Isaiah 40:1-11 and Mark 1:1-8 - What are we waiting for?

(Click on the title above to listen to this sermon)

Advent is a time of hope and expectation for the church; a time when we look forward to the incarnation of Christ, celebrated at Christmas. But Advent also looks forward toward the 2nd Advent of Christ. Advent is the ultimate period of time in which, collectively, the church begins to wait, and see.

But what are we waiting for? Advent can be reduced to simply a prep time for waiting for the birth of Jesus to the exclusion of its expectation of the 2nd Advent of Christ. That is certainly the dominant message that gets proclaimed at Advent – Jesus is coming! But are we really waiting? Do we really want something to happen? Do we really want the something different that Advent promises us? This is the challenge of Sunday’s lectionary readings from Isaiah 40 and Mark 1.

As chapter Isaiah 40 begins, Israel has experienced the tragedy of massive defeat, endured the agony of exile in Babylon, and suffered the unthinkable – God has let the people, and even God’s own house, be destroyed. And so during the time between Isaiah 39 and 40, Israel experienced a period of divine silence.

Divine silence is hard to deal with. We know God is out there, we know God is ruling and is continuing to be sovereign and work out God’s plan. What we don’t know, when faced with divine silence, is whether or not God continues to care for and love us as God’s people, especially when God is silent while we experience severe hardship and pain, as Israel experienced the degradation of their religion, holy places, faith community, and way of life.

Finally, at long last, a message came from God – Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God... At long last, our captivity is over and God is going to act. Isaiah describes a time when God will restore the people and reveal God’s glory, but first the way must be prepared. This preparation will be like a road carved out of the wilderness…valleys will be filled in, mountains will be brought down…the very earth will be leveled so that God’s restoration will have a way and God’s glory can come forth. And so Isaiah was to preach that though life is impermanent and fleeting, God’s word is permanent, and will last forever. God will come and restore the people. God will be a great and mighty warrior to rescue the people, but will treat them like a shepherd tends to his flock; God will act like a mother sheep, leading her children to safety. Isaiah 40 ends in expectant hope.

Our passage from Mark 1 combines Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40 to tell us that John is the one the prophets spoke of, that John is the one who is going to prepare the way and proclaim the salvation of God. And so we read that “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” and that Jesus is coming.

I have been guilty of making the anticipated mystery of God a wholly spiritual one. I have been guilty of making Jesus’ message and the message of the New Testament simply and exclusively about redemption from sin. But we mustn’t forget that the comfort of Isaiah 40, in fact the anticipation of the coming of the Messiah throughout the Old Testament, was not primarily about salvation from sin, but about salvation from oppression and injustice. The people longed for a day when the evil forces of this world would be defeated. Salvation would be from the systemic evil of the world expressed in evil empires and tyrants, from one class of society oppressing another, from one group of people going hungry while another ate their fill, from systems that are designed to keep one group poor so that another can get rich. Yes salvation was for the forgiveness of sins, but it is not limited to that…the anticipated salvation from God was for a new world order to begin. And onto this expectant scene for a new world order marches the voice crying out in the wilderness saying the kingdom is coming, the new manifestation of God’s reign is coming – and the way to prepare for it is to repent.

Advent is not just about waiting for Jesus so we can have our sins forgiven. Advent has always been about waiting for God to act redemptively in the world to bring shalom, or peace, or health, or wholeness to it. Peace between us and God; peace or shalom between us; and there can be no peace or shalom until there is equity and justice – until there is reconciliation. We are waiting for the very manifestation of God’s reign that the people of Israel in Egypt and the captive Jews in Babylon were waiting for. We are waiting for the manifestation of the very kingdom of God that the 1st century Jews and Christians were waiting for.

The people of God, on both sides of the cross, have always been looking for God to move and act redemptively in the world. I think this is why John’s message was a message of repentance. John tells us that repentance is primarily a relational event. Repentance is a way to restore relationships with other people and repentance is a way to be reconciled or restored to God. This message is brought out best in Luke 3, which contains a fuller version of John’s preaching and call to repentance in anticipation of the coming salvation of the Lord.

Repentance is acting out the new kind of life made possible by the redemptive act of God. Repentance is living out the life of the kingdom that we are waiting for. Repentance is about turning around and actively working against the forces of evil that seek to build barriers between people and between people and God. It is about restoring equity and justice in our relationships with other people. And it is about recognizing when we are participating in systems of injustice and inequity and seeking to right that wrong. Repentance is about acting now in a way that honors the one who is coming who will act finally and redemptively at the end to bring about final and complete shalom, to and for all people. And if Isaiah and John are to be believed, when the people of God repent in preparation for the coming redemptive action of God, a new world is born.

Sunday was the 2nd Sunday of Advent. Originally, Advent was a time of penitence and fasting, much as the Season of Lent. But in recent times, the penitential nature of Advent has been replaced with a more positive message of hope and anticipation. However, the readings for the 2nd Sunday in Advent put the two together. They proclaim to us a message of comfort that salvation is coming, but call on us to repent because salvation is coming.

The challenge of Advent is to see that God is always a God of Advent. God is always doing something new. God is always working to bring peace and reconciliation. This is who God is. Our task is to look for those places where God is working; and I think that we will find some extraordinary things. God works through a baby in a manger in an insignificant town in a tiny country to change the world. God works through the shame of a cross, a death that robs one of dignity and significance in order to bring dignity and significance to the world. Could it also be that God works through a small and seemingly insignificant church to change the world again? I think that is what we are waiting for. May it be so!

Psalm 80: A Cry for God's Salvation

(Click on the above title to hear JJ's sermon from Psalm 80)

The lectionary asked us to consider Psalm 80 as a part of the readings for the 1^st Sunday in Advent. Despite the difficulty presented by the Psalms as a resource for preaching (their liturgical purpose, the difficulty in determining their historical context, and the communal nature of the Psalms), it seemed appropriate to begin the Christian year with a Psalm that has the Lord’s people crying out for the Lord’s salvation and deliverance.

Psalm 80 is a psalm of lament. Lament Psalms can have a hard time connecting with contemporary American Christian audiences, perhaps because so much of the American Christian experience over the last few decades has been largely a triumphant experience. The dominant theme of American Christianity is the goodness of God. We tend to equate material wealth and economic prosperity as signs of the blessing of God, which while true, tends to create a fairly skewed view of Christianity. However, psalms of lament insert a mournful and angry tone into worship, inviting believers to confess their own disillusionments and disappointments with life and with God. So for a church that has been nurtured consistently on messages of God’s goodness and grace and mercy, a Psalm that is angry with God and accuses God of abandoning God’s people and being responsible for their pain and suffering has a difficult time connecting. We are largely uncomfortable with such accusatory expressions directed at God, and even more uncomfortable with their public expression in worship, where we tend to favor messages that have a more positive spin.

But back to Psalm 80. It starts off rather bleak. We are not told of the situation, but the community is crying out for God to save them. The cry of verse 2 – “Stir up your might and come and save us!” becomes the refrain of the entire Psalm, found in vs. 3, 7, and 19 – “Restore us, O God of hosts, let your face shine, that we may be saved.”

The actual situation that gives birth to the cry for salvation is difficult to establish. Some have suggested that the psalm was written in the aftermath of the Babylonian exile by a people who have had to come to grips with the ultimate challenge to their faith – abandonment by God that led to a loss of their home country. Others have suggested that the cry of salvation arose as the intense cry of pain from a community that has been torn in two by the division of the kingdom between Rehoboam and Jeroboam after Solomon died. Regardless of the situation, the cry for restoration is a communal cry for God to restore the kingdom, to right the wrong that they believe has been done to them by God.

Their experience is apparently one of pain. The people are afraid, and feel abandoned and frustrated because of it. All the while God appears to them to be unmoved by their plight. God seems strangely absent. And so the Psalm moves from a cry for restoration to a tone of accusation. God has fed them the bread of tears, God has made them the scorn of their neighbors and God has caused their enemies to laugh at them. Finally, after cries of pain and accusation, the Psalm ends with a plea for God to send his righteous servant to restore the people back to God.

How do we connect with such a Psalm of lament?

Many people never question their relationship with God. They know God is present and in some cases are keenly aware of that presence most of the time. But for others, such a relationship with God is not easy. For these people, faith is a challenge, especially when confronted with difficult circumstances and situations in life that just make no sense and have no real solution. For some, they just can’t seem to find their place in life. For others, they just can’t seem to get ahead and can’t seem to get over the lumps that everyday life keeps sending them. We all have either experienced or known people who have experienced the feelings of fear, uncertainty, abandonment, and anger toward God that are engendered in Psalm 80. For these people, it is comforting to know that God can handle our lamentations…God can handle our questions and God can handle our accusations. However challenging and discouraging and discombobulating we might find the dark night of the soul, it can be a vehicle toward greater faith, if we have but the courage to lay our feelings and emotions honestly before God.

