My Old Sermon Blog

It’s Ash Wednesday and I thought I would simply post our meditation for this evening here. May God bless us with a good beginning on the Lenten journey.

When David Copperfield first met the villain Uriah Heep, he was filled with mixed feelings. On the one hand, Uriah was completely and absolutely respectful and deferential toward David. On the other hand, there was something about Uriah that bothered David, that even repelled him.

The first time he speaks with Uriah, David tries out a simple compliment upon the man. Heep’s reply is “Me, Master Copperfield? Oh, no! I’m a very umble person… I am well aware that I am the umblest person going.”
In every subsequent conversation they have, that word “umble,” “humble,” drops from Uriah’s mouth over and over. His mother is “umble.” They live in “a numble abode.” His dead father had a most “umble” job. All his earthly aspirations are low and very, very “umble,” he says, over and over and over. He is so terribly humble that he just can’t quit talking about it.

As Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield unfolds we discover Uriah Heep’s “umbleness” is merely the most transparent mask for an overreaching pride and vicious ambition that could be the ruin of some truly good and humble people. Heep is full of a false humility that hardly conceals the fact that he is greedy and selfish and concerned only with making an impression he can turn to his advantage.

Uriah Heep is a typical Dickens character, almost a caricature, overdrawn and nigh on unbelievable. It seems like only in a story could you think anyone would really be like that, so full of humble pretense but in reality full of himself.

When you read the beginning of Matthew chapter 6, the “hypocrites” Jesus portrays for us seem as unbelievable as Uriah Heep. It’s only through Jesus’ wonderful parables and figures of speech that we can even imagine a person who has a trumpet blown before he drops his coins in the poor box at the synagogue as Jesus pictures in verse 2. Or somebody who goes out on the street corner to pray where everyone can see and admire him as in verse 5. Or a man who deliberately puts dirt on his face, as it says in verse 16, and messes up his hair to advertise the fact that he is fasting. They seem like characters in a story, not real people.

Yet characters like Uriah Heep and the hypocrites were drawn for our spiritual direction. They exist to warn us that you and I are not really so different. We may protest our “umbleness” as vehemently as Heep does, but there is still something in us that enjoys a little recognition for our good deeds. It feels good to be generous, to be devout and prayerful, to be strong enough to go a day without eating. It feels even better to get some credit for it those things. We’d like our humility to be noticed.

To all those feelings in us Jesus addresses His direction about spiritual life. Do what you do for God, not to be noticed or praised by others. It’s a harder lesson than we might imagine to learn and take to heart.
We’re conditioned to like praise and reward. All our lives. The finest motivation for good behavior parents can give is sincere praise and appreciation. When we get to school, motivation is organized into a whole system assigning letter grades according to how well we perform. Employment teaches us that excellent work is rewarded financially. Throughout life we learn to seek what psychologists call positive reinforcement. But it all means that even in our good behavior we may not be very good people.

Jesus asked us to give generously, pray devoutly and live sacrificially at just those times and places when there is no positive reinforcement. He asks us to forgo the compliments and strokes and kind words from other people which might encourage us to keep moving ahead. He wants to quit wondering if anyone will notice, whether anyone will see the good we’re doing. Instead we should be concerned only with what is seen by a God we can’t see. It’s at that point that quiet humility begins.

You might think this whole Ash Wednesday thing gets it all wrong in relation to the kind of humility Jesus is concerned with. Someone might observe us tonight and conclude that we are about to do one of the very things Jesus warned against in verse 16. They “disfigure their faces,” they might think, with dirty ashes. Aren’t we missing the point here, creating a visible symbol of our humility?

We could be. That’s why I’m talking about it. If humility begins with a walk forward tonight and my thumb tracing a cross of ashes on your forehead, and ends with a little soap and water when you get home, then it’s all just as Jesus said. You came out for a worship service. Not many people come to this one, so you get a little extra credit. You let your guard down, forgot appearance, and accepted the ashes. You were humble. But if it stops there, it’s just a little show for a bit of recognition.

That’s why Ash Wednesday is just the beginning of a whole process of humbling yourself, not in front of me or Bryan or anyone else here, but before our Lord. It’s why we talk about entering into spiritual discipline during Lent, spiritual work. None of it meant to earn anything, from God or anyone else. But it is meant to mold us into the kind of people who are genuinely humble.

