My Old Sermon Blog

This will be my last post in this blog as I get ready to preach my last sermon at Valley Covenant Church this coming Sunday. I’ve created several new sermons over the past few weeks, offering a few thoughts of encouragement and thankfulness to our congregation as they enter the time transition to a new pastor. Yet as I contemplated this final message I kept coming up short for fresh words and inspiration. So, drawing on a three-decade deep reservoir of previous preaching, I’m sharing again a sermon I’ve offered two or three times in the past.

The text is Jeremiah 33:14-16, the great promise of a “righteous Branch” springing up from the root of David’s royal line. Both the Jewish people and Christians understand this as a promise for the Messiah, God’s Anointed One who brings salvation to His people. The Christian faith is that this promise was and is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who brought salvation which is received by faith and bringing anyone who believes in Him into the company of God’s people.

Rather than a discursive discourse on the meaning of the text, like the previous paragraph here, this sermon is a fable-like narrative of story and image which reflects on how we as human beings have related to God and His grace throughout history. I hope it can be understood on multiple levels, as salvation history through the ages, both Jewish and Christian, both individual and corporate.

Refreshing this message in this season of my own life and in the life of our church, the repeated refrain in it, “There’s more to the Story,” feels especially appropriate. May the Lord bless this offering from my heart and lips and make it wonderfully true that He has so much more to bring about in our own stories.

Reflecting on this week’s sermon text, Galatians 3:23-29, led me to recall our denomination’s favorite image for Christian unity across the diversity of human differences: a mosaic. The ancient art of fashioning an image by laying down bits of stone or ceramic of different colors is an excellent metaphor for how Christians are joined to each other in the Body of Christ.

As we come to the verses of the text at the end of Galatians 3, Paul has been responding to controversy in the Galatians church in regard to demanding conformity of Gentiles to Jewish religious observances, especially circumcision. Lurking under that issue appears to be the general feeling among Jewish Christians that Gentile believers were in some way inferior. Paul takes great pains to undermine that attitude and demonstrate that anyone must come to Christ in the same way, through faith rather than by “works of the law.”

The “new perspective on Paul,” perhaps most famously represented by N. T. Wright, would have us reassess our typical understanding of Paul’s insistence on that faith supersedes works. The “works” at issue are not all efforts at moral goodness, but the specifically Jewish “works” which marked off their identity as a people, circumcision, diet, observance of holy days, etc. In contrast to those identity markers, faith in Christ is now what distinguishes God’s people, and does equally regardless of one’s social status, gender, or racial origin.

Verses 23 and 24 argue that the Jewish law was not the fundamental basis of Jewish identity, but actually functioned as a kind of baby-sitter–“disciplinarian” in the NRSV–so that God’s people might maintain their relationship with the Lord until Christ arrived and brought all people to Himself by faith. Jewish relationship with God was based in faith from the outset. See what Paul says about Abraham in chapter 3 verse 6. The law was a kind of guardian to keep them connected to God. Yet the law is not simply tossed aside. Only those aspects, like circumcision, which were tailored to preserve identity have now become unnecessary.

God’s ultimate aim was that all people might come to Him in the same way, by faith. That was accomplished in Jesus Christ. So “in Christ,” says verse 28, old important distinctions are displaced. “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.”

This oneness in Christ and the suggested absence of human distinctions is not some sort of mystical disappearance of genuine differences among people. In the churches of Paul’s time and on into our own time, we continue to see racial, social, and gender differences among Christians. Only wrong-headed utopian cultists have attempted to vanish those differences entirely. Instead, the point is that different sorts of people “fit into” the body of Christ like the pieces of a mosaic. There are different colors, different shapes, yet they each have an equal status as an equally important part of the whole.

We can see how Paul worked out the practical implications of this equality in Christ in each aspect. He constantly welcomed Gentiles into the church and some of them, like Titus, became leaders. At various points in his letters he greets or mentions female colleagues in ministry in ways that point to their status as leaders alongside men. And his letter to Philemon in regard to the slave Onesimus calls on the former owner of the slave to welcome Onesimus as an equal to Paul and a brother in the Lord.

Thus Galatians 3:28 stands out as a verse at the heart of our Covenant understanding of what the church and the ultimate kingdom of God is meant to be: a mosaic of diverse people united in Christ to portray the beauty and glory of God. May we continue to unpack the implications of that great Gospel declaration in our own time.

How many reviews do you need to read? A product I recently considered had 36 reviews. It is not an expensive item, so it’s unlikely I would read them all. In fact, reading 3 might be enough, maybe two positive and one negative reviews. One doesn’t quite do the trick. Too many just gets confusing.

Of course, other people will approach product reviews differently. You may be skeptical of them all or feel the need to consider every one of them carefully. But a general epistemic principle seems to be that we feel better when some bit of testimony is confirmed by multiple sources. It’s true in the courtroom as well as in on-line shopping. The Bible confirms that principle in Deuteronomy 19:15, “Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.”

For this coming Trinity Sunday, we our brief text from John 16:12-15 suggests that something like that testimony from multiple sources happens for us as we receive the truth of God’s revelation in Jesus. While the reality that God is three persons in one God has many other aspects to it, it means at least this: when God speaks, what He says is communicated to us in three distinct ways which help us grasp and hold to His truth in faith.