But the Psalm is a communal lament. In the Psalm, the community is afraid because the kingdom that they once knew is no longer. Whether the Psalm is about the divided kingdom or the Babylonian exile, the situation for the kingdom looks bleak. It went from a thriving, growing, powerful kingdom to a small and seemingly insignificant kingdom, threatened by its larger, richer, and more powerful neighbors. The faith community, finally and at long last, has realized that there is nothing for it to do but cry to God for salvation, and wait expectantly for God’s deliverance. And their expectant hope took concrete shape in the form of a person who is at God’s right hand, the one whom God made strong, and this person will restore the people to faithfulness, life, and worship – waiting for the advent of God’s divine action for God’s people.

I submit that our church situation is the situation of the community in Psalm 80. We were once larger than we are, but over time have gotten smaller. We are surrounded by larger and richer churches who are competing (probably not the right word) for the same new members that we are. We are struggling to find our way; to discern the will of God; to figure out a way to survive and thrive and grow when it seems as if the deck is stacked against us. We too are afraid of what is going to happen to our church in the future. I would even bet that there might be those among us who have a hard time deciding what God can possibly be doing to let things get to this point. We have done everything as faithfully as we knew how. We made decisions and congregational moves that we believed were the best for the church, and because we believed them to be the leading of the Holy Spirit, and yet now we are not sure what to do or where to go.

Psalm 80 is a psalm in which the community of faith acknowledges that on the one hand God is in control, but on the other hand laments because of the uncertainty of its present circumstance and is clearly waiting for God to come and save us. Today is the 1^st Sunday in Advent, and lament is appropriate language for Advent. If Advent were only about heart-warming stories of a baby in a manger, then Advent might fail to connect with us in our times of darkness and discontent. To own our fear and lament our circumstance and the challenges it brings us is to profess and deepen our own faith in God. Let us not forget that Psalm 80 – a psalm of lament, moves from despair and accusation, fear and abandonment to a renewed hope that God will act and see that God’s will is done. So perhaps our proper response to our circumstances, as Advent begins, is to mimic the act of faith and hope in Psalm 80 – to cry out to God and dare to see and expect a greater manifestation of the reign of God where others might see and expect nothing. Like the people in Psalm 80, we address God when God seems absent. We expect and hope that in spite of our fears, we will see God in the most surprising places – in a manger – or the most God-forsaken places – on a cross.

Advent is the time where we cry out – “Restore us, O Lord God of hosts, let your face shine that we may be saved.”

Mark 4:35-41 - Jesus is in the boat

(Click on the title above to hear JJ's sermon)

This sermon was recorded at the Rosedale Fellowship gathering, of which Cahaba Valley is a part. Rosedale is the only African American neighborhood in Homewood, and Cahaba Valley got involved with the Rosedale churches as a part of a social justice effort to keep Rosedale from being taken over and developed for business and commercial use. This is a gathering held every 5th Sunday, and JJ preached at the last one held this year.

Mark 4:35-41
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’

A Paralyzing Fear - A Reflection on Matthew 25:14-30

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For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away…

One has to wonder about the wisdom of putting the parable of the talents right next to the parable of the ten virgins. They both are part of a private conversation between Jesus and the disciples (ch. 24) and both are about the general theme of the final judgment. However, their placement together might send a mixed message. Maybe the third slave in the ‘talent’ parable had heard the story of the 5 foolish virgins who ran out of oil and took it to heart. He did not want to be the one let without ‘oil’ or without ‘talents’ at the master’s return. Therefore, he did the most natural and fiscally responsible thing – he buried the money, so that he would have the master’s money when the master returned. Yet instead of rewarding the servant for prudence and preparedness, he had him thrown into outer darkness, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That seems totally unfair.

Any reading on the parable of the talents would likely lead to a conclusion that it has something to do with being faithful with what God has entrusted to us. This message is established through allegory, the dominant way that parables used to be interpreted, in which the master represents Jesus, his return represents the 2nd coming and the final judgment, and the servants are Jesus’ disciples, today represented by the church. So, many of these writings on the parable would argue that the central issue of the parable is this: what does Jesus entrust us with? Or, to put it a different way, what do the talents represent?

What are the options? Augustine thought that the talents represented salvation; others believe that the talents represent the Law, and still others the Word of God. Some people don’t think the talents mean anything – they are just a way to demonstrate the unfaithfulness of the third servant. But the number one option for the meaning of the talents, put forward by John Chrysostym, is this – they symbolize personal gifts and abilities to be used in the service of the Son of Man. So the talents represent talent.

To make the correlation between the talent and talent is a legitimate reading of the story. But it does come with a couple of problems. If I’m reading the story correctly, the first two servants double their 'talents'; this implies that using one's gifts and abilities will result in the gaining of more gifts and abilities. The issue is further clouded by verse 28 where the one talent of the third servant is taken away and given to the first servant. How this could be said to apply to gifts and abilities is not exactly clear. A further complication is that the gaining of new talents/abilities happens after the return of the master, or after the return of Jesus, which further clouds the issue. Additionally, at face value, one critique of this reading is that it espouses a work-centered theology that most of us simply cannot agree with. Perhaps I’m reading way too much into the story and taking the allegory too far, but it certainly does make you wonder whether the talents are really meant to be talent.

What if the major issue in the text, thought, doesn’t have to do with trying to identify what the talents represent at all?

Maybe a better question is this – what is the difference between the servants that led to such different outcomes upon the master’s return?

The answer is fear. The third servant was afraid. Maybe he did know the story of the virgins and didn’t want to be the one left empty-handed when the master returned…burying the money until that time was the safe thing to do.

Given our country’s current financial situation, his plan sounds good. Think about the incredible audacity of the first two servants to put their master’s fortune at risk. The story moves through the investment and return so quickly that we are tempted to think it is almost a given that the servant’s investment of the master’s money will automatically pay off – but that is not necessarily the case. These guys possessed some kind of nerve to take a fortune that they neither earned nor could pay back and put it completely at risk, enduring the possibility that they would be left to greet the master upon his return with nothing.

I can totally relate to the third servant. I grew up believing that “it is better to be safe than sorry.” I have lived significant portions of my life in fear…fear of dieing, fear of the unknown, fear of failure…even fear of success. Fear can be absolutely and totally paralyzing, prompting us to see burying money (and even our heads in the sand) as an example of sound, fiscally responsive policy. Fear is a totally merciless and demanding master that can take over and run our lives into the ground.

Many of us have recently been talking about trying to grow our church. Telling people about Jesus can make us afraid. I think probably the number one reason that people don’t engage in evangelism is because they are afraid. What if people say no? What if people think we’re stupid? The challenge to grow and be evangelistic and engage people in conversations about faith and salvation challenge us and our faith on its deepest level – do we have the faith to conquer our fear and take the risks to win people to Christ? Or perhaps our fear takes us in a different direction. What happens if we fail? What happens if we make a mistake? What happens if we totally blow it and instead of growing we lose more members? What happens if we go broke? What happens if we die? Or, maybe worse…what happens if we are successful and actually grow? You cannot grow a church and not experience at least minimal, but more likely, significant change. As we all know, change is an occasion for fear as well.

I think the message of this parable for us is this: there is no responsible use of the gifts of God, there is no responsible work in God’s service that does not involve taking risks. Stasis is impossible. There is no standing still, no burying of capital allowed. Responsible discharge of our calling as Christians and our calling as a church requires us to take risks for the Kingdom, risks we would rather avoid. The parable pushes us beyond the apparent issues of industriousness and using our talents to a harder truth – service for the king is a dangerous affair that calls for us to risk everything for the sake of the reward that stands before us. I can’t help but think back to Jesus' words to the disciples, "Those who want to save their lives will lose them and those who lose their lives for my sake will find them."

So I guess it makes sense, after all, to put this parable next to the parable of the ten virgins. “Be ready for a long delay as you wait for my return,” says Jesus, “but don’t let fear keep you from serving me with all you have in the meantime.”

A Reflection on Matt. 25:1-13 - The Parable of the Ten Virgins

(Click on the title above to hear this sermon)

A Reflection about All Saints/All Souls Day

(Click on the above title to hear the sermon from Nov. 2, 2008)

This past Sunday we celebrated All Saints and All Souls Day. From the first century, the Church has always honored those who have died in the Lord. During the church’s first three centuries, Christians often encountered severe persecution, suffering torture and bloody death because they refused to deny Christ, even when this denial might have saved their own lives, or the lives of their children and families. The stories of these martyrs provide models for how Christians throughout the centuries should live as Christ’s disciples. Even today we know the importance of remembering people of extraordinary achievement and exemplary character. We celebrate President’s day (honoring Lincoln and Washington as exemplary presidents), Columbus day, July 4th, Veteran’s day, Memorial day, Martin Luther King Day, etc.

Furthermore, there are at least two places in the New Testament that hint at such a practice. The first is in Hebrews 12:1-2, which says since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses (referring back to the heroes of faith in chapter 11)…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. The second place is in Revelation 7, our New Testament lectionary passage for this week.

I confess that I am intimidated by the book of Revelation. I just don’t understand apocalyptic literature. It has been helpful for me, however, to understand that Revelation was written to address a specific historical context. The emperor, in this case Domitian, claimed to be God and everyone was expected to acknowledge his deity. Rome was seen as the ultimate power in this world and that it bestowed the blessings of peace and prosperity on those who were loyal. Therefore, all patriotic citizens would support the state as the ultimate source of blessing. However, to the first century Christian, such claims could only be heard as a blasphemous usurpation of God’s sole authority as the Almighty – Jesus is Lord, and not Caesar.

