March 30 2018 (Good Friday) sermon - The Greatest Love Story Ever Written

After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus replied, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they stepped back and fell to the ground. Again he asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go.” This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, “I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me.” Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave’s name was Malchus. Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” So the soldiers, their officer, and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound him. First they took him to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it was better to have one person die for the people. Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, but Peter was standing outside at the gate. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out, spoke to the woman who guarded the gate, and brought Peter in. The woman said to Peter, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.” Now the slaves and the police had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing around it and warming themselves. Peter also was standing with them and warming himself. Then the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. Jesus answered, “I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.” When he had said this, one of the police standing nearby struck Jesus on the face, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?” Jesus answered, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?” Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest. Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They asked him, “You are not also one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” Again Peter denied it, and at that moment the cock crowed. Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate went out to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” They answered, “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law.” The Jews replied, “We are not permitted to put anyone to death.” (This was to fulfill what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die.) Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, “I find no case against him. But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” They shouted in reply, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a bandit.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and striking him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to them, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!” When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.” Now when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever. He entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate therefore said to him, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.” When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge’s bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it.” This was to fulfill what the scripture says, “They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.” And that is what the soldiers did. Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, “None of his bones shall be broken.” And again another passage of scripture says, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced.” After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

(John 18:1-19:42)

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     One thing that I’ve noticed over the years is that Protestants seem to have a lot of trouble with Good Friday. I suppose that’s understandable. The cross is a hideous thing, really, and the crucifixion is a gruesome story. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, we prefer empty crosses in our sanctuaries rather than crucifixes and the resurrection – while perhaps harder to believe – is a lot more palatable than Jesus’ death. I understand all that. But a resurrection without a crucifixion seems illogical, and one can’t really speak of new life unless one is prepared to acknowledge that the old life has to come to an end. So Good Friday may not be the most popular of worship services, and it may be sombre, but it is necessary. And since Protestants do seem to have more trouble than Roman Catholics with the very idea of Good Friday, I thought I’d turn to a Roman Catholic source today to try to give some perspective to this strange day on which we worship.

     Father Jim Schmitmeyer is a priest and author who served the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati. In one of his books called “Preacher In A Hard Hat,” he described the last days of his grandmother, who had suffered for years from Alzhemier’s. He wrote that “everything had grown completely strange to her and nothing was familiar. She no longer recognized anyone, didn't know where she was, and only spoke a few phrases in German, the language of her youth.” He went on to describe the phone call that everyone dreads – the call from the nursing home saying that the family should come because there wasn’t much time left. Before they headed out the door to travel to the nursing home to say good-bye, Schmitmeyer’s aunt (the dying woman’s daughter) thought to bring something sacred: she picked up a small wooded crucifix that had hung for years on her mother’s bedroom wall. Schmitmeyer then described what happened next: “In a world where my grandmother knew nothing else, she recognized the crucifix! She reached for the cross and she held it close to her until she died later that evening.” He went on to say that “I am convinced that, on some deep level, in that part of us that we call the soul, we recognize the power of Christ’s cross because we retain a memory of human love. … Love remains.”

     On Good Friday we’ve not gathered to celebrate the death of Jesus – we’ve gathered to embrace the cross just as Jim Schmitmeyer’s grandmother did in the last hours of her life, and we do that because – as squeamish as it may make us feel and as uncomfortable as it may be for us to admit – fundamentally we are people of the cross; we are people who recognize the cross as the greatest sign of the greatest sacrifice and of the greatest love that the world has ever seen. As Charles Wesley wrote in a wonderful hymn, “Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”

