blindness Christ has healed, who seek His light in His Word and His holy sacraments. Let us fall at the feet of Jesus, the Light of the World and worship Him, bringing forth the fruit of the light, which is goodness, righteousness and truth. For He has illuminated us and made us to be lights for the world. Jesus illuminates us as the sun lights up the moon, because He is God and God is light.

And you know, the time He shone most brightly is when the world seemed the darkest of all.

At the end of this service yet another candle will be put out to symbolize our journey closer to Calvary. And it’s true: Jesus the everlasting light of heaven and earth permitted His light for awhile to be extinguished on the cross. He allowed those who preferred their terminal darkness to the everlasting light of God to put Him to death. He let the prince of darkness for a brief moment believe that at last the darkness had overcome the light.

But the prince of darkness was wrong. The God who is Light can never be overcome, never be extinguished, never finally die. The darkness of the cross gave way to the everlasting light of eternal life for you and for me and for all whom the Lord our God shall call out of the blindness of this darkened world. The darkness of the cross opened the way to the glorious vision of the face of God to all who believe.

Receive the light our Saviour gives. Receive the sight He creates in you. For He Himself is our light. He is our vision. He is our everlasting Lord, and our glorious God. Amen.

Open-Eyed Faith

Texts: Genesis 12:1-4a; 15:1-6; Romans 4:1-5; 13-17

IMAGINE YOU’RE A MAN OF 75 YEARS, living outside a small city called Haran in Aramea, in the plains of southern Turkey. You haven’t lived there all your life: several years ago you left your native land a thousand miles away and came here with your father, your wife, and your dead brother’s son and his wife. Your father always talked about pushing on to a land farther to the west, but somehow, you never did.

Imagine that you’d never heard of Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam-- because they didn’t exist. Imagine that you’d always worshipped a myriad of gods and goddesses. Imagine that you’d heard about a divine entity known as the Most High God, but you’d never had anything much to do with Him. Imagine that you and everyone knew the Most High God had created the world, but he’d delegated all the god duties to deities like Nannar the moon god and Ishtar goddess of fertility and Shamosh, god of the sun. Imagine that you believed that even the moon god and the sun god were too high and mighty for you, that your personal gods and goddesses were spirits of rocks and trees and hills. And imagine you believed that if you went to a new country, you’d have to start worshipping new gods, because each little deity had his own turf and didn’t have any power in another land.

And now imagine, just suppose, that one day, or one night, you become aware that God Most High--the Most High God- is talking to you. Imagine that He identifies Himself as the Lord Jehovah, the God Who Was and Is and Is to Be, the Maker of heaven and earth and all that is in them. Imagine that God Most High, the Lord Jehovah, makes it clear that those other gods and goddesses you’ve been worshipping are really nothing, and that from now on, you’re to listen to Him and Him alone.

And imagine that this exalted Jehovah, the Most Exalted God, the Great Creator, tells you directly that He has a unique and world-changing plan especially for you, but you have to trust Him totally to get the benefit of it. Imagine He commands you, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house, to the land that I will show you."

But now imagine it’s not easy for you to up and leave, just like that. Suppose Haran is your forefathers’ ancestral home, even though you weren’t born there: the place where your people had always lived even though your branch had roamed off east for awhile. Suppose you fit right in back here in Haran, that you’re part of a big extended family, a tribe, and now it’s just you and your little clan that’s supposed to go blinding off into the blue with no idea where you’re all going. Suppose you’ve just become the head of your little clan, and you’re loaded with the responsibility for all your relatives and servants and slaves. And what about all your sheep and cattle? Will there be grass and water for them where the Lord Jehovah wants you to go? Where He’s taking you, will there be bandits or defensive landowners? Will the kings of those nations demand taxes or tribute from you? You have to consider all these things. It’s not a trivial thing, just to pack up and go.

So, what will you do? What’s going through your mind? Do you doubt your sanity? Do you tell yourself, "Aw, I was just hearing things!" and stay where you are? Or are you convinced you’ve really heard from the Most High God, Jehovah by Name? Will you believe He is who He says He is, and will you obey and go?

If you’re Abram son of Terah, somehow you obey. You pack up your goods and your livestock and your family and you go. You go, even though you don’t have a clue where Jehovah Most High is leading you. You go, even though the only thing your really know about Jehovah Most High is that He’s the Maker of heaven and earth and that He’s spoken directly to you. You go, and that takes a degree of faith the world has never known before or since.

There’s a reason that St. Paul calls Abraham the father of all of us who believe. We take it for granted that there’s only one God. We just assume that His power extends over the whole universe and beyond, and there’s nowhere we can go away from His presence. We know of all the mighty acts Jehovah God would do for Abraham and his descendants. God willing, we have personally experienced the saving power of the Lord when He rescued us from sin by the blood of His Son Jesus Christ. We know all this. We assume it.

But Abram didn’t assume all this. He couldn’t assume it. Until the Lord Most High called him, Abram didn’t know a thing about it at all.

One of the neatest things I learned in seminary was that all the idol-worshipping nations in the ancient Near East had some concept of a Most High God who had made the world, even though they had all sorts of bizarre ideas about Him having wives and children and doing all sorts of ungodlike things. And a neat thing I learned when I was studying for this sermon was that Abram’s people weren’t originally from Ur of the Chaldees, which is to say, from southern Iraq. They were nomadic Arameans, and though they pitched their tents wherever conditions were good for their sheep, that region up in southeastern Turkey around the headwaters of the Euphrates were their ancestral home. As Arameans, they were Semites, and they would have heard of Jehovah God, the Lord God whom alone we worship today. But their knowledge of Him would have been corrupted. Arameans like Abram would have thought that Jehovah was just another territorial or national god.

So again, think how revolutionary, how earth-shattering it was for Abram the Aramean to have Jehovah God reveal that He and God Most High are One and the Same. And not only that, but also to have Him make Abram promises that revealed that He the Lord had power over all the nations, not just the Arameans.

It took faith for Abram to pack up and go. He could have said, "Jehovah, how do I know You have any power beyond my own country? You might abandon me!" He could have called on another god to frustrate God Most High in his plans-- after all, some legends said that the sky and the earth were the sons of this god, and they’d gotten away with rebelling against him. Abram could have tried to bribe the Lord with sacrifices to make Him change His mind and let him stay in Haran.

But Abram took the Lord God at His word. He didn’t quail, he didn’t debate, he didn’t demand signs and wonders and evidence. Abram simply believed that Jehovah God was Who He said He was, that He was a righteous God, and that He had the power to keep the promises He had made to His servant Abram.

That is faith. That is the faith that pleases God. As it says in the letter to the Hebrews, "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." We can argue that Abram wasn’t really seeking Jehovah when Jehovah called him. So much the more we should look up to our father Abraham, because he trusted in the Lord’s existence and His power to reward as soon as the Lord revealed Himself to him.

But was Abram’s faith was some meritorious deed that the Lord had to reward him for? Not at all. Abram merely did what we all ought to do, he trusted God implicitly. But even though Abram didn’t "earn" anything by his faith, the Lord by His free grace chose to reckon or credit it to him as righteousness. God declared the sinner Abram worthy to be His servant and to walk in friendship with Him. For unless God has imputed His own righteousness to us, none of us sinners can stand in His presence.

