December 27, 2020 St. John, Apostle 1 John 1:1-2:2

            My kids have pointed out that almost all Christmas programs and movies have similar themes.  Someone is trying to save Christmas or Santa Claus.  Or someone is trying to save the true meaning of Christmas because it is threatened; perhaps by a bad guy or by commercialism or something else.  Christmas, this culture wide multi-billion dollar annual event – the biggest annual celebration of our society – is presented as weak or fragile, seriously threatened.  Ironically none of the Christmas movies give any serious coverage to the birth of Jesus story, which perhaps is truly threatened.  And yet, when we turn our attention to our Bible readings for today we realize that there is nothing that can actually threaten Christmas. 

            December 27 is the day to celebrate St. John, our church’s namesake.  Even though it is not a specifically Christmas theme, we discover that there is a powerful message for Christmas too.  But first, we have to ask ourselves a question.  Who wrote the things in the Bible attributed to St. John?

            John the disciple of Jesus is the obvious answer, and it’s the one suggested by church history as well.  A first century Christian by the name of Polycarp appears to have been an acquaintance and disciple of the apostle John.  He is our closest link connecting the gospel of John and the three letters of John to the disciple John.  However, while legends abound, we know almost nothing certain about Polycarp.  As early as the year 130 we have people questioning whether these writings do actually come from John.

            There’s something ironic about questioning who wrote these works.  Because not only do they not say who wrote them, they are actually written for the purpose of keeping the author unknown!  In 2^nd John and 3^rd John the writer only refers to himself as “the elder”.  The Gospel of John only refers to the author as the “disciple whom Jesus loved”.  And while 1^st John is deliberately written from a first person perspective that person remains anonymous – only to be known as we read in our second reading (1 John 1:1-2:2), a reliable witness.

            You could argue that this anonymity is for safety sake – Christians are being persecuted by both Romans and Jews.  The author doesn’t want his words to be traced back to him.  But I don’t believe that is the case.  In those days the justice systems didn’t get too worked up about things like evidence and proof before torturing and executing someone. 

            No, the anonymity of the author is part of the author’s writing strategy.  He wants us –readers far far away and centuries later- to learn something about God through him, an eyewitness.  He insists on being part of the background, so that through him we can be in the story too.  Ultimately he wants to feel close to us the reader

and us feel close to him

and also close to God.

            Hear again the beginning of our second lesson, “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us – we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”  (1 John 1:1-3)

            I said before that this day to commemorate John actually speaks to Christmas.  It speaks to Christmas far more powerfully and profoundly than the birth story of Jesus with angels, shepherds and wise men.  Because all of that, while significant, is surface detail.  What does Christmas mean?  What is its purpose?  Why is it important?  Those are answered by John. 

            Jesus, the Word of God, according to the Gospel of John, was made flesh.  Why?  So that real living people like you and me could see and touch and hear God in our own form and in our own world.

            The birth story of Jesus that we read on Christmas Eve has almost reached fairy tale status.  There’s the supernatural angels and lowly shepherds, a virgin mother and stars in the sky.  All of which makes a great story, but a story no different from a fairy tale.  A fragile fairy tale no more stable in most people’s minds than many other cultural Christmas traditions like Santa Claus.

            John’s not interested in validating or defending that.  He really doesn’t care about Jesus’ birth story.  He cares that you know this: 

You cannot reach God. 

You cannot understand God. 

You cannot be in relationship with God. 

And God knows all of those limitations you have. 

Therefore God came to you. 

And therefore you can now fully know God. 

You can now be in an actual relationship with God.

            In our second reading John no sooner makes this point than he makes a sudden shift.  He talks about sin.  “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1:8-9)  You may know those words well from when they were regularly used in the confession and forgiveness. 

            Why take such a turn?  Why link the coming of Christ in one breath and then talk about sin in the next? 

Because John wants you to fully know Jesus and be in relationship with him.  But as I mentioned before, can you by your own power be in relationship with Jesus?

Can you reach God on your own?

            No.  You can’t. 

It is only by recognizing our limits, our brokenness, our separation that the door stays open for God to reach us.  The moment we think we’ve got it we close the door and the relationship starts to suffer.  And remember, in John’s writings sin is not so much actions that you do that are naughty or bad, sin is a state of being that wants to exist without God.  Sin is wanting to be your own savior by your own power.  If you don’t see that tendency that is constant and common to all of us then you really are trapped in your sins.