The Asian Christians claimed that God is the Almighty ruler, and that Jesus is Lord, but their life experience was one of pain and frustration, suffered at the hands of pagans. How were they to make sense of this paradox?

John gives their experience meaning by telling a story in which the power of God is contrasted with the power of the emperor and empire. The story assures the reader that those forces currently at work against God, forces of oppression and injustice, will be overthrown by the liberating act of God. The Christ, the agent of God’s liberating act, appeared, confronted the kingdom of this world established on violence and oppression, and conquered.

But instead of conquering through violence and oppression, he conquered through suffering and death. The king is also the lamb, and the suffering and death of the Christ represents the very power of God to overthrow the dark forces of this world. Therefore, as suffering and death was Christ’s ultimate victory, so death and suffering is to be the Christian’s ultimate victory.

So at last we come to Revelation 7 where we are transported to the heavenly throne room. There are the four living creatures surrounding the throne, and the angelic host, and the 24 elders, all singing – “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.” There is an innumerable group of people from every nation, tribe, and tongue, dressed in white robes, holding palm branches and crying out “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
An elder comes and tells us that “these are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb…” These are the people whose faith stayed strong in the face of the might of the empire, who never wavered from their conviction that Jesus is Lord, and who ultimately gave their lives for that confession of faith. These are the martyrs.

This vision was given to give us hope regarding the outcome of our difficult, threatened, persecuted existence in the world of the empire. “Stay strong in the faith,” says John’s apocalypse, “because you will join this group, in a place where the physical trials of this life will be gone, the injustices of this world will be put to right, and where you can enjoy being in the presence of the king.” "Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses," says Hebrews 12:1, "let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us..." Jesus put it this way - "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven..."

We no longer suffer under the tyrannical rule of an emperor and empire that persecutes us because we do not recognize it as lord of our lives. I think, though, that we would have to admit that the rule of the empire is alive and well. It doesn’t threaten us with torture and death…it tempts us with prosperity and an easy life-style. Our ordeal is trying to resist buying into the way that this world works. In our day and age, the great ordeal is not the threat of death, but the grim conflict of loyalties in which a Christian may well be in genuine doubt about where his or her duty lies. Common sense says: The true power in the world to save is the United States, or capitalism, or democracy. The Revelation says: the true power is the Lamb of God, whose power is made manifest, not in the weapons of violence, but in the intentional submission of life to death for others. The problem we face today is the same as in the past…how do we not cave in to a common sense that defines reality as the power of wealth, violence, and exploitation of the environment, rather than defining reality as the Lamb of God who conquered and achieved victory through service, selflessness, suffering, and death on the cross?

Today is All Saints/All Souls Day. It is a day where we are challenged to remember the martyrs who gave themselves for the cause of Christ and to be encouraged in our faith because of their example. They remind us that church is not just a social club where we go to get our social needs met; Christianity is not simply where we come to suck the blood from Jesus in an exercise of cheap grace while we ignore his call to radical discipleship where there is no compromise to be brokered between the power of God and the power of the empire. Those people in white robes, those who put their lives on the altar of faith in Christ believed that Christianity was irreconcilable with “good citizenship” in the empire of this world. The martyrs remind us that the call of Christ is to radical discipleship, where we are asked to leave father and mother, leave the comfort and security of the promised prosperity from the modern empire and asked instead to follow Jesus down Calvary’s road.

Therefore, let us raise our voices and cry with that great host of martyrs in heaven “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Let us join with those who are now enduring the great tribulation, those oppressed by poverty, or war, or natural disaster. Let us unite ourselves with those holy martyrs robed in white before the throne, those of every nation and tribe and people and language: Men and women, all races, all ages who through their enduring witness, have taught us what it really means to stand up on proclaim and bear witness that Jesus is Lord.

A Reflection on Leviticus 19

(Click on the title to hear JJ's sermon on Leviticus 19 from October 26, 2008)

In 1861, Harriet Jacobs wrote the first slave narrative composed and published by an African American woman entitled “Incidents in the life of a slave girl.” This is what she wrote about her early childhood mistress:
“After a brief period of suspense, the will of my mistress was read, and we learned that she had bequeathed me to her sister's daughter, a child of five years old. So vanished our hopes. My mistress had taught me the precepts of God's Word: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." But I was her slave, and I supposed she did not recognize me as her neighbor. I would give much to blot out from my memory that one great wrong. As a child, I loved my mistress; and, looking back on the happy days I spent with her, I try to think with less bitterness of this act of injustice. While I was with her, she taught me to read and spell; and for this privilege, which so rarely falls to the lot of a slave, I bless her memory.”

I have no doubt that Ms. Jacobs’ mistress was a deeply religious woman. But like many that we come into contact with everyday, I am not sure she was really Christ’s disciple. For some reason, religion and discipleship are thought to be separate from each other – as if what we do on Sunday has nothing to do with what we do during the week. I suppose that the people of God have always tried to separate them; and I suppose the prophets of God have always tried bringing them back together, as they are brought together in Leviticus 19.
Leviticus 19:2 says – You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Following this bold declaration is a litany of laws that may seem unreasonably legalistic, authoritarian, and completely foreign to our worldview, but whose purpose, simply put, was to make God’s people holy.

What does it mean to be holy? Ubiquitous in both the Old and New Testaments, holiness sounds like a religious concern, not a discipleship one. The very word ‘holy’ tends to conjure into our minds images of cowled monks huddled in a chapel at the top of a mountain praying day and night.

To be holy is to be separate…it is to be distinct. Leviticus 19 equates holiness with righteous and ethical living. Holiness has a purpose, it is about treating other people the way God would have us treat them and seeing within them the image of God that we believe is in us. Holiness means that the people of God, as part of God’s family, are held to a higher standard of behavior than anyone else because God is holy and we are to reflect this divine attribute.
But what is this higher standard of behavior? Many people believe that Christian life means that we abstain from things. But simple abstention is not what Leviticus 19 or I are talking about. Let me highlight three areas or ethical behaviors which I believe are necessary to be holy that I think are problem areas for us today.

In verses 9 and 10 we are told that as we go about our regular routines of life, in this case harvesting crops, we should be intentional about helping the poor. How many of our regular life practices are designed with the poor in mind? Whole facets of our society have been built to get away from the poor (and others) – we call them suburbs. We rationalize the separation by saying that suburban life is best for our families – crime is lower and schools are better out here. I am sure that we are all possessed of the best of intentions. We likely never intentionally decided that we would live here to be away from certain types of people. However, the truth is that we unwittingly participate in the process of keeping people in poverty by living in the suburbs (much could be said here about the connection between white flight, the culprit behind the ‘burbs, and the poverty of the city). The ease and comfort of the suburbs have lulled us into forgetting the poor (and others), the very people to whom, as Jesus said, belongs the kingdom of God. Do we have to have to move into the city to be holy? No. But we must intentionally engage with those areas that are historically poor and marginalized if we are going to be holy. To be holy means to take care of the poor.

A second area of ethical concern from the text comes from vs. 32, where we are told to rise before the aged and defer to the old. Sometimes, in our society, the elderly are perceived as an unbearable burden. Like the poor, elderly people are put out of our sight (thank you nursing homes), and frequently out of our mind. It is sad to me that even the church, which has received specific instructions from the New Testament writers about honoring our elders, champions the cause of the young over the old. Young people speak of the elders as hampering our new and exciting agenda and holding us back. Church programs are designed to attract youth because there is at least an implied idea that somehow young people are better for church growth than not-so-young people. But as Christians, we are challenged to come up with clear and unwavering commitments to honor our elders—for our holiness sake, and for the Lord's.

Before moving to the third area of ethical concern, let me mention vs. 18 and the familiar command to love neighbor as self. The treatment of the neighbor says more about one's theological commitments than any ecclesial confession. Indeed, how one defines who is one’s neighbor reveals the kind of God in whom one believes. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are theological issues because conforming to such prejudices hinders us from viewing those of other races, genders, and sexual orientations as neighbors. I have highlighted 2 areas of concern for the church today – the poor and aged. But they are only examples of a far-reaching problem within today’s church. Christians have gotten it into our heads that we get to choose who we are going to treat with respect and who we will not; who is worthy of the gospel and who is not; who bears the image of God and who does not. Leviticus 19 and the New Testament which relies upon it do not afford us this luxury. It is no wonder that Jesus, Paul, and James all appropriate this statement from Leviticus 19:18 as being fundamental to what it means to live as a Christian.

This is why many of the commands in chapters 18-20 end with the phrase “I am the Lord,” or “I am the Lord your God.” This phrase recalls to the mind the broader context of Israel's relationship with God. The God who speaks to Israel is the God who has already faithfully and redemptively acted on Israel's behalf: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt" (v. 36). By placing these instructions in the context of deliverance, the writer understands them not as the arbitrary dictates of power for power's sake, but as the practices that will continue and extend the effects of God's redemptive presence among the people.