When Jesus walked on earth, what God said came almost always directly from Jesus’ mouth. Our text begins with Jesus’ own acknowledgement that not everything God wishes to say to us could be communicated in that way: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

That limitation on the disciples’ part, on the human side of the communication, is the ground then for the fifth and final “Paraclete saying” in Jesus’ parting words to them in John’s Gospel. Instead of Jesus, the Spirit becomes the carrier of divine truth, “he will guide you into all the truth.”

Yet though Jesus is going away and the Spirit becomes the truth bearer, the connection with Jesus remains. Verse 14 says, “He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” That point both confirms that we have at least a double divine witness to Christian truth and that whatever information the Spirit provides will come from and be consistent with what Jesus has said and taught. That’s an important safeguard against theologies based on spirit revelations which contradict or fail to conform to what was seen and heard in Jesus.

Finally, though, in verse 15, the Spirit’s witness drawing on and expanding the witness of Jesus circles back to Jesus’ self-testimony that He speaks on behalf of God the Father. Jesus says what the Father says, and so says also the Spirit. “All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I declare that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

So this brief but somewhat baffling text on Trinity Sunday helps us remember that the Triune God is not a pantheon of separate gods doing different things and only accidentally

This coming Sunday we celebrate the Ascension. As I’ve often noted, “celebrate” seems like an odd word in relation to the memory of a departure, particularly the departure of the Savior of the world, the Son of God who was the most important human being to ever walk upon the earth. Yet remember and celebrate we do, not only because it is just what happened, but because it is the Ascension of Jesus which paves the way for what we celebrate the following Sunday, the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

The first Covenant church of which I was a part, the one in South Bend, Indiana, had a large mural of the Ascension in the narthex. It was probably the first large church painting done by beloved Covenant painter Warner Sallman, more famous for his oft-repeated “Head of Christ” portrait depiction of Jesus. The Ascension painting in South Bend had been the altar piece in a previous church building. The newer building in which I first saw it was designed in part to preserve and display the mural. How that painting was and is cherished speaks to the importance of the Ascension in the Christian heart and mind.

The image I’ve pasted here is, of course, no less and no more “historical” than Sallman’s very white portrayals of Jesus. It simply displays again the wide-spread Christian desire to picture and imagine this event and hold it in our collective vision.

I’ve often preached the Ascension from the more detailed account in Acts 1 or from the epistle lesson in Ephesians 1:15-23 which dwells on Christ reigning from heaven now that He has ascended. Yet this year, as I contemplate my soon retirement and departure from this congregation I’ve served for nearly 29 years, I am drawn to the Gospel lesson, Luke 24:44-53, and to the interesting direction of Jesus which appears both in it and in Acts 1:4, the command for the disciples to stay, to remain in Jerusalem until they are empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Those verses, Acts 1:4 and Luke 24:49, set up what seems to be a possible conflict with the narrative of the other Gospels. In Matthew and Mark, the disciples are told to meet the risen Jesus in Galilee, far from Jerusalem. In John 21 we find a long account of them actually meeting Jesus along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Luke makes the disparity feel even greater by a narrative flow which leaves one feeling it all happens, including the Ascension, on Easter day, which we know cannot be, even by Luke’s own account in Acts 1.

So the simple answer to the quandary is that a period of time has elapsed between Jesus’ Easter appearance to His followers in Luke 24:36-43 and the events and sayings of verse 44 and following to the end of Luke’s Gospel. The command to “stay” comes after the resurrection appearances in Galilee.

In both Luke and Acts, that “stay” carries with it a reason for doing so, a promise of blessing to come, after Jesus’ departure. In Luke 24:49 it is, “until you have been clothed with power from on high.” In Acts 1:4 and 5, it is the explicit promise of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. As I considered the text this time, that blessing which follows staying was upon my mind. It seems like it may still apply to followers of Jesus, a need to remain in place for a while in order to see the power of God, the Holy Spirit Himself, arrive.

Of course, here I am leaving soon, but, with absolutely no credit to myself for the fact, I have stayed here in Eugene a relatively long time. And I absolutely believe that I have witnessed blessing and the power of God to do great things which I would not have seen had I left sooner.

As I reflect on it all, that command to stay may still have something to say to me. A wise Christian friend counseled my wife and me to make no big changes, no moves or other large decisions, until a year after retirement, to simply stay in place and discern what God might have in store for us next.

Likewise for the congregation I serve. Though I have absolutely no say in how they proceed, it would seem like wisdom for them not to rush into finding an immediate replacement, but to take their time, wait upon the clear leading of the Holy Spirit, and find that same blessing of staying and waiting.

So the Ascension is speaking to me this year of the power in what immediately follows, staying in place for a time and waiting for the Holy Spirit to show up. May the Lord continue to give that Ascension blessing to His people, real staying power.

The first time I can remember Revelation 22:2, from our larger text Revelation 21:10, 22 – 22:5, registering on my young mind was its appearance at the ending of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, “And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” It’s quoted by Guy Montag, the protagonist who has fled a city which has just been destroyed by nuclear bombs. That sudden appearance of Christian hope, at the end of a terribly bleak story of dystopian ignorance and violence, lodged itself in my mind. I can’t read that verse without remembering Bradbury’s use of it.

(I think this image of a 1966 paperback version of Bradbury’s book matches the one I originally read in junior high and which may still sit on my shelf at home.)