            Have you ever had someone sin against you but not realize it; or perhaps refuse to realize it?  Perhaps it’s a co-worker whose part of the project is over budget and past due.  The whole team is taking the hit and suffering but this person always manages to have excuses.  It’s never his or her fault but someone else’s.  You may even be the target; and while blame may not stick to the other person it does somehow end up sticking to you.

            Are you ever going to be able to have a good relationship with that person?  Can you be that person’s friend?  No.  No matter how much you forgive that person, and no matter how much you work to have a good relationship, until that person recognizes his or her destructive behavior you can’t do anything.  That person needs to recognize his or her sin.  Then and only then can a healthy relationship develop.

            Perhaps sometimes it is we who blame others for our failings.  Woe to us when that happens.  We are in a self-created downward spiral. 

            I find that people who willingly forgive others are often willing to recognize their own sins and effectively accept forgiveness.  And those who do not forgive are also not willing to accept their own sinfulness.

            John, our church’s namesake, would have us been in a full and healthy relationship with God our creator and savior – who comes to us in a form we can understand, and who forgives us endlessly.  But the relationship can only form when we accept our limitedness. 

Here’s a strange Christmas gift for ourselves.  Stop trying to be perfect and do it all right on our own.  Instead, give up.  Accept our imperfections, accept the imperfections of others, and in so doing discover true fellowship with each other and our God.  Amen

December 13, 2020 Love 1 Corinthians 13

 (Accompanies the story “The Hornbill” from The Manger is Empty by Walter Wangerin Jr.)

            The story of the Hornbill opens us to an understanding of love that goes deeper than words and intellectual concepts.  Love is word that is used often but I think misunderstood and often misused.

            People usually use love to refer to an intense feeling.  But love as the Bible describes it is something much deeper.  You may have heard that while we have one word for love in the English language the Greek language has three: eros, agape, and philia.  That is true.  You may have heard people make a big deal about the three.  And indeed, it is helpful to be able to separate out erotic love, or eros, from other understandings of love.  Some may a distinction between agape and philia.  Perhaps there is, but for the sake of the New Testament authors, they use them interchangeably.  In today’s gospel reading from John 21 both are used when Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?”  It is for stylistic variation and not to make a subtle point.

            What then is love?  You can define it many ways.  I like to define it as doing whatever is in your power for the benefit of another person.  Love then can have very little to do with feelings and very little to do with actually liking someone.  It is quite possible to love someone you strongly dislike.  And I think that is the sense of love St. Paul is using in 1 Corinthians 13, which often wrongfully ends up being used as a sappy Bible text at weddings.

            Love is doing whatever is in your power for the benefit of another person.  There is no strategy and no selfishness in love.  Truly loving is very hard.  And I think it is actually impossible for us. 

In Luke 6:32 we find Jesus saying, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners love those who love them.  If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.  If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.  But, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” (Luke 6:32-35)

That’s really challenging.  But then Jesus goes on with something very true but something we immediately start to use as a strategy - and thus mess up love.  Jesus says, “… and lend, expecting nothing in return.  Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  (Luke 6:35-37)

Us being the clever people we are instantly start to strategize.  “Ah,” we say to ourselves, “if I love other people and work to build them up that will please God.  If I please God then God will look favorably upon me and like me.  God may make my life easy and certainly give me eternal life.”  If that is true then loving is just a strategy to please God for the ultimate purpose of personal gain. 

I don’t care what grades you got in school, you’re smart enough to think you can exploit God.  You’re smart enough to know that if it’s really about eternal life then better to suffer a little now and be rewarded later.  St. Paul even said in the text we read from Romans last week, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” 

Is that then even scriptural endorsement of: please God now and be rewarded later?  …love then is a powerful strategy ultimately employed for personal gain.  Seeing love that way (while one can certainly get there through scripture) is completely missing the point. 