The three acts described here are not just examples Jesus pulled out of His hat. These disciplines were three foundations of Jewish spiritual life. Giving alms. Daily times of prayer. Regular fasting. And they remain foundational for Christian life. In order to be the people God wants us to be, genuinely humble people, the disciplines of giving, prayer and fasting are essential.

Let me say a little more about the last one, fasting. It’s foreign to many of us. Most of us don’t do it very often. It may be the hardest of the three. It may strike us as artificial. It’s hard to see the point.

But fasting, giving up food, or some other harmless pleasure or activity, is a way of saying and learning that our lives are not built upon things. To live for awhile without eating your favorite food, or without watching your favorite television program, or without playing your favorite game, is a way to learn to trust the God who gave you those things, but wants you love Him more than those. A fast allows us to discover unexpected joy in the Lord that we may have thought could only be found in such things.

What Jesus says about fasting here makes it even more an act of dependence on God. He said to fast without getting anyone else’s approval or praise for it. If you give up chocolate or “Glee” or “Angry Birds,” then the hardest thing to do may be not to talk about it. The quiet humility Jesus called for means not complaining to your friend when she eats a Hershey bar in front of you, or to your spouse when he sits down to watch television without you. It means fasting without talking to anyone about how hungry you are. It means seeking all your approval from God and no one else.

In addition to Uriah Heep, there is a genuinely humble person in the story of David Copperfield. Over and over, his childhood friend Agnes gives up what she wants for those around her. She gives up each day to care for her aging father. She gives up David whom she truly loves, so that he can marry someone else he thinks he loves. It seems as though she might even give herself up to an evil marriage for her father’s sake. Yet she does not blow a trumpet, she doesn’t stand on a corner, she doesn’t disfigure her face. No one, especially David, even notices the sacrifices that she makes. She simply, humbly, offers her gifts to others and trusts herself to divine providence.

In the end, Agnes is rewarded. She ends up with the deepest happiness. I won’t spoil the story by telling you how. But quiet humility is blessed. Quiet humility that keeps itself  secret, is rewarded, just as Jesus promised. Our unseen Father sees what no one else sees. By the grace of Jesus Christ who Himself practiced quiet humility, seeking no one’s approval but the Father, God will reward and bless and raise up those who are humble. May we quietly seek to be such people.

Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj

A popular military (or sports) slogan goes, “No guts, no glory!” The point is that the glory of victory or at least a noble defeat demands bold, courageous action. Mark 9:2-13, our text this week (extending the account of Jesus’ transfiguration to include the conversation which follows it) argues that the divine glory itself is not merely a matter of courage but of a willingness to enter into suffering. No grief, no glory.

The transfiguration of course is a moment of supreme glory in the earthly life of Jesus. In the presence of His three closest disciples, His divinity breaks through His humanity in the form of dazzling light so bright that even His clothing is transfigured in appearance. Heaven seems to come to earth, so that Jesus enters into conversation with two of heaven’s most prominent citizens, Moses and Elijah.

There is much to learn from the whole account, and even some amusement as we watch Peter again befuddled by events surrounding his experience with Jesus. Yet it’s instructive to note that for Mark the Transfiguration is sandwiched between two separate predictions of Jesus’ death and resurrection. In our text in verse 10 we find the disciples very confused following the second prediction, wondering “what the rising from the dead could mean.”

The disciples are confused because it’s difficult for them to imagine any reason why the Messiah (and they are coming to believe Jesus is the Messiah) might have to die. Especially after the incredible experience of on the mountain, it’s difficult for them to imagine a person of such divine glory needing to suffer and die.

In their confusion, the disciples in verse 11 fix on one of the figures they’ve just encountered. Elijah was generally understood to be a precursor of the Messiah and of the great time of restoration of fortune to Israel, the Day of the Lord. They’ve just seen Elijah, so how can there now be any talk of suffering or dying?