Finally, perhaps the most incendiary area of concern from Leviticus 19 comes from vs. 33, where we are told to love the aliens who live among us as ourselves. This has obvious relevance in America where a major political battle is being waged regarding what should be done with people who live here illegally. I make no claim to solve the political debate in our country. Let me just say this. How we treat someone or speak about someone must not be determined by that person’s legal or illegal status in our country. We might be tempted to say that this is another time and place and Israel did not have the problem of aliens in the land like we do. However, if you remember your Bible, Israel was not supposed to have any foreigner in the land at all so as to protect the purity of the people. Yet despite that fact, Israel was still told to treat the foreigner, the alien, the illegal alien as fellow citizens of Israel. What can we say about the foreigner who lives among us except this – we were once foreigners who lived in a strange land; we were once sinners, alienated from God, but in God’s love we were welcomed into the kingdom of God’s glory and grace and if we are to be holy then our hospitality must extend to those who are strangers in the land as well. In our time there is perhaps no other issue that will demonstrate what our theological commitments are than this one. The true test of ethics and holiness will be whether or not we can speak of and treat the immigrant among us, legal or otherwise, as neighbor.

There are many other things to be said about Leviticus 19. Let me end with this: holiness demands that we put the injustice perpetrated on Harriet Jacobs by her owner to rights. Let us demonstrate that a holy people will champion the cause of justice and equality because that is the cause of our holy God. If we would be the people that God calls us to be; if we would be followers and disciples of Christ then we must land on the side of justice and holiness for that is where Jesus is. And where Jesus goes, we will follow.

A Reflection on Exodus 33:12-23

(Click on the title above to hear JJ's sermon on this passage)

The episode of the golden calf is a blight on the record of Israel’s history. Because of it, Yahweh threatened to remove the divine presence from leading the people to the Promised Land. But I am not sure the Israelites were as bad as we have been led to believe.

Let’s put ourselves in their shoes. We have been brought out of Egypt, and know that it was only due to the might hand of Yahweh that we got free from Pharaoh’s tyrannical grasp. Yet Yahweh has been closeted away for weeks meeting with Moses, and we have no idea about when they will be done and return. We’re not sure what to do. Fear is beginning to spread amongst the people. And when fear dips its toe into our communal waters, waves begin to ripple. “How are we going to survive as a people without any clear direction on where to go? There is no clear voice that can point us toward existential certainty…we are standing in the shadow of Sinai and are not sure that we are going to survive and make it to the promised land,” we exclaim!

Hoping to calm the growing uncertainty, our leaders call a tribal meeting. And amidst all the standing around and scratching heads wondering what to do now arises a voice from the back of the tent – “I’ve got an idea!” These are four very dangerous words.

This is what fear does, doesn’t it? Anxiety and fear will cause us to look for anything that will provide relief – it doesn’t have to work; it just has to provide us with the illusion of action and progress.

The golden calf is unimportant by itself. The particularity of the idol is not the issue – the golden calf is simply the symbol of a people who are too afraid to wait on the legitimate presence of the LORD to lead them to the Promised Land.

Upon learning of their collective march toward idolatry, God is, understandably, upset. “Get out of my way, Moses, so that I might smite them with my cosmic death ray!” But Moses’ cooler head seems to prevail in the face of God’s wrath, bent toward the annihilation of God’s people, and God relents.

So in Exodus 33:12-23 we might assume that the problem is God’s temper, and the angel a fitting answer to the Israel/Yahweh relational problem. This is a bad assumption. The problem is, rather, that God’s presence has been withdrawn from the people in favor of a surrogate guiding angel, which is not a welcome sign of God’s presence, but a disappointing substitute.

Moses understands exactly the implications of leadership via angel or the divine presence. God’s presence was always to be Israel’s mark as the unique people of God. From the pillar of fire by night and the cloud of darkness during the day, to Paul’s claim that the church is the temple of the living God, the presence of God is the bedrock principle of what it means to be God’s people. And if God refuses to lead the people then the Exodus was all for naught. So Moses successfully argues that God and not the angel should lead the people to the Promised Land.

But how can we know that the presence of God is with us? In this story, God’s temper seems imperfectly trustworthy, even Moses is a bit suspicious of God’s intentions. So he says in verse 18 – “show me your glory, I pray.” Moses knows that seeing the glory of God will be a reassurance of Yahweh’s presence. In the face of fear and uncertainty, opposition and anxiety, we ask God for unambiguous physical and visual symbols of God’s presence.

But today’s theophanies, or encounters with God, are more subtle. God doesn’t light up the sky with personal messages of enduring presence. Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if God is around at all.

The fullness of the Lord’s presence, what Moses in his fear and uncertainty thinks will help, is in and of itself too much for human comprehension. Such presence would be coercive – faith would be turned into sight. There is always some uncertainty with regard to the Lord’s presence, some mystery associated with God. Otherwise, would there be room for faith and trust?
So how can we know that the Lord is with us?

God told Moses that God will be known through proclamation – “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you.” Knowing God – faith, as Paul wrote – comes by hearing the proclamation of the word. Sight, it appears, does not tell us much about either divine or human behavior. What good is it to see some great miracle of power and glory? It tells us nothing about the nature and character of God. Even if it were possible to walk by sight, I am not sure that we would learn to be faithful anyway. Remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus? After his death, the rich man begged to have Lazarus sent back to bring testimony to his family so that they may avoid his fate. And the response? If they did not believe the words of Moses and the prophets; if they did not heed the proclamation, then they would not pay attention to a resurrected poor man come to save them.

I don’t know how to concretely answer the question about how we can experience the presence of God. Moses asked for a visible symbol and received a proclamation of the goodness and mercy of God instead. We cannot go back to a pre-calf existence when the fullness of God can be seen more clearly…we are left instead with the task of knowing God through our obedience. But isn’t this the way it’s always been? We hear the word of God proclaimed; we hear about God’s gracious and merciful nature and respond to it by offering our obedience – and faith says that somewhere in the offering of ourselves through submission, we will see and know God. I like what the Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote - “How shall we begin to know who You are if we do not begin ourselves to be something of what you are? We receive enlightenment only in proportion as we give ourselves more and more completely to God by humble submission and love. We do not first see, then act: we act, then see…and that is why the man who wais to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.”

A Reflection on Philippians 4:1-9

(Click on the title above to listen to this sermon)

Recently, it seems like the only thing anyone talks about is the financial crisis. Even the election seems to have become solely about the crisis, with each candidate doing what he can to convince voters that he has the very plan to come in and save the day. It also seems like every time I turn on the TV there are news analysts, experts, and journalists up on the screen sounding a lot like Chicken Little running around saying “the sky is falling, the sky is falling.” Maybe they are right? Ask just about anyone and they will tell you how things are – stock, credit, and housing markets all in the toilet, civil and political unrest the world over, and soaring food prices; all of which seems trivial to us in light of the news that we received last week that Oscar has cancer.

This past Sunday the lectionary asked us to consider Philippians 4:1-9, in which Paul issues a list of exhortations that include, among other things, instructions to stand firm, rejoice, be gentle, be thankful and prayerful, to not worry about anything and to be at peace.

Paul clearly has not been paying attention to the news! He is in prison, there is division in the church, the stock-market is falling, retirements are being lost, health is threatened, we’re not sure how we are going to survive as a church, much less grow, the government is borrowing money to save the credit markets, loved ones can’t find a job, people are facing real, painful situations and nobody can say how it is going to turn out, and all Paul has to offer us is platitudes – stand firm, rejoice, be gentle, don’t worry, pray, give thanks, and be at peace? To be frank, it appears as if Chicken Little is right - the sky is falling. We are just one small, insignificant church. How can we, a small voice in a market of competing megaphones, hope to make any difference for Christ?

It is unfortunate that our lectionary passage began at 4:1, and not back in 3:20, where Paul offers us a serious dose of perspective that might make the platitudes of chapter 4 seem possible. Back in 3:20 Paul writes – “our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory…”

It is as if Paul has answered all of my questions – “ok JJ, you want to know how I can have the nerve to ask you to stand firm, rejoice, be gentle, don’t worry, pray, give thanks, and be at peace? It is because you are a citizen of Heaven. You are over there with Chicken Little in the wrong time zone. You are thinking like you belong here on this earth, but you don’t. You are a part of the kingdom of heaven and that is where you live.”

What in the world does it mean to be a citizen of heaven? This is the only use of the word translated ‘citizenship’ in the entire NT, and there appears to be no English word which sums up what Paul appears to be saying to the Philippian church. Under the provisions of the Roman form of government, Philippi was governed as if it were on Italian soil. The concept is perhaps similar to a consulate or embassy – the American embassy in Egypt, for example, though it is technically in Egypt, is American soil and is governed and conducted by American rules and regulations. Thus, Paul tells the Philippians that they are part of a heavenly embassy, their state and constitutive government is in heaven, and as its citizens they are to reflect its life. There is no dual citizenship here.

Trying to maintain dual citizenship means that earthly thinking tends to dominate how I live. And guess what happens when the mind is set on earthly things? I spend a lot of time listening to Chicken Little, and he is right. When viewed from one perspective, the situation is bleak, and maybe even hopeless.