In any case, verse 2 and the surrounding context are John’s expansion of a vision in Ezekiel 47:12 of a great river which flows from a rebuilt and purified temple and which heals the land and even makes the Dead Sea into fresh water. There too are trees which grow all sorts of fruits which are for food and “their leaves for healing.” John expands that to “healing of the nations.”

Throughout history this little promise for the healing of the nations must have been especially cherished when the world seemed bleak. The story of poverty, plagues, hatred and war seems to constantly repeat and we see it being played out again in current times, with even what had seemed to be the long-past threat used by Bradbury rearing its head as we consider Russia’s possible use of nuclear weapons in its bid to dominate Ukraine.

So the hope expressed clearly here at the end of Scripture in Revelation is especially good to remember now. The Christian hope is not just the yanking from the fire of a few privileged folk who believe in Jesus. It’s the full restoration and healing of our world, including all peoples, “the nations” in biblical parlance.

The Gospel lesson from John 14:23-29 also offers the promise of peace from Jesus’ own lips. Though it might there be understood as only a private, personal sort of peace for those who trust in Christ, the vision of Revelation and Jesus’ own teaching in other contexts show that the promise of peace is for the world, for all nations.

As my wife taught this Revelation text in elementary Sunday School a few weeks ago, she asked me why that image was used, “Why are leaves from the Tree of Life for the healing of the nations?” I didn’t have a good answer for her then, other than that the imagery shows God’s care and restoration of our world. I think there may be a bit more to say about it and about how we Christians play a role in it, but I will leave that for Sunday. Bradbury’s book and the 1966 movie made from it will come back into what I have to say then.

 

Mother’s Day was designated to honor mothers, but it’s often an occasion when we all have occasion to think about and thank God for various women in our lives as well as our mothers. It’s appropriate then that this Sunday’s epistle reading, Acts 9:36-43, focuses on a woman, a good, generous, socially active woman. She is the center and recipient of a miracle done by Peter which is reminiscent of one done by Jesus.

This text was clearly selected as one of the Easter season readings from the Book of Acts (in place of the usual Old Testament readings) because the miracle is that Tabitha/Dorcas was raised from the dead. Like the raising of Lazarus and of the little girl in Jesus’ corresponding miracle in Mark 4, this is not the final Resurrection from the dead for which we hope as Christians. Tabitha along with the others would still die again sometime. Yet even these temporary returns to life reflect the glory of Jesus’ own resurrection and His power over death and life.

For the sermon I’d like to ponder just a little the character of the woman who was raised there in Joppa on the coast of Palestine. Luke takes the time to tell us a bit about her and we should find the significance in the portrait he paints. The first thing we’re told is that she is a “disciple.” That is notable because of our tendency, even millennia later, to think of disciples as men. We focus so much on the male followers of Jesus that we forget that women received the same designations, not only “disciple,” but in at least one case at the end of Romans, also “apostle.” Egalitarian roles in the church are not a modern innovation but were there from the beginning.

The second thing we’re told about Tabitha is that she lived a cross-cultural life. She apparently was known both by her Jewish name in Aramaic, Tabitha, and by the Greek name Dorcas. They both mean the same, “gazelle.” As the story of Acts unfolds, one of the major themes is how the Gospel bridges Jewish and Greek culture, bringing together people who existed side-by-side in cities around the Mediterranean, but who spoke different languages and viewed the world in different ways.

Tabitha is also an example of the social concern and ministry which was part of the early church’s life. In verse 36, “She was devoted to good works and acts of charity,” the latter of which many translations elucidate as “helping the poor.” Reading on in the passage we realize that those who received her “good works” were likely the socially disadvantaged class of “widows,” who in verse 39 are putting on quite a display of mourning. The language suggests that they are not only showing Peter items of clothing made by their patroness but actually wearing what they are displaying to Peter to demonstrate Tabitha’s generosity and service to them.

There is no mention of any family for Tabitha, no husband, children, or any other relatives. Perhaps we can assume that she had none, but had made the women for whom she cared her family.

On Mother’s Day in our church we always invite those present to acknowledge not only mother and grandmothers, but those “who have been like a mother to you in some way.” It’s an opportunity to remember that our lives and the body of Christ are not complete without relationships in the Lord which go beyond blood ties. It’s a space to honor the important role in the church held by those who do not marry or bear children, both women and men. Those good people deserve perhaps a special honor for the love which they offer willingly from their hearts, apart from any natural familial obligation or connection.

That honor to those who live good and godly lives in households of one member among us is seen in the Lord’s guiding of Peter in the miracle given to Tabitha. With just one syllable difference, the apostle says just what the Lord said to the child in Mark 5:41, “Tabitha, get up.” She rose up restored to take up again her ministry of mercy. It was certainly a miracle to inspire belief, as verse 42 says, but it was also a blessing on the way this good woman lived her life. May you and I aspire to be such people even as we wait for our own call from the Lord to rise again at the last day.

As my ministry at Valley Covenant Church winds down, one of the sad aspects of retiring is that in the last couple of years we have had almost no opportunity to welcome anyone to our home. COVID-19 concerns caused us to play it safe and offer only one or two invitations to come to our house, let alone eat a meal. Likewise, we declined every invitation we received to dine at the homes of others, including from my sister.

So the focus of this sermon is a role which for the moment is more of a hope than a current reality in Beth’s and my lives, the hope of once again being able to serve as hosts and welcome guests to sit around our table.