Jesus’ answer in verses 12 and 13 is confusing yet today, even to us with much more of the picture in hand. But the gist is to affirm that the disciples are correct. Elijah’s coming does precede the great restoration. Yet even “Elijah,” who is understood by Jesus (and so by Mark, see chapter 1:2-4) to be John the Baptist, will have to suffer on the way to that glory, so “they did to him whatever they pleased.” I.e., John the Baptist was imprisoned and then beheaded by Herod.

If Mark, as some would argue, was written for an early Christian community suffering its own persecution, possibly under the emperor Nero, then the Gospel made it clear to them that their own situation was in no way a disappointment or a failure of their faith. Even the Lord, even “Elijah,” experienced a path of suffering on the road to a future glory.

As we stand on the edge of Lent, which begins next Wednesday, February 22, we remember that discipleship is the way of the Cross. Our faith in Christ does not lift us out of hardship, but promises a glory on the other side of it. The lenten discipline ahead invites us to seek ways to enter into ways to join our Lord and also the hurting and needy of the world on a path that brings us grief before it brings us glory.

Growing up in southern California it was common to hear friends talk about “star sightings” they had experienced. I had my own. One day as my mother drove us slowly down the Pacific Coast Highway in a traffic jam, I looked over at the car next to us, a red convertible, and saw David McCallum who played Illya Kuryakin on one my favorite shows, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”

Because of all this attention, most of us understand that celebrities of all sorts will dress down, wear dark glasses, and go to other lengths to avoid recognition in public places. Many of them don’t want the attention and the mob scene which can result if numbers of people see them waiting for a plane or eating at restaurant.

Something like that restraint about public appearance seemed to characterize Jesus, especially as Mark shows Him to us. Over and over, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus commands silence about Himself and especially about His identity as the Messiah. We’ve already seen in 1:25 and 1:34 how Jesus silenced the demons He was casting out, “because they knew him.”

In our text this week, Mark 1:40-45, Jesus forbids the healed leper to speak publicly about Him, but the command is disobeyed and Jesus’ entrance into cities is hindered by the recognition generated.

There’s also a little theme of private, even secret instruction of the disciples around the parables in Mark 4:10ff, and in Mark 8:30, Peter’s brilliant confession of Jesus as the Messiah is followed by a stern warning for the disciples not to talk about Him.

In the early twentieth century, William Wrede coined the term “messianic secret” for this theme of Jesus’ hiddeness in Mark. He believed that the idea of Jesus ordering people not to reveal His identity as Messiah was fiction, invented by Mark in order to explain why there was not more recognition of Jesus during His lifetime. Wrede’s theory has been almost wholly discredited by later scholarship, but the secrecy theme remains there in Mark’s Gospel.

Jesus’ secrecy certainly has some of the same motives as the celebrity secrecy I noted above. His ministry was hindered by thronging crowds. But there were other reasons. Jesus’ actual ministry would show that the expectations of the Messiah current in His day–as a great military leader–were way off base. To be widely identified as the Messiah would only result in wide confusion when Jesus did not mount a military campaign.

Moreover, there was a sense in which all characterizations of Jesus would be incomplete and premature until the completion of His mission in His death and resurrection. So while Matthew has Peter declaring that Jesus is both Messiah and Son of God, Mark reserves that revelation for a moment while Jesus is on the Cross, when the Roman centurion makes the awestruck observation that “surely this man was the Son of God.”

Jesus will remain somewhat hidden from us as well, until we willingly see Him in the light of His whole accomplishment, which including suffering and death. Any messiah who does not connect us with suffering is a false messiah. The secret of the identity of Jesus is an open secret which can be known by anyone who cares to pay attention and who is willing to be united with Him in His death, so as to be united with Him in His resurrection (Romans 6:5).

I’m standing in my waders beside a lovely trout stream rigging up my favorite fly rod. I can see big fish rising in a pool just upstream. My fingers tremble as I try to tie on a matching fly as quickly as possible so as not to miss the moment. Then someone taps me on the shoulder and says, “Put down the rod, take off the waders, and come with me.” No, it’s not the game warden nabbing me for fishing out of season. It’s my image of how the call of Jesus to those Galilean fisherman must have felt to them.

