Acknowledging our Adoption

Paul says in the fourth chapter of in his letter to the Galatians that Christ freed us from the law and revealed that we are all the adopted children of God.  The "law" referred to the Mosaic code; the lengthy regulations and rules that were required for proper Jewish belief and practice.

The meaning of Paul's statement about the law and adoption is best understood by understanding freedom from the law in the context of a statement that Paul makes in Galatians 3.13.  Here, Paul says that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us, and references a text in Deuteronomy: cursed is everyone that hangs from a tree.

In Jesus' day, Israel perceived the law as a mechanism to gain God's favor; to be adopted by God and considered God's people.  Paul says that the law itself was not a curse--the problem was not the Mosaic code but Israel's perception of it and why they followed it.  In fact, Paul perceived the early Christian community as having Jewish and Gentile Christians side by side; Gentile Christians having freedom not to practice the requirements of the law and Jewish Christians having freedom to continue to practice it.

Being hung from a tree rendered someone defiled under the Mosaic law.  By being crucified on a tree, Paul argues, God freed Israel from its perception that the law was needed in order to be God's children.  Israel could never again say that the law was required to be accepted by God, because God in Jesus Himself would thereby be considered unclean.

Israel had gotten things backwards.  God did not bring the Mosaic law to Israel to create hoops for Israel to jump through in order to be adopted as God's children.  Before the law came into being, God chose Israel has His covenant people.  The law was a mechanism for Israel to be reminded of its adoption and to live in accordance with its status as God's covenant people.

We often get things backwards in the Protestant tradition as well.  We think that in order to be adopted as God's children, we too have to jump through hoops.  Too often in the Protestant tradition there is an implied theological understanding that in order to become God's people, we are required to have an emotional experience where we suddenly believe a set of abstract principles about Jesus, and then profess our belief in this set of abstract principles.  At this point, we are then adopted as God's children.

The entire human race is already adopted as God's children.  When we accept Christ as Lord, we do not become God's children.  Instead, we come to understand, acknowledge, and profess that we were always God's children.  We then begin to learn to live our lives as if we believe that we are adopted as God's children.

The Necessity of Baptism by Fire

At the beginning of Mark's gospel, John the Baptist says that the one who will come after him, Jesus, will baptize with fire.

The word baptize in its Greek context means "to submerge." John is telling us that if we choose to live according to the example of Christ, we will be "submerged" in fire.

We typically associate fire today with destruction, but in Jesus' day, fire was primarily associated with healing, restoration, and purification.  In the era before modern medicine, fire was used to heal wounds.  Fire was used to purify materials.  Fire was commonly used in connection with religious rituals to signify renewal and restoration.

God's agenda is not to destroy us, because God has important work for us to accomplish.  God needs our hearts and minds to be purified and healed of all our impurities so that we can be the people that God needs us to be to accomplish God's purposes: the redemption and transformation of the world.  To accomplish God's purposes, God cannot take use us as we are: God must take us out of the world and purify us so that we can then be in the world to fulfill the Great Commission.

God's mechanism for transformation is the Church, the community that seeks to live according to the example of Christ.  The Church exists as the conduit through which disciples are made; where our impurities and imperfections are removed so that we can be empowered to go back into the world to transform the world.

The Church too often seeks to accommodate human culture and to give us the things that human culture tells us are important.  If the Church is being faithful to its purpose, it will transform us so that we can see that our preoccupation with the concerns of human culture; of materials possessions and success, is a manifestation of our impurity.  If we are baptized by fire, we will see ourselves in Pauline terms as in the world but not of the world because we will see the world for what it is as we will also see God's plan for what it needs to be.

The Immeasurable Riches of the Church

When writing his letter to the Church at Ephesus, Paul tells the community that they share in the immeasurable riches and glory of God, both in the present, and in the future.  The Ephesians, like other people in the Mediterranean world, had a very distinct idea of what "glory and riches" were: material possessions, important titles, the acquisition of land, etc.  The Ephesians knew that they did not have "glory and riches" now, so they would have been perplexed at Paul's statement.