In the video the adult Sunday school class watched just before worship the presenter, Luke Johnson, wrapped up his remarks by making a distinction between “religion” and “magic”.  By magic he does not mean the visual tricks and illusions some people can invent.  He is talking about living in a strategic way that will bring upon your life the power and blessing of a supernatural force; a deity, or “God” if you like.  Indeed, look at the ancient Greek religions and their stories; although I think Luke Johnson wouldn’t call them “religions” so much as he’d call them “magic”.  Those stories are all about people doing things to please the gods and get their divine favor for life.  But is that really loving?  No!  Of course not!
            We are going to begin reading through Mark’s gospel in January.  We should be all the way through it during worship by Easter.  Mark’s gospel is among the most tightly and brilliantly constructed pieces of literature ever written.  Details down to the absolutely minute carry incredible meaning.  If you know Mark’s gospel well, or if you remember from three years ago when we read through it, there is one and only one time in the entire gospel that a human character recognizes Jesus as the Son of God.  Who is it and when does that recognition happen? 

It wasn’t the disciples that’s for sure! 

It was the Roman pagan centurion overseeing the crucifixion, and he says it at the moment of Jesus’ death.  For Mark, the ONLY way to understand Jesus’ identity is as the crucified one.  Mark does not have any resurrection appearances in his original writing.  Other later authors added some to his writing. 

From very early on in the gospel Jesus is predicting his death.  Close to half the gospel is focused on Jesus journey to Jerusalem for Passover.  Jesus starts getting in trouble with the religious leaders all the way back in Chapter 2!

You may remember me asking this before.  What is the most important holiday of the year?  It certainly isn’t Christmas!  Easter might come to mind but that’s missing it too.  It is Good Friday.  Good Friday is about love in its purest and most powerful form.  Good Friday is about the work of salvation being accomplished.  Mark’s gospel focuses there because he knows that’s what Jesus is all about.

Theologian Tom Long points out that Jesus shows what it is to be most fully human, and ironically most fully alive, when he is innocently executed.

I don’t say this as a downer at all.  I am pointing out where our scripture takes us, because it shows us the real power of love.

None of us loves perfectly – at least I can’t.  I think all of us, to at least some degree, have a bit of strategy in mind when we love.  Fortunately God is forgiving and does not require perfect love from us before being loving towards us.  However, the truly find the overwhelming and eternal power of love, one lives by it with no expectation of return or reward whatsoever.

To truly love one must first realize that one is good and capable and powerful.  It is to realize that you have good and important things within yourself that can be a blessing to others.  You have them because God gave them to you and they cannot be exhausted.  Your ability to love, your God-given value, is a renewable energy source – not a fossil fuel which will eventually run out.  And so you can give of that inexhaustible goodness from God.  In so doing you discover your truest self.

Ironic, counterintuitive, maybe even crazy – yep.  But that is love.  That is how God runs the universe and how God is acting to save it.

December 6, 2020 Hope Romans 8:18-30

            If you are like me as soon as you see a sign on a door that says, “Employees Only,” or “Do Not Enter,” the first thing you want to do is find out what’s inside.  When I’m at a store I want to know what goes on behind the scenes; see the storeroom behind the façade of the sales floor. 

Strong Hospital used to issue clergy ID badges similar to that of their employees.  They don’t anymore but I wish they still did.  It was a great way to be able to go in after visiting hours and not have to go through the whole ID process.  I’m told that the clergy ID’s were only for that purpose and for parking privileges.  However, mine was like a universal key to the whole hospital.  It unlocked any and every door I ever tried it on.  The front doors – they opened.  The intensive care units, they opened.  Surgical areas, they opened.  I never tried it too widely though.  I thought it was a way to give pastors access without having to bother staff.  But apparently mine was a mistake.  Still though, it made me all the more curious about those locked doors that said: “Operating Room” or “Radioactive” or “Biohazard”.

Anyway, theologian Karl Donfried, Professor of Religion and Biblical Literature at Smith College in Massachusetts suggests that a Christian living in hope has obtained in this life is “access” – not complete entrance – but access to God’s grace.  And then rejoices in the hope of sharing the full glory of God in the ultimate future.  I see it as access into what non-believers think are locked doors.  You get access but perhaps not yet full use of the rooms.  Sometimes we describe hope as being “already but not yet” life in God’s kingdom.  It is living in the limits of the here and now but knowing that by God’s grace fullness of life is surely coming.  Therefore that future has a major effect on the reality we live now.

In the passage from Romans 8 we read, “For in hope we were saved.  Now hope that is seen is not hope.  For who hopes for what is seen?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”  (Romans 8:24-25)

I think when many people say they hope for something they are really filled with doubts.  They find their desired outcome for the future to be doubtful but they are hoping for otherwise.  When I was in college and I found myself hoping to get a good grade on an exam paper I just turned in it meant that I felt I had not done a good job but I hoped for a good grade anyway.