     As Protestants, we want to focus on the resurrection. I get that. We prefer our cross empty. I get that, and I rejoice in the empty cross as well. We sanitize Holy Communion, so that many prefer to speak of “the Cup of new beginnings” rather than “the blood of Christ,” and “Bread for the journey” rather than “the body of Christ.” I get that. I understand it, and I think those are fine and meaningful images. But – at least on one day of the year – we’re invited to consider perhaps the hardest thing about our faith: that we proclaim a Messiah who not only died, but who was savagely and brutally tortured because of his insistence on proclaiming a message of inclusion, a message of hope, a message that all were equal and welcome before God, a message of deep and abiding love – and to reflect upon our own society which (although we may not engage in torture) still contains many people who at least ridicule those who dare to stand for such principles. An absolutely literal translation of John 15:13 says “Greater than this love no one has: that anyone lays down his soul for his friends.” Not just “his life” - which is the way the verse is usually translated – but his very soul; that part of a person that connects them most intimately and most personally to God. That is what Jesus gave for all whom he would call his friends, including us: not just his body, but his soul.

     In a Spanish language gospel song called “Look At Him,” the Mexican songwriter Ruben Sotelo describes Jesus at the cross. He asks those who listen to imagine that they are there and rather than singing along or swaying or clapping, to just look quietly as Jesus dies; to simply be quiet, because there’s literally nothing to say when confronted by the love of the crucified Jesus. That’s why the Passion story Karen and I read truly is the greatest love story ever written.

March 25 2018 sermon - The Beginning Of The End Or The End Of The Beginning?

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

(Mark 11:1-11)

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     In 1942, British forces defeated the Germans at the Battle of El Alamein. It was the first land victory by Allied forces over the Germans in World War II. It was widely considered a significant turning point in the war. A few days later, in a speech in London, Winston Churchill uttered these famous words in speaking of the battle: “This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But this may be the end of the beginning.” I often think of that quote by Churchill at this time of year. Palm Sunday has a bit of that same feel to it. The life and ministry of Jesus changes on Palm Sunday. Aside from the Sermon on the Mount, most of the major events in Jesus’ life take place in the few days between his entry into Jerusalem and his crucifixion. The Gospel takes on a frantic quality as it depicts the last week of Jesus’ life. I suppose that could mark Palm Sunday as either a beginning or an ending. But either way, beginnings and endings are the most important parts of any journey. There’s the excitement of the beginning, as we set off, and there’s the satisfaction of the ending, as we arrive at our chosen destination. In between? Well, that can sometimes be kind of a drag. Lent can feel a bit like that, and Palm Sunday tells us that our journey through Lent is nearing its end; approaching its destination. Today, we find Jesus entering Jerusalem – the destination he had set for himself, even knowing the risks he would face in that city. If it’s not itself the end, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem must have seemed to many to be at least the beginning of the end. We know how those next few days after he arrives in Jerusalem will work out for Jesus, and by Friday we’ll be gathering together for a Good Friday service to commemorate Jesus’ death. It certainly sounds as though this entry into Jerusalem represents the beginning of the end, doesn’t it? As tension mounted, and as the threats grew, it must not have seemed like any sort of beginning – not one that people would be excited about, anyway.

     We probably think of endings and beginnings as mutually exclusive, or at least as polar opposites, when in fact they’re complementary terms. The ending of one thing often means the beginning of another. “Bring Up The Bodies” is the second in a trilogy of historical novels by Hilary Mantel that charts the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, one of the leading advisors to King Henry VIII. In that novel Mantel writes that “There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings.” No ending is truly an ending, in other words. Every ending is really only an invitation to a new beginning. So endings and beginnings aren’t necessarily as simple as they might seem at first glance. Sometimes they overlap; sometimes they’re the same thing. In God’s plan even those things that seem to be so final sometimes only lead to something new and different. We know that Jesus died on a cross, for example, and yet we know that he lived on and that he lives on still. It seems that with Jesus, beginnings and endings have very little relevance. If the beginning and end of a journey are characterized as I suggested a few moments ago by excitement at the beginning and satisfaction at the end, we can also see those things in Jesus’ ministry. At the beginning, there was great excitement as men such as John and Andrew and Peter surrendered everything in their lives to follow him, and at the end, Jesus’ last words on the cross would seem to have been a cry of satisfaction: “It is finished!” Jesus had accomplished what he had set out to accomplish.

