"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.

"Conquering weakness," 10.14.12

Isaiah 55:1-13

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. ²Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. ³Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. ⁴See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. ⁵See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

⁶Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; ⁷let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. ⁸For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. ⁹For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

¹⁰For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, ¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. ¹²For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. ¹³Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Revelation 21:1-11

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ²And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; ⁴he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” ⁵And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”

Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. ⁷Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

Revelation 22:1-5, 20-21

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ²through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. ³Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; ⁴they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. ⁵And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever….

²⁰The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! ²¹The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.

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            Who can tell me about the picture on the cover of the bulletin? Great. Now what’s the smaller picture below it? Good guess. I’m not going to make you guess what the Space Shuttle Endeavor has to do with the Book of Revelation, though I’m sure that could be an interesting sermon all its own. My point is much simpler: it’s hard to understand a piece of a picture or story if we don’t know what the big picture looks like.

I think for many regular church members and even more people outside the church the Bible is an intimidating book. It’s intimidating because we feel like we should know it, but there’s a lot we don’t know about it. A big part of that feeling is that we don’t know the basic outline of the story; we don’t know the big picture so it’s hard to understand the individual pieces we read. This summer I’ve tried to address that feeling by leading us in a tour of the Bible. We started in June with the creation story and today we’re wrapping up this marathon sermon series with the end of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.

When we look at the Bible as a we notice a ton of variety: different subjects, different authors, different kinds of writing, different perspectives and different times. With all that diversity, the Bible is also one story, though there are detours and intermissions from time to time. The whole story of the Bible through all its diversity is about God’s relationship with people.

Your urban ministry fact of the day is that the Bible starts in a garden but ends in a city. More important than that, many of the themes that began in Genesis find completion in Revelation. God created the heavens and the earth in Genesis and promises a new creation in Revelation. When Adam and Eve turn away from God by eating the forbidden fruit, God curses the ground so it will only produce crops with great effort. In Revelation’s new earth there is no longer any curse and trees of life grow spontaneously in the street.

When we look at the story from the end, which is the view John’s vision in Revelation gives us, we see that many of these themes have been echoed many times over in the Bible story. The pain and sorrow that came from that first sin, and from the human pride and lust for power so often on display throughout scripture, is healed in God’s new creation. We know from Genesis that God is the beginning of creation, the Alpha or first letter of the alphabet. We hear echoes of Genesis in John’s Gospel which starts with: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the Word was God.” Revelation tells us that God is also the end, the completion, the Omega, or last letter of the alphabet. There is nothing before God and there will be nothing after God. As Paul preaches in Acts: “In God we live and move and have our being.”

There are more echoes too, because this vision from John isn’t the first vision the Bible gives us of God’s healing for a troubled world. The passage Karen read us from Isaiah is a familiar vision, as are other prophetic visions from Jeremiah, Ezekiel and others. Though there have been moments of doubt, God showed the prophets all along that the story has a happy ending.

That was an important thing for John and the churches he served to know 1900 years ago. John had been exiled for his faith and many other Christians faced ridicule, isolation from relatives who didn’t understand their new religion and even persecution from religious and political leaders. It was important for them to hear that they weren’t crazy, that even though their everyday experience said the opposite, God was in control and would bring the story to a happy ending.

John’s Revelation is that God is still on the throne, that Jesus in his scandalous death on the cross is stronger than Rome or Satan or evil, that one day healing would overcome suffering and joy would put an end to pain. That was good news to John’s churches facing trouble and persecution. It’s good news for churches and Christians facing persecution today in Burma or parts of India and Afghanistan. It’s good news for girls struggling to get an education in Pakistan or longing to escape sexual exploitation in Philadelphia. It’s good news for kids trapped in poverty and violence here in Rochester and Christians cut off from their family lands in Palestine. It’s good news for the church of every age longing for an end to evil systems that keep some in power while others starve and suffer. It’s good news for a church around the world longing for peace, praying for God’s new heaven and new earth, for the holy city coming down from heaven.

predestination and calling

Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24

¹   O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
²   You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
          you discern my thoughts from far away.
³   You search out my path and my lying down,
          and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴   Even before a word is on my tongue,
          O LORD, you know it completely.
⁵   You hem me in, behind and before,
          and lay your hand upon me.
⁶   Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
          it is so high that I cannot attain it.

