Promises, Promises: The Promise of Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2020 by salooper57

(Text:Micah 5:1-5. If you prefer to listen rather than read, you can find a link to this sermon below.)

Do you have one of those friends – maybe you have more than one – who is always making, but rarely keeping, promises? “I’ll take care of it,” he says, but he doesn’t. “I’ll be there,” she says, but you already know there will be a last-minute text explaining, yet again, that something has come up. You’ve learned to smile, nod, and ignore what they say. You certainly don’t entrust anything important to them.

Hopefully you have some of those other friends too, the kind that rarely makes promises, but when they do, they keep them. Their word is their bond. They don’t make excuses. They don’t have time for that; they’re too busy making good on their promises.

Walter Carr is that kind of guy. He hired in with a multi-state moving company called Bellhops, was given a start date and an address, and told to meet his fellow-workers there for his first day on the job. But between his hire date and his start date, his car broke down.

Even so, Carr was the first worker to arrive. He left his home in another town at midnight and walked. He made a commitment, and he intended to keep it. The police saw him walking around 4:00 AM, and then again sometime later, so they stopped and asked if he needed help. When he explained what had happened, they drove him to the address and so he got there very early.

Of course, he had to explain to the owner why he was so early. She couldn’t believe this guy would leave his home at midnight and walk all those miles. She posted the story on Facebook and the post went viral. Someone brought it to the attention of the Bellhops CEO, who rewarded Mr. Carr’s faithfulness by giving him a 2014 Ford Escape.[1]

When people like Mr. Carr make a promise, they create a point of certainty on a vast plane of uncertainty. They make one thing predictable in the midst of an unpredictable future: they will be there. They will defy circumstances, if necessary, and keep their promise. They are brothers and sisters of the righteous man of Psalm 15:4, “who keeps his oath even when it hurts…”

God cares about keeping promises. There is a revealing story in the Book of Joshua. The Israelites have entered Canaan and have won battle after battle, conquered tribe after tribe. The Gibeonites fear they are next. So, they plan an elaborate ruse to trick the Israelite leadership into entering a treaty with them. At the heart of the deception is a carefully-crafted illusion that their tribe is from far away, from out of state, if you will, which would allow Israel to enter a treaty with them. The truth is that they were neighbors from one county over.

Israel’s leaders were played. They signed a non-aggression treaty and even promised to defend the Gibeonites, if they were attacked. The truth came out three days later, and when they realized they has been scammed, Israel’s leadership wanted to break the treaty and attack the Gibeonites. After all, they entered the treaty under false pretenses. Surely, they had every right to break their promise. But God said to them, “No, you don’t. You should never have made that promise, but you did, and now you’re going to keep it.” He insists his people keep their promises, even when it hurts.

But then, he’s not asking his people to do anything he hasn’t done himself. When God makes a promise, he keeps it. He will be there. A promise from God is a refuge of certainty in the storms of uncertainty. He will keep his promise, even when it hurts, regardless of the cost. The birth of the baby in Bethlehem is the result of a promise. So is the death of the man on Golgotha. The cross says to us, with unmatched eloquence and unparalleled power, that God keeps his promises, even when it hurts, no matter what.

In Micah 5, we have a promise that is all tied up with Christmas. “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the rulers of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” This is the promise the biblical scholars and chief priests quoted in answer to King Herod’s inquiry about the birthplace of Israel’s messiah. The true king of the Jews would be born in Bethlehem. God promised.

The prophet Micah delivered that promise during a time of great adversity. That is often how it is with God’s promises: they come during our worst—even our most desperate—times. Consider, for example, when Adam and Eve received the promise of a future deliverer: in the moment when their guilt was exposed and the consequences of their treason became woefully apparent. For Abraham, the promise came during the trauma of childlessness. For Jacob, the promise came when he was running for his life. For Paul, the promise came aboard a storm-tossed ship, which was either on its way to the bottom of the sea or to a capital trial in Rome. For the disciples, promises came on the night Jesus was betrayed and their whole world caved in. God made Joshua promises on the eve of war as he sat on the border of a new and hostile land. Hannah received God’s promise when she was in despair over infertility. Israel received God’s promises when they were being exiled from their home. And what about the promise to the thief on the cross—his situation could not have been worse. So often, the promises of God come to people at their lowest point. If you’re in trouble, if you’re desperate and don’t know what to do, you’re in a place where God works.