Paul explains to the Ephesians that the "immeasurable riches and glory" of God are not like Rome multiplied by 1000, but instead, that through becoming holy and taking upon themselves the mind of Christ, the Ephesians would come to understand the meaning of "immeasurable riches and glory" differently than Rome.  They would understand that what Rome considered to be riches and glory didn't mean anything, and that it would all fall away.  The immeasurable riches and glory of God are intangible: simplicity, compassion, honesty, honor, frugality, etc.

As always, we look to Christ as our model.  God, in Christ, could have had the immeasurable riches and glory of Rome times 1000, but chose to live a simply life as an itinerant preacher.  If God is unchangeable and eternal, then it simply doesn't make any sense that God would literally have immeasurable riches and glory according to the world's understandings in the world to come if God did not have them when God was revealed here on earth.  Any images of God and of Jesus demonstrating immeasurable glory and riches in Rome's image must be understood as Paul intended: as ironic metaphor.

By living holy lives we find immeasurable riches and glory beyond anything that Rome could comprehend.  As the Church, we can experience this now, and in the world to come.

Holiness as One Big Party

We are at the end of the Season after Pentecost.  Christ the King Sunday comes next, followed by the start of another liturgical year with Advent on November 30.  It is fitting that we end this season of the year when we explore what it means to live under the Lordship of Christ with the parable of the wedding banquet

Jesus uses a metaphor of a wedding banquet to give us a vision about what it means to live eternally under the Lordship of Christ.  This parable is usually understood to refer only to the end times, but as is the case in most such texts that are generally given a narrow apocalyptic reading, they are meant to convey a broader message about what it means to live as God's people in this world, in the next, and in the final consummation of things.

The choice of a wedding banquet as metaphor is striking.  A wedding banquet, in the ancient near east, was an occasion of crazy boisterous fun.  It was an "Animal House" style party, togas and Louie Louie and all.  It was the opposite of a metaphor that would describe the contemporary church's understanding of sanctification and holiness.  We tend to think of holiness as denying what will truly make us joyful in order to avoid punishment in the future.  I think a visit to the dentist for a root canal would be an appropriate metaphor today, no offense to those in the dental profession.

But here is the twist: what the world thinks will bring us joy and crazy fun (i.e. Animal House), is the exact opposite of what actually does.  In fact, it does nothing more than give us a headache when we wake up in the morning.  The "wisdom" of the world is nothing but foolishness to God.  What truly brings us joy and fulfillment in this world is the exact opposite of what we think it does.  What brings us joy and fulfillment is true holiness.

The greatest news on this Sunday of the liturgical year when we read Matthew's account of Jesus giving us this remarkable metaphor of living under the Lordship of Christ is that it reveals that the God of all eternity, who created and sustains all things, wants our lives now and in the world to come to be filled with absolute crazy fun.  Crazy fun that never ends.

Moving from Justification to Sanctification

The Gospel of Matthew contains an image of God's judgment.  Those who are judged righteous, symbolized by sheep, are characterized as having engaged in acts of mercy; clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and visiting the prisoner.  Those who are deemed unrighteous, symbolized by goats, are deemed unrighteous because they have not done these things.

This text is typically interpreted in a moralistic manner and as a code of ethics (i.e. a list of things that disciples should do).  I think this type of reading misses the point of the story.  In the story, the righteous and the unrighteous are being judged without having had access to this story that tells them what to do and what not to do.  They have not been told this story and put on notice of what is expected of them because they are characters in the story.

This story is not giving us a code of ethics.  Rather, the acts that distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous are given as examples of the things that the righteous will naturally do, and the unrighteous will naturally not do.  In the ancient near east, sheep were considered to have a good nature, and goats were considered to have an evil nature.  Those with a good nature naturally do things consistent with their nature, and those with an evil nature naturally do things consistent with their nature.

In the Wesleyan tradition, the good news is that we believe in the principle of sanctifying grace: we see conversion as a gradual process that begins with the moment of justification; when we choose to acknowledge Jesus as our Lord and live a life imitating him.  Justification begins a lifelong process of trying to change our nature.  When our nature is changed, it will be our natural proclivity to engage in the type of acts that are described in this story: we don't have to be given an exhaustive list of things to do; we don't have to be told how often to do them.  We just do them naturally because it is our nature to do them.