We read in Genesis 12 that the Lord promised to make of Abram a great nation. That means children, descendants of his own body. But several years later, Abram and Sarai still had no offspring. We see that by chapter 15, Abram is bold to question the Lord on how He is going to keep His promise to make him a great nation. Will it be through an adopted son, a slave like Eliezar of Damascus?

Does this mean Abram was wavering in his faith?

No, not really. For again, he demands no signs and wonders, no miraculous proof. The Lord simply assures Abram that the sons and daughters of his body will be like the stars of heaven, and again, Abram simply takes God at His word. As the Scripture says, "And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness."

Is that blind faith? Maybe for Abram it was. But if you’re blind and you put your trust in a faithful guide, that’s not like putting your faith in nothing at all. The path is still there and the destination is still at the end of it, even when you have to rely on someone else to get you where you have to go.

It’s like I was telling the children. A blind person with a guide dog trains with that dog. He gets to know that dog. He lives with that dog twenty-four hours a day. He relies on that dog to keep him on the right path, to get him around obstacles so he won’t bark his shins or step out into traffic. Our blind friends may not be able to see the road ahead, but the eyes of their hearts are very open to the trustworthiness of their faithful dogs. And so they snap on the leash and step out in faith.

Our God is much greater than any Seeing Eye dog. But He is not less than a Seeing Eye dog. Whatever trust a blind person can have in her dog, Abram had exponentially more trust in the Lord Jehovah, God Most High. Whatever trustworthiness a trained guide dog might have, the trustworthiness of the Lord God of heaven and earth is infinitely more.

Abram believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Abram knew he was blind to what would happen to him in the future, but he put his life and the life of all he had in the hands of the God Who Sees.

And because he did, we do not have to rely on blind faith. We don’t have to screw up our guts or our emotions and believe in believing. We don’t have to generate "faith" as if it were some force to keep Tinkerbell alive. We don’t have to manufacture faith as if faith itself were a form of work that God has to pay or reward us for. We can simply look at everything our Lord Jehovah did for Abraham and his descendants. We can receive the testimony of what He did for centuries to save and defend His people the Jews. We can trust in the overwhelming power of what Jesus the Son of God did for us on the cross.

We still need faith, but our faith is not blind. We trust in the sure word and working of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave His life for us. We trust that we are spiritual children of Abraham and Sarah, reckoned through their blessed offspring Son Jesus of Nazareth. And because we are their descendants in Christ, we share in the promises that the Lord God promised Abram from the very beginning. We inherit the promise of belonging to a great nation-- which is the kingdom of God. We can claim the promise of God’s blessing-- the blessing of being made a child of the eternal Father Almighty. The promise of a great name-- the great name of Jesus our Lord, at whose name every knee shall bow. The promise of many sharers in our blessing-- people of every language and nation and tribe whom God shall call into the fellowship of His Church. The promise of ultimate vindication-- the final defeat of death and the devil and of all those who follow and serve Satan, the Enemy of our souls.

All these blessings we share, because Abram that day in Haran long ago believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. All these blessings we share, because we walk in Abraham’s footsteps and believe God when He tells us that faith in Jesus alone is the only way to please Him. All these blessings we share, because we trust in the blood of the Cross to wash away our sins so we can be reckoned righteous in His sight.

What is our brother Paul’s concern? His concern is that we stop trusting in our own works to make us pleasing to God. He doesn’t even want us to have faith in faith, as if that were a work we did to make us pleasing to God. No, our brother Paul wants us to open our eyes and simply receive the gift that God is giving us, the gift of eternal life and righteousness won for us by the saving death of God’s Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

It’s true, we can’t see the consequences of trusting God and receiving that gift. But we see Jesus, who bore the cross for our sake. We see what God did for us through Him. We can have open-eyed faith that Christ is trustworthy and will fulfil all God’s promises to our father Abraham in us. We can have open-eyed faith that He is the One true God, the righteous Lord Jehovah, God Most High. And we can trust Jesus our Lord to bring us at last to the Promised Land, to the very heart and arms of our Father in heaven.

To whose Name be honor and power, blessing and glory, through Christ, with the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen.

Not So Fast!

Texts: Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 6:1-4; 16-18

LAST YEAR IN LATE MARCH, I stood in this pulpit and asked how many of you had made specials vows for Lent.

If you were there, you may recall that no hands were raised. At least, I didn’t see any.

I guess it’s not a Presbyterian thing to give things up for Lent. That’s for the Roman Catholics, or maybe for the High Church Episcopalians. We Presbyterians don’t feel bound to observe special times and seasons. We’re not obligated to deny ourselves for any set period just because the Church says it’s a good idea.

And you know what? We aren’t bound from the outside to give things up for Lent. No church authority can tell us we must stop eating meat or chocolate or indulging in any good gift of God we happen to enjoy, for religious purposes. No human being has the right to tell us we must fast or pray or do acts of Christian love and service at any particular place or time.

Nevertheless, the Lord our God speaking in His Holy Scriptures assumes that from time to time we will set aside times deliberately to fast and pray. Moreover, He assumes that the exercise of physical and spiritual discipline will be good for us.

We have just read what the Holy Spirit says, speaking through the Prophet Isaiah, about the true nature of a fast that is pleasing to God. And in our reading from St. Matthew, our Lord Jesus tells us how we are to carry out our spiritual and physical discipline, when, not if we do it.

In both our readings, we have to pay attention to what our Lord tells us about how not to fast.

Now, at the beginning of Isaiah 58, we have to wonder what God is objecting to. I mean, His people are acting really zealous and devoted to Him! They aren’t just claiming to go hungry for religion’s sake, they’re actually doing it! As Jesus would put it, look at their uncombed hair and unwashed faces! See how somber they look! Look, some of them have even disfigured and cut themselves, to prove how sincerely they’re seeking God, how eager they are to know His ways! They’ve really humbled themselves, haven’t they? What more does the Lord want?

"Why have we fasted," they complain to God, "and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you, O Lord, have not noticed?"

But that’s the problem. God’s people want Him to notice them. They’re treating Him like Baal or Astoreth or some other pagan god. They expect to bribe the Lord with their religious devotion, to make Him cough up whatever it is they want.

The pagan idea was that if you starved or disfigured yourself or screamed or wailed or whatever, you’d get your idol’s attention and he or she would be obliged to do what you wanted. If you were really desperate, you’d sacrifice your own children to your false god. For the pagans, fasting was all about making the gods perform. It was about bribing or coercing them to do what you wanted. And now the Israelites say, "Boohoo, no fair, Lord God of Israel! We’re doing our part, why aren’t You doing Yours?"

It must not be so with us. When-- not if-- you and I deprive ourselves of good things for the sake of religion or godliness, we must never, ever imagine that we’re putting God in our debt by it, or forcing Him to give us our way.

Another way not to fast is what Jesus points out-- doing your fasting or other acts of religion so other people will see you and exclaim over how pious and holy you are. Such public fasting is all about us. It has nothing to do with God-- why should He respond to it?

In our modern culture, we do such a good job avoiding this error, that the very words "pious" and "righteous" and "religious" are insults!

But have we in the West really stopped showing off our good deeds to be seen by others? How many of us do volunteer work not out of love, but because it’ll look good on our resumes or university applications? How many multi-millionaires do you know who donate a building and don’t expect their name to be on it?