Mark’s narrative is generally more compressed than Matthew’s or Luke’s. Although this week’s text, Mark 1:16-20, appears almost the same in Matthew 4:18-22. But that compression may make the disciples’ call and departure seem more abrupt than it actually was. John records a meeting that’s likely prior to this encounter by the sea, and Luke 5:1-11 adds a fishing miracle to Jesus’ meeting with Peter there by the shore. I might welcome my imagined tap on the shoulder more if it were accompanied by casting directions which produced a couple of giant fish.

Nonetheless, Mark makes it very clear that these first four disciples were abandoning just about everything they might have valued in order to follow Jesus. They left means of livelihood (their nets and boats), and family (James and John’s father) in order to become Jesus’ disciples. The text forces us to ask what we have left for Jesus’ sake.

“Disciple” and “discipline” obviously derive from the same root. We are quite comfortable with the idea of being “disciples,” and not so comfortable with the thought of discipline, especially discipline which may cost us.

May our Lord show us both what we may yet need to leave behind along the shore AND what blessings and joys await us if we turn from what we thought was valuable and seek His way.

When we talked to my daughter’s fiance’s Canadian family on Christmas day, we asked how they had spent the day. Besides church, presents and the big meal, they said they had watched the Queen’s televised Christmas address. We Americans chuckled at this quaint holdover from an age gone by.

Yet the idea of monarchy is not at all foreign to the Bible or the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact the first and primary message of our Lord when He began His ministry is found in verse 15 of our text from Mark 1:12-15, “The kingdom of God is at hand!”

We would do well to consider our own democratic prejudices against monarchy as we think about the fact that God’s work on earth consists of creating a kingdom, His kingdom in our midst.

God’s kingdom all begins in the person of Jesus Christ. One of my favorite gleanings from the early church fathers is Origen’s notion that Jesus is the autobasileia, that is, the “kingdom in person,” the kingdom in Himself. In the person of Jesus, God begins to reign in this world in the way in which He means to reign over it all. That’s exactly why Jesus can announce the nearness of the kingdom. He has brought it with Him.

Kingdoms of course have enemies. So we see glimpse of both spiritual and earthly enemies in our text. Satan of course is the adversary who tempts Jesus in the wilderness. But in verse 14 we see Jesus’ ministry beginning as John the Baptist’s ministry is brought to a close in his arrest by Herod. God’s kingdom in Jesus is planted and grows right in the midst of fierce opposition. Likewise the kingdom continues among us, despite the opposition of its enemies, both internal and spiritual, as well as external and physical.

Perhaps no act of the Christian faith inolves the whole person more than the sacrament of baptism. In baptism one surrenders oneself to being placed under the physical water while also surrendering to work of God through Christ by the Holy Spirit.

Our text for this coming Sunday, Mark 1:2-11, marks the historical beginning of the practice of baptism in connection with the Christian faith. Baptism begins with the pre-Christian baptism of John, in which Jesus Himself participates as a mark of identity with the rest of humanity. While Jesus Himself has no need of John’s baptism “of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (verse 4), He enters the water to place Himself fully with those He has come to redeem.

As we look at this point in sacred history where baptism began we can see displayed four points of significance for our continued practice and experience of baptism.

1) Baptism with its resonances of washing expresses just what it did for John, God’s cleansing of our sins through gracious forgiveneness.

2) Just as Christ identified with us in the act of baptism, we identify with Him by being baptized. Which means that His death and resurrection, His dying and rising, apply to us. In baptism we die to an old life and rise to a new life. We also are assured the hope that physical death will be followed by physical resurrection when Christ comes again.

3) Baptism was for Jesus the moment for public declaration by God the Father that “You are my beloved Son.” Likewise for us in baptism we enter into the family of the children of God, the Church.

4) Baptism was Jesus’ preparation for ministry. Almost immediately after His baptism (only His temptation intervenes) Jesus began His mission to preach the good news of the coming of God’s kingdom (see Mark 1:14-15). Our baptism places us in solidarity with Jesus’ mission, marking us as people who will do what He does, bringing good news to the lost and needy.

All of the above is why the experience of baptism has been at the heart of Christian life and practice from the beginning. It all starts here in what we read about John and Jesus.

Hi friends,

After a break from my weekly blogging of thoughts toward the coming Sunday’s sermon, I’m back in stride for the second Sunday in 2012.