God's Gift of Free Will

Matthew's gospel contains a parable where a landowner leases a vineyard to tenants.  This was a common practice in the ancient world.  The tenants would produce product for the owner, and the owner would periodically send agents to collect his profit.  The tenants would be given a small amount of the profit in return for their labor.

In the parable, the landowner's tenants kill the agent who is sent to collect the profits and keep the profits for themselves.  This was highly unusual, but not unheard of in the ancient world.  The landowner would obviously respond by replacing the tenants, and the tenants would obviously flee after their criminal actions.  If the tenants were caught, they would be put to death.

What is shocking about the parable is that the landowner continues to do business with the tenants, even though the tenants continue to murder the agents that are sent by the landowner.

God is the landowner and human beings are the tenants.  We have been given free will, and we have done terrible things to ourselves, each other, and to God's creation.  We often do the most damage while we think that we are acting in God's name.  Despite this, God continues to be in relationship with us. 

The message of the parable is for us to truly face ourselves and who we are.  The parable was directed to the religious authorities of Jesus' day.  Like the religious people of our own culture and of other cultures, it can be more difficult for us to see the damage that we do.  We have the capacity to be holy, but to be the people that God wants us to be, we must always acknowledge the damage that we continue to do as the tenant's of the landowner's vineyard.

Placing God in the Parable of the Day Laborers

The Gospel of Matthew contains a parable where the Kingdom of God is compared to a wealthy landowner who hires day laborers to work in his vineyard.  Some of the workers are hired first thing in the morning, some later in the day, and some late in the afternoon.  The landowner pays the same wage to all the workers, which upsets those who have been working all day.  The landowner points out that the daily wage was agreed upon at the end of the day, and that none of the day laborers have any reason to complain.

Sermons on this parable normally identify the landowner with God, and the workers with those who are disciples.  The typical reading of the parable is that disciples who spend their lives serving God will receive the same prize as those who do not make a profession of faith until late in life.

The parable can also be read as autobiographical, with God, in Jesus as one of the day laborers, particularly those who are chosen at the end of the day.  It is extremely likely that Jesus, his father Joseph, and Jesus' brothers would have spent their days as day laborers.  We typically understand that Jesus was a carpenter.  Scholarship suggests that the word normally translated as "carpenter" is better translated to a modern audience as "builder." Builders were those who spent days laboring on building projects for the wealthy.  It is also very likely that Jesus and his family did this work in the town of Sepphoris, a Hellenized city located within walking distance of Nazareth.

Jesus says that the meaning of the parable is that in the Kingdom of God, the last shall be first and the first shall be last.  God, in Jesus, became the servant of all people.  God was revealed as a day laborer who would not have been given a second look by the rich and sophisticated population of Sepphoris, to show the world that the Spirit of God resides in all people.  Living in the Kingdom of God means that we will see God in ourselves, and in all people.

What We Want and What We Need

What we want is almost always the opposite of what we need.  This is true when it comes to just about everything.  The foods that we want; that taste good and bring us comfort are not the foods that we need for our bodies to be healthy.  When we want a new television and we don't have the cash, we want to make the purchase immediately on a credit card rather than save up the money first.  At the workplace, when we have something that we don't want to do, we put it at the bottom of our to do list for the day.

This is also true when it comes to our discipleship.  What we want is an image of God whose primary concern is our comfort, happiness, and material wealth.  And we want a Church that reflects this; a community that helps us be comfortable, happy, and materially successful.  And we see the goal of the Church as facilitating our eternal happiness; telling us what to do to be comfortable and to avoid punishment in the afterlife.

Paul says that this is the opposite of authentic discipleship.  Discipleship; following after the example of Christ and reflecting Christ in our belief and practice, means that we live as the servant of all people and that we place others' needs above our own needs. 

This is reflected in Paul's letter to the Philippians, where Paul quotes an early Christian hymn that appears to have been a predominant profession of faith in the early Church.  The confession states that we are to seek the mind of Christ, who was formed in the image of God, but intentionally chose to live as the servant of all people.  God's only thought in Christ was the redemption of the world.  Our only thought should be service to others.  Just like everything else in life, what is best for our souls is the exact opposite of what we immediately want.