Now, he works in other places too. Being in distress is not a prerequisite to receiving God’s promise. David had just gotten out of trouble and was in a peaceful and successful time of life when God made him a gigantic promise. But even if the promise comes in relatively good times, as it did for David, it doesn’t mean a person won’t have to live through difficult times while waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. That was certainly true of David. It was also true of some of the greatest heroes of the faith. They received promises from God, but before they saw those promises fulfilled, they were “put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated … These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised” (Hebrews 11:36-37, 39). Not in this lifetime. But they will … because God keeps his promises.

So, one thing about God’s promises is they often come during times of trouble. Another thing about God’s promises is they are rarely what a person would expect. Take the promise that the savior would be born in Bethlehem. If you surveyed ten thousand people at the end of the first century B.C. and asked them to choose a place where the next world-changing event would happen, I doubt even one of them would choose Bethlehem. It would be the equivalent of giving ten thousand 21st century people pins, putting them in front of a world map, and instructing them to stick their pin in a place they guessed would be home to next year’s most important world event … and they chose Quincy, Michigan.

Now, I’m not dissing Quincy, Michigan. I’m sure some important things have happened and are happening in Quincy, and some important people have come from there. Some of you are Quincy born and bred. Samuel Etheridge, who was one of Michigan’s first state senators, was from Quincy. Scott Barry, the Major League Baseball umpire, hails from Quincy. So does Jill Dobson, who has been a correspondent for Fox News and The Associated Press.

Quincy has had its moments, and so had Bethlehem. The sleepy little village was not always sleepy. It had the distinction of being the starting point for one of Israel’s most horrific crimes: the rape, murder, and dismemberment of a young woman. It was also the site of a famous battle. And there were some important people associated with Bethlehem. Rachel, the wife of the man for whom the nation was named, was buried there. King David, one of the Bible’s greatest heroes, was born there. His grandfather Boaz was from there, and his grandmother Ruth moved there.

But knowing all that, Bethlehem is still not a place that would spring to mind when talking about the next great thing. In the first century, one would expect the next great thing to come out of Rome or Athens or Corinth or Ephesus. Maybe out of Alexandria or Damascus or Jerusalem. But Bethlehem? Unlikely.

In our day, we might expect the next great thing to come out of New York or Washington or Beijing or London, but probably not Quincy, MI. Yet God is full of surprises. He doesn’t need to start big to get big results. That’s the thing about God. He always has the fulfillment in hand when he makes the promise. He plans and shapes history for thousands of years in such a way that his promises never fail. He’s that big, that smart, that strong.

The promise God made through the prophet Micah was that a ruler of Israel, one who would “stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God” (verse 4) would come out of Bethlehem. He would bring security at last, and his “greatness [would] reach to the ends of the earth.” By Jesus’s time, people referred to this ruler as God’s anointed; his Christ—the Messiah.

That promise, though, would not be fulfilled right away. That’s another thing about promises. They are not like the drive-in at McDonald’s: you don’t place your order and pick it up a couple of minutes later. Abraham waited 25 years to see God’s promise fulfilled; Noah, a hundred years; Adam and Eve waited millennia. Promises do not end the tough times; they sustain us through them. They help us endure, support us as we learn to wait on God, to trust him, and do the right thing when circumstances are all wrong. The promise of a Bethlehem-born ruler whose “origins are from of old, from everlasting” (verse 2) came through the prophet Micah, somewhere around 700 B.C. It took approximately 700 years for the promise to be fulfilled, 700 years before, verse 3, “she who is in labor gives birth.” Between the giving of the promise and its fulfillment, life was hard. Israel was conquered, subjected to foreign rule, and most of its people were exiled, never to return. It was a humanitarian crisis similar in kind but much larger in scale to the forced exile of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar today.

The prophet knew it would take time for this promise to be fulfilled and warned that before that day came, Israel would be abandoned. (That is verse 3.) And abandoned they were. The nation came under attack. The capital was besieged and finally fell. It’s people either died of hunger during the siege, were killed in the bloodbath that followed, or were forced into exile. During this dreadful time – one mass exile after another, followed at last by marginal (and disappointing) resettlement efforts – the promise of the Bethlehem ruler sustained people and gave them hope. Promises do not end the tough times; they sustain us through them, if we remember who made them and what he is capable of.