But such is not the way of the Kingdom of Heaven. Paul reminds us that when we put on Christ, we experience a permanent change of address. Our reality is transferred from this world to the world of the Kingdom of heaven. It is as if, in putting on Christ, we have walked through the brick wall and landed in magical, mystical, wonderful Diagon Alley. And once we discover the real world, the world of Christ, the world where we belong, why would we want to go back to Muggle-land?

And in this world of the kingdom we expect a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is transforming our bodies of humiliation – our bodies of flesh and bone and their reliance on all things brick and mortar, invested and saved, medical and dental – so that they may be conformed to the body of his glory. We are part of a system that knows no governments, citizenships, or allegiances other than the one to Christ. This heavenly kingdom is a present reality and determines how we live in this world – we wait patiently for Christ’s return and live by the heavenly character of the commonwealth to which we belong. I am pretty sure that this is what it means to be in the world but not of it.

Therefore, as we live here in America by the rules of the Kingdom of Heaven, it is to be expected that we would be a people who, in the face of adversity, hardship, health crisis, and economic ruin, stand firm, are gentle, aren’t worried about anything, pray, give thanks, and are at peace. Maybe the old song was right? “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through; my treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue; the angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door and I can’t feel at home in this world any more.” I pray that it may be so.

A Reflection on Philippians 3:4b-14

“If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more…” I used to read these verses as a polemic against legalists. Indeed, this seems to be what Paul is after. He apparently intends to contrast those who place their confidence on the things of the flesh, i.e. legalism, with those, represented by Paul, who place their confidence in the righteousness that comes by faith. And so Paul says – “ok, if you want to compare reasons for confidence, then I win! But all of these things which made me confident of my standing before the Lord; whatever I perceived to be to my religious advantage, I count as loss. It does not even come close to the surpassing value that comes from knowing Christ.” Ah, such great rhetorical polemic against those legalists!

But suppose that the application of Paul’s polemic here goes beyond the legalists. Suppose that Paul is talking to anyone who places too much stress on their own spiritual achievements, even those which aren’t classically legalistic?

The current favorite whipping boy of “enlightened” are those whom we believe to be legalists. How fond we are to remind ourselves that after much consideration, we are right and they are wrong. I am sure that we mean it with the best of intentions, but we are quite fond of reminding our congregations how great it is to finally have realized how wrong we were all those years we spent as one of the legalists, and how happy we now are to have discovered grace, and if only all those legalists would just wake up and discover how much better it is to live over here where we are.

I can almost hear Paul saying it. “If anyone has confidence in the flesh, I have more: a preacher of grace; proponent of inclusiveness; purveyor of social justice; and towards those who get it wrong – non-judgmental.”

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these things. I think that this is truly who I should be and the kind of preacher needed in the church. The problem is that my confidence in my achieved spiritual maturity is just a re-packaged version of the confidence that a legalist feels in claiming to have gotten everything right.

Paul says that all that confidence in the flesh is rubbish, it is garbage, it is putrescence; it is to be left behind so that we may “gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ,” a righteousness that really comes from God, not my own sense of spiritual achievement, and that is really based on faith.

I like the fact that I know that I am right. I am proud of the fact that I am considered a liberal, maverick preacher in my denomination. What’s more, it affords me the privilege of lobbing my smug grenades at any and all who disagree with me. “Oh if only they could figure out how much better it is over here – KA BOOM” “If only those legalists would wake up and smell the grace – KA BLAM!”

And God, through Paul, flies through the smog of my superiority and asks – what are you really willing to give up to know Christ?

No, I can no longer think that Paul is just talking to legalists here in Philippians 3. He is talking to me. He is asking me to give up my confidence not in my legalism, but in my liberalism. He is asking me to rely on actual faith instead of spiritual achievement, regardless of how right I believe that achievement to be.

Instead, Paul calls me to a righteousness that is from God and is based on faith that leads me not to Spiritually Superior Mountain, but to “knowing Christ” and a shared experience of his sufferings and conformation to his death.

In Philippians 3, Paul calls me to realize that what I have done in the past, whatever achievements or strides in maturity or growth in grace I have made do not allow me to simply stop and bask in the glow of my spiritual perfection. Wherever I am on discipleship’s road is merely one point on the journey toward the ultimate union with Christ at the resurrection of the dead. Paul calls me to understand that I am still imperfect in my positions and in my understandings, no matter how confident in them I might be. I never get to the point where I get to proclaim that I have arrived.

What am I willing to give up to know Christ?

Am I willing to give up my own confidence in my spiritual decisions? Am I willing to sacrifice the theological certainty in which I operate for the frightening uncertainty of truly pursuing a righteousness that comes from God through faith? Am I willing to try and intentionally conform to the pattern of Christ’s life so that I might share in his sufferings and be conformed to his death?

I would like to say that I can confidently answer these questions. The truth is that I can’t. Just as my spiritual location is simply a point in time on a journey of ever-increasing discipleship toward the image of Christ; so also is my desire continually in the process of transformation. Perhaps all I can hope for is that I want to know Christ and be conformed to his image more today than I did yesterday; and I that I want to do more in my life to attain to the goal of Christ-likeness today than I did yesterday, that the same will hold true for tomorrow.

Such is the kingdom of God - a world where confidence rests solely, only, singularly, and whole-heartedly in Jesus and not in my own spiritual confidences or achievements.

Work, Fear and Trembling – A Reflection on Philippians 2:1-14

Written by Hugh Rushing...

I liked, as a child, to jump on my bed. What child doesn’t? Of course, my mother didn’t allow me to do this. Therefore, I took to jumping on the bed when my mother was out of the house—at the clothesline for instance. From my second floor bedroom window, I could see my mother, a hamper full of wet laundry on her hip, headed to the clothes line. I leaped on the bed and jumped and jumped and jumped. Since I could see my mother as she was returning I was able to tidy up the spread and occupy myself doing something else as she returned to the house.
She came upstairs, armed with her favorite weapon, a paint stirrer which had been dipped hundreds of times in paint, so the end of it was heavy, coated with dried enamel. After the requisite punishment, I sobbed, “But how did you know I was jumping on the bed?” “A little bird told me,” Mother said. I never did figure that one out.

Someone observed that character is what you are, how you act, when no one is watching you. Isn’t it much easier to do what we should do if we are under a watchful eye? I believe it would be much easier to walk my Christian walk if I could hire JJ or one of you to watch me all of my waking hours. Even my wife has a restraining influence over me.

In fact, we rely on our support systems more than we know. When Emily is out of town, I don’t put the toilet seat down; I’m likely to stand with the ‘fridge door open, looking for something to snack on; I’m liable even to drive over to KFC and eat an entire eight piece bucket of original all by myself. I do not however jump on the bed any more.

This is the situation we find in the epistolary reading from the lectionary this past Sunday, taken from Phil. 2:12-13. Paul credits the church at Philippi with always obeying when he was around; but now, some 12 years after its founding and about six years since they’ve seen Paul, he writes to ask that they obey even when he is not there (being held under house arrest clear across the Roman Empire at the time).

From his absent and jailed position, what does Paul ask the church at Philippi to do? – “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”

What does Paul mean by this?

For many years, I understood this passage to be a direct command and proof text for the living of a holy and--so far as possible--blameless life. That only by “acting” correctly could one possibly merit the salvation delivered by Christ’s sacrifice. It was an ideal statement for a legalistic, deterministic and judgmental form of Christianity. It also made it easier to just “give up”, since I felt I could never, ever, measure up.

Historically and traditionally, there were other Christians who thought that a sinner must be “convicted” of his sin, and, through a highly emotional experience, “come through” or be “prayed through” in order to reach a sanctified state. This was “working one’s salvation with fear and trembling” for certain…the weeping sinner in the mourner’s corner.

Now we certainly know the first idea—that Paul is commanding his friends to make certain they tow the line so that they can merit their salvation – is certainly not true. At very nearly the same time he writes to Philippi, Paul has also sent a letter to the church at Ephesus where he says in chapter 2:8-10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the results of works, so that no one may boast. (Listen carefully here): For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for Good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Some believe this passage provides sponsorship for an individual road map to salvation, that everyone has to somehow “figure out,” on their own, what they must do to achieve their salvation. Again, this can hardly be the case, because Paul has some very definite ideas about how Christians should live. In fact, the verses just preceding these contain that great hymn in which Paul commands the Christians at Philippi to take the form of Christ, in humility, and be obedient unto death.

What I believe Paul is saying when he asks that their salvation be worked out is this: God has planted his salvation within the Philippians and within us as well. With that planting, we need to allow his grace to affect every area of our lives—our minds and our relationships with others.

And what about the phrase “with Fear and Trembling?” Paul uses the same phrase to describe how servants ought to relate to their masters in Ephesians 6:5, and how Titus was respectfully received by the church in Corinth as we read in 2 Cor. 7:15. The point is that Paul asks not for a quaking in the boots kind of fear, but rather a respectful awe which flows out of the reverence that we have for the salvation imparted to us by God.