The Demands of Agape Love

Paul took conventional Jewish religiosity and stripped it down to what he considered its fundamentals.  Many of the earliest disciples were Jews who continued to practice the ancient traditions that are defined in the Hebrew Bible, such as dietary restrictions and purity laws.  Paul said that these things don't matter.  The sole requirement of the follower of Jesus is to love one another.

On the surface, this sounds trite.  This is only due to our culture's watered down trivialization of the term "love." In Paul's Greek language, there were several terms that fell within the meaning of the English word "love." These included philia, eros, and agape.  Philia is what we think of today as devotion and adherence to those who are like us.  Agape is the most challenging form of love, and it is the term that Paul uses when he says that we are called to love one another.

Agape can be considered love of the stranger, the alien, and even the enemy.  Agape means devotion and concern for those who are strangers to us.  Paul looked around him and saw hatred, anger, and violence, all stemming from humanity's unwillingness to practice agape love.

The basis for our ethos as followers of Jesus should always be concern and devotion for the stranger, because in doing so, we are emulating God, who sought our salvation when we were strangers to God and lost in sin.

Changing our Perception of Death

The ancient Middle East was terrified of death.  Death was often represented in the ancient Middle East through unstable waters, like floods.  Most Middle Eastern cultures had stories of great floods that resulted in death and destruction.  Middle Eastern cultures developed rituals to placate the gods and powers that they thought were responsible for death.  Mythologies arose that attempted to explain the nature and significance of what lay beyond this world.

Our culture is terrified of death too.  We respond in different ways than in the ancient world, but we remain terrified of death.  We try to deny the aging process with medical procedures.  We romanticize youth and health.

In the Christian tradition, through the resurrection of Christ, we know the truth about death that the world does not know.  We know that death is not a monster to be fought or to be feared, because it has no power over us.  Death, in the sense of being perceived as an end and termination of existence, is an illusion.  What we perceive as death is simply a transition from one form of existence to another.  We are eternal beings whose existence does not end.  It just changes.

The early Christian community saw this changed perception of death revealed in symbolic form in the story of Jesus calming the storm when the disciples were trapped in a boat.  As ancient people, there was nothing so terrifying as unstable water.  Jesus revealed to the disciples that God controls the waters, and symbolically, death.  We are God's people now living under God's dominion, and when we pass from this world, we will remain God's people living under God's dominion.  We don't have anything to fear.

God's Hidden Creative Power

One of the most fundamental characteristics of the parables is that they are set in a specifically non religious context.  Another characteristic is that the content of the parables seem ordinary and mundane (e.g. a sower sowing seed, a women in search of a lost coin, and a women baking bread). 

This weeks' gospel lesson contains a recitation of a number of very short parables.  Most of them consist of only one verse of text.  One of the parables describes the Kingdom of God as analogous to a women baking bread.  It is hard to imagine a context that is less obviously religious and more mundane.  Women in ancient Israel were, literally and figuratively invisible.  They were prohibited from appearing in public in most contexts and were excluded from virtually all positions of power and authority.  They literally had no voice.  The women baking the bread would have been hidden and unseen.

Despite the fact that no one would have actually seen the women baking the bread and would not have given her a second thought, the women is creating enough food to feed an entire village (i.e. three measures of flour).  Additionally, the very act of leavening is something that takes place through a hidden agent.  A small amount of leavening dough was added to the flour to make it rise and the leavening dough was literally hidden in the flour.  To the casual observer, the agent that created the bread that fed the village would have been invisible.

God is the creator of all things.  And God is hidden from our eyes.  God is the creative power behind all things, even the creative power behind the things that cannot say God's name, and the creative power behind the creative endeavors of human beings who either refuse to acknowledge God or who do not know God.  God slowly and imperceptibly brings life to the world.

Removing Our Self Imposed Yokes

A yoke was a wooden crosspiece that was placed around the necks of two animals and attached to the plow or cart that the animals were pulling.  Yokes were also used on human beings who were enslaved or imprisoned to prevent escape and for public humiliation.