That may be a common way to understand hope, but I do not think that is how St. Paul uses it in his letters.  In our children’s sermon we talked about a child looking to a parent for the fulfillment of basic needs: clothing, food, shelter, stability, physical and emotional safety.  The child hopes for these things and (presuming the parents are good) lives in reasonable certainty that they will be received from the parents on an ongoing basis.  I said then that I think that is how Paul understands hope.  It is the reasonable certainty that God is – and will continue to – provide for our basic needs.

Keep that in mind and hear vs. 26-27 again, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because it intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

I think in the context of hope being the confident expectation of future care we can understand those verses fully.  That is not about being weak.  It is not about knowing how to pray properly.  It is in the context of a child being safe in a parent’s providence.

Also verse 28, which is so often misinterpreted, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God…”  People read that and with completely good intentions think it means that if you have faith everything will always turn out to be okay.  If things aren’t okay then just keep trusting and praying and working; and if you do so with patience things will eventually come out good.

That attitude is very commendable.  I’d recommend it highly.  However, that thinking is actually too limited. 

To be honest, Romans 8:28 is a problematic verse.  Ancient manuscripts differ in significant ways and no one is perfectly sure what Paul actually meant.  There are some hard core commentaries in the church library that dive into the difficulties, but one thing is for certain.  These verses are not about overcoming personal hardships.

When Paul says, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God…” he is not talking about the small stuff of any one person’s life.  Remember the previous verses and realize the cosmic scale Paul is using.  Remember he said, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope,” there’s our word for today, “that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (8:21-22)

He goes on with a powerful image, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now…”  As a man who has never, and can never, have a child I can only understand that verse distantly.  However I suspect that verse has incredible meaning to any woman who has ever birthed a child.

“All things work together…”  Yes, all things, ALL THINGS – the cosmic reality – is in labor to birth God’s intended fulfillment.  It is intense.  It is universal.  It is God’s work.  It is not ours.  We live in the sure and certain hope of God’s promised fulfillment.  And in a small way, we are invited into that work.

All things work together for good, yes.  But don’t think small.  Instead realize big – cosmic scale!  The whole universe is in travail for whose benefit?  God’s?  No.  Paul does not say that.  He says ours.

While we are part and parcel of the universe humanity plays a deeply important role in the heart of God.  God loves the entire creation but there is something unique and special to God’s love and delight in humanity.

That is the truth and the hope that we live in.

I never want to minimize individual suffering.  Lives can be broken.  Physical pain can be severe.  Sometimes that pain is from a body being abused, and sometimes it because a body just doesn’t grow right or there’s an accident or a disease or cancer or what have you.  There is emotional distress, broken relationships, people being used and exploited and psychiatric damage.  Yes, individual suffering can be real.  God sees it.  God knows it.  God cares about it.  And I wish God would solve it more often than God does.  Yet in the midst of it, I think it is helpful to realize that it is part of the pangs of the whole creation.  It is good to remember that God is up to something big – much bigger than ourselves.

I’ve said this before, and I know it can be guilt inducing, but I don’t mean it that way.

I encourage you to live day to day making decisions based on the hope of what God is up to.  Ask yourself before you buy something, “Will this help me or equip me to be more effective in bringing about God’s kingdom?  Will this help me be who God has created and called me to be?”  I know almost no one does this, but when you buy a house ask, “How will this equip me to be a child of God?  How can I accomplish God’s purposes through this purchase?”

I know that would throw the world of real estate on its head!  The same goes for buying a car.  Ask yourself, “Will this car equip me to be a better Christian and help me carry out God’s work?”  If you ever want to see a puzzled expression on a car salesperson’s face go into the dealership and don’t ask what car is the most dependable, or gets the best gas mileage, or is the most luxurious, or has the best safety record, or any of that kind of stuff.  Ask what car has the features that will best help a Christian live out their faith most effectively.  Since our topic today is hope, maybe we would be asking for a “hopemobile” instead of the “popemobile”.

Silly as this all is, I think it does show how far our culture is from actually living in the real hope that Paul encourages his readers to have.

God is indeed doing big things.  We can count on it.  Like a child knowing good nourishment will be provided by a parent so we also know is providing for us.  Live in that hope and let that hope inspire everything you do.