⁷   Where can I go from your spirit?
          Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸   If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
          if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹   If I take the wings of the morning
          and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰  even there your hand shall lead me,
          and your right hand shall hold me fast.
¹¹  If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
          and the light around me become night,”
¹²  even the darkness is not dark to you;
          the night is as bright as the day,
          for darkness is as light to you.

²³  Search me, O God, and know my heart;
          test me and know my thoughts.
²⁴  See if there is any wicked way in me,
          and lead me in the way everlasting.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

²⁴He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; ²⁵but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. ²⁶So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. ²⁷And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ ²⁸He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

³⁶Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” ³⁷He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; ³⁸the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, ³⁹and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. ⁴⁰Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, ⁴²and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”

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            This passage from Matthew always catches my attention. On the one hand, I’m not a huge fan of judgment and burning evildoers in the furnace. On the other hand, this is about the best example passage for our Presbyterian tradition of predestination, and I value that heritage. Plus, this passage inspired our first hymn, a classic Thanksgiving favorite of mine.

            Predestination is part of our tradition that we often sweep under the carpet. At the same time, it’s one of the beliefs Presbyterians are known for, so it’s important to be familiar with the basic idea. Predestination means that God knew and decided our eternal destiny long before we were born. Like the wheat and weeds in the story there is nothing anyone can do to change the outcome. No matter how you tend the plants, wheat is always wheat and weeds are always weeds.

There’s something about having our destiny fixed that rubs us the wrong way; it’s an insult to our sense of freedom and fairness. The problem with predestination is the judgment part. God judges people without any regard for what they have done. Some are wheat and some are weeds. It seems unfair and cruel.

            But the God we meet in scripture is loving, not cruel. The God we serve loves us so much that he sent Jesus into the world to call us back home. The God we know takes on our sin and defeats it once and for all. In the end, judgment is about redemption; God judges to save and redeem. God uses judgment to break human pride and selfishness so grace can flow freely for everyone. I believe that when everything is said and done God’s love will win and even the thorniest weed will be transformed in love.

the gift of righteousness (3.13.11)

First Reading Genesis 12:1-4a

¹Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ²I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

⁴So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.

Romans 4:1-8, 13-25

What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? ²For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. ³For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ⁴Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. ⁵But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. ⁶So also David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works: ⁷“Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; ⁸blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin.”

¹³For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.

¹⁶For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, ¹⁷as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) —in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

¹⁸Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.” ¹⁹He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²²Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

²³Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone, ²⁴but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

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             We don’t use the word “reckon” very often. I remember my southern relatives saying they reckoned something was true. A lot of the people I’ve met from Australia and New Zealand say the same thing. But in Philadelphia or upstate New York we don’t reckon much of anything. That unfamiliarity can make it hard to hear the passage clearly.

            In this passage reckoning is almost an accounting word. Imagine a giant account book with every person in the world in it. God keeps track of each of us in that big book; he adds up credits; he figures, reckons our balance in a book.

            The question Paul answers in this part of Romans is how God reckons or figures our account. How does God determine our status, our credit, our righteousness?

            In Paul’s time the leading opinion in the Jewish community was that our righteousness was based on following the Law. God gave us the Law as a way to please God, to show us how to stay in the good column in God’s giant account book. Since Christianity was a movement within Judaism, the same idea was common in the church. The Law tells us how to be righteous with God like our 1040 form shows us how to keep our account right with Uncle Sam.

            There are some similar ideas today about how we keep our God account in the black. Maybe the most common belief is that we please God by being good people; by keeping our promises and being nice to others. Some people add to that going to church, giving generously and doing good deeds. Those are all good things, by the way; I’m not discouraging being nice or going to church.

            Paul says that’s not how God does math; that’s not how God reckons our righteousness. He looks back at Abraham’s story, because Abraham is our main ancestor in the faith. He remembers God’s promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. He remembers that God promised to bless all the families of the world through Abraham. Since we are all Abraham’s spiritual children we find an important clue to our righteousness by looking at Abraham.

            So we get to the key phrase in our passage: “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Abraham did plenty of good things in his life, some not so great things too, as we read a few Wednesdays ago, but plenty of good things. But that wasn’t what gave Abraham a good balance in God’s book. The foundation of Abraham’s righteousness with God was faith, trust in the God who called him, trust that God would keep his promises, even when Abraham couldn’t understand how that was possible.