Furthermore, Paul continues in vs. 13 – “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

Surely, left to our own devices, the law of the jungle kicks in – the biggest, meanest and cruelest person wins all the marbles. Whatever good we have within us and however it comes out is because of God and his Spirit working within us. God’s indwelling gives us the power to do what we ought and to act according to his good purpose.

God’s salvation was given to the Israelites in Egypt, but when there was no water the people quarreled. After grumbling to Moses, which he labeled a “testing” of the Lord, God provided the water, just as God also provided the manna and quail. But the people had to consider specific actions which enabled them to collect the manna and the quail and to drink the water. When the Israelites came to the parting of the waters, they still had to walk, just as we have to walk our walk of salvation.

Likewise, this is the situation which Jesus exhibits in our Gospel Lesson for the day: The unwashed of the day…the tax collectors, collaborators with hated Rome, and the prostitutes entered the Kingdom of Heaven ahead of the chief priests and the elders of the people. These were the people who believed in John’s authority and his baptism. They had been granted salvation and they had chosen to walk in their belief, working out their salvation, while the religious authorities neither believed nor repented.

The Western World’s firm grip on individualism has tainted, I believe, our understanding about much of what we find in Chapter Two of Philippians. We have elevated individual rational thought, the express seeking of individual happiness to the expected norm. We work mightily to build up self-esteem; to assure everyone that everyone is a winner in something, to instill pride and boastfulness in home, business and church activities.

What Paul is attempts to do is to convince the Philippians they should be, as he says in 2:2, likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord and of one mind. And with that one-mindedness, seek with all seriousness to embrace fully the love and grace of God that has delivered them from judgment. And that single mindedness works as that support system which enables Philippi’s Christians as well as us today to magnify the grace of God and make it a rich source of joyful living.

Our new minister, JJ Martin, speaks a lot about the image of Christ, and how a congregation of God’s people can be the image of Christ…not each one being necessarily a clone of the other, but in what matters, love, devotion, friendship, support, being of ONE MIND. We cannot individually do everything that our brothers and sisters need, and that the world needs. Paul recognized that we are of many differing talents and abilities; that Christians within the church can have differing roles and attributes. This is the work of salvation—figuring out as a body, with fear and trembling, where our role is in the world. What we can do, whether large or small, to support and minister to each other and the world we come into contact with.

But we can all look forward to that great day, when time is no more, where every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. May that day come quickly and may we, I pray, be prepared for it. May God’s will be that we are of one mind at Cahaba Valley and that we strive every day to live in thankfulness for the gift of Jesus and his salvation for us. Amen.

A Reflection on Philippians 1:21-30

(Click on the title to hear JJ's sermon)

The lectionary from last week asked us to consider two seemingly unrelated paragraphs from the first chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Philippians as one unified section in the letter.

In the first paragraph, vv. 21-26, Paul reflects about his current circumstance in prison – “for to me, living is Christ and dieing is gain.”

What does Paul mean that for him, living is Christ? Does Paul envision it to mean the mystical union between Christ and the Christian that he often talks about, ala Galatians 2:20? In other words, is the implication that the entire identity of the Christian is subsumed into the life of Christ, so that as we go about our lives it is not we who work, play, socialize, etc., but rather Christ within us – we take on the identity of Christ? Or does the phrase mean that the ministry of Christ and his mission to spread the gospel and reconcile all peoples back to God became the sole object of his devotion, to the exclusion of everything else?

Regardless of how you understand Paul when he says that for him living is Christ, the one thing that I can say for certain that living for me has not always been about or in Christ. Rather, living for me has been primarily for JJ. I have been too busy with my agenda, my desires, my wants, my needs that at the end of the day, there is precious little left to give to Jesus. “I will live for Jesus tomorrow,” I vow, only to have tomorrow turn out just like today.

But Paul also says that dieing is gain. How should we read this in light of Paul’s other comments about the end of time and the bodily resurrection? Are we to assume that there is a place where the Spirit goes upon death to wait and be with Christ, only to return and participate in the bodily resurrection? Or does Paul mean that his martyrdom would give him special privileges so that he can skip the bodily resurrection and go straight to God, as early Catholic theology thought? Or does Paul mean that since God is in control of the space/time continuum, he can work it so that death, for each individual, is the time of the resurrection for that individual? Or does he simply mean that death is gain because it is a cessation of all of the suffering that he has had to endure as an apostle?

Everyone has their own opinion about what Paul means, but here is the real truth…I have no idea. Any speculation about the implications of this passage relative to the experience of life after death is just that – speculation. I really wish Paul were answering the question that I want him to answer, which is what specifically and in great detail happens when we die. However, it is going to have to be enough for us to know that Paul considers dieing to be far better than living, regardless of the exact details of death.

But what is really interesting to me about this paragraph is that Paul’s angst about his situation gives the clear impression that he has a choice whether he will continue to live or to die – “I don’t know which to choose,” says Paul. “My desire is death. Death is advantageous to me, it is to my benefit. Death is my best option.” On the other hand, living is to the gain, benefit, advantage of the Philippian church. Does Paul really have a choice, does he really have control over whether he lives or dies? And is that really the issue here? Let’s table that one for a moment.

In the second half of the passage, Paul encourages the Philippians to “live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel…” What doe you suppose Paul means to live a life worth of the gospel?

I think he answers this question in the clause which follows “so that” in verse 27. In other words, a worthy walk is one in which the people of God walk together in like-mindedness. They live together in one spirit. We live together in one faith, in one gospel, sharing the same love. It can be said that we walk worthy of the gospel when we are united in Christ. It is a foundational principle of the gospel call that disparate and diverse people are called out of the various lives into one glorious kingdom of Heaven, inaugurated by a savior who had room in his kingdom for all people. The gospel unites people. It breaks down the barriers between people; and if there are divisions, ill-will, bad feelings, backbiting and such like among us then we dishonor the gospel.

So what do these two seemingly unrelated paragraphs have to do with each other, and why is the lectionary asking us to consider them together?

Paul’s overarching concern for the church, as he stipulated in the thanksgiving earlier in chapter 1, is that the church be pure, holy, and blameless, and that they walk together in unity; and there is no way that the church can be pure, holy, and blameless when its members are acting impure, unholy, and trying to assign blame. Furthermore, such behaviors lead to division within the church; such behaviors threaten the stability of the church, dishonor the gospel, and threaten the success of the gospel. Therefore, Paul uses his own story to demonstrate to the Philippians what it looks like to look out for the interests of others ahead of your own. Paul says that even though dieing is to my benefit, advantage, and gain, I choose to stay in this life because it is what you need me to do. It is exactly what the Christ hymn of Philippians 2 is all about. This is what it means to die to self, take up the cross, and follow Christ. Paul’s story provides the Philippians with a model of love determining action on which to pattern their own lives.

In other words, if the church is going to have a walk worthy of the gospel, if the church is going to be unified, like-minded, sharing the same spirit and love, then its members are going to have to make it a priority to set personal gain aside and intentionally pursue congregational unity.

This is tough, isn’t it? In a society that values the rights of the individual over the needs and rights of the group, this is especially hard. We just don’t have this kind of group think encoded in our DNA. We are taught from the beginning that we have to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We are encoded with the messages of self-sufficiency, self-gratification, and self-aggrandizement. Setting aside my need to be right and to win simply does not sit well with us, but that is exactly what is needed if we are going to be successful or even survive as a church.

I know that we face some uncertain times in the years ahead. That uncertainty is going to bring with it the great temptation to pursue our individual agendas, to get our individual ways, and to lobby for our individual plans. Let us firmly resolve, with Paul, that we will intentionally choose not that which is to our personal advantage, our personal benefit, our personal gain, but rather that which is most edifying, most encouraging, and most conducive to peace and unity in the church.

A Reflection on Romans 14:1-12

The epistolary passage from this past week, Romans 14:1-12, is actually part of a larger section that stretches to chapter 15:7 or 13, depending on who you read. When read as a whole, 14:1-15:13 is a unified statement about the business of judging fellow members of the church. Many believe that Paul’s initial reason for writing the letter to the Romans was to address a growing tension between Jewish and Gentile Christians over the necessity of keeping the Law, embodied in this passage by the issues of eating meat and keeping certain days as holy. The result of this growing tension is that one group of Christians was apparently judging the other, causing Paul to write the letter and put the situation to rights.

Since Paul concedes that there is a stronger Christian, and one who is “weak in faith,” I would expect him to correct the situation by declaring which side is right, and which side is wrong. What is needed is for someone with sufficient pastoral authority to enter into the dispute regarding eating meat and keeping holy days and deliver the truth on the matter. I expect Paul to do this because I am frequently concerned with determining who is right and who is wrong in any given situation; nor do I believe that I am alone in that concern. Indeed, a good doctrinal debate seems, at times, to be the very air which a congregation breathes.

Interestingly, Paul does not appear to be concerned about delivering the truth about this point of doctrine and therefore correcting someone’s supposed error. In fact, he mentions the “correct” position later on in chapter 14, though he issues no apostolic edict to the “weak” to shape up and embrace the right position. Rather, Paul’s words are shaped by his concern for the unity of the church. Put another way, eating meat and keeping one day as a holy day over another are irrelevant in the kingdom - each person must make his or her own decision about that issue. However, what is very relevant in the kingdom is how we get along in the face of our differences of opinion. It is very easy to be a coherent community of faith when everyone agrees about everything (in fact, I believe that the push some churches make toward unanimity is due to their fear about how to handle differences of opinion). What is not easy is to maintain unity in the face of diversity.