After a couple years of not worrying too much about boxes sitting in the dining room and about cameras and other video recording equipment cluttering up our living room, at least for the first year, it feels a bit odd to be picking up, dusting off end tables, and rearranging the furniture into a more guest-friendly setting. And we now have a treadmill sitting in the corner of our family room where a small sofa used to sit.

If the pandemic actually winds down as Dr. Fauci suggests, we are almost ready to start welcoming guests again, just about the time we will be saying goodbye to all of you. It’s a little heartbreaking to look at it like that.

In ancient times, it seems, hosting guests, even strangers, was a more common experience than it is in our separated, privatized times. The text I’m reading Sunday, Luke 24:13-35, presents us with two disciples of Jesus hosting Him at the end of a long walking journey together. It’s an event that happened on the evening of the first Easter, and that is actually the assigned text’s place in the lectionary. But since so many churches have no worship time on Easter evening, one has to shoehorn in the “walk to Emmaus” where one can. That’s what I’m doing Sunday.

For now, I will simply point out that Cleopas’ and the other disciple’s (his wife?) hosting of Jesus rings out some our own Scriptural motivation for engaging in hospitable hosting of others. We may be reminded of Matthew 24:40 when Jesus asserts that hospitable care for those in need may regarded in this light, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” The explicit direction of Hebrews 13:2 also comes to mind, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without know it.” The possibility of thereby having Jesus as a guest is a huge encouragement toward being gracious hosts.

Something else happens in the story which also happens for us when we come not to our own tables, but to the Table of the Lord. The surprise turnabout at Luke 24:30 is that Jesus, a guest in the disciples’ home, suddenly takes on the role of host, by blessing and breaking and distributing the bread to the others there. That is exactly what happens when we bring our bread and cup to the service of Holy Communion. Even as pastor, I may break the bread and offer the cup, but in fact as Jesus makes Himself present there, He becomes the Host at that Table, welcoming and serving us all.

Praise God for our divine Host and for the privilege of being guests at His Table. May our own hosting always reflect His gracious and unlimited hospitality.

Fish for breakfast has always been for me a rare treat which happened either on backpack trip where there was fishing water or as a boy at our cabin in Arizona. In either case there would have been a very early morning visit to the water and some good luck plying my fishing rod. Unlike the disciples in our text this Sunday, John 21:1-19, I would not have a boatload of fish, but only one or two. Yet frying up freshly caught fish beside some hash browns, eggs, or peppers and onions is a very pleasant thought and memory.

As I will elaborate in detail on Sunday, it’s fascinating that we are given the exact number of fish caught on that post-Easter morning along the Sea of Galilee. John doesn’t tell us how the disciples came to leave Jerusalem and to be back in the place where it all started, but in verse 11 he tells there were 153 fish in the overloaded net.

In any case, Jesus asks for and presumably prepares some of the fresh fish on a fire He’s already started and serves them to His followers. Oh, to have the Lord make you breakfast!

The miraculous catch of fish confirms Jesus’ identity as the One who had initiated His call to the same fishermen with an almost identical miracle haul. At that earlier point and in a parable Jesus told in Matthew 13:47, 48, we as readers would pretty much understand the net full of fish as an image of the “fishing for people” to which the disciples were called. In Matthew 13:47, we’re told there were “fish of every kind,” which could be understood as the great diversity amid the numbers of people God will draw into His kingdom through Jesus and His witnesses.

Yet the second half of the text turns from all those fishing images to what you might feel is a warmer, gentler metaphor. As Jesus sits down with Peter to plainly confront the disciple with his betrayal, the Lord adopts another picture which has been a constant part of His ministry. Three times He tells Peter, “feed my sheep.”

I like to think those pictures, fish and sheep, are an intended contrast to let us see to necessary and inseparable parts of Christian discipleship and ministry. We are to engage in evangelism, support missions, and haul in the fish. Yet we’re not meant to simply count the catch and move on, leaving the poor creatures gasping on the shore. Those “fish” are also “sheep,” who need tending and feeding. The church of Jesus Christ is not merely to gather together as many people as possible, but to nurture and grow them up in faith and faithfulness.

So Peter the fisherman in the end is asked to become a shepherd. His traditional symbols include a boat and the “keys of the kingdom” which Jesus speaks of in another conversation with Peter. But another symbol for Peter is a shepherd’s staff.

Peter’s ministry fully understood as both fisherman and shepherd is also ours as the Christian church. We are all  in some sense fish and sheep, both needing to be hooked and caught for the Lord, maybe more than once, but also in definite need of loving care and feeding. Let’s try to see each other in both ways.

 

As it is meant to be, the Anastasis (Resurrection) icon of Greek Orthodoxy is a sermon in itself. Surprisingly, it portrays the rising of Jesus via images based on an event that might be ascribed to Holy Saturday, His descent into hell. Jesus stands upon the gates of hell, which have fallen into the shape of a cross. He extends His hands to lift Adam and Eve, the parents of humanity, from their graves. On the Lord’s right above Adam we see David and Solomon with John the Baptist looking on. On Christ’s left above Eve are likely Adam’s and Eve’s son Abel as a shepherd, Moses, and perhaps Elijah.