     Holy Week, beginning today with Palm Sunday, challenges us to think about beginnings and endings. It challenges us to reflect on whether we think of Palm Sunday as the beginning of the end or as the end of the beginning – because that makes a difference. If today is the beginning of the end, then it’s a sombre day that leads us into a sombre week as the shadow of an unpleasant and yet inevitable destiny begins to cast itself over us. If today is the end of the beginning, though, then today is a day of celebration that leads us into a week that certainly contains some sombreness – because the cross beckons us – but that also reminds us that this is, indeed, only the beginning. All will be well; all will go on; all will move forward; God will be with us; light will still shine; hope will still exist; life will be victorious. But, still, there is that shadow.

     Reading the account of the joy and sheer excitement of the crowds as Jesus entered Jerusalem, who would have thought that such a shadow lay ahead? And yet, amid shouts of joy there were warnings as well. The people greeted Jesus as their king, but they didn’t understand the nature of his kingdom. He entered Jerusalem on a donkey, the lowliest of beasts which would be an appropriate vehicle for only the lowliest of people. The people overlooked this, and they

spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

     There are some words in there that are worthy of some sobre second thought. “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” This was what the people were expecting of Jesus: liberation from the Roman Empire, and the restoration of David’s old kingdom of Israel. But Jesus had no time for that, nor was it his mission. In these last few days, He would Himself make clear, for example, that paying taxes to the Roman Emperor was expected. This was not a man to lead a revolution, in other words; at least, not the kind of revolution the people of Jerusalem were expecting. In only a matter of days, there would be at least three groups deciding that an end should be put to this Jesus: the Romans, who saw it as a threat that the people proclaimed him a king; the religious authorities who feared his popularity and accused Him of blasphemy; and these same people who had just hailed him as their king, who, apparently disappointed by his lack of revolutionary zeal, would be among those who appeared at his trial, demanding his crucifixion. And all three groups would have their way. An end would be put to this Jesus. He would be “crucified, dead and buried” in the words of The Apostles’ Creed. And then, this marginal Jewish preacher – who led no armies, who owned no home and whose own disciples would be scattered and frightened – could be forgotten. To a casual observer who had been present in Jerusalem during these dramatic days, Jesus’ entry would certainly have seemed to be the beginning of the end. And yet, in the words of Natalie Sleeth, who wrote what is today one of the most popular hymns in the United Church of Canada - “In The Bulb There Is A Flower” - “in our end is our beginning.” And so, I find myself ruminating once again on the words of Winston Churchill: “This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But this may be the end of the beginning.”

     It has always intrigued me that the entertainment industry often forgets about the resurrection when it portrays the last days of Jesus’ life. Two of the better known stage plays that deal with these last days (“Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Godspell”) both end with a dead Jesus. It seems that both Andrew Lloyd Webber and John Michael Tebelak – who wrote the respective scripts – would have seen Palm Sunday as the beginning of the end for Jesus. And if Palm Sunday is the beginning of the end, then it’s really a rather hopeless day on the church calendar. On CBC News this morning, I heard a reference to Palm Sunday as the start of “Holy Week celebrations.” I had a gut reaction against that. “Celebrations?” Holy Week? Knowing where we’re heading in the next few days, the word seemed misplaced. And yet, gathered together here on Palm Sunday, basking in the glow of the shouts of joy with which the people greeted Jesus, but also mindful of the cross now just beyond the horizon, perhaps we need to ask ourselves again: is this the beginning of the end or is it merely the end of the beginning? While the cross may be starting to overshadow us – is there something even more exciting than Palm Sunday already on the horizon? Is there another new beginning already beckoning to Jesus as he enters Jerusalem – another new beginning beckoning to us? Is Palm Sunday just the end of the beginning? And if it is merely the end of the beginning? Well, then, the possibilities are endless. And, of course, because there is no spoiler to the gospel after two thousand years, we can easily stand here just a few days before Good Friday, beginning to shift our attention to the cross, and yet still remember that the crucifixion was not in any sense the end, which means that the entry into Jerusalem can’t in any sense be seen as the beginning of the end. Maybe those of us gathered here can learn from the hundreds of thousands of teenagers and children who gathered yesterday in Washington for a rally against gun control – and the many, many thousands who joined them in cities across the world. They took a horrible event and turned it not into a celebration, but into a movement for change. Maybe that’s what we’re called to do with Holy Week. Not so much celebrate it as use it to recommit ourselves to bringing about God’s reign of justice and peace. Looked at that way, Palm Sunday is not the beginning of the end. Far from it, in fact. Palm Sunday is merely the end of the beginning, because even two thousand years later, the ministry of Jesus and the work of the church has only begun!