Last week in the epistle lesson from Paul's letter to the Romans, Paul said that we have two choices: we can either be slaves to righteousness or slaves to sin.  There are, simply, no other choices, and any perception of true autonomy or freedom is an illusion.  This week in Matthew's gospel, Jesus echoes Paul's position in the letter to Romans by stating that God's yoke is easy and his burden is light. 

The idea of an "easy and light" yoke cuts against the very notion of having a yoke.  But consistent with Paul's understanding of our choice of being slaves to sin or righteousness, what is implicit in Jesus' statement is that we similarly have a choice to be bound by two yokes: the yokes that we self impose upon ourselves, or the yoke of holiness.

We impose enormous burdens upon ourselves, consciously and unconsciously.  And the foundation of the yoke that we place on ourselves is grounded in our mistaken understanding of what we are.  We are God's children, and are already beings of infinite worth and value.  Forgetting this central assertion of our faith, or not knowing it in the first place, leads to insecurity and the notion that we are fundamentally unworthy and need to achieve something or do something in order to be worthy.  Our perception in our unworthiness then leads us to fear, anger, and self loathing, which adds more weight to the yoke.  Before we know it, we are burdened with an enormous weight that prevents us from living a life of joy and peace.

Jesus says that the solution is to take upon ourselves the yoke of holiness and obedience to God.  The foundation of this yoke is the understanding that we are already the children of God and are persons of infinite worth.  This then leads us to live our lives consistent with this understanding, and to treat others as people of infinite worth, which spreads peace and joy throughout the world.

What the Trinity Reveals about Human Nature

Today is Trinity Sunday in the liturgical year, the day when the nature and significance of the Trinity is recognized and celebrated

The Trinity reveals much about human beings, and unfortunately, it doesn't paint a very positive picture.  The trinity is the Church's theological acknowledgement and affirmation that God is revealed as creator, redeemer, and sustainer, and that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of the same nature and substance.  That means that whatever Jesus did and said was reflective of the nature of God, because as the redeemer, Jesus and God are One.

If that is true, then let's review how God, in Jesus was perceived and treated by others.  The Romans thought he was a troublemaker and a political dissident.  We know this because he was crucified.  Crucifixion was a Roman form of execution that was reserved for one crime and one crime alone; political sedition.  Jesus would not have been crucified unless he was perceived as someone who was challenging the authority of the Roman state.

The Jewish religious establishment, closely tied with Rome, though that Jesus was irreligious and a blasphemer.  He associated with tax collectors and "sinners".  He did not follow all the Jewish religious rules and practices, such as healing on the Sabbath.  He did not acknowledge the supremacy of Jews over the Samaritans.  Jesus may have been crucified by the Romans, but there was a very close nexus between the Roman culture and its local representative, Pilate, and the Jewish High Priest and religious establishment.  The Romans and Jews both didn't think much of Jesus.

Jesus was rejected and cast out of his hometown, Nazareth.  We are told in Mark's Gospel that even his own brothers and sisters rejected him.  Jesus attracted large crowds due to his miracles and exorcisms, but the same was true of others in the ancient near east who performed similar acts.  There was actually an informally recognized vocation of "wonder workers" who traveled the countryside doing these things. The same crowds quickly turned against him in Jerusalem.

Let's think about what this means: God was uniquely revealed in Jesus.  God is perfectly good and without sin.  In God there is no darkness at all.  And yet God, in Jesus, was identified and treated as a political dissident and trouble maker, irreligious and a blasphemer, was cast out of his own hometown, and even rejected by his brothers and sisters.

I have no doubt that the way that God was treated in the ancient near east is no different than the way that God would have been treated if God was revealed in any time and place.  There is no greater manifestation of human sin than that.  And there is no greater indication about how much we need redemption and salvation.  The Trinity reveals much more than the nature of God.  It reveals the darkness within ourselves and our need for God's grace.

Celebrating the Ascension

Last Thursday was the Celebration of the Ascension in the liturgical year, which is the 40th day after Easter when the Ascension of Christ is acknowledged.

The Ascension used to be read in a way that localized Jesus and God above the earth.  The ancient and medieval Church believed that heaven was literally located in a dome above the earth, and that the story recorded in the gospels of Jesus being "taken up" meant that Jesus was returning to an actual physical location above the earth.