It must not be so with us. When-- not if-- you and I fast or deny ourselves to give more to charity or when we make a deliberate effort to spend more time in prayer, we must do all we can to keep it between ourselves and God. And when we cannot, God must receive all the glory.

And then, God’s people were using their fast and their fast day as an excuse to be rude, cranky, and downright mean. They were quarrelling and fighting and claiming, "Well, it’s not my fault, I’m hungry and I’m in a bad mood." Their fasting wasn’t drawing them closer to God or making them more loving towards their neighbor; no, it was driving them further away.

It must not be so with us. When-- not if-- we fast and deny ourselves, we must use it as an occasion for love and charity towards God and our neighbor.

Now, we think we’ve got this problem solved. We think we can avoid doing all these bad things by never fasting at all. But that’s not our Lord’s idea of how to solve the problem. He wants us to understand what fasting really is, and for us to grasp all the good things it can actually get us.

In our reading from Isaiah, we see that "fasting" is really a code word for self-denial and self-discipline. It’s about giving up our will and our wants so the will of God may be done, on earth as it is in heaven. As Jesus would say, it’s taking up our cross and following Him. The self-denial that the Lord wants isn’t only about not doing certain things, it’s also about doing certain things, things that are hard, things that are inconvenient, things that are awkward, for the sake of God and His glory.

Awkward things like speaking out against injustice wherever we find it, and liberating the exploited and oppressed--regardless of what political party we support. Inconvenient things like feeding the hungry and housing the homeless-- even if they are dirty and disgusting and ungrateful. Hard things like always treating the members of your own family with grace and kindness and never, ever taking them for granted.

So why can’t we just do that instead of denying ourselves physically? Let’s just exercise social justice and charity and forget about fasting and prayer!

But God knows we need both. We need to learn to deny ourselves in our bodies and spirits, so we can draw closer to Him. We need to experience denying ourselves in our money, time, efforts, and attitudes, so we can draw closer to our neighbors. As Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, giving to the needy on one hand and fasting and prayer on the other hand go-- well, hand in hand. One is first towards God and one is first towards our neighbor. Both, if undertaken in true humility and faith can make us more holy and more like Him.

Both kinds of self-denial draw us closer to God and make us more aware of our need for Him. If you’ve ever made a sincere vow to give up something good for the Lord’s sake, or if you’ve ever decided deliberately to do good, you know what I mean. You begin well, but then it gets hard. You really want to eat that food or indulge in that amusement. Maybe the people you’re really doing good for aren’t grateful, or people question your good motives. The tempting little voice in your head starts saying, "Oh, go ahead, give up. God won’t care! He won’t make you keep your promise!" But you did promise God, and the only way you can be faithful is to cry out to the Lord and say, "Father, help me do this! I can’t keep it up without you!" Both kinds of self-denial show us God’s strength and our weakness-- and that’s good.

Both kinds of self-denial open our ears to listen for the Lord’s voice and guidance. It’s easy to say we’re going to be good to our neighbor all the time, and yes, we should be. But when you deliberately choose for a time to do something in particular for Jesus’ sake and in Jesus’ name, you become more aware of working side by side with Him, of being His disciple and accepting His teaching. You become humble when you realize how far you are from conforming to His image, and hopeful when time and again He comforts you with His sanctifying Spirit.

Both kinds of self-denial help us enter into the suffering and struggles of our Lord Jesus Christ as He faced the Cross for the sake of you and me. Going without a meal or meat or chocolate for a time seems absurdly like nothing compared to what He went through. But it’s all about saying No to our flesh and Yes to God and becoming more like our Master who prayed, "Not My will, Father, but Yours be done." Denying our flesh and going out of our way even for our enemies helps us to grasp a little of what Jesus Christ gave up and did for us and fill us with gratitude and praise.

Exercised in faith and total dependence upon Almighty God, both kinds of fasting bring us into the pleasure and delight of our Lord. As He says through Isaiah, if we fast as He requires,

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Jesus says that when we fast and pray and do our acts of charity to please God and to benefit our neighbor, our Father in heaven will reward us. Our spiritual ancestors the ancient Jews wanted to be rewarded by God, but they were after the wrong reward-- worldly security and riches and the freedom to do whatever they pleased. But the reward of God is so much better than that! The reward of God is His eternal presence with us. The reward of God is life and meaning like a spring whose waters never fail. The reward of God is light in darkness and comfort in need. The reward of God is God Himself.

You may decide to undertake a special act of self-denial or service this Lent. Or you may decide to do it at some other time. No one in the Presbyterian Church-- not I, not your interim pastor, not the Moderator of the General Assembly-- can order you when or where or how. But when-- not if-- you give to the needy; when-- not if--you spend special times in prayer; when-- not if-- you fast, do it to the glory of God and for the good of your neighbor, confiding in the strength of Jesus your crucified and risen Lord. And your Father in heaven will be your great and glorious reward.

________________________

Preached at an Ash Wednesday service of penitence and Holy Communion

Good on Ya!

Texts: Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12

DID YOU EVER DISCOVER some exciting club or group you really wanted to belong to?

It might have been that clique of cool kids when you were in Junior High. It might have been the debating society or the basketball team when you were in college. It might have been the elite businessmen’s group when you were struggling to get a foothold in life. And you thought to yourself, "How do I get in? What are the rules and requirements so I can keep them and belong? If I get in, what are the benefits?" Or maybe you knew what the benefits were, you just wanted to know how to get them!

As we learned last week, after John the Baptist was thrown into prison, Jesus returned to Galilee and began preaching, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!" We learned that the "kingdom of heaven" or the ‘kingdom of God" is how things will be when God Himself rules as the only Lord and King in the hearts of all people. The kingdom of heaven is a group really worth getting into! And in our passage from Matthew chapter 5, Jesus seems to be laying out the membership rules and benefits for anyone who wants to try and belong.

We know these chapters 5-7 as The Sermon on the Mount, and verses 3 to 12 of the fifth chapter as "the Beatitudes." "Beatitude" is Latin for "blessed." The word in the original Greek is "makarioi" , and it actually does not mean, "God blesses you if you’re like this"; that would need a different Greek word altogether. No, this word "makarioi" means "Boy, these people sure have a good deal in life! Boy, are they fortunate! You should congratulate them!" Or, as the Australians say, "Good on ya!"

"Good on ya if you’re poor in spirit!" says Jesus. Good on ya if you mourn, if you’re meek, if you’re merciful and all the rest! People should envy you! You’re in the club! You belong to the kingdom of God!

But there’s something very odd about these Beatitudes. Most of them don’t describe a way of life a normal human being would envy. Jesus' standards are totally upside-down compared to the standards of this fallen world.

Let’s look at how Jesus describes what it takes to belong to the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." But the world favors the bold, the assertive, the aggressive. The world congratulates the person who declares he doesn’t need God to be a fulfilled, moral human being. But Jesus says "Good on ya!" to people who humbly yield to God, who bow before Him and accept that He knows better than they do what is best for them. He says "Good on ya!" to people who keep on trusting God even when people make fun of them for it, even when obeying God seems to put them behind in business and personal ambition. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven! And of course it is, for the poor in spirit have willingly accepted God as King!

Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." The world understands mourning for lost hopes and lost expectations, lost money and lost loved ones. We sinful human beings may get rail against these things, but we accept that they happen. But Jesus is talking about a whole different kind of mourning. He says, "Good on ya, when the very idea of sin and death make you upset and unspeakably sad. Good on ya, when you realize that it’s the sin in yourself and every human being that makes the world the terrible place it can be. Good on ya, when you shed salt tears over the insult your sin presents to your Creator God. You’re to be congratulated, for you will be comforted with the comfort of God."

Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." The satisfied sinner despises the meek, for he thinks "meek" equals "weak." He’s wrong there, for to make something meek is to take something strong and wild and make it gentle and tame, without crushing its spirit. Think of a wild stallion, that’s been broken to the bridle and bit. "Good on ya," says Jesus, "when your human will has been tamed by the original Horse Whisperer, God. Good on ya, when God and His will are firmly in the saddle of your life. Good on ya, when God can lead you anywhere He wants you to go, and you trust Him to know what He’s doing, even if you don’t know where He’s leading. Good on ya," says Jesus, "when you’re like your forefather Abraham, who left his home and country and believed the promise of the Lord God that he and his descendants would inherit the land." Abraham's descendants thought that just referred to the land of Canaan. "But you," says Jesus, "you who are meek under the reins and the reign of God, you will inherit the whole earth!"

Jesus says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." The world doesn’t think that’s anything to envy. Speak of righteousness among most human beings, and they’ll think you mean "self-righteousness." The nicer ones will think you mean social righteousness, being good to the poor and the outcast. But that’s not good enough if you want to belong to the kingdom of heaven. "Good on ya," Jesus says, "when more than anything you desire the bright, burning righteousness of God." God’s divine righteousness isn’t content with anything less than perfect holiness, love, and justice towards Himself or towards any creature. "Good on ya, if that’s what you really, really want," says Jesus, "because you certainly will be filled with it to the full."

Jesus says, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." When I think of the world’s mercy, I think of the movie Schindler’s List, where the concentration camp commandant is in the habit of taking potshots at the Jewish prisoners as they cross the yard outside his office. I can’t recall who it is, if it’s his mistress or if it’s Schindler himself, but somebody tells him how much stronger and grander it would be for him to show mercy to the poor prisoners. And for a few moments he enjoys the feeling of himself as a merciful man. And then he goes back to shooting prisoners at random out his window, because he enjoys even more the power of being able to end lives whenever he wants. Either way, he feels like some kind of god. But Jesus says, "Good on ya if you’re merciful, because you recognize and condemn your own weakness and sin before you go condemning the sins of others. Good on ya, when you realize that you’re no better than any other human being, and so you treat others the way you’d want God to treat you. Good on ya, because you’ve put yourself in the position to receive the mercy of God!"

Jesus says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." The worldly man thinks his heart is basically good. He doesn’t realize that his heart is an idol factory, that it’s split and corrupted by all his desires and cravings and lusts. He doesn’t understand the commandment to love God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength. He thinks he could stroll into God’s presence any time he wants, providing he could make his way to the throne room of heaven. And he probably thinks God wouldn’t be anything special once he saw Him in person. But the natural sinful human is fatally wrong. Almighty God is too pure to look on sin. God on high cannot-- yes, cannot--allow sin to continue in His unveiled presence. He puts up with our sin as long as we are here on earth, but when we stand before His throne, all that is not pure and singlehearted and devoted will be destroyed by the fire of His holiness. So Jesus says, "Good on ya if you’re pure in heart, because some day you will experience the greatest, most inexpressible joy that can come to a human being-- you will see the face of God and live." And, "Good on ya," says Jesus, "because if your heart is focussed on God on this earth, you will see Him working everywhere you lay your eyes. You’ll even see Him in things that are wrong and bad, because they’ll contrast with His goodness. You’ll understand how God is overcoming the evil of this world, and you will rejoice."

Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God." In this world, peace means the absence of conflict. To be a peacemaker means to stop people fighting, whether that really solves the problem or not. The sinful person of this world imagines that God is at peace with us, and the only conflict is between individuals and groups and nations. But the fact is, the most horrible war this world has ever known is between all humanity and the Lord God of heaven. We’ve all been in rebellion against Him since the Garden of Eden, and all our human fights and conflicts come out of that great war. And in our sinfulness, we deserve for God to come at us with the whole arsenal of His wrath. We’re not just at war against God; He’s also at war against us.

But in the midst of this cosmic war, God Himself declares that He wants to make peace. Remember what the angel said when Jesus was born? "Peace on earth, good will towards men with whom God is pleased." God makes the first offer of peace, offered to us through the blood of His Son Jesus Christ, offered for us on the Cross. So Jesus says, "Good on ya, if you strive to make peace between God and man by spreading the gospel of peace." He says, "Good on ya, when you bring human enemies into the peace of God. For once they have made peace with God, they can no longer be at war with one another. Good on ya, because my Father is the great Peacemaker, and if you’re a peacemaker like Him, that will show the family resemblance between you and God Himself. You’ll be proving you’re His sons."

And Jesus says, "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." In this worldly life, we reap the bad reward for things we’re doing wrong. We suffer for things we think we’re doing right, but maybe we aren’t. Sometimes we put up with this and realize we’re getting what we deserve. But a lot of times we sinners kick and complain that we’re being persecuted, and whoever’s doing it to us has got to pay. But Jesus says, "Good on ya, when you’ve really got a hold on what God wants you to go and how God wants you to be, and people punish you and scorn you for it. Good on ya, because you’ve transferred your citizenship from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of heaven."

Well, this is all very well. But I look at myself, and I think, I will never, ever qualify for membership in the kingdom of heaven!

I’m not poor in spirit: I’m full of injured pride! I may mourn, but it’s over my own dead dreams and disappointments! I’m not meek: my will is a landfill piled high with unruly passions! I don’t hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness: I’m greedy for what is miiiiiinnnnnne! I’m not really merciful: it’s only cowardice that keeps me from giving certain people the sharp edge of my tongue! I’m not pure in heart: I make God share a very messy heart room with my idols and desires! I’m no peacemaker: I just don’t like to be bothered with conflict! And if I ever feel I’m being persecuted for righteousness’ sake, it’s only for an earthbound, temporary righteousness, not for the eternal heavenly righteousness of Christ my God.

And you know what? If you search your own heart with the lamp of God’s Word, you’ll find that you’re exactly the same. None of us, not one of us, deserves to enter the kingdom of God. The Beatitudes of Christ are not some quiz in a magazine, where we tick off items to see if we could qualify for some elite group or other. Not a single one of us can say we come anywhere near the standard Jesus sets in His sermon. In our natural selves, we have nothing to be congratulated for, nothing Jesus can say "Good on ya!" about. In our sinful natures, we have no hope of the kingdom of heaven.

How can we ever get in? Where is the key?

The key to the kingdom is located in verse 11 of the fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel. Jesus says, "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me."

"Because of me," Jesus says of Himself. That's the secret! "Good on ya, when you are so identified with Me, Jesus of Nazareth, that the people of this world persecute you just like they persecute Me." Jesus Himself is the key to the kingdom, and He gives us an immediate pass wherever He goes.