We enjoyed wonderful Christmas Eve candlelight services and a very fun brunch/worship time on Christmas morning. Last Sunday on January 1 we welcomed the new year by reading together the first verse of Mark, which speaks of the beginning of God’s good news for us in His Son, Jesus Christ.

May your new year be blessed with good beginnings. Thanks for joining me here on this blog when you have opportunity. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome.

In Christ,
Pastor Steve

[This post is a bit of a fragment, never quite completed and posted before the sermon it aimed at on December 18. I place it here just to fill out the record of my thoughts prior to preaching this text.]

The credits roll and as the actors’ names run down the screen you hear the movie’s theme music play once again. Then the cast and supporting cast are done and we begin to see the names of director, producer, and writers, the music changes again, maybe to the romantic theme of the film. Yet another tune from the movie plays as we read start into the gazillions of names of those who worked on costumes, props, special effects, assistants to the stars, gaffers, grips and all the plethora of different jobs that into the film. By the time we reach the location credits and film studio logo at the bottom, we’ve probably heard most if not all the musical pieces which played behind the movie’s action.

That sort of reprise of themes is just what Paul does for us in the closing verses of Romans, chapter 16, verses 25-27. Beginning with the power of God, he moves to the Gospel and Jesus Christ, on to the fact that this good news was previously hidden and is now revealed, that it was predicted in the prophets, that it is God’s command which brings it all about, and then that key phrase from Romans 1:5, “the obedience” of faith.

These verses are all one sentence in Greek, starting out to give praise to God, but sidetracks to all the reasons Paul has to do so. But he finally lands this verbal 747 in verse 27 with the doxology he intended from the start of verse 25, “to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.”

As we prepare for Christmas we are making ready to do just what Paul was doing at the end of Romans, to praise God for all that He has done for us in the gift of Jesus Christ.

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis compares relationships among human beings to a fleet of ships sailing in formation. We might also think of the tight patterns flown by brilliant pilots like the Blue Angels. There are two dimensions that make possible those clean smooth maneuvers in formation. Lewis says,

“The Voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order.  As a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other.”

In other words, smooth sailing (or flying) among human beings depends both on good internal order (i.e. personal morality or holiness) individually and on a collective, communal effort to stay in good order in relation to each other.

Our text last week from II Peter focused more on the first of these dimensions. This week’s text from Paul’s letter to Thessalonica, I Thessalonians 5:12-24 is more about the second, about how we are to be a community together in Jesus Christ. It’s about the community which is the Church.

Paul begins in verses 12 and 13 by urging respect for the Church’s leadership, which provides direction and admonishment for keeping the community in good order. Then in verses 14-22, he offers a seemingly haphazard list of directions for good interpersonal relationships in the church. Finally, in verses 23 and 24, he reminds us that we do not rely just on ourselves to accomplish good community, but that it is the work of God.

The list of directions is not as aimless as it seems. It bears many resemblances to directions given in the second half of Romans 12. Which indicates that Paul is actually offering a standard body of teaching for good conduct of church life together. He repeats what he must have taught over and over in many places about how brothers and sisters in Christ might best live and serve together.

Paul asks us to be patient and kind toward each other, while being unafraid to address admonishment (verse 12 and verse 14). He also calls for spiritual sensitivity that does not quench the work of God’s Spirit in our midst and the genuine prophetic proclamation of the Word in particular situations (verses 19 and 20).

Verse 22 suffers from a long-standing misunderstanding because of mistranslation in the King James Version, which reads, “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” This has sometimes led to an excessive concern with appearances, which is not true to our Lord who ate with and befriended tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners.

Context and other usage dictates the translation of verse 22 found in modern versions, “Abstain from every form of evil.” I.e., the community is only healthy when its members seek to be free from every kind of evil practice. C. S. Lewis’ picture is helpful again. A fleet sails in good order when individual ships are well-maintained, trying to correct any problem before it causes a vessel to conflict with others.

The Advent theme is stuck in verse 23 in Paul’s prayer that God will accomplish this work of individual holiness and good relationship in us in anticipation of the “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s how we want to be found when Jesus arrives, sailing well together in His direction.