What we see at the bottom is fascinating. Beneath Jesus’ feet and the Cross, we see the dark depths of hell, in which are scattered keys, links of chain, and broken locks, symbolizing the breaking of the bondage of sin which held humanity. The bound figure at the bottom represents Satan or Death. I incline toward the latter interpretation because in our lectionary epistle text for this Easter Sunday, I Corinthians 15:19-26, the final verse tells us, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

We had lessons from I Corinthians 15 in the weeks just before Lent. Now on Easter Sunday we return to Paul’s great argument for the authenticity of the bodily resurrection of Christ and for our own hope that our bodies will be raised, as we repeat regularly in the Apostles’ Creed. For Easter, the reading of verse 19 pulls in the conclusion of the great reductio ad absurdum by which Paul proves the Resurrection and then counters it with his marvelous celebration of Jesus’ victory over the powers which subject us to death.

Social media has transformed democratic politics into a process of identifying enemies and then galvanizing a following into action against them. The result has been a polarization which feels almost impossible to overcome, as those with different views are constantly portrayed as evil opponents. The only thing which seems to break through that image of each other as enemies is yet another enemy we may construe as common to us all. That’s the role Vladimir Putin and the Russian war on Ukraine seems to be currently playing.

Yet Paul reminds us that the focus of the Gospel is on our conflict and Christ’s victory over greater enemies, ones truly common to us all. Sin, death, and the devil are common names for these foes. Verse 24 looks toward their final defeat “when he [Jesus] hands over the kingdom to God, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and every power.” Verse 26 tells us the last of these to be conquered is death. That’s because, despite the fact that Christ has conquered death, its power and its effects still remain very much among us.

Let us then focus on our common enemy, coming down firmly on the side of our Lord and of life. Being on that side crosses current political boundaries. It means both opposition to abortion and opposition to the proliferation of guns. It means supporting just policing which protects the innocent as well as supporting that which brings housing, food, health care and every sort of life-giving aid to as many people as possible.

In the meantime, we wait for the completion of the victory. So I’ve added verses 54-57 of I Corinthians 15 to the reading for Sunday. Paul looks forward to the day when:

the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?

On Easter we remember the victory over “the last enemy” already won and the victory yet to come. And we also pray verse 57, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Once again this morning I found myself trying to wriggle out of a text I assigned myself several months ago for this Sunday, Palm Sunday. I had elected to preach on the epistle lessons for Lent and to carry that plan over through Holy Week, including Easter. Yet here I was today, going over Philippians 2:5-11 and wondering whether I could find something fresh to say or should simply repeat a sermon from not too long ago in 2017.

It finally struck me that following through on that prior commitment to a text, even in regard to the preliminary title, “Obedient,” would reflect the spirit of Jesus’ own submission to the Cross, the submission and obedience which the passage itself celebrates.

The word “obedient” on which I focus is in verse 8, “he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death–even death on a cross.” It’s problematic in our time for a variety of reasons. One reason which not many may notice is that a theological concept called the “active obedience of Christ” will quickly plunge one down a rabbit hole of controversy in Reformed theology. So I will be quick to say here that the focus in this passage is on Jesus’ obedience to God’s plan of salvation through the Cross and Resurrection, rather than on His perfect obedience to the Law.

Another problematic feature of discussing Jesus’ obedience is the connection in verse 7 to his “taking the form of a slave…” I haven’t verified it, but I imagine this text might have been one of those Bible texts misused in the antebellum United States to inculcate obedience in enslaved people at that time. There is probably much to say about such abuse of human beings via the abuse of Scripture. But suffice it for now to say that Jesus’ submission and obedience to the Cross was wholly voluntary and thus different from involuntary servitude and suffering inflicted by oppressors in any age.

Nonetheless, the opening, verse 5, of the text clearly sets up Jesus’ obedience as an example, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” It follows a call in verses 1-4 of the chapter for Christians to live together in love, to eschew ambition and self-promotion, and, in verse 4, to “look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Which of course is exactly what Jesus did as He emptied Himself of His rightful privilege and honor as the Son of God and took on human nature.

In verse 9 our text shifts from humility and obedience in suffering to the resulting exaltation of Jesus, who receives “the name that is above every name.” You could say the text jumps from Good Friday to Easter, from the Cross to the Resurrection. Palm Sunday itself reflects this tension and transition, sort of in reverse. We move from the exaltation of the entry into Jerusalem toward the Cross at the end of the week. Yet the ultimate destination is Jesus rising again in glory on Easter.

Palm Sunday, then, is a good time to reflect on how we reflect the mind of Christ in and among us, setting aside our own individual interests and personal glory and seeking that of others. The hopeful note is that such obedience and sacrifice leads to exaltation. In the words of Eleonore Stump in her book Atonement, contrary to ordinary expectations, suffering can be the occasion for human flourishing when it is experienced through the grace of God in Christ.

 

America produces 239 million tons of trash each year. In the last couple of years, the scope of recycling has declined in our community, apparently due to China beginning to limit the amount of recyclables it accepts. Setting our plastic carts of plain garbage, recyclable cardboard and plastic, and yard waste at the curb, we usually don’t give much thought to it all. It just “goes away.” Likewise for all the human waste which we daily flush away both literally and from our minds.

In one sense it is good for health that trash and waste is removed from the places we live. Accumulation of waste attracts both insect and rodent vermin, as Eugene neighborhoods have found with a rise in keeping chickens and backyard composting. Norway rats have moved in and become ugly pests even around homes without chickens or compost piles. They are attracted to collected rubbish which perhaps does not belong in the confines of a city.