I once read something J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to a friend while he was working on The Lord of the Rings. He mentioned he had introduced a new character into the story he was calling Strider but had no idea who this character was or what he was going to do. Strider would become one the author’s best and most important characters. The entire plot would revolve around him. Yet Tolkien didn’t know that when he started.

God does not labor under the same limitations J.R.R. Tolkien faced. He sees the end from the beginning. He is at work through countless generations, both in terms of biology and nurture, through events that seem planned and others that seem entirely coincidental, to bring about his purpose. You can throw a civil uprising in his way, a plague or two, an ice age, a tyrant – a Caesar or Herod or Hitler or Stalin – and he will simply work those things into his plan. He is unstoppable. Unbeatable. Irresistible. He cannot be outsmarted, out-maneuvered, or outdone. When he makes a promise, nothing in heaven or on earth or under the earth can prevent him from making good on it.

No wonder St. Paul, when he thought of him, burst into praise: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

This is the God who made the promise that one coming from Bethlehem would rule over Israel, would stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD (verse 4), and would cause people to live securely and in peace (verse 5). And remember: the God who promised to send his son the first time to Bethlehem also promised to send him a second time to make the world right. And he keeps his promises. You can depend on it. Nothing gets in his way, not even death.

A church showed a cartoon video of the crucifixion to their kindergarten children. When Jesus was buried, a little boy who knew the story turned to his buddy and said, “He’s dead now, but he’ll be back.”[2] That boy got it: nothing can stop him. They beat him with whips. They nailed him to a cross. They hanged him in a public spectacle, horribly dehydrated and exposed to the merciless Middle Eastern sun. They ran a spear through his side and watched him bleed out. When they knew he was dead, they stuck him in a hole in the earth and covered him up. And guess what: he still he kept his promise.

So we’d better keep ours. Let’s not make promises lightly and then break them lightly. We’re the people of Jesus. Our behavior reflects on him. We show the world what he is like. We’ve made promises: let’s keep them. Promises to a spouse. Promises to the church. Promises to our friends. Promises to our kids. We’re the people of Jesus. Let’s keep our promises.

God kept his. The Baby of Bethlehem is proof.

Listen to the sermon here: https://clovermedia.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/store/79806b0d-0c80-4d63-83ea-040d8666d19a/3b83f26745/audio.mp3

[1] Jelani Greenidge, pastor, PreachingToday.com ; source: Danielle Garrand, “Man walks over a dozen miles to first day of work, CEO gifts him a car as thanks,” CBS News (7-17-18)

[2] Robert Russell, “Resurrection Promises,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 151.

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God Is Our Context: Interpreting Circumstances

Posted on December 25, 2020 by salooper57

Noam Shpancer says that most people “interpret all of life by [their] current context.” The current context is the only interpretive lens they’ve got. How sad that is, especially during this time of pandemic, but also at other times. Interpreting all of life by our current context makes faith impossible.

There is a story in Numbers 13 and 14 that illustrates this perfectly. Moses had sent twelve men into the Promised Land on a reconnaissance mission. They saw that the land was good, but they also saw fortified cities and enemy forces. Ten of them reported back that the situation was impossible. “We can’t complete the mission,” they said. “We’ve got to turn back or we’ll get pulverized. It’s hopeless.” They interpreted life by their current context

The other two, Caleb and Joshua, interpreted their current context by the eternal God and what they knew he had done in the past. They said, “We can and must do this – and we’ll succeed at it – because we know our God.” The others locked eyes with their troubles. Caleb and Joshua locked eyes with their God. Is it any surprise that the author of Hebrews tells us to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of the faith” (Hebrews 12:2)

Don’t interpret life by a COVID-19 context. God is our context. Don’t interpret life by a health context. God is our context. Don’t interpret life by an employment context, a financial context, a success context. God … is … our… context.

God is not only our context; he is our future. The God who was present in the past is already present in the future. The God who owns the past owns the future as well. The future is no less safe to the people of God than the past. We don’t worry about what the past might do to us, neither should we worry about what the future might do. God – our God; the God of our Lord Jesus Christ – is our future.

Now, we need to know this: The God who owns the past and owns the future meets us in the present. There is simply no other time to meet him. Don’t say someday. It is today; there is only today. This is the time to acknowledge God, to give your life to him, to trust him. He meets us in the present. If we do not meet him there, we will not meet him at all.

And he meets us in a person: his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is God with us. Jesus is God for us. If we will not meet God through him, we will not meet him at all.