Thanks be to God for the promise in verse 24, “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

Ditto Jim Hukari’s sentiment from the previous post. I hate to wait. And my dislike of waiting has two dimensions. I don’t like to wait for good things, like the arrival of some nice package or dinner when I’m hungry. But strangely enough, it’s hard to wait for the advent of bad things, whether it’s the report on a biopsy or some difficult confrontation with a friend or family member. I usually want to get such things over with as soon as possible, rather than drag out the time before they happen.

Our text this week from II Peter 3:8-15a seems to capture both those dimensions of our discomfort with waiting, our desire to have the good as soon as possible and our wish to get through the bad without delay.

Peter is writing to a community of Christians troubled by false teachers saying that neither sort of anticipation should concern them. The fact that Jesus had not returned for what must have seemed a long time to them was being cited as evidence that belief in His return was false hope. Their complaint is voiced in verse 4 preceding our text (using language about the world continuing the same as it always as which might bring to mind the so-called “steady-state” theory of cosmology, which has had its ups and downs in physics). As if they were children waiting for a ride home from school, the delay in the Second Advent was understood to mean He was not coming at all.

So Peter did some good theology by turning to Scripture to understand why things might be taking so long. He found Psalm 90 verse 4 and quoted it here in verse 8, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” The point is not that the passing of time is beneath God’s notice, but that in His eternal perspective, He is able to be particularly patient with us human beings. Our wait is not divine delay, but divine patience.

God is being patient because He wants to provide an opportunity for us to escape the bad which is coming, His fiery judgment on our world and cosmos. It’s impossible to say exactly what is meant by the passing away of the heavens with a loud noise, the dissolution of the elements, and the revealing or laying bare of all that is done on earth. Nor is the meaning of the repetition of some of this in verse 12 clear. But it doesn’t sound good for human life.

The point is not so much to provide a spiritual answer to cosmological questions about the end of the universe, but to warn and urge human beings to be ready for that event, ready for the fire of judgment. Peter wants us to consider what sort of people we need to be to survive the holy fire. He wants to us to holy and godly, says verse 11, “without spot or blemish, says verse 14.

Out of what we find in the text, we can spin some theories and raise some questions about how God will bring an end to this world. One of the larger and more significant ones is whether Peter is talking about the complete obliteration and replacement of our world with a new one or whether he’s looking toward a fiery and cataclysmic process of refining and renovating our earth. From other Scripture, like the Revelation, I’m inclined to the latter view, but that’s not the big concern in the present text.

No, Peter’s aim is eminently practical and ethical. He is asking for believers in Christ to become people able to go through the fire of the world’s end and remaking. He wants us to be the sort of persons who will not be devastated when God’s fire lays open all that is done in this world, including our own secret deeds. May we not miss that call in other theological concerns. Let’s seek an integrity and transparency that need not fear any fire.

Part of our regular Sunday worship is the offering of a meditation by a member of the congregation on the Scriptures and theme of the service. I’m happy to post this week’s meditation by Jim Hukari on the First Sunday in Advent. Thank you, Jim, for sharing these good thoughts with us!

I hate waiting. To waste all that time at the intersection, waiting for the light to change. Waiting for the mail to arrive. Knowing that I have far fewer items to ring up than the lady in front of me, and I’m waiting. . . .  oh, how nice, now they’re chatting.  Waiting is the universal waste of time. And yet, we wait.

Waiting is not a value in our society.  I don’t know where I could have learned it. And, yet, waiting is essential to the spiritual life. 

Henri Nouwen described waiting as, “an awful desert between where you are and where you want to be.” 

But God can do great things in the desert:
          He formed a people in the desert;
          He tested His Son in the desert;
          He prepared an apostle in the desert.

God can work in a desert;  chaotic, loud, rushed cities – not so much.

During the season of Advent, we dwell on characters that were waiting:
          Zechariah and Elisabeth;
          Mary is waiting;
          Simeon and Anna were waiting.

And waiting reverberates throughout all Scripture – through the Psalms . . .  in the Gospels; all the way through to the command to wait patiently for His Son from heaven

Waiting implies patience.  Patience comes from the Latin verb patior  which means “to suffer.”  Waiting patiently is suffering through the present moment; and for suffering to be fruitful, one needs to embrace it, live in it, taste it to the full; its being in the present and allowing yourself to really experience it.