March 11, 2018 sermon - A Snake On A Pole

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

(Numbers 21:4-9)

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     “An FBI agent takes on a plane full of deadly and venomous snakes, deliberately released to kill a witness being flown from Honolulu to Los Angeles to testify against a mob boss.” If that sounds familiar to some of you, it’s because it’s the plot of a 2006 movie that starred Samuel L. Jackson and was called “Snakes On A Plane.” It sounded a bit silly, and I was able to resist the temptation to watch it for several years, but about five years ago I finally succumbed. I shouldn’t have. It was indeed a silly, silly movie. It wasn’t a bad movie. It was just a silly movie. Even a dull movie after a while, once you got used to the basic concept – THAT THERE ARE VENOMOUS SNAKES LOOSE ON A PLANE BITING PEOPLE! And sometimes they bit them in – shall we say – sensitive places. ‘Nuff said. The appeal of the movie – or, at least, the hook that was supposed to bring people in (with apologies to Samuel L. Jackson) – was the snakes. People have a strange fascination with snakes. We don’t necessarily like them – but we’re fascinated by them. From the story of the talking serpent in the Garden of Eden, to Cleopatra’s suicide by asp, to strange snake handling churches in the backwoods of West Virginia to any number of movies that have featured snakes – they fascinate us. They creep a lot of us out. Last year, when we had our “Blessing of the Animals” service, I set a rule – I would take care of all the puppies, kittens and bunnies and Karen could have the spiders, lizards and snakes. That seemed fair! We’re going to be doing that service again this year – same rules! Actually, I’m not really afraid of snakes, but I’m not especially fond of them either. They are kind of creepy – and we do like to feature them in creepy stories.

     This weird passage from Numbers popped up this week in the lectionary. It was irresistible. How often does a Christian preacher get to preach from the Book of Numbers, after all? And it fits in quite well with our general attitude to snakes. One commentator that I read a few days ago actually said that this little six verse passage is one of the creepiest passages you’ll find anywhere in the Bible, and suggested that it seemed on the surface at least to be more appropriate to share on the Sunday before Halloween rather than midway through Lent. But here it is – midway through Lent.

     In all honesty – the opportunity to use Numbers aside – the natural temptation for any preacher (and for most Christians) I think, is to look at this passage, shake our heads and pass it by. I mean, on the surface it defies both good theology and good science. From the point of view of theology – why would God send poisonous snakes against his own people? Where’s the love? And from a scientific point of view – how can looking at a bronze statue of a snake on a pole heal anybody? Where’s the anti-venom? Move on – seriously. But the thing that really intrigues me about this passage is that the authors of the New Testament – at least one of them – didn’t move on. This story makes an appearance in the Gospel of John, in one of the most beloved passages of the Bible. John 3:16 tells us that “...God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Heartwarming, indeed! But I’ll bet that most people don’t know what comes right before John 3:16. So here’s John 3:14-15: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” There’s the story. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness ...” And it’s connected to one of the most beloved verses in the Gospels. More about that later. For now, back to … “A Snake On A Pole.”