This is why Christmas is good news: The God who is behind us in the past and before us in the future, is the God who is with us in Jesus Christ. The God who came humbly to us in our own flesh, who will return gloriously to us in his own power, is the God who is with us in Jesus Christ, our Immanuel. Want to lock eyes with this God? Look into the face of Jesus.

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God Is Our Context: Lock Eyes with God

Posted on December 24, 2020 by salooper57

Sometimes, the future is so promising. We want it to come: we want to get married, have kids, go on vacation, get a job, retire from a job. Sometimes the future is so threatening. We just want to get it over with: the blind date, the doctor’s appointment, the meeting with the boss, the confrontation with a relative. Either way, waiting is hard – “the most bitter lesson a believing heart has to learn” (Michael Card).

Israel’s first king was trying to wait but he could see trouble coming—and it was getting closer. He had agreed to delay engagement in battle until the prophet Samuel arrived, but the prophet was late. The prolonged fear was getting to his men and many were going AWOL. He told himself he couldn’t wait any longer. He told himself he had to do something.

We tell ourselves the same thing. We’ve got to get out in front of this thing and take control of it! That is what King Saul did and it ruined him. He didn’t wait patiently.

But how can we wait patiently? It is so hard! The first thing we need to do is get our focus on God and remembering what he has done in the past can help with that. God ordered a yearly reenactment of his people’s deliverance from Egypt for just that reason. It helped them refocus on God. If we do not remember what God has done in the past, we won’t know what he can do in the present. We will get our eyes fixed on what is coming and forget who is coming with it.

We need faith to wait patiently. Impatience is symptom of an ailing faith. Our son Kevin went into isolation after contracting COVID-19, but he probably had it for a few days before he realized it. His first symptom was that he was more tired than usual, but he had worked out extra hard the day before and that was sufficient explanation for being tired.

Then, he developed a pretty bad headache, but that happens to everyone, so he didn’t think much of it. But when he was eating breakfast the next morning and the sausage didn’t taste right, he went over the cupboard, opened a bottle of vinegar and sniffed deeply. He couldn’t smell it. That was the give-away: he had COVID.

Anxious scrambling to get control over the future is the give-away that we suffer from a faith condition. Isaiah said, “…he who believes [in God] will not hurry” (Isaiah 30:18). Everyone else will.

When we remember what God has done in the past, we can trust him for the future. But, as Isaiah said to King Ahaz (when he was scrambling to get control over the future), “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all” (Isaiah 7:9). We can and must look to the future but let’s not lock eyes with it. Let’s lock eyes with God.

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God Is Our Context: The Need to Remember

Posted on December 23, 2020 by salooper57

If we are going to trust our God, we must learn to trust his timing. If we do not, we will always be in a hurry, constantly be worried and, in our haste for tomorrow, miss what God has placed before us today.

Remember Dr. Shpancer. “We forget the past, can’t wait for the future, and interpret all of life by our current context.” He hits the nail on the head. That is what most people do but God has shown us a different – and a better –way. He wants his people to remember the past, wait patiently for the future, and interpret all of life in the context of God and his love, supremely displayed in Christ.

The need to remember couldn’t be any clearer in the Scriptures. Listen to Deuteronomy 4:9 “… be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live.”

Remembering the past is critical to living well in the present. In the Bible, God’s people are told to remember the good things (like the awesome day they covenanted to be his people at Mount Sinai) and the bad things (like being oppressed and misused as slaves in Egypt). One of the ways we come to know what God is like is by seeing how he has acted in both our good times and our bad times.

People used to say: “Don’t forget in the darkness what you have seen in the light.” I haven’t heard that axiom for years, but it is good biblical counsel. In times of darkness, we mustn’t forget how God has blessed us in the light. In time of sickness, we remember the health that has been ours by God’s grace. In times of upset, we dare not forget the peace we have enjoyed. “Don’t forget in the darkness what you have seen in the light.”

But the opposite also carries biblical weight: “Don’t forget in the light what you have seen in the darkness.” When asked, people consistently say they have experienced greater spiritual growth during the dark times in their lives than they have during the bright times. When things are good – COVID is over, you get a pay raise, an extra week of vacation, and meet the person of your dreams – don’t forget what God did for you when you were down, when you were struggling, and afraid. You cannot know how to act in your present apart from knowing how God has acted in your past. Circumstances change, he and his ways stay the same.

One way to remember the past is to reenact it. Some of Israel’s most important