So, while I won’t be so presumptuous as to proscribe a spiritual discipline for you, but to be blessed, you must be become good at waiting.  If you haven’t already, why not use this Advent season to begin? 

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Netflix and a Roku box means that in idle moments I’ve watched a couple seasons of the original Monty Python show. One memorable sketch has a late-coming-home husband protesting to his wife that he didn’t expect a “Spanish Inquisition.” The joke is that at that moment there’s a pounding on the door and in pop three or four men in red clerical garb declaring that line, “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

As we arrive at the start of a new church year and the first Sunday in Advent, one wonders if it’s almost as humorous and true to say about us as American Christians, “No one expects the return of Christ!” Yes, we talk about it and sing about it, but what in our daily practice actually reflects a sincere conviction that our Savior may actually pop through a sky thrown open at any moment?

The Gospel lesson from Mark 13:24-37 gives us Jesus’ warning to be alert for His return and the end of this age. Our sermon text from I Corinthians 1:3-9 shows us Paul assuming that part of the purpose of the gifts of grace in Jesus is to enable us to persevere and remain strong “to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We don’t expect a Spanish Inquistion, but we do expect that at any moment we may need to give an account of ourselves before our Lord. What kind of life truly reflects that expectation?

May we be truly ready for the end our Lord will bring to this age through devotion, good works, and joyful worship that expresses a real conviction and expectation that Jesus will return.

It is often remarked that reading the New Testament epistles is like reading someone else’s mail. In a very fundamental way, that is not true, because the faith of the Church from the beginning was that these writings were for all Christians, not just the single congregations to which they were addresssed.

Nonetheless, this week’s text from Romans 16:1-16 conveys a heavy dose of the feeling that one is getting a peek into other people’s personal relationships. Paul names and greets a number of Christians in Rome. One question is how he knew so many people in a place which he had never visited. Yet some of them, like Prisca and Aquila, are clearly frequent travelers that Paul would have met elsewhere.

Another interesting question is why Paul felt it important to greet so many in Rome by name. Writing to other places like Corinth or Ephesus, places he had visited, he includes almost no personal greetings. There’s an almost inverse relationship. He greets by name writing to places he’s never been like Rome and Colassae, but hardly at all when writing those he met in person. N. T. Wright’s suggestion is that it’s the caution of any writer or speaker to people he knows well: if you mention one you have to mention everyone so as not to being playing favorites.

Not playing favorites may also be part of the motivation for exceptionally long list of names at the end of Romans. After Paul has talked about the need for acceptance and fellowship between the “strong” and the “weak” parties in Rome, he deliberately and even-handedly offers a hearty greeting to many people of both stripes.

Another fascinating aspect of this list of names is their grouping, sometimes clearly, sometimes deducible, by the “churches” or smaller assemblies in which they gathered for worship and fellowship there in Rome. A New Testament scholar friend tells me these groupings illustrate various social strata in Roman culture and demonstrate the diversity of the church from its inception. Jews, wealthy Romans, slaves, and freed slaves are all recognizable by the names they have. And women are named as prominent leaders, even an “apostle” among the early Christians.

And this personal touch of Paul’s also speaks how important is each member of the Body of Christ. Some of those named here we know nothing about other than their names. Yet they were witnesses and servants of the Lord and loved by God there in their own time and place. May we each remember how true that is of us and our fellow Christians today.

In “Mary Poppins,” Julie Andrews sang “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” Laying aside more recent concerns about the consumption of sugar, it’s not a bad rule of thumb. It certainly makes sense when applied to interpersonal communication.

You’ve been a little tough on someone, maybe your son or daughter, maybe someone who works for you, maybe a friend. So after you’ve spoken words of friendly advice, critique, discipline, whatever you might call it or was needed, you offer some softer, gentler words to help the “medicine” go down easier. That’s what Paul does in Romans 15:14 as begins the “personal” section of his letter to Rome.

Our text for this week, Romans 15:14-22, is meant to explain Paul’s attitude toward the Romans, to make it clear that he does not mean to step on their toes.

