"To judge the living and the dead..." 1.12.14

Daniel 12:1-4

“At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. 2Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. 3Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. 4But you, Daniel, keep the words secret and the book sealed until the time of the end. Many shall be running back and forth, and evil shall increase.”


John 5:15-30

15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.17But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” 18For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.

19Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. 20The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. 21Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes.


22The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, 23so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.


25“Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; 27and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. 30“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.
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As long as I can remember, I have loved the Bible. I think I finished reading the whole book for the first time in 7th grade. A lot of it didn’t make sense, but the overall story did make sense and something about it captured my attention and my heart.


I have also struggled with the Bible a lot in my life. The Bible is challenging and it comes with lots of baggage. I’ve especially struggled with John’s Gospel because it makes such strong claims about Jesus. Favorite passages like John 3:16, that express the amazing love of God in Jesus are followed by the idea that those who don’t believe in Jesus are condemned. I struggled; I still struggle with the image of God condemning people because they don’t believe in Jesus.


I’ve always had friends who don’t believe in Jesus. Whether it was Jewish and Muslim friends in my elementary school or atheists in high school and beyond, there have always been people close to me who don’t accept Jesus as their Lord. These are people who take their responsibility to other people seriously, people who want to make the world better. It has never made sense to me that God would send them to hell because they didn’t understand God the same way I do. I thought of John’s Gospel as the center of this exclusive way of thinking about Jesus, and that kept me from paying much attention to John.


I took another look at John during my seminary internship. During Bible study a great saint of the church I was serving said that her favorite Gospel was Luke but she thought John was most likely to make someone become a Christian. That made me take another look, and what I discovered was the welcoming grace of Jesus I love in all the Gospels in more poetic language.


When we read John or any other part of the Bible we have to understand the passage we’re reading as part of a bigger book. You don’t have to read all the latest scholarship or take a college course about it. But you do need to know what’s around the text. The Bible doesn’t make sense if we read one verse by itself without reading the story it is part of.


The John’s Gospel is about the eternal word of God that was with God from the beginning of creation becoming a human being in Jesus. Jesus came to his own people to show them a different perspective on God. In John’s Gospel Jesus does signs or miracles so people will believe he is the Son of God. When they believe in him as the Son of God they will see more clearly who God is and what God wants. That especially means they will see that God is love: God loves us deeply, and God wants us to love each other.


In all the Gospels Jesus and almost everyone he interacted with was Jewish. When John says, “The Jews,” he means religious leaders who shared Jesus’ faith but generally opposed Jesus. Over the church’s 2000 years we’ve done a lot of harm because we blamed Jewish people for resisting Jesus. For Jesus, he was talking to his own community, not a different group. As much as Jesus and the religious leaders argue, they are part of the same faith community.


When this passage begins Jesus has just healed a man who had been unable to walk for 38 years. Like many of the healing stories in the Gospels, this one took place on the Sabbath, the religiously commanded day of rest. The religious leaders get upset because Jesus broke the Sabbath. They get even more upset because Jesus says God is his Father, which they think is disrespectful to God.


The argument between Jesus and the religious leaders here is about the relationship between God and Jesus. The religious leaders think of God as holy and totally separate from humans. The way to connect with God for them was to follow God’s commandments faithfully. The commandments strengthened the faith community and connected people to God. Since Jesus wasn’t following the commandments, they figured he couldn’t be following God.


Jesus responds that he’s following God more closely than they can imagine. God sent him with a specific mission: to do God’s will and even to judge the dead. God has given all these powers and all this responsibility to Jesus to so people will be able to understand God more clearly.


The leaders see God in the commandments, and that’s right, but not the clearest image they could have. Imagine a preschool child. The child learns when school starts to find Jevon, his morning partner, so they can share markers and start the day with drawing. The “commandment” the child learns is about finding Jevon, but the point is learning how to share and developing a routine. The commandment isn’t wrong, but it’s part of a bigger picture. You can share without finding Jevon and sharing is the bigger purpose.


The same is true in this story and in Jesus’ ministry as a whole. The commandments teach us how to love God and love our neighbor. The Sabbath commandment is a part of loving God; we set the Sabbath aside as a day specially dedicated to God to help us be more dedicated to God in the rest of our lives. Keeping the Sabbath is also a part of how we love ourselves and other people because we all need rest and a break from our work routine. The Sabbath isn’t the point in itself, but it teaches us about honoring God, and caring for ourselves and other people.


In the strict sense Jesus is breaking the Sabbath, but he’s not going against God’s law. Instead he is showing the people an even clearer picture of love. We can learn what love means even more perfectly by watching Jesus than by obeying the Sabbath commandment. When we’ve faced with a choice between breaking the Sabbath and caring for another person, the more loving, more faithful choice is to care. So Jesus heals on the Sabbath. That’s not something the religious leaders can take in; they can’t accept Jesus because he is too different from what they expected.


The religious leaders are stuck. They think about God as a lawgiver, so following God for them means following the law first and foremost.