In our epistle lesson for this Sunday, Philippians 3:4-14, Paul is also concerned with proper waste disposal. In the two verses prior, Paul warns against “dogs,” which is an ugly image for those who advocated circumcision for Gentile Christian believers. While the Jewish practice of circumcision was a good thing of which Paul himself can boast, it has become a disposable extra in relation to new life in Christ.

In verse 4, Paul identifies concern with an unneeded accumulation of spiritual identity markers like circumcision as part of the “flesh.” While he clearly means the term to evoke the actual physical flesh involved in the rite, the larger meaning is, as I said last Sunday, a realm of human thought and endeavor which is contrary to God’s work in Jesus Christ.

So Paul enters into a discourse on all the spiritual accomplishments which he accumulated “in the flesh,” prior to encountering Jesus: his circumcision; his Hebrew heritage; his careful keeping of the law as a Pharisee; his zeal even to persecute the church when he thought Christianity was contrary to God’s will. Simply note that not all of these have to do with physicality, confirming that more abstract pejorative meaning of “flesh” in Paul’s theology.

In any case, all those fleshly accomplishments he now says he regards as loss rather than gain, even as “rubbish” in verse 8, a word which probably means dung or excrement and which suggests something which is properly thrown to dogs.

In the place of such spiritual rubbish, Paul holds up “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” In verses 10 and 11, he says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Paul understands that in order to know Jesus, he needs to discard much of what he thought he knew, what he thought he understood about place and privilege both in the world and before God.

It’s time for you and I also to begin sorting through what we imagine is important and discarding that which is simply refuse, with the aim of truly knowing Jesus. Paul’s inclusion of “and the sharing of his sufferings” in what it means to know Christ makes it clear that part of what we may need to discard is a misguided notion that we are somehow as believers to escape loss and sorrow. Instead, it may be that just in such losses we discover what we actually need to know about Jesus. . . and about ourselves.

One of the founding figures of our Covenant denomination is Paul Pet(t)er Waldenström. We have constantly retold the story of a conversation Waldenström had with two other Swedish Lutheran pastors in 1870. They were discussing “God’s reconciliation in Christ,” that is, how God was reconciled to human beings through the work of Christ, appeasing His wrath, and turning Him toward human beings with love and grace. Paul Peter’s famous question dropped into that discussion was, “Where is that written?”

I could go off on how the slogan “Where is it written?” became foundational in Covenant life and thought and our attitude toward the Scriptures. But I’m concerned here with the main point of that seminal conversation and Waldenström’s follow up. His question was greeted with a laugh amid the general assumption that God’s reconciliation to human beings was “written all over the Bible.” Yet after great searching of the Bible Waldenström not only did not find the phrase “God reconciled in Christ” anywhere in Scripture, he found the whole idea of the “reconciling of God” missing from both Old and New Testament.

Thus Waldenström launched a theological movement which challenged the reigning Lutheran (and Reformed in general) assumption that the work of Christ on the Cross was a satisfaction of God’s wrath which changed God’s attitude toward us from wrathful to gracious. Instead, maintained Waldenström, the change in state was all on the human side. Jesus reconciled human beings to God, taking away their sins and making them righteous.

To this firmly Covenant (at least on this matter) reader of Scripture, Waldenström’s “discovery” seems obvious in our text for this week from II Corinthians 5:16-21. From the insistence on our being a “new creation” in Christ in verse 17 to verse 18’s declaration that “God… reconciled us to himself through Christ to the entreaty in verse 20, “be reconciled to God,” it seems abundantly clear that reconciliation (and thus the Atonement via the life, death and resurrection of Christ) happens on our side rather than on God’s side.

In our decidedly anti-theological contemporary Christian culture (for which, frankly, Waldenström and other pietists are partly responsible), such distinctions may seem petty and divisive. Yet there remains good reason to insist on the Bible’s overall depiction of God’s attitude toward human beings as love rather than wrath, as seen in our Gospel reading this Sunday of the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. To portray God as filled with a wrath which needs violence against offenders in order to be appeased leads to a way of seeing the world and those around us which makes a shambles of God’s grace and loving kindness as a model for our own behavior.

One aspect of it all, clearly seen in our text, is that Waldenström’s way of looking at reconciliation and the Atonement holds out great hope in God’s work of making something better of us. If the main object of the Cross is to change God’s mind about us, then it seems we remain simply miserable sinners. In fact, the Reformed theology often suggests that our “righteousness” in Christ is simply an “imputation,” a legal fiction by which God merely regards us a righteous when we are not. The Waldenströmian view (as well as of others, like Catholic philosopher Eleonore Stump in her big book Atonement)  is that the work of Christ changes us in order to make us into fit objects of God’s love. It’s a theology that holds out the hope Paul vividly expresses at the close of our text in verse 21, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Thus God does not simply decide by an arbitrary act of will to pretend that an elect group of people are good and holy when they are not. Instead, He offers in Christ the opportunity to receive a loving forgiveness which slowly transforms us into “a new creation.” That precious hope is what is written in the Bible, no more, no less.

Here’s a screenshot of today’s graph of COVID-19 case numbers in our county (Lane County in Oregon) over the last few months. Graphs like this have helped motivate the relaxing of almost all pandemic mitigation mandates and measures here in Oregon and across the United States. And I have to say it looks hopeful. The daily average is well below even where it was prior to the Omicron surge which one can see clearly in the chart. I pray that the line keeps sliding downward.