Verses 14 begins by explaining that Paul does in fact see much good and much knowledge in the Roman church. Paul at this point had never been to Rome. The people he is writing to had been evangelized by someone else. Tradition says it was the apostle Peter. So after all the instruction, both theological and practical, he has been offering them, he wants to make it clear that he does not believe they are either morally suspect or ignorant. No, he says, you are “full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.” He’s almost acknowledging that his instruction to them is unnecessary.

Then in verse 15 he softens things further by suggesting that though he’s written rather boldly on some fronts, particularly in regard to interpersonal relations between the “weak” and the “strong,” it’s all been by way of reminder. “I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know,” could be the paraphrase.

Paul’s purpose in talking in this gentler way is unfolded in the rest of the text. He wants them to know that he does not mean to horn in on the work of other ministers of Jesus Christ, not by Peter or by anyone else. In the next section he will repeat his desire to come to Rome, already expressed in chapter 1, verse 10. But he doesn’t mean to come in his usual role of evangelist. Someone else has done and is doing that work. No Paul wants to get to Rome in order to receive assistance on toward his next goal, which is to bring the Gospel to Spain.

So Paul outlines his previous ministry, trying not to boast of himself, he says, but only in Christ. He’s preached the Gospel all the way from Jerusalem to Illyricum, a great arc of evangelism reaching almost to the Adriatic Sea. Now he wants to push that arc to what was for him the western edge of the world, Spain.

In it all, Paul’s goal and God-given mission, as he says in verses 16 and 18, has been to win the Gentiles to Christ. In the process, he says in verse 20, he has deliberately avoided building “on someone else’s foundation.” He wants to reach people who have never heard the good news of Jesus. He wants to extend the building of the Church of Jesus Christ to new ground. So Rome is not a focus for his ministry, it’s a pit stop on the way.

Might we learn something from Paul’s desire for new ground? Where might God be directing us so that we can build something new for Him from the ground up? Perhaps it could be the building of something as small as a new space of devotion in the midst of a too busy life. Maybe it’s a call to some distant mission field. Overall might it not be a general attitude of being open and willing to receive whatever new moment, be it trial or blessing or ministry, to which our Lord calls us?

Where’s the new ground for me, for you? And who will be God’s appointed helpers for us to reach it, like Rome was for Paul?

I couldn’t get the song out of my head last night. As I studied this Sunday’s text, Romans 15:1-13, my eyes immediately lit on the end of verse 1 and beginning of verse 2, and then the chorus of Ricky Nelson’s 1972 hit “Garden Party” was playing in my mind:

“But it’s all right now, I’ve learned my lesson well.
You see, you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself.”

Nelson’s sentiment could not be further from the lesson of our text. In fact, our text could not be further from a sentiment like Nelson’s which is firmly lodged in popular psychology suggesting that it is mentally unhealthy to want to please others rather than oneself. The warning is that by focusing on the wants and needs of others, you will lose yourself and become desperately unhappy. Instead, we should seek self-approval and thus arrive at contented happiness.

This popular notion of self-contained happiness needs critique from serious psychologists, but it is clearly at odds with what Scripture says over and over. And (a theme in our text this week) it is at odds with the person of Jesus Christ Himself, who verse 3 says “did not please himself.” To say the least. The same verse goes on via a quotation from Psalm 69:9 to elaborate only one small aspect of Christ’s suffering on behalf of others, the insults which He endured.

The result of such concern for pleasing others, far from personal unhappiness, is harmony with each other (verse 5, literally “the same mind with each other”). That harmony results in unified worship of God.

In verses 7 to 13, Paul repeats the same injunction in different words, “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you,” and again affirms that “Christ has become a servant,” i.e., put other’s needs above His own.

The result, which Paul proves with several Old Testament quotations in verses 9-12 is the completion of God’s project which is at the heart of Romans, the bringing together of Jews and Gentiles in Christ.

And the final benediction in verse 13 suggests that the end result of seeking to please others, following the model of Jesus, is joy, peace and hope. So it may be true that you can’t please everyone (Nelson probably got that right), but the conclusion should not be that “you got to please yourself.” That only leads to a selfish, turned-in, blighted spirit and not to the joy, peace and hope which comes from giving up ourselves like Jesus gave up Himself.