Jesus came to set them free from that limited way of thinking and feeling. Of course, God gave the law, and Jesus wants to be clear he comes from the same God. Jesus’ ministry fits into the same story as God’s creation of the world, the call of Abraham and Moses, the Exodus and the law. But God is much bigger than that. Following God is much bigger and simpler than following rules.


More than anything else, God loves the world and every one in it. The way we follow God is by loving others. Jesus came to show us that.


The commandments also teach love, and rules are part of how we learn love, but they can also get in the way. Rules are easy to twist to support our power instead of pushing us to do our best. On the other hand, without rules sometimes we let ourselves off the hook too easily and forget to make love the center of our life. The religious leaders Jesus argued with had more trouble letting the rules get in the way of a vibrant and open relationship with God; our culture has more trouble getting lazy about love and substituting some vague, wishy-washy idea about being nice for the demanding work of love.


Judgment is similar. When we think about judgment as a matter of living up to rules, we will be afraid, but worse than that, we’ll be selfish about following the rules. In other words, we’ll approach life as if it’s a test where the most important thing is for us to follow the rules. That makes it about us.


When we know that judgment is about Jesus, and really, about love, that reminds us above all else to love. That’s why Jesus says that those who honor him and believe that God sent him will escape judgment. Believing in Jesus doesn’t give us a get out of jail free card. Instead, if we actually believe that Jesus is the Son of God and we honor him, we will live as if love is the most important thing in the world. We will actually, in our everyday lives treat people with love even when it is inconvenient or even dangerous. When we do that we will do the right thing consistently and contribute to God’s loving kingdom. So when the dead rise and Jesus judges us, we will have nothing to worry about.


The key to the whole passage, the whole series we’re about to begin and to thinking about judgment in general is the closing line of our passage: Jesus says, “My judgment is just because I seek to do not my will but the will of him who sent me.” The Bible teaches us that God is love, which means love is the heart and foundation of all judgment. At the end of the day that is what matters more than rules or even believing something about Jesus.


God is love; Jesus shows us that love by becoming human, welcoming outcasts and dying for us. It is that active, courageous, loving Jesus who will judge us when the world ends, so we can trust him to judge justly and mercifully. In the end, all will be well because love is in charge.


Thanks be to God.

Everyone is welcome: making the belief a reality, 7.14.13

Acts 15:1-21

Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.’ ²And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. ³So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the believers. ⁴When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. ⁵But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, ‘It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.’

6 The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. ⁷After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, ‘My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. ⁸And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; ⁹and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. ¹⁰Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? ¹¹On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.’

12 The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. ¹³After they finished speaking, James replied, ‘My brothers, listen to me. ¹⁴Simeon has related how God first looked favourably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. ¹⁵This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written,
¹⁶ “After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up, ¹⁷ so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things ¹⁸known from long ago.”

¹⁹Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, ²⁰but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood. ²¹For in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every sabbath in the synagogues.’

Galatians 2:11-16

¹¹But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; ¹²for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. ¹³And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

¹⁴But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” ¹⁵We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; ¹⁶yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.

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            The early church was an amazingly dynamic community. New people were coming to faith all the time and becoming a part of a community where sharing and love were a way of life. At the same time, there were disagreements, and the church was still learning what it was. We read a few weeks ago about how the Holy Spirit led Peter to Cornelius and his family to preach the good news about Jesus.

            As soon as the believers in Jerusalem heard about Peter eating with gentiles, they started to criticize him. But when he told the story of God’s Spirit clearly leading the way and of how God gave the Spirit to those gentiles before Peter had even finished speaking, they could see that God was reaching out to gentiles as well, and they praised God.

            That didn’t end the discussion, though. While the church leaders accepted that gentiles could come to faith in Jesus, some people believed that gentile believers had to be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses.

            That seems strange now since neither one of those things has been part of our experience as Christians. But at this point in the church’s life, Christianity was still a movement within Judaism. The church had its own leaders, but they hadn’t left the synagogue or temple. They were still Jewish, even though most Jewish leaders thought they were heretics.

            The Old Testament was the only Bible these Christians had, and when the Old Testament talks about circumcision, it is clear and non-negotiable. Israel is ordered to circumcise their sons on the eighth day after birth as a mark of their covenant with God; those who weren’t circumcised, were excluded from that covenant. Circumcision and law were the signs of the relationship with God. Without being circumcised and following the law, one was not part of the Jewish community of faith, so it makes sense that these Jewish disciples of Jesus insisted on new believers following the rules of Judaism, their community of faith.

            But Peter, Paul and Barnabas had seen that God was doing something new. It wasn’t just about bringing a few gentiles into Judaism; in Jesus God was making a new way for people to be in covenant with God. This new covenant was based only on God’s grace through Jesus Christ. These evangelists who had worked with gentile believers knew that God was calling them to follow Christ, not to follow the law of Moses.

            The church is wrestling with what it means to be part of the faith community. In this conference, the church decides that membership in the church is going to be based only on following Jesus and following a few ideas from the Law. It sounds like strange and silly detail, but the short list of rules James mentions: no sexual immorality, no animals that have been sacrificed to idols or strangled, and no blood, keeps enough of the tradition of Judaism so as not to offend, while not restricting the gentile believers unreasonably.