The significance of the Ascension is much deeper and significant than that.  What the story reveals is God's omnipresence and Christ's omnipresence--that the power of God as revealed in Christ cannot be limited to the earth, nor can it be limited in heaven.  Through modern technology, we have explored the skies, and there is no dome of heaven where the medieval Church thought it was.  Rather than seeing this as a challenge to our theology, we should recognize it as an affirmation of God's omnipotence and omnipresence.  God's presence cannot be limited or localized, and God remains revealed on earth as God was revealed on earth in Christ.

Our role as disciples is not to perceive the earth as a place where God is not present, with our goal being to escape to where God is fully present, but rather, to see that God is here with us now, and that we can, through God's power, make God's Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Being the Sheep of God's Pasture

One of the most well known visual depictions of Jesus is the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  Sermons on the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd typically associate the sheep (followers of Jesus) with ignorance and helplessness, who need the protection of the Shepherd.  This association of sheep with ignorance is consistent with the way that human beings are metaphorically linked to sheep in contemporary political discourse.

This characterization of followers of Jesus being ignorant and helpless fundamentally misconstrues what it means to be a follower of Jesus, as does understanding the purpose of discipleship as seeking protection from harm.

Jesus is, after all, the Lamb of God, whose sacrifice effected the reconciliation and redemption of the world.  Sheep in ancient Israel were used in religious ritual as instruments of reconciliation between believers and God, and between persons who were estranged.  Similarly, followers of Jesus are cultivated by Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, so that we can become God's instruments of reconciliation.  We are sent, through God's Spirit, out into the world to bring about reconciliation and to proclaim redemption.

Our Encounters with the Risen Christ

Luke's gospel contains a post resurrection story that is not found in any of the other three canonical gospels, which describes two disciples who encounter Jesus on the road.

What most sermons on this text focus on is the fact that the disciples do not recognize Jesus as they walk along the road with him.  It is only at the end of the story, when they invite Jesus to break bread with them, that they recognize him for an instant, after which he disappears.

What I find most remarkable about the story is not that the disciples do not recognize Jesus, but that Jesus does not announce Himself or tell the disciples who he is.  It is the disciples who are given the task of recognizing Jesus.

I think this story was remembered and past down in the early community and included in Luke's gospel because it is paradigmatic of the experience of the early Church.  The earliest Christians expected Jesus to return within their lifetime with great demonstrations of power and glory and inaugurate a new age.  The fact that this did not happen perplexed the early Church.  The early Church was also perplexed that they did not encounter Jesus in a way that was obvious and self evident.  Like the disciples in the story in Luke's gospel, the early Church learned that Christ did not appear to the community in a way that was easily recognizable.  Despite this, the Church also knew that the risen Christ was truly present with them. 

It is the task of the Church to be able to discern the presence of the risen Christ.  Christ is truly present in our lives, but does not announce His presence.  Instead, we must learn to see him.  This is a spiritual discipline that must be practiced and nurtured. 

The Reason Why Thomas Doubted

In one of the most well known post resurrection stories in the gospels, Jesus appears to the disciples when Thomas, one of the twelve, is absent.  Upon returning, Thomas doubts the disciples' claim that Jesus appeared to the disciples, leading to the phrase "doubting Thomas"

We typically assume that what Thomas doubted was the fact that someone could rise from the dead.  This is most likely an incorrect assumption.  In ancient times, most cultures believed that people could rise from the dead.  Thomas himself had witnessed Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

What Thomas doubted was how Jesus could have been raised after suffering death on the cross.  That is, if God truly was revealed in Jesus, it didn't seem to make sense why Jesus would not have revealed his power and glory at the cross, when all of Jerusalem could have witnessed it.  Instead, Jesus' resurrection was witnessed by very few while the crucifixion was a public event.

The fact that the power of God was revealed in the cross is a holy mystery.  The Church is called to live in this mystery and celebrate this mystery.  What appeared to the world to be powerlessness was actually the glory of the God of eternity, who lives only to serve and to die for our salvation and redemption.

What Holy Week Reveals About Human Nature

During the season of Lent, I have emphasized that in order to truly understand the wonder of God's redemptive work revealed in Jesus and the resurrection, we first have to understand and face ourselves, our nature, and our sin, both individual and collective.