     Last week, Jesus overturned some tables and whipped a few people. I pointed out how important it was for us to connect every now and then with that uncomfortable image of Jesus if we were really going to be able to understand Jesus. Today’s passage took place long before the birth of Jesus. But the discomfort is the same. Traveling with God as the Hebrews were doing was not a comfortable experience. God caused terror. God’s power terrorized the Egyptians and the Hebrews alike. The relationship of the ancient Hebrews to God was a cautious one at best. God could do great things no doubt, but still the Hebrews wandered and faced danger and sometimes seemed to be getting nowhere. They complained incessantly almost from the moment that they left Egypt. As they did often they complained that God and Moses had brought them into the wilderness to die, and then they made a really strange statement: “there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” That’s like saying “the food we don’t have is really bad.” The point is that the people had food. God had provided for them. They just didn’t like what God had provided for them. And so – on came the poisonous snakes.

     Were the poisonous snakes a punishment from God? I have my doubts – and it really depends on how you read the passage. But however you choose to think about the snakes, the one point that the story makes very clearly is that there are always consequences to living life in a way that shows no appreciation and no thankfulness for what we have. To never be satisfied; to always be demanding more – this is not the life we were called to. God’s people are called to a life of gratitude and contentment. Contentment – which Paul speaks about in his letters – is important. To be content by its very nature implies that you may not get everything you want, but that you can accept with gratitude what you have. And when we aren’t content, our lives aren’t much fun. In the wilderness the people of God weren’t content. They didn’t like what God had given them. And just maybe the snakes were of their own making – by their lack of contentment and by their constant complaining about what they didn’t have rather than their focus on what they did have – we don’t have any food and our food is lousy anyway – they were filling themselves with venom; they were sapping the contentment out of their lives – and to not be content is really not to trust in God. Finally, God intervened. “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live,” God said to Moses. Not all the problems were solved. The people apparently were still being bitten by snakes; still full of venom – but as Elizabeth Webb said, “God [didn’t] remove the snakes, but [provided] a means for healing in the midst of danger. God brings healing precisely where the sting is the worst.” It was the very presence of the snakes and the bites (however you want to interpret the story) that made God’s presence and power obvious. I believe it was Oswald Chambers who wrote that adversity doesn’t come in spite of faith; adversity is a sign of faith. And so we fast forward a few centuries.

     God’s people were again facing adversity – because adversity is a sign of faith. There were no snakes, but there were oppressive Romans and arrogant religious leaders and sin and darkness was becoming ever more apparent. And now, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” It seems strange to be comparing Jesus to a snake – but in this context it is Jesus himself who does it – not me! And his point was clear. The people were reminded of an earlier time, when things seemed hopeless and their ancestors felt abandoned – but when God found a way to heal them and once again push them forward. And while at the time they may not have understood exactly what was meant by the Son of Man being lifted up – they would certainly have understood that somehow the Son of Man would heal them and push them forward against whatever odds they faced.

     A snake on a pole may seem like a poor substitute for the Son of Man on a cross, but the one pointed directly to the other. Both remind us that God acts in mysterious and unexpected ways that we can’t control. With God, a poisonous snake on a pole can become a sign of healing, and with God a dead man on a cross can become a sign of new and abundant life.

March 4 2018 sermon: The Right Kind Of Anger

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

(John 2:13-22)

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     The Jesus we met in this morning’s reading from John’s Gospel is not the Jesus that we’ve come to know and love! A Jesus who overturns tables and drives people and animals out of the temple with a whip is not a particularly comfortable image, and we have a tendency to want to focus only on those aspects of Jesus that do make us comfortable. The problem with that strategy is that it’s the uncomfortable parts of the story of Jesus that may in fact be the most important, and so we ignore them or explain them away at our own peril. The truth is that we should embrace these uncomfortable images of Jesus – or, if not embrace them, at least learn from them – because what we see in passages such as this is that Jesus came to jar us out of our comfortable assumptions and bring us face to face with the reality of the sometimes uncomfortable relationship between faith and the world around us. Sometimes we need to see this other side of Jesus to be reminded of that, and this morning we saw that other side of Jesus! The question is: now that we’ve seen this other side of Jesus, what do we do with this other side of Jesus? This is the Jesus people would rather not think about, but this Jesus may actually be a lot closer to the real Jesus than the fantasy Jesus we store in our minds who spends his time cuddling little children and carrying baby sheep around when they’re tired. The Jesus we read about this morning wasn’t that nice – and it’s this Jesus who forces us into reality and who forces us to confront what our faith is really all about: not a feel-good message, but a call to action, and sometimes even a call to anger.