Jesus is the One who is truly poor in spirit, who humbly trusts in the plan of God. Jesus is the only one who can truly mourn over the sin of this world, and at the cross, He felt all the burden and horror of that sin as if it were all His own. Jesus is the One who has suffered His great power to be tamed and meekened: as He said before going to the Cross, "Not my will, Father, but yours be done." Jesus alone genuinely hungers and thirsts for divine righteousness, for He alone knows what a gloriously satisfying thing it is. Jesus alone is truly merciful, for He shared our human condition that we might be granted the mercy of God. Jesus is the one true peacemaker, the great mediator between God and Man, making peace through the blood of His cross. Jesus Christ is the only Man who can truly claim to have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake alone, because Jesus is the only Man who had no sins of His own to answer for.

But Jesus Christ does not remain alone. He came to earth to bring us into His kingdom with Him. He came to bring us in not as terrified subjects or as slaves, but as His brothers and sisters, as joyful sons and daughters of God. Trust Him to do everything for you that you can never do for yourself. Rely on Him to bring you through all the trials and temptations of the Christian life and install you at last in the riches and joys of His kingdom. Be grateful that you can share His trials; in fact, rejoice and be glad, for you join your brothers the prophets and your sisters the martyrs and all who have suffered for His sake. It is Jesus’ good pleasure to give you the blessings of the kingdom of heaven. Receive His marvellous gift, with His congratulations. Good on ya!

Entrusted with God's Work

Texts: Titus 1:6-9; Matthew 4:12-23

THIS MORNING RIGHT AFTER THE sermon, we’ll be doing something Presbyterian churches all over the country are doing this month: We’ll be installing church officers. It’s something we even take for granted: it’s January, it must be ordination and installation time. I don’t know how it is with you, but in some churches, it’s just a matter of business, something to get over with so we can get on to the important stuff like the Scriptures, the hymns, and the prayers.

The fact is, though, that installing church officers is part of the foundation of the Christian Church. It’s part of a process instituted by Jesus Christ Himself. So we should never take it for granted or think it’s not important.

In fact, installing church leaders fits right in with this season of Epiphany. You’ll remember that "epiphany" means to "reveal [something or someone] to [someone]." Epiphany is the time when we celebrate how God revealed His Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to the world. Every year at this time, the lectionary includes a reading on Jesus calling the disciples to come and follow Him. Jesus reveals Himself to the world in the calling of His disciples-- and He continues to reveal Himself to the world through church officers and church helpers of every kind in every denomination.

Our passage from St. Matthew tells us that after Herod put John the Baptist in prison, Jesus left Judea-- the region around Jerusalem-- and returned up north to Galilee. And He began to preach: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!"

But what did Jesus mean by "the kingdom of heaven"?

The "kingdom of heaven" is the same as the "kingdom of God" spoken of by St. Mark and St. Luke. Either way, it describes the way things are when God Himself rules and reigns personally-- intimately-- in the hearts of women and men. It’s got nothing to do with geography and borders, it’s got very little to do with forms of government. The kingdom of heaven is God judging the injustice, unrighteousness, and shabbiness of human hearts on earth and changing them to reflect the obedience, goodness, and splendor of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is God’s doing, not ours. The coming of the kingdom of heaven requires us all to repent, to turn around and stop doing things our way and start doing them God’s way. The kingdom of heaven is a way of life that God brings, and He brings it by the God-Man Jesus Christ.

But God in His mercy ordained that His Son would have other men, and yes, women, to help Him bring in the reality of His kingdom. And so we see Jesus one day, walking beside the Sea of Galilee. He sees two brothers, the fishermen Simon and Andrew, casting their net into the sea. "Come, follow me!" Jesus cries out to them, "and I will make you fishers of men."

Shortly after that, Jesus calls the brothers James and John in the same way: "Come with me, and I’ll make you fishers of men!"

We say Jesus was calling Peter and Andrew, James and John to be His disciples. And so He was. "Disciple" means a student, or learner, and these men and their colleagues would learn a whole new world of things from Jesus in the next three years. But He didn’t call them just to learn. He was recruiting them to be His agents in the great change His life and death and resurrection would bring into this fallen world. Jesus was calling them to help Him bring people into the kingdom of heaven. He was binding them to Himself to entrust them with the great work of God.

I used to think that only Jesus had disciples. But no, we read in the Gospels and in history that John the Baptist had disciples and the Pharisees had disciples and all kinds of rabbis wandering up and down the length and breadth of Judea and Galilee had disciples. And the usual way it worked was-- Well, say a catalog for a local community college has just come in the mail. You look over the adult education classes, and you see something you’re interested in. Pottery-making or 19th century Victorian novels or how to use the Internet. And you ask around, and you find out that the teacher of that course is really good. So you sign up and for a few weeks you go to the community college and you benefit from the new knowledge and information.

That’s how it usually was with rabbis and disciples in Jesus’ time. A man might want to learn more about the Scriptures, so in the slow periods in the fishing business or maybe in the time between harvest and spring planting, he’d go join up with some famous rabbi and learn from him for a few weeks or months. Then when it was the busy time again with the fishing or the farm, he’d tell his rabbi thanks and goodbye and go back to his ordinary work. That’s how it was: the disciple chose the rabbi, and the disciple was with the rabbi only part time. What’s more, the typical disciple was there to learn from the rabbi, but he didn’t intend to leave everything behind and start a new profession. He just wanted to improve his knowledge of the Scriptures, maybe deepen his relationship with the Lord his God.

So you can appreciate how radical it was for Jesus to show up by the Sea of Galilee, right in the middle of fishing season, and command Peter and Andrew, and James and John to leave their professions, their families, everything they had and come follow Him. It’d be like that community college teacher knocking at your door and saying, "I’ve come to teach you astronomy, and I’m not taking No for an answer!"

And what if that community college teacher said, "I intend to make you an astronomer like me, and you’ll never go back to farming or business or your retirement hobbies again!"?

That teacher would have to be pretty compelling to get away with that-- compelling like our Lord Jesus. We read in the gospel of John that Peter and Andrew and James and John had met Jesus before: John the Baptist introduced them to Him after He was baptised in the Jordan River. And they returned to Galilee with Jesus. But they then they went back to their fishing-- until this day. Matthew says that when Jesus summoned them, they immediately dropped their nets and followed Him.

Did they realize what they were getting into? They'd soon discover Jesus wasn't like the other rabbis; He wasn't even like John the Baptist. Jesus was calling them to become His disciples not for a few weeks, not for a season, but forever. Being a follower of Jesus meant becoming a fisher of men to bring people into the kingdom of heaven. Being His disciple-- that wouldn’t be just a form of spiritual enrichment: from now on, that would become who they were.

Was this call just for those fisherman a long time ago? No, Jesus lays that eternal call on every last one of us who bears the name of Christian. But He particularly lays it on those who are called by the voice of His Church to be ordained Church officers.

As a Christian, but especially as an elder or a deacon, it is Jesus who calls you; He calls you for His purpose; and He calls you for life. Even while you labor at your weekday job, even while you enjoy your retirement, Christ has made you a servant of God, an apostle called to bring people into the kingdom of heaven.

In St. Paul’s letter to Titus, we see what an elder or overseer is supposed to be like. Whatever we do, we mustn’t read this as a list of human qualifications, as if it said, "If a man has his household in order, if he’s good-tempered and honest, and godly, righteous, and sober, he’s got the right stuff-- make him a deacon or an elder." Or, "If a woman is hospitable, upright, holy, and disciplined, make her a deacon or elder." That makes it sound as if church office is something someone deserves, like it’s a reward for good behaviour. No, what Paul is saying is, "Pastor Titus, look for people who have evidence of Jesus Christ already working in their lives. Look for people who are already following our Lord in their behaviour and conduct, whether it’s at home or in the community, in public or in private." Jesus could look straight into people’s hearts and know what they were when He called them. We have to go by the evidence of the Holy Spirit working in a person’s life when we the Church call them to ordination.