Paul handles this situation in two ways. First, he issues a blanket statement that Christians are not to judge their fellow Christians His argument works like this - If we are all servants of Christ, then who are we to sit in judgment over a fellow-servant? As far as I know, Christ has appointed no one to the position of head-servant in the kingdom, and until he does, I am going to continue assuming, with Paul, that we are all equal. But what does Paul mean that we shouldn’t judge? I think vs. 10 gets us close to a definition when Paul asks – “or why do you despise your brother or sister?” Judging does not have to be an active, in your face condemnation of someone’s beliefs or behavior. Judging is a more subtle affair. I think we are judging our fellow Christians when we quietly sit back and bask in the sure knowledge that we have got it right, got it figured out, and they have not. Judgment says “they must be stupid, ignorant, or simply don’t care about the truth if they don’t think like or hold the same positions that I do.” They don’t even have to know that we are judging them. We can sit back and quietly despise them and the only one it affects is us. Unfortunately, sitting in judgment will destroy relationships in the church, and it will tear the unity of the church apart.

In this passage, Paul also handles the situation by appealing to our relationship with Jesus. “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” Paul has been carefully building this case throughout the book of Romans. There is a fundamental identity change when we take on Christ in baptism. We take on his identity, we become clothed in Christ. Paul encourages the church to be transformed into Christ’s image. The acceptance of Christ in baptism means that we accept not only his lordship, but also his mission, ministry, and very self. So, when we judge our fellow Christians, we are not only rebelling against the image of Christ that we bear, but also denigrating the image of Christ in others.

Jesus and Paul are very concerned about the unity of the church. Church unity is not only threatened by open warfare within the congregation over differences of opinion. It is also threatened when Christians take it upon themselves to sit in the judgment seat over their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. It is very easy to slip into judgment mode. I am certainly guilty of judging others. I know how good it feels to judge. But let us be vigilant to welcome all of our fellow Christians, regardless of how much we disagree with them, for when we welcome them, we welcome Christ in our midst.

A Reflection on Matthew 18:15-20

The gospel reading for this past Sunday, Matthew 18:15-20, is special because it is one of only two places where Jesus actually mentions the church (the other is Peter’s confession in Matthew 16).This paragraph appears to be divided into two parts. Part one, vv. 15-17, is often referred to as the justification for the practice of church discipline. It is a three step process detailing how members of the Christian community are to hold each other accountable to the life of holiness and righteous that Jesus calls us to. It begins with first singly confronting a brother or sister in sin, progresses through a group intervention, and ends with a pronouncement before the church, proclaiming that the one in sin is to be as a pagan or tax collector to the church, i.e. to be as one who is outside the community of faith. However uncomfortable I am with this practice, its uniqueness within the gospels makes it stand out.

This passage has been referred to as “The Rule of Christ” for centuries, and has been used as the basis for significant portions of the confessions of faith since the Protestant Reformation. The Belgric Confession (1561) says that the process of church discipline is one of the three markers of the true church, along with “the pure preaching of the gospel” and “the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them;” likewise, the Westminster Confession (one of the most influential statements of faith in modern times, written in 1647) devotes an entire chapter (chapter 30) to the question of church discipline. Rather than being an instrument of punishment for bad behavior, Christians for centuries have recognized that church discipline is a tool of reconciliation, designed to use the influence of the community to restore and repair broken relationships with God and fellow Christians.

Why does Jesus place this very heavy responsibility on the church’s collective shoulders? Despite our individualistic tendencies, the church is not a collection of individuals, but it is one community. Just as there are three persons of the Trinity, but one God; so there are many members of the church, but only one body. Paul makes this argument over and over again. Church is primarily a communal experience. And in the community, what one person does affects the rest of the community. In other words, the sins of one person hurts the entire church.

God apparently sees his people collectively, as well as individually. One person cannot act sinfully with impunity. God is concerned not only with individual salvation, which is where we tend to place our focus, but on the purity of the church. Ephesians 5:26-27 (which appears in the midst of a passage talking about the importance of mutual submission in the church) says that Christ died not only to save individuals, but to have a pure church, holy and blameless, and if that is to happen then we must be concerned as a church with holding each other accountable for living holy and righteous lives.

Part two of the passage, vv. 18-20, is concerned with the business of binding and loosing, a phrase which occurs in both Matthew 16 and 18 (the only two passages in the gospels which mention the church). What does this binding and loosing mean?

As I see it, there are two possibilities. The first, and least likely, is that it refers to the authority of the church to forgive and retain sin. (The church has been given this authority, but it is better established by John 20:22-23 and James 5:13-16.) The most likely meaning of binding and loosing has to do with the practice of determining the application of scriptural commandments for contemporary situations. In other words, final authority rests with the community to identify which behaviors constitute sin and which therefore require repentance. This is consistent with Matthew's understanding of the Great Commission (28:20). In order to fulfill the mission entrusted to us, the church must be able to discern what obedience Jesus’ commands look like, and those entering into discipleship must accept the church’s authority in determining what it means to follow Jesus.

As a church, we instinctively put this grave responsibility into practice. For example, though slavery was once a tolerated if not accepted practice in the church, the church in its wisdom has determined, based on the authority that is granted it by Christ, that slavery is a sinful practice which cannot characterize anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus. Another example comes right here from Cahaba Valley. Though many would say that the Bible clearly prohibits women from holding an eldership role or authoritative teaching role in the church, we have decided, based on everything we understand about God, the equality we all share in Christ, the first century context, our modern context, and good interpretive principles, that there should be no restrictions placed on women and that they should have equal participation with men in the life, worship, and leadership of the church.

Matthew 18:15-20, with its accountability process and weighty authority to bind and loose, can seem to be a heavy burden. However, if we see it for what it is, it does not have to be a passage which elicits a groan every time it is mentioned. If we view it as a passage which encourages mutual submission, patterned after Jesus’ submission to his own father’s will, that seeks to keep the church pure and holy; and if we view it as a passage which grants the church broad authority to negotiate the difficult path of discerning what it looks like to be the church which belongs to Christ in a pluralistic society, then it can become a powerful exercise of grace and love, two ideas which I know we can all get behind.

Reflections on Romans 12:1-2

Paul apparently wrote the book of Romans to address friction that existed between Jewish and Gentile Christians. Originally, the church in Rome was likely primarily made up of Jewish Christians. However, the Jewish expulsion from Rome meant that for all intents and purposes, the church was now a Gentile church. When Nero allowed the Jews to return in A.D. 54, the returning Jewish Christians came back to a very different church, one in which they were now the minority. Therefore, Paul wrote the letter to bring these two groups together into one coherent, unified community of faith. All of Paul’s thinking and all of his ethical instructions served one primary purpose – the establishment and maintenance of the Christian community. Paul believed that the success of the mission of the church is directly tied to the cohesiveness and unity of the church.

And so, in Romans, Paul sought to bring both Jews and Gentiles together by laying out his basic theology of salvation by grace through faith. One of the major themes of the first 11 chapters is that all Christians, regardless of ethnic or religious background, are united in the death of Christ and in their new status as a new creation in Christ. Believers' participation in this new creation calls for a distinction between life lived according to the ways of the present age and life lived by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:5-8). Romans 6:1-10 makes it clear that baptism into Christ means baptism into his death, in order to live with him and for him. Christians enter into fellowship with Christ in his total self-surrender to the will of the Father in order to find acceptance with the Father through his atoning work on their behalf. The moral implication of this is to live out the new obedience which baptism into Christ's death entails. We are consequently challenged to offer ourselves to God 'as those who have been brought from death to life,' recognizing that the purpose of this self-dedication is holiness.

In Romans 12, Paul begins his description of what it looks like for Christians to walk by the Spirit. Verses 1-2 initiate this discussion by using the language of worship and sacrifice – Christians are to offer their bodies as ‘living sacrifices,’ which is an act of daily worship. Paul's intent is not to separate "spiritual" worship from "earthly" or inner experience from outer. Rather, he aims to sacralize everyday conduct and thus to remove the barrier between worldly and "spiritual" behavior for those in Christ. For Paul, the way that we offer ourselves as living sacrifices is through a radical life of discipleship marked by high standards of moral and ethical behavior. There is a danger of accenting the inwardness of Christian worship and not taking sufficient account of the fact that we are to yield our bodies to God's service; and the service God calls for is the obedience of faith expressed by those whose minds are being transformed, so that they will no longer be conformed in lifestyle to the values, attitudes and behavior of 'this age,' but rather demonstrate the life of holiness that glorifies a holy God.

But what does Paul mean in vs. 2 that Christians are to be transformed by the renewing of the mind, and how does that relate to the ability to discern what the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God is?