Holy Week begins with Jesus' entry into Jerusalem and ends with the empty tomb and the resurrection.  From the beginning of Holy Week until the end, the nature of human culture is painfully evident.  The crowds that welcome Jesus at the beginning of the week are manipulated by the powers that be and turn against Jesus by the end of the week.  The encounter with the money changers reveals how the worship of God had become an instrument for greed and monetary gain.  Peter's denial of Jesus reveals our cowardice.  Judas' betrayal.  The crucifixion.  The list of acts and omissions during Holy Week that reveal our darkness and sin goes on and on.

We must understand who we truly are in order to understand who God truly is.  God's grace, mercy, and forgiveness has no limits.  We know this because despite what human nature is, revealed before Holy Week, evident during Holy Week, and revealed in every generation, God is preoccupied with nothing but our redemption and salvation.

The Task of the Church

The task of the Church is the redemption of the world and the salvation of the lost.  The more lost an individual is, the more attention the Church should give to that individual.  And the greatest sin of the Church is the exclusion of those who we deem to be unholy, because it prevents the Church from fulfilling its mission of the redemption of the lost. 

Today many Christian voices speak primarily about exclusion and judgment of those who they deem to be lost in sin.  The only message to those who are deemed to be lost is to confirm that they are lost and fallen.  Part of the task of the Church is to define holiness and right behavior.  But rather than condemning those who are deemed to be lost, the Church should be about the business of seeking the redemption and salvation of the lost by emphasizing that redemption and salvation is available in Jesus.

Think of the Church like a hospital.  The greatest attention in a hospital is given to those who require the most medical assistance.  The medical professionals with the highest level of skill are assigned to the care of the patients who need it most.  By analogy, the Church has become a place that excludes those who need the Church most by simply telling them that they are lost and fallen without balancing that message with the real message of the gospels, which is the message of redemption and salvation.

The Nature of God's Community

God had a plan from the beginning for the redemption and transformation of the world.  The plan is ekklesia.  Ekklesia typically is translated as "Church", but has a much broader and deeper meaning than the way the word "Church" is used in common parlance today (i.e. participation in collective worship).  The word "ekklesia" implies being "drawn out" and "set apart".  God's plan for redemption was first evident in his relationship with Abraham, who was set apart to form a covenant with God and initiate a new community, Israel.  God's plan for redemption was evident in Jesus, who called his followers to be "drawn out" from the world to be holy and set apart.

God's plan of ekklesia is made necessary because the world is fallen and lost in sin.  Ekklesia exists to be in the world to be an alternative to the world's fallenness, for the transformation and redemption of the world.  God's hope is that the ekklesia would reveal God's plan for the world, drawing the world into Ekklesia, making the world the place that God wants it to be.

What underlies God's plan is God's love for the world.  This is why God entered into covenant with Abraham.  This is why God was revealed in Jesus.  God seeks the redemption and restoration of the world because God loves the world.  Ekklesia is called to be in the world to reveal God's love for the world and to show the world what it can be.

What Should Energize and Not Energize the Church

The Sermon on the Mount plays a central role in Matthew's gospel.  Matthew conceptualizes Jesus as the new Moses who has brought into being a new covenant community, the Church, in place of the old covenant between God and Israel.  The Sermon on the Mount mirrors God's revelation to Moses of the law and Moses' communication of the law to Israel.  In the same way that the law delivered by Moses to Israel defined God's covenant relationship with Israel, the Sermon on the Mount defines the new law that governs the Church, dictating how the Church should handle its business internally and externally in its dealings with the world.

The content of the Sermon on Mount has been challenging for Christian communities.  The ethical commands seem extreme and seem to cut directly against society's notions of common sense.  This is particularly true of Jesus' commands with regard to our adversaries.  Jesus says that rather than doing what seems logical and natural to us (i.e. to love our neighbor and hate our enemy), we are called to love our enemies.