Those signs of the Holy Spirit are essential, because being an elder or a deacon is not all about budgets and plans and activities. It’s about making the local church a living model of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

We often forget that as church officers. I’ve sat in a lot of Session and Deacons’ meetings when you’d think our only job was to keep track of money. And I’ve sat on a lot of Nominating Committees where somebody will say, "Oh, let’s get ole Whatsisname to be an elder. He never shows up to church, but he’s good at fixing roofs. He can go on the building committee!"

Money is important in church life, and so are buildings and activities and plans. But they aren’t the goal Jesus has in mind when He calls you by the Church to be an elder or deacon. As St. Paul writes to Titus, elders and overseers of the church are entrusted with God’s work. And what is God’s work? God’s work is exhibiting His Son Jesus Christ to the world as the one and only way for human beings to escape the just punishment for their sins and to enter into the peace that comes though Christ alone. God’s work is instituting His kingship here on earth, and making sure everyone knows that He is King. God’s work is defeating the power of Satan in people’s lives and bringing them out of bondage to enjoy the glorious liberty of the children of God.

So you, deacons and elders, you are responsible for making sure the people of this congregation are taught and discipled with the good news of the kingdom of heaven. You are ordained to equip the people of this church to take that good news into the wider world, by word of mouth and by deeds of love and mercy. You officers have been commissioned through the Holy Spirit to encourage others with the trustworthy message of Christ crucified for our sins and risen again for our new life. You have been set apart to defend that gospel and to give a gracious but confident answer to anyone who tries to deny it.

Most of all, you are called by Christ to display Christ in all you are and say and do.

Scary, isn’t it? It’s a tall order. The best of us find it hard to be blameless. Some of you may have experienced the tragedy of a divorce. Everyone knows what it’s like to have children who sometimes refuse to obey. We’re all tempted at times to be over-bearing and quick-tempered. We may not be greedy for dishonest gain, but there may have been times when we almost wished we could get away with something not quite honest. We’re not always fondest of what is good or all that upright, holy, and disciplined. If we have to have a lock on all those virtues to be called and ordained church officers, we may as well all resign!

But that would be forgetting Who it is that calls you. It’s Jesus who calls you. It’s Jesus who puts His Spirit upon you. It’s Jesus who forgives you your weaknesses and enables you to stand approved in His presence. It’s Jesus who entrusts you with the good news of the kingdom of heaven, and it’s Jesus who brings in that kingdom, sealed and guaranteed with His own blood.

When Jesus calls you to be a leader in His church, you don’t choose Him, He chooses you. When Jesus calls you to be a leader in His church, it isn’t just a segment of your life, it’s a sign and symbol of who you are in Him. When Jesus calls you to be a leader in His church, it’s not just for the time you’re actively sitting on Session or on the Board of Deacons, it’s for the rest of your life.

And you know, that goes for all of us who are called by Christ’s name, whether you are ordained or not, whether you have a special church job or not. Our Lord Jesus Christ has extended to us the benefits of His cross to all of you, to set you apart and make precious to Him. Jesus Christ has chosen you all to be His disciples; you have not chosen Him. He calls you all to forsake the evil and ambitions of this world and to live for Him instead. And for all of you, whatever your role in the church may be, His claim on you is forever.

So I charge you, all members of this congregation: Serve your neighbor in His name. Be His faithful disciples, learning more and more of Him and from Him. For the more you learn of Jesus Christ, the more you will love Him and the more you can show unbelievers what the kingdom of heaven is like in this world.

And you, deacons and elders, you have been ordained and installed to help this congregation heading always towards that goal. And so I charge you, by the new covenant made in His blood, keep faith with Jesus who called you. Hold firmly to the trustworthy message of new life in Christ as it has been handed down to you by faithful apostles and teachers. Follow your Master Jesus Christ in your ministry, teaching the good news of the kingdom and ministering to the sick and hurting and lost of this church and in the world.

And most of all, I charge you to carry out your calling in the power of Jesus Christ and not in your own. You have been entrusted with God’s work. Remember always, it is God’s work. He is the King of the kingdom, and He-- and it-- can never fail.

The Voice of the Lord

Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE to hear the voice of the Lord?

I mean, actually physically hear the voice of God?

How would we feel? Thrilled? Privileged? Would we be pleased with ourselves because, hey, the Lord God Almighty is speaking to me!

Would hearing the voice of God with our ears be a comforting and comfortable thing? Would it assure us that we are loved and cared for by Him?

Or, rather would it not make us cower down in awestruck fear, overwhelmed by God’s glory? Would it not convict us of our puniness and our sin?

That’s how it was with the Children of Israel when they heard the voice of the Lord at Mount Sinai, after Moses had brought them out of Egypt. The voice of the Lord in their ears was too much for them! They begged Moses to ask the Lord not to speak to them audibly any more. "You talk to the Lord, Moses," they cried. "We can’t bear it!"

The psalm used in our Call to Worship, Psalm 29, is about the awe-inducing effect of the almighty voice of the Lord. And even here, it’s not the direct voice of God, it’s the voice of God as He expresses Himself through wind and thunder, through tempest and earthquake. It’s a wonderful thing to experience from a safe distance, but you wouldn’t want the full brunt of it bearing down on you.

When I was in college in Kansas, during wild thunderstorms people in my dorm would go out on the front porch and cheer God. A really bright flash of lightning would streak down, and be followed by a stupendous clap of thunder, and we’d yell, "Yeaaa, God!!"

I don’t know how many of us were sincerely giving praise and who was just being flippant. But I’d wager that if that lightning had hit us, or if that roaring wind had collapsed that concrete porch roof on our heads, we wouldn’t be going, "Yeaaa, God!" anymore. We’d be too overwhelmed to say anything at all.

And that’s what it’s like when it’s merely the voice of God speaking through Nature! How much more awesome, how much more unbearable would be the voice of God hitting our ears in its unshielded self!

We imagine it would be wonderful to hear the direct, unmediated voice of Almighty God, because we forget how utterly high and majestic He is compared to us.

It’s not just that we are created beings and He is the everlasting Godhead who dwells in inexpressible light and glory. Adam was a created being, and he communed with the Lord God in the garden of Eden as friend to friend.

No, the thing that would make the unshielded, audible voice of God unbearable to us is the fact that we are rebellious and sinful created beings. The unmediated voice of the Lord would remind us painfully of that fact, as it reminded the Israelites in the desert. It would remind us that we have broken His law and betrayed His trust. The naked voice of God speaks judgement on all our little schemes for getting in good with Him and climbing up to heaven on our little four-foot step-ladders. Actually hearing the voice of almighty God would not be a pleasant thing. It would be a terrifying and devastating thing indeed.

But our Lord God does love us, in spite of our sins. He cares for us and wants to reconcile us to Himself. So from of old He spoke to certain chosen individuals, to patriarchs like Abraham and poets like David and prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah. I would dearly love to know what that was like, whether they heard the Lord’s voice with their ears, or in visions, or only in their hearts. However it was, He made them able to bear it, so they could bring His message of repentance and love to His people.