Yet our sermon text from I Corinthians 10:1-13 and the Gospel lesson from Luke 13:1-9 are warnings against overconfidence. While it is spiritual overconfidence, as found in the Corinthian church, that is primarily in focus for Paul, Jesus’ words in Luke 13 invite us to beware even of an ordinary human overconfidence in relation to things like acts of terror and natural disaster. Natural disaster might very well include a pandemic.

This story about an uptick of the BA.2 variant in the UK and Europe, not to mention what is happening in Hong Kong, might make us want to take note of these words from a University of Washington microbiologist at the end of the article: “We can’t let our guard down, because the message that people get when they say ‘we’re lifting restrictions’ is the pandemic is over. And it’s not.” Overconfidence is a danger both in the natural order and in spiritual things.

So I am glad that our church council decided last night to buck the general inclination to “unmask” here in our community and continue for at least three more weeks to ask everyone in our congregation to wear a mask to worship. We will then re-evaluate the situation.

Yet there are many forms of overconfidence. Even solid scientific steps, like vaccination, mask wearing, and social distance, can generate dangerous indifference to continuing risks from the COVID-19 virus. Similarly, in spiritual life, Paul addresses what appears to be Corinthian overconfidence in relation to baptism and the Lord’s Supper as measures for spiritual protection against the threats of a pagan society full of idol worship.

Paul points to the story of Israel in the Exodus in verses 1-4, suggesting that the Hebrew people had their own analogues to the Christian sacraments, a “baptism” in which they passed through the water of the Red Sea and sacred food consisting of manna and the water which Moses produced from a rock on two different occasions. In speaking of the “spiritual rock that followed them,” Paul may be drawing on Jewish legend which imagined that it was literally the same rock from which they drank both at the beginning and the end of the wilderness journey and that the rock had actually followed them in their wanderings. Paul goes on to identify that “spiritual rock” with Christ, making perhaps something beyond an analogical link between Israelite “baptism” and eating and drinking in the wilderness and the Christian sacraments.

In any case, Paul warns in verse 5 that their “sacraments” did most of the people of Israel at that time no good and that most of them died in various ways in the wilderness without ever entering the promised land.

One might think that Paul’s warning about God’s judgment on disobedient Israel in the wilderness contradicts what Jesus says in the Gospel. Some folks brought him a current news story about fellow Galileans being horribly slaughtered by Pilate in a repressive act of terror. Jesus responds by asking those bringing the news if they thought those Galileans worse sinners than other people. He then goes on to mention another current event, eighteen killed in the collapse of a tower, asking if those who died were worse people than others. In verse 5 of that text, Jesus answers His own question, “No.” So Paul seems to be saying that what befell the Israelites in the desert was God’s judgment on their sin, while Jesus explicitly denies that what happened to unfortunate people in His time was directly because of their sins.

Yet both Jesus and Paul continue forward with the same sort of warning, a call to repentance and to repudiation of wrongdoing, specifically the evil of idolatry in what Paul says. Both Paul and Jesus are addressing spiritual overconfidence. Jesus spoke to those confident that they are not as bad as others who have suffered dire fates. Paul spoke to those who imagined that the Christian sacraments gave them license to live however they pleased among their pagan neighbors.

The gracious part of the text from I Corinthians comes in verse 13, the blessed hope that the testing of temptation to sin, in whatever form, comes to us with a promise of God’s faithfulness to us in such times, along with the assurance that there will be a “way out” of such temptations toward sin. We must remember that promise comes after warnings not to be overconfident in our status as better people than others, whether because of goodness or because of our reception of grace in the Sacraments. Grace is just that, not our own doing, nothing on which to base self-confidence, but a gift to see us through all this world’s trials.

At the end of last year, my wife and I renewed our passports. It was a relatively simple process. Obtaining the proper photos to send was the part which took the most effort. Despite news stories and anecdotes about long delays in processing, our relatively simple renewals went through in about a month. One interesting result, however, is that though we mailed our renewal applications at exactly the same time, one of us received an updated passport in the older “ePassport” format while the other received a newer format, “Next Generation” passport (see the picture of examples from the government web site).

Either one of our documents will allow us to travel to go see our grandchild again or to make another excursion to British Columbia in Canada. These little blue booklets are proof of our identity as American citizens. But what is the proof of our identity as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ? In our text for this Sunday, Philippians 3:17 – 4:1, Paul warns the church at Philippi against those who wish to base their spiritual identity, and citizenship, on false documentation.

Verse 17 begins with Paul enjoining his readers to imitate him as well as others who follow his example. We often think of the call to imitate Jesus (WWJD), which Paul has affirmed in chapter 2 verse 5. But we less often notice Paul’s occasional injunction to imitate him (see also I Corinthians 4:16 and 11:1). Here he adds to that call for imitation the models to be found in others like him, perhaps his apostolic companions or simply other faithful Christians in Philippi.

Paul then immediately jumps to a warning in verses 18 and 19 about those who are not to be imitated. While some may wish to imagine his tirade is against supposed Christians given to physical pleasures (“their god is the belly” in verse 19), his “I have often told you of them” in verse 18 should take us back to the beginning of this same chapter, verse 2, and his warning against those who are insisting on circumcision for Gentile Christians. Paul is concerned about what some supposed Christians are relying on as spiritual passports, both for themselves and others.