The renewal of the church mind is a thorough reorientation of life in accordance with the truth learned in Christ. It is a call for community ethical discernment. Paul probably did not refer to the renewal of individual minds but to the way the church as a community perceives God and tests his will. (Elsewhere Paul calls on the church to be “united in the same mind” so they can judge together what is right, 1 Cor. 1:10; see also Phil. 2:1-4). Remember that the critical issue behind the writing of Romans was how Jewish and Gentile Christians could together discern God's will for their lives.

Interestingly, Paul relates the individual’s call to daily worship through a sacrificial life to the renewal of the mind of the church. In other words, if the church wants to discern God’s will and find its way in the world, it must first begin by making an intentional and deliberate decision to live sacrificial lives. When the community joins together in such an undertaking, it has the effect of transforming us as a group and making clear how God wants us to carry out God’s mission. I am not sure how all of this practically happens, but I affirm that it does, and I am grateful for the mystery of God’s continued action in the life of the church.

Reflections on Matthew 15:10-20

Matthew 15 begins with a dispute between Jesus, the scribes, and Pharisees over the correct method and ritual for washing one’s hands before eating. The obvious background of this passage are the Jewish food laws of the Old Testament and the traditions that the Pharisees had established to make sure that they could be clean and pure despite their necessary daily contact with the unclean and impure. The common thread that binds all of these laws and rituals together is the idea that they intensified the separation of Israelites from the neighboring Gentile peoples, allowing them to maintain their faith in God. In other words, if a holy God was going to live among you, then you needed to do your best to practice holy living.

Jesus’ disciples did not practice the ritual hand-washing before eating. To the Pharisees, this was not simply a breach of social etiquette. They perceived the disciples behavior as a blatant slap in the face at millennia of tradition dating back to the Levitical laws of Moses. Furthermore, they saw their behavior as a blatant disregard for God, the one who had stipulated the laws in the first place.

It is against this backdrop that Jesus said to the people around him that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles” (Matt. 15:11). Jesus is not issuing what amounts to a critique of all Pharisees; nor is this a critique of all ‘‘outward forms of religion.’’ Jesus is not against maintaining ‘‘the traditions of the elders.’’ He finds nothing wrong with the ritual of washing hands. Rather, Jesus is against an improperly drawn boundary of acceptance.

Like Jesus, I am against drawing boundaries of inclusion or exclusion along a certain set of doctrines, practices, and traditions that have nothing to do with the heart of who God is and what God’s message of reconciliation and redemption is to God’s people. Praise God that we have been freed from such legalistic constraints and have been freed to talk about the true heart of the gospel, which is grace and mercy and love and accepting people for who they are and where they are and making sure they know of God’s love for them and of God’s desire to be in a relationship with them!

But Jesus didn’t leave it there. His problem with the Pharisees was not that they drew a clear boundary of pure and impure, clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable behavior for those who claim to be a part of the kingdom of God, but rather that they drew the wrong one.

In the conclusion of our gospel lection, verses17-20, Jesus drew a fairly clear boundary of what is pure and impure, clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable behavior for those who claim to be a part of the kingdom of God, but it was not based on anything external like the keeping of traditions, the eating of food, and the washing of hands. Jesus’ standard of purity has to do with ethical and moral behavior which flows out of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. The larger claim to which the whole passage points is that it isn’t what we eat or drink that defiles us but what we say and do and intend. It is not our religious rituals that do us in; it is rather the intent of our heart and how we live because of it.

There is a delicate line here somewhere that I am not entirely sure how to walk. There are many questions based on this passage that I do not know how to answer. How do we preach a radical message of grace, mercy, and love while at the same time holding each other to a radical standard of discipleship that places us in a position to be formed by the Spirit into the image of Christ? How do we know when to supersede one tradition for the life of the spirit? How do we address the root cause of impure and unclean behavior like theft, murder, slander, greed, materialism, selfishness, etc by getting to the ‘‘heart’’ of a ‘‘defiled’’ person rather than simply focusing on his or her behavior?

I am not sure that I yet know the answers to these questions. I do know that the church needs a group of believers who are committed to spreading the message of God’s radical love and inclusiveness while at the same time holding itself to a radical standard of discipleship that bears witness as a holy people to a holy God.

A Reflection on Matthew 14:22-33

The gospel reading from last Sunday comes from Matthew 14:22-33. As the story picks up in vs. 22, we find Jesus attempting to find some solace in prayer. So, he sent his disciples ahead of him across the lake while he remained behind to dismiss the crowds that he had fed with the loaves and the fishes and then spend some time alone. The text tells us that before the disciples could complete their journey across the lake they got trapped in the midst of a storm.

You know the rest of the story. Jesus comes to them walking on the water, Peter hops out and does his thing, sinks, gets rebuked by Jesus, the seas calm once they get in the boat, and then in vs. 33 the disciples exclaim to Jesus that “truly you are the son of God!”

Preachers tend to preach this passage by focusing either on Peter’s faith (or lack thereof), or by focusing on the conclusion that the disciples come to at the end of the story when Jesus calms the storm. However, neither one of these perspectives answers the question that I have simply overlooked – why was Jesus walking on the water?

I believe that Jesus walked on the water because it was the fastest way of getting to his disciples who needed him. His closest friends, his dearest companions, the disciples whom he loved very much were in trouble and their trouble, their need overcame his need to be alone and he went to them in the quickest way he could, he walked to them on the water. Jesus went to great lengths to rescue his disciples from what had to be certain death.

And now I can at least guess at why this story is in Matthew’s gospel. Matthew is writing to a church that is struggling to survive without the physical presence of its savior. And it is not easy. There are people who are against them. In some cases, even their own family is against them. The church, throughout the centuries, has frequently found itself in the position not unlike those 12 disciples – struggling to move forward when the world is against it. The church has often existed and lived within a storm.

I know that it can often look like we here at Cahaba Valley are in the midst of a storm. How can we get our message out to a society that appears to not want to listen? How can our message be relevant to our culture, when our voice is just one of a multitude of voices, and when we do not put on the best show, have the best programs, or the resources to meet everyone’s ever present needs? How are we going to get new people into this church so that we do not die a slow death as our current membership gets older? I have heard many of you ask these questions, and I have asked these questions.

Matthew included this story in his gospel to speak to us, Christ’s church, and tell us that we should take courage and not be afraid, because Jesus is coming and he will meet our needs.

Unfortunately, the story does not end with Jesus walking on the water. Many people overlook the response of the disciples to this miracle. The disciples, upon seeing Jesus coming to them across the lake assume that he is a ghost and are frozen with terror.

Isn’t this the way of things? Our fear can be so paralyzing that we fail to see the fact that Jesus is responding to the needs of his people. There is much to be afraid of. We can be afraid of the church stagnating and dieing, we can be afraid of the unknown, we can even be afraid of the change that will come from trying to pursue God’s will for this church. But let us not be so paralyzed with fear that we fail to see Jesus coming to rescue us and meet our needs.

A Reflection on Genesis 32:22-32

The Old Testament reading last Sunday was a story from the life of the patriarch Jacob. After swindling his brother Esau out of his birthright, he deceived his father into giving him the blessing that rightfully belonged to Esau. This made Esau mad, so Jacob ran off to find a wife from his mother’s relatives. After being tricked by his twice over father-in-law, he managed to turn the tide and obtain a large family and great wealth through business practices that were opportunistic at best and downright deceitful at worst. Jacob is a thoroughly self-centered and self-serving opportunist. Not exactly hero of faith material.

I imagine Jacob experienced at least a smidgeon of fear when God told him to take his questionably gotten family and wealth and return to his home country, which meant that an inevitable meeting with his brother Esau. Not knowing how Esau would respond to his estranged brother, Jacob devised a plan to assuage Esau’s anger before it could find expression. The plan involved flattery, bribery, bargaining with God, and using his own family as a human shield behind which he could make his escape. However, before he could bring his plan to fruition, he encountered a mysterious man at the Jabbok River, with whom he wrestled until dawn.

The ambiguity of Sunday’s lection has left me with two prominent questions: who did Jacob wrestle, and why?

I think the wrestling match occurred to stop Jacob from escaping behind the shield of his wealth and family. Interestingly, though, it is Jacob who pursued the fight even after he was permanently injured. It was the mysterious man who, at the approach of day, pled with Jacob to let him go, prompting me to ask the question – why is Jacob holding on?

I think it is because he was afraid. Despite all of his elaborate plans, daybreak and his failure to escape meant that he was still going to have to face his greatest fear – his brother.

There is much that could be said about this encounter with the faceless, nameless stranger, the least of which is that it was profoundly shaping in Jacob’s life. His identity was changed because of it. Somehow, through this wrestling match, Jacob came face to face with himself, his doubts, his fears, and his guilt. He would carry a limp from this fight for the rest of his life. But that was a small price to pay for the victory of conquering his fear and humbling himself before his brother.

What is the message of Jacob’s wrestling match for us today? We could talk about the transformative value of encountering God, or the value and power that comes in facing our greatest fears. We could talk about the transformative affect of humbling ourselves before a brother or sister whom we have wronged. We could say one of a number of different things about this story. Or we could simply say that Jacob’s life was a lot like ours – complex, messy, filled with fear and self-doubt, faith at times hanging by a thread, and yet proof that all the while God is faithful; even when we are at our worst, God is at work fulfilling his purpose in us.