But somehow, His people, most of them anyway, were deaf to what the prophets had to say. Their life, their hope, their entire purpose for being was bound up in the Word of God, in what the Almighty Lord spoke to them. But when He spoke to them by the prophets, His people wouldn’t listen, and when He spoke to them directly, they couldn’t listen.

But praise His name! His prophets kept on listening, and we have the record of what some of them heard. And so in the 42nd chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah, we read what the Lord said about the Servant of His who is to come.

This Servant, says the Lord, will carry the Lord God’s message of justice to the nations. He will bring the peoples of the world into the Lord’s covenant. His service-- or, we could say, His ministry (for the word "ministry" means "service") will mean light to the Gentiles, sight to the blind, and freedom for the captives-- captives of oppression and tyranny or captives to sin. All these gracious things the Servant will do.

Now here is a sad thing: Our Jewish cousins generally interpret this passage to refer to the Jewish nation. The work of this Servant of the Lord, the rabbis say, has to do with the good influence the Jews will have in the world. And it’s true, the Jews have had great and glorious influence in this present world, in all sorts of ways.

The trouble is, this Isaiah passage can’t possibly be talking about a mere mortal, or any group of mere mortals. The Lord says the Servant will "bring forth justice" and "establish justice on the earth." How can any man, however noble, do that? It’s hard enough for even the best of judges to judge with total righteousness in even individual cases. Only God Himself can establish justice over the entire earth!

And the Lord says the islands-- that is, the remotest parts of the world-- will put their hope in the Servant’s law. Is this some system of laws generated by a man or a nation? No, for even the best system of human laws, even the U.S. Constitution itself, for example, falls far short of the perfect law of God! But the law of the Servant isn’t the law of any man, it’s the law of God. If the Servant had made it up for Himself, the Lord would not praise Him for establishing it. But He not only commends Him for it, He declares that the Servant will do this in the power of God’s Spirit.

And, says the Lord, His Servant will be a covenant for the people. The passage doesn’t say, "You will administer or draw up or deliver My covenant for the people"; no, the Servant will be that covenant Himself. All the good promises and protections of belonging to God and being His people will be wrapped up in the Servant. All the pledges of God will be Yes and Amen in Him. No mere man can claim that!

Only God can do all these things. Only God can claim this glory. The Lord Himself says it in verse 8:

I am the Lord; that is my name!
I will not give my glory to another
or my praise to idols.

No sinful, fallen human being could do all these things and gain all this praise. Only the Lord God Almighty is capable of carrying out these tasks. Only the Lord God Almighty Himself can be His own perfect Servant, the Chosen One, the One on whom His Spirit rests.

But if the Servant is somehow God Himself, don’t we still have the same problem? How can we hear this message of justice and hope and liberation? For as Psalm 29 says, the voice of the Lord shakes the desert, the voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare!

This is how we will hear it: We will hear it softly and tenderly; earnestly, pleadingly. In verse 2 of our Isaiah passage the Lord says,

He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.

The Servant of the Lord would be the Lord Himself coming to us with the voice of love and forgiveness. He would not come as a conqueror, nor as an angry overlord marching into a rebellious city to claim his rights. No,

A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

He would support and encourage what is good; He would have mercy on our weakness. He would speak so we could hear Him; His voice would be pitched so we could respond.

It would be wonderful to hear the voice of the Lord like that. But it seems too much to hope for.

But it isn’t too much to hope for. The Servant of the Lord, the hope of the nations who was and is God Himself, has come to us, and His name is Jesus the Christ. Our passage in Isaiah introduces Him and His ministry seven hundred years before He would appear, and our gospel reading from St. Matthew introduces Him as He begins His ministry on this earth.

As Jesus our Lord comes to be baptised, we see Him coming in humility. We see Him entering into our weakness and sympathizing with our frailty. John the Baptist says, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" He’s right, humanly-speaking, to say this. For John’s baptism was a sign of repentance from sin, and our Lord Jesus had no sin to repent. But Jesus is the Servant of the Lord who has been called in righteousness, and He submits to baptism to fulfill all righteousness. His very willingness to share the sign and symbol of our sin-- though He never sinned Himself-- declares His good news that we can share the reality of righteousness in Him. The baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of new life and repentance that don’t depend on our efforts, but on the liberating, eye-opening, covenant-making mercy of God.

Jesus was baptised for us in the Jordan River, and as He came up out of the water, heaven was opened and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on Him. As the prophet Isaiah said,

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him.

And a voice from heaven is heard: it is the voice of the Lord God Almighty, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well-pleased." The unshielded voice of God was heard by the ears of man: heard by John the Baptist and his disciples standing around, and they were not overwhelmed, they were not judged, they were not destroyed!

How could this be?

It could happen because here at the Jordan the voice of God gave testimony to Him who was and is and will always be the voice of God on earth. From now on and forever more, the Man Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, is the Voice of God speaking to humankind. From now on, what God does for mankind He will do through Christ. The voice of God at the Jordan River testifies that this one Man, this Galilean, is the Servant of the Lord who will not make a clamour in the streets, who will not rant and scream to lord it over others, but who will be the Son of Man, preaching the Good News of new life in Him, the humble King of Glory who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.

If you want to hear the direct voice of God, look to Jesus Christ. Look to His obedient life. Put your utter trust in His sacrificial death. Hear Him call you to share in His glorious resurrection.

Accept no counterfeits. Whatever voice does not glorify Jesus Christ, whatever voice is an enemy to His cross, whatever voice would tell you there are other ways to find divine justice, liberation, and light--that is not the voice of God. Jesus Christ is how God speaks to us. Jesus is the Voice of God to us, recorded in His holy Word, testified to in our hearts by His Holy Spirit.

Jesus is the voice of God to us now, just as much as He was to those who heard Him preach and teach in Galilee and Judea long ago. In fact, He is more so, for now He has ascended into heaven and can minister to His people in every time and place. For as the prophet says,

In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
In his law the islands will put their hope.

This is our Saviour. This is our Lord. He calls you to trust in Him, to trust what He did for you at His cross where the voice of His blood spoke forgiveness and covering for your sins. He calls you to let Him open your eyes, that you might see your sins for the filthy things they are-- and then see them taken away, totally removed, by the power of His sacrifice. His voice is calling you out of the prison of your prejudices, your limitations, your ungodly fears and your agonizing memories. He speaks to free you from the deep dungeon of your brokenness, to bring you into the wideness of His marvellous wholeness and light.

Will you hear His voice today? You may say, I was baptised as an infant; I’ve known Jesus all my life. If that is your thought, yes, praise Him for that grace. But we who have known Jesus all our lives need to hear the voice of the Lord just as much as the one who has never heard or responded to it at all. We need to hear His Word daily to support us, to uphold us, to help us persevere until the day we are made perfect in Him. We need the testimony of His Spirit confirming His truth to us. With open ears and willing hearts, let us hear and follow our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Voice of the Lord: He calls us to repentance, He gives us hope, and He invites us to share His justice, His liberation, and His light.

God's Inclusive Exclusivity

Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

TODAY IS THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY. It's the day when the Church celebrates God's revelation of Himself to the Gentiles in the Infant Christ. "Epiphany" means "to show [something] to [someone]," and that's just what the Lord God does when He leads the Wise Men by the star to come and worship Jesus, the newborn King.