     That might seem to be a contradiction. Jesus didn’t believe in anger, after all. In the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said to the crowds “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment ...” It seems that anger brings down God’s judgment upon us, but Jesus was pretty angry in John 2. You don’t throw tables around and whip people when you’re in a good mood. So, how do we make sense of this? I want to suggest to you this morning that there are two types of anger.

     The first (and the most common) type of anger is the type that Jesus condemned in the Sermon on the Mount. This is an anger that comes from raw emotion – it’s an out of control anger and it’s usually a selfish anger because it erupts from within us when something is done that hurts us, and this kind of anger can easily and quickly consume us. If you ever encounter a person who’s been consumed by this kind of anger you’ll know that it can be an unpleasant experience – they’re often embittered people who seem to hate everything and everyone. That type of out of control, uncontrollable, all-consuming anger can easily take control not just of our thoughts but of our actions as well. It’s not only selfish, it’s potentially dangerous as well, and that’s why Jesus equates it with murder in the Sermon on the Mount. Murder stems from that sort of raw, uncontrollable, out of control anger.

     But there is a second kind of anger, and it’s the kind that Jesus displayed in this morning’s reading. I’ll call this type of anger “righteous anger.” Righteous anger is a legitimate sense of anguish and even outrage against actions, events, behaviours and even thoughts that dishonour God, but it isn’t an out of control anger, nor is it thoughtless, and it does not take possession of us. Throwing tables around and whipping people might seem out of control, but in fact Jesus was acting very thoughtfully in this incident. In fact, v.16 tells us that Jesus was very much focused on his Father while he acted. He wasn’t thinking about himself – instead, Jesus was reacting against what he considered to be an outrage against God and against God’s people. If righteous anger had a legitimate place in the life of Jesus then it must have a legitimate place in the lives of his disciples as well. The challenge for the followers of Jesus is to figure out where that place is. To delve into that question, we need a little bit more context for the incident.

     If you just take a quick glance at the passage without going deeper, you might get the impression that Jesus was upset because there was selling going on in the Temple area, but in fact that was not the problem, so don’t worry - I’m not going to demand that we cancel the Spring Fling here at PVUC, and I’m not going to come to it armed with a whip! What made Jesus angry was not that there was selling taking place – it was that there was dishonesty taking place. You can really only understand this incident if you look at all four Gospels, because this is one of the few incidents in the life of Jesus that was recorded by all four. John said that Jesus was outraged by the fact that the temple had become “a marketplace,” but Matthew, Mark and Luke say that Jesus’ outrage was directed at the fact that the temple had become a “den of thieves.” There was dishonesty going on here. There was price-gouging. This was like Loblaws selling bread at the temple! Think about the situation. This incident took place right before the Passover, and Jerusalem was full of pilgrims. When they arrived, the people had to find animals for sacrifices and they would have to exchange their money for the local currency to buy the animals. This was always happening. Animals had to be bought and sold and money had to be exchanged near the temple, because people were always coming to Jerusalem to make their sacrifices. But Passover was special – the holiest time of the Jewish year. The city was full of visitors and with so many people needing to buy animals the merchants raised their prices and the money changers raised their rate of exchange. It was like a long weekend at the gas station! People were being cheated, and because the sacrifices were required by the Law of Moses, that same Law was therefore being used as an excuse for the dishonesty, which meant that God was being implicated in the dishonesty! That’s why Jesus was outraged! That’s why Jesus was angry! It was a righteous anger focused on the fact that God was being dishonoured and that God’s people were being taken unfair advantage of. Our tendency today is to try to keep our anger under control – which is why this passage presents such an uncomfortable image of Jesus to us – but that’s not always appropriate. Righteous anger – anger that moves us to act against injustice – sometimes needs to be let loose. Jennifer Twardowski – a psychotherapist in California – wrote in the Huffington Post a couple of years ago that “It is acknowledging our anger that helps us to see what it is that our soul is calling us to do so that we can take proper action and move forward.” I would say that it’s God who works through righteous anger to call us to action rather than “our soul” - but I get Twardowski’s point, and I think she’s right. We need to act on it rather than suppressing it when righteous anger bubbles up. How do we act on it? Well, I’m going to offer five guiding principles for distinguishing between righteous anger and common anger and for guiding us in how we respond to those things that cause us to feel righteous anger:

• righteous anger is God-like anger – it’s directed not so much against those who hurt us (or even against those who hurt God) but rather it’s directed against those who do harm to others;
• righteous anger is legal anger – it’s directed against those who deliberately violate the will of God and it’s expressed in ways that are consistent with the will of God. It’s not vigilante justice; it’s legal justice;
• Righteous anger is not explosive – it’s slow to provoke because it isn’t based on out of control emotions, but rather on a thoughtful consideration of a situation;
• Righteous anger does not give us pleasure in the way that releasing common anger can make us feel better for a while. Instead, righteous anger actually makes us feel worse if only because we’re saddened by the conditions that made our display of righteous anger necessary in the first place;
• Finally, righteous anger is always under the control of the person expressing it, rather than being in control of the person expressing it. Common anger possesses us and can easily get us out of control, escalating situations to a dangerous level, and becoming excessive and even abusive, but righteous anger doesn’t. Righteous anger knows its proper limits.

     My sense is that righteous anger is a thing of the past. As I suggested last week, in this era when churches worry a lot about survival (in spite of the fact that we claim to follow a Lord who did not worry about survival, but who gave himself for the world) we’re often too concerned with wanting to be liked to display any true righteous anger, and we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s more important to be popular than it is to stand against those things that dishonour God. A lot of Christians today don’t want to stand out in the crowd; don’t want to call society to repentance; and don’t want to call ungodly powers to account. And that’s too bad, because Jesus did all those things when it was necessary. It seems to me that if we call ourselves disciples of Jesus, perhaps our faith demands that we stop playing it safe, and that we start to do those things as well.

A Thought For The Week Of February 26, 2018

Last November, Toronto FC won the championship of Major League Soccer. This afternoon, I watched as they began their defence of their title. They lost. It was only one game, and there's a long way to go, but it brought to mind for me Romans 8:37: "... in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." Whether it's a team winning a championship or a military victor turned into a ruthless dictator, the world is full of conquerors. I wondered, what is it that makes someone who believes in Christ "more than" a mere conqueror? Worldly conquerors may possess power and prestige - but it's temporary. Teams that win championships inevitably have to pass their title on to some other team that becomes better. Ruthless dictators may rule for a long time, but eventually they're defeated - either by an even stronger conqueror who comes along, or by the ravages of time. Somehow or another, they're defeated. But "... we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." Christ is "him who loved us." Christ was the one who appeared conquered on the cross; his disciples scattered, his message silenced. He and all he stood for had been conquered by religious and political authorities. But the conquerors could not win. Christ would rise, his disciples would find their courage, his message would change the world. Because unlike worldly conquerors, Christ could not be stopped. He would become the conqueror - and more than that. He would become the conqueror who would not be conquered. He would be the one who would bring life from death, hope from despair, freedom from bondage. And we who believed in him would share his victory. We are now more than conquerors because of him. With assurance of victory, we do not have to fear defeat. With assurance of eternity, we do not have to fear the passage of time. We live - and we serve, bringing this message of hope to all who need it. "... in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." Toronto FC may win the MLS title again - or they may not. But for Christians - that which we have won through Christ will never be taken from us!