Even after the council, the question of how gentiles will be included in the community isn’t entirely settled. There continued to be people who taught that circumcision was required. The whole Letter to the Galatians is Paul’s response to this faction within the church.

In our case we’re just reading a small section of that letter. In that passage we see a different side of Peter than we do in the passage from Acts. In Acts Peter advocates for fully including gentiles without making them follow the Law or be circumcised. We know he risked the disapproval of his friends when he stayed with Cornelius. He wants everyone to have a place in the church.

But then Paul talks about rebuking Peter because when Peter visited the church in Antioch he started out sharing the table with gentile believers, but then pulled away from that fellowship when he felt pressure from other leaders. How do we put those two pictures together?

It seems like Peter believed in including gentiles in the church in principle, but wasn’t a hundred percent committed to deep community with them. He knew that they were equal in God’s sight, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to think of them as brothers and sisters. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get close to them. After all, they came from a different background; they had different traditions and food and habits. And Peter didn’t want to endanger his friendship with the Jewish Christians at the center of the church in Jerusalem.

In a way, Peter is acting out separate but equal. It’s fine to have gentiles in the church, but he isn’t interested in being their best friend. Paul says that’s not enough. In Christ, we are all one body. It doesn’t matter where we come from, how much money we make, what we like or don’t like. Our standing in the community doesn’t have anything to do with what we do for a living or how much we give or what kind of clothes we wear. It doesn’t matter what faith we followed before we came to Christ. All that matters is Christ. Christ’s grace is the only thing that saves us and it is the only thing that brings us into the community of faith.

That’s still a challenge in our congregation and in others. Church is part of our social life, but it’s also more than that. When we come to church we naturally have people we feel closest to, people who are close friends. And many of us have been in this congregation for years, so those church friendships have been part of our lives for decades.

That’s great. Part of the fun of coming to church is the joy of seeing people we already know and care about. It’s awesome when people we know from church become friends we see outside of church too. Some people we click with almost automatically, often because we have interests and experiences in common, and it’s fun to share those things together.

But the church is called to becoming the body of Christ. That means breaking down barriers. It means actively seeking out people we don’t know in the community and getting to know them. Not just getting to know their name, but listening to their story, sharing their experiences. It means getting outside our comfort zone every week to make new friends.

It’s hard because relationships can be awkward. Even simple things like knowing someone’s name. If you’ve seen someone in worship a few times and maybe you introduced yourself three weeks ago, you feel like you should remember their name, but you just don’t. So that feels embarrassing and it makes it hard to get to know someone better.

That might be the hardest thing about coming to a new church as a visitor or member too. If you’ve been coming to Laurelton for 5 years you already know everyone’s name who has been here a while so all you have to do when a new person appears is learn their name. That new member has to learn everyone’s name, and that’s hard to do. It can be hard for long term members to get to know new people too, partly because we already have people we want to visit with. That can be a beautiful thing, but it can also keep our community from integrating new people.

The challenge for the church is to be a community where deep relationships flourish, where we can share our true selves with one another and trust each other with personal things. At the same time we are called to be an open community where people are welcomed right in and made to feel at home regardless of where they come from or what struggles they face. Those two things don’t go together very often. Usually our relationships are either open, accessible and superficial or closed, exclusive and deep.

How do we do both at the same time? It starts with practice. It starts with looking for chances to get to know new people and really listening to each other. There are some conversations we need to have in private with particular people we trust, but in general I’d like us to actively work on including people as much as possible in our conversations and in our lives.

So today at coffee hour I encourage you to seek out someone you don’t know well. Even if you know the other person’s name and think they know yours, start by introducing yourselves so there’s no awkwardness if someone has forgotten. Listen to each other’s stories; get to know each other’s interests; find out what brought them to this church, what they like, what they don’t like.

We’re a small church. That comes with some challenges, for sure. Probably it would be easier to pay the bills if we were larger, for instance. But the cool thing about being small is that we have a great chance to get to know each other pretty well. Make it your goal to know everyone’s name by the end of August. If there’s someone in worship whose name you don’t know, find them after worship and introduce yourself.

I’d love it if we had enough new people visit during the summer to make it a challenge to learn everyone’s name. One thing we do every week in supper and scripture is start with introductions. Some weeks it feels silly because everyone there is a regular who already knows everyone, but the practice never hurts. So we’re going to try that today. We’re going to start with Alan and just go around the room. You can stand up or not, but say your name loudly and slowly. And pause after the person next to you so people have a second to absorb. As you listen, try to pay close attention. We’re not going to have a quiz, but community is better when we really know each other, and learning names is a start.

Paul writes a little later in Galatians: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” That’s a deep sense of unity, a vision of barriers broken down.

We say and believe those words. We believe that everyone is welcome in the church, but for that to really mean something, for the grace of community to really transform our lives and our community, that welcome has to take shape in everyday, practical relationships. We have to welcome new people in conversation, to share our lives with each other in ever deeper ways. It starts with a simple introduction and an open ear, and leads in slow, mysterious ways to God’s kingdom.

Thanks be to God.