But this holy day could also be called "The Feast of Inclusive Exclusivity."

We all know what being inclusive means. When we're talking about people, it means letting everyone into your group and not keeping anyone out. Inclusiveness is a primary virtue in our culture. Everyone wants to be considered inclusive. If you're not inclusive, you must be intolerant or some sort of bigot or something else equally unacceptable.

On the other hand, it's not acceptable at all to be ex-clusive. If you're exclusive, you put up barriers. You let some people in and keep others out. Our culture says it's wrong to be exclusive. Who are we to judge? Better to be caught robbing a bank than to be openly exclusive.

But on this Feast of the Epiphany, God reveals His inclusive exclusivity. We see Him letting people in on the one hand, and keeping them out, on the other.

What is God up to? Is He somehow going against His own rules by being inclusively exclusive? Or is He doing something that should cause us to fall down in worship and adoration? Is He teaching us a lesson we should follow as we do His will in this fallen world?

Our readings from Isaiah and St. Matthew certainly show the inclusive nature of the Lord God of Israel. And I name Him "the Lord God of Israel" on purpose. The Lord called the children of Israel from father Abraham on and made a special covenant with them that they would be His special people and they would be their special God. And unlike what we hear so much of these days, no, not every nation was special to the Lord. Just Israel. Just the Jews.

But Isaiah looks forward to the day when foreign kings and alien nations would come and share in Israel's covenant promises. They would enjoy the peace and prosperity and happiness that up to then God had pledged to Israel alone. All through his prophecy, Isaiah speaks of how foreigners who had no right to God's divine favour would one day be joined to Israel and receive the blessings belonging to the Lord's chosen people.

Then hundreds of years later, St. Matthew is writing his Gospel, and he considers how the Magi came from the East to worship Jesus, the little King of the Jews. And Matthew recognises that as the beginning of the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy.

It's pretty certain that the Magi weren't exactly kings, but they would have been on the upper levels of the hierarchy at the royal court in Chaldea. They would have been royal advisors, like the members of the president's cabinet, and we can assume they carried royal authority and sanction with them. So they indeed represent the Gentile "kings" Isaiah prophesied would come to the brightness of Israel's dawn.

In fact, the Magi represent all the Gentiles that the Lord God of Israel would call and lead to come and be included in the blessings and benefits of glorified Israel. The blessings weren't just for the Jews anymore. As Isaiah says, "Your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the arm."

This in one sense is talking about the return of children of exiled Jews, born in foreign lands and coming to back to the Promised Land, to Jerusalem for the first time. But the Holy Spirit means more than that. These children, these sons and daughters are those born Gentiles that the Lord on this great day will bring to be included in His glorified Israel. And as the prophet says, every true Israelite will be overcome with joy to see everyone who will be included, everyone who will come join him in the praise of the Lord.

So God is very, very inclusive. The Wise Men themselves, they were from Chaldea, or Babylon. Today, we call that country Iraq. Babylon was a byword for all that was evil, all that was to be rejected by a good Jew. But the Lord God has led even high officials of that hated nation to come and humble themselves at the cradle of the King of the Jews. If Babylonian nobility could come and bow down, if their worship was accepted, how could any Gentile of any nation ever be excluded at all?

They can't. We can't. People of every tribe and tongue and nation are called to come and receive the blessings God promised to His people Israel.

For as we saw last week, those blessings are made possible and perfect in Jesus Christ, who is the New Israel. He's the one who keeps the law in ethnic Israel's behalf. He's the one who takes the punishment for their rebellion and sin. Jesus Christ is the One who rose again to usher in a new life in God for His people Israel. He's the one who is the true Heir of all the promises God ever made about light and life and glory and prosperity and blessing. He's the new and true Israel. And Jesus is the one who incorporates all of us, Jew and Gentile, into Himself, and so He includes us in the inheritance that is coming to Him.

But we've put our finger right on it. That's God's ex-clusivity right there. It's Jesus Christ. If you want to be included in God's blessings, if you want to be a member of God's special people, you have to get in exclusively through Jesus Christ.

In Isaiah, the Holy Spirit speaks of a glorious dawn that will relieve and lift the spiritual darkness covering all the world. He says nations and kings will come to that light. But that's the point: They have to come, because the dawn comes out of Israel alone. And the source and Sun of that dawn is Jesus Christ, Israel's Messiah.

If God were being "inclusive" as the modern world counts inclusiveness, the new light, the great new morning would have been given to every pagan nation right where they were. They would have had no need to seek and worship the incarnate Son of the God of Israel.

But that's not how God chose to do things. He chose to have the high officials of Chaldea, the wisest of the wise, come all that way to bow down before the Infant King of the Jews! He led them by the miraculous star to come all that way, and the Magi were overjoyed to do it, too.

For they were wiser men than a lot of people who consider themselves really smart today. They knew that if they wanted to be included in God's blessings to Israel, they had to come worship before Israel's true King, because that's where the blessings exclusively were.

You hear a lot of silliness these days about how "religion" should be inclusive. Some people will say, "The heart of Christianity is its inclusiveness. If a church excludes anybody for any reason, it's not really a Christian church." Other people will say, "Christianity is a bad religion. It excludes people who don't believe in Jesus."

Both those statements totally miss the point of God's glorious inclusive exclusivity. Yes, the Lord calls everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, to share in the light and riches of Christ, the New Israel. He is inclusive. But that light and those riches are found exclusively in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the New Israel, the King of the Jews. You have to put your trust in Him and Him alone.

You have to, because there is no other source of blessing and fellowship and eternal life with Almighty God. There is no other way to please God and be acceptable to Him, other than trust in Christ the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. There is no other route to heaven, besides the one Way, Truth, and Life who is God's only-begotten Son.

Because that is Who He is-- the Son of God. If you want blessings from God, if you want eternal life and gracious favor and peace with God and man, if you want your face to be divinely radiant and your heart to throb with holy joy, you have to get all those good things from God Himself. That's where they are. Jesus Christ is the one and only exclusive source of God's light and love and blessing, because He of all human beings is God in human flesh, and He alone. You try to go somewhere else to get them, if you try to make up a way to get all these divine things for yourself, you're wasting your time. And you're a fool, because they won't be there. The blessings of God towards man are found exclusively in God's Son, the Man Jesus Christ.

The Wise Men knew this and were willing to travel mile upon desert mile in order to be included in God's exclusive source of blessing. They didn't turn up their noses at the Lord's exclusivity. No, when they saw the star that told them they were getting close to the Child Jesus, they were overjoyed!

Are we as wise as they? Are we willing to receive our heavenly Father's inclusive gifts in His exclusive way? We don't have to travel hundreds of miles to get them. God's blessings in Christ are as close to us as our church fellowship, as close to us as the Bible on our nightstands, as close as the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts, as close to us as this Holy Supper spread for our spiritual nourishment.

Come to this Table exclusively through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will include you in His blessings of grace and salvation. He died to give them to you. See and touch and taste the bread and the wine. Be refreshed by the sacrifice of His body broken for you, and His blood shed that you might share in His heavenly joy with all the saints of every time and place. Come, be included in the Lord's communion, and know the divine salvation and joy and light that come exclusively and gloriously through Jesus Christ, our Saviour, King, and only Lord. Amen.