 As a way of understanding Jesus' command to love our enemy, Jesus tells us at the end of the section of the Sermon on the Mount where this command is found that the Church is called to be perfect like our Father in Heaven is perfect.  We are called to love our enemies because that is what God does.  When the world was in darkness and we were enemies to God, God died for us.  God, in Jesus, even forgave the Romans who put him up on the cross and in his dying moments, petitioned for their deliverance.

What energizes God is reconciliation, service, and love for everyone, including those who are enemies to God.  We are called to do the same.  Too often the Church mirrors society in the sense of being excited and energized by hating our enemies.  If we are to be God's people, we must never be energized by hatred.  Hatred should exhaust us and make us miserable.  We should be energized and excited by what makes God energized and excited.

The Revelation of a Mystery

Our culture does not like mystery.  We want to have everything figured out, analyzed, and quantified.  If something can't be figured out, analyzed, and quantified, then it must not be real. 

This works well when it comes to airplanes, vacuum cleaners, and global temperatures, but not when it comes to God.  We will never be able to figure out, analyze, and quantify God in the same way that we can categorize the natural world.  God is, and always will be, mysterious to us.  The tragic mistake that is made both in and out of the Church is that if God cannot be figured out with the same methodology that we use to figure out the natural world, that God must not be real.  Those who do not believe in God state as their justification that they cannot see or perceive God in the way that we see or perceive natural objects.  Some Christian voices try to prove God's existence by literal interpretation of biblical stories and then attempt to align those stories with the findings of paleontologists, geologists, and biologists.

Paul said that in Christ, God revealed a holy mystery that was hidden from the foundation of the world.  Notice that Paul did not say that Christ took away the mysterious nature of God or made God comprehensible.  Rather, Christ revealed the nature of God as mysterious to us.  As the Church, this is where we theologically live and stay.  We know that God has been revealed in Jesus, that God has redeemed us in Jesus, and that the world remains lost in darkness despite the light of God that lives inside the hearts of every person in this world.  This is a holy mystery.

The True Business of the Church

Religious institutions spend a lot of time arguing and quarreling internally and externally.  We argue among the people in our own religion about what belief and practice is right and wrong, true and false.  We argue with other religions and perspectives, trying to convince others that we are right and they are wrong.  We spend so much time doing this that this very process of arguing and quarreling has become identified with the task of religion itself.

Christians have quarreled and argued with each other since the very beginning.  Paul addresses this problem in his first epistle to the Corinthians.  Paul says that quarreling and arguing over belief and practice impedes the Church's true business and agenda, which is to seek after the mind and purpose of Christ, and to live according to the example of Christ.

There were quarrels and arguments in Jesus' own culture.  Jesus did not enter into these quarrels and take sides.  Jesus instead simply proclaimed to everyone that the Kingdom of God had come near to them and that God sought their redemption and reconciliation.  If we are to live our lives after the example of Christ, we will spend our time spreading God's light.  This is what will make the world into the place that God wants it to be.

Missing the Point about Baptism

This Sunday is Baptism of the Lord Sunday in the liturgical year.  It naturally leads to reflection about the nature and significance of baptism.  In the Christian tradition, discussion about baptism is normally framed in terms of understanding who can be baptized and how they can be baptized.  That is, there is significant disagreement about whether baptism requires immersion or can be accomplished by sprinkling or pouring.  There is also disagreement about whether infant baptism should be practiced, which is the practice of my own Wesleyan tradition as well as many other traditions (e.g. Roman Catholicism, most orthodox traditions, Anglican traditions), or restricted to adult believers

I realized this last week as I thought about baptism that these very questions miss the real point about the nature of baptism.  Baptism should be all about celebration.  It celebrates the fact that God seeks to enter into relationship with us and seeks our redemption and transformation, and that this good work began in us before we had the opportunity to respond.  Baptism is not something that should be practiced out of obligation.  By analogy, when the weather begins to get warm, people will start to gather at Centennial Park in Nashville with their blankets and picnic baskets to enjoy the sun and the warm weather.  They are not told or instructed that this is required to be a citizen of Davidson County, Tennessee.  It is not an obligation or regulation that is being followed out of necessity or obligation.  It is something that happens naturally out of our celebration of the renewal of life.

Baptism should be the same.  Jesus was baptized in the Jordan to celebrate that God had entered into the world to bring reconciliation and redemption.