The old identity markers of Jewish identity, circumcision, a kosher diet, etc. are not only old style but obsolete for new Gentile believers in Jesus. There’s some debate about Paul’s meaning, but it’s likely circumcision again which is his focus here. “Their god is the belly” points to the physical region of the body they wish to emphasize and “their glory is their shame” indicates that “private parts” which one would be ashamed to display are in fact their claim to glory. These are Christians who suppose their “passport” to spiritual status is a certain human generated condition of their bodies.

That reliance on circumcision is why Paul says those he is warning about are “enemies of the cross of Christ.” They are relying on what they have done to themselves versus what God has done for them in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus. They are basing their identity on the wrong things, on their own physical makeup rather than on the grace of God.

So in contrast to that false documentation in physical flesh, in verse 20 Paul declares, “But our citizenship is in heaven.” That word “citizenship” might also be translated “commonwealth” or even “government.” He goes on to say how that heavenly citizenship consists in a hope which comes solely from that direction, “a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Just that word “Savior” continues the political imagery Paul is employing here. The emperor Augustus had been named “savior” because he had “saved” Rome and brought it peace. To use that name for Jesus, a rare thing at that time for Paul, after talking about citizenship or government, was to additionally make it clear that Christian identity and citizenship came from the heavenly Savior, not from an earthly political power.

That thought of a new and heavenly government in Jesus is carried forward in verse 21 as Paul argues that Jesus “will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.” As Paul has already said at the beginning of Philippians 2, Jesus overcame and was exalted by allowing himself to be humbled, like us, in His body. Our identity and hope comes from our Lord’s own movement from humiliation to glory.

The text’s last verse, the first of chapter 4, cements the idea of Christian citizenship in and through the work of Jesus on the Cross by Paul’s call to his brothers (and sisters) to “stand firm in the Lord” even while he calls them, those who faithfully learn from and imitate him, his own “joy and crown.” Paul places his own citizenship and identity and authority all in and with the community of those who, like him, look to Jesus and nowhere else for identity, country, citizenship.

Those new passports are important to my wife and me. They show who we are and where we belong for now. But much, much more important, even if passports are lost or expired, or a nation overrun like is happening in Ukraine, is our identity, our citizenship in Jesus.

Within the coming year, by June 2023, a fixture of society I have known all my life since elementary school may be on the chopping block. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court may declare against the use of “affirmative action” in decisions about hiring, college admission, etc.

I ashamedly confess that when I was old enough to learn what affirmative action is, I resisted it. I used the term “reverse discrimination” to describe a practice I felt might be taking opportunities away from people like me, white and male. It’s taken me a long time to see how wrong I was.

The practice of preference based on race or gender directed at correcting the imbalance and injustice of preferential treatment that had long run in the other direction is a good thing. And it has a biblical basis.

Jewish readers of Paul’s letter to the Romans very likely supposed him to be giving unfair, preferential treatment to Gentiles. That concern is at the heart of the whole letter, Paul’s attempt to show how God is actually just and fair to both Jews and Gentiles, while at the same time showing incredible grace toward the latter. Our text for this Sunday, the first in Lent, Romans 10:8b-13, contains one of the most well-known verses in Scripture, often used in helping people come to faith in Christ, Romans 10:9:

“If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Paul’s discussion and the actual Jewish response to his theology is much more complex, but a useful simplification for my purposes is to suggest that the average pious Jew might have responded to that verse with the feeling, “That’s too easy!” For those who have lived lives of deep devotion, prayer, sacrifice, and giving of aid to those in need, Paul’s theology of simple confession and faith might even have seemed insulting. Surely Gentiles would not be admitted to the saving grace of God without at least some form of the kind of piety which marked good Jewish people.

The argument of all of Romans is meant to show that God can in fact be just while bringing Gentiles into His kingdom as easily as Romans 10:9 suggests. Part of that is the arc of the whole letter, the occurrence of the phrase “the obedience of faith” at the beginning and the end, which makes it clear that a salvation based on faith still includes a transformation toward obedience.

Therefore, there is no basis for the use of a phrase in verse 12 in our text, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek,” to disparage present day calls for “equity” rather than “equality” in regard to race or for misuse of a passage from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream,” speech to argue that the correct approach to race is a supposed color-blindness which treats all people in every way the same. God’s exceptional grace to Gentiles demonstrates that such blindness to people’s actual situation in the world is not at all how God operates.

No, the “no distinction” here is the announcement that God is gracious to both Jews and Gentiles and that both come to Him on the basis of faith, though by different paths. In being particularly gracious to Gentiles, God is not abandoning His chosen people, nor even expecting of them more than that “obedience of faith” which He expects of all people.

Thus our text in verse 13 concludes with the same quotation from Joel 2:32 that the apostle Peter used in his sermon on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:21, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” There are plenty of distinctions in our world. Justice demands that we not be blind to those distinctions, that we allow those distinctions to leads us to greater compassion for those most in need or for those most oppressed. But like God’s own similar compassion for Gentiles, the ultimate result is no distinction in love for them versus the Jewish people. The rest of verse 12, after that “no distinction” phrase, is, “the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.”

The distinctions are there. Just as in God’s salvation they demand that people be treated differently, with more grace and even preference for those who fall lowest in society’s framework. But that gracious preference is only that there might ultimately be no distinction in the end, no distinction in the experience and enjoyment of the love of God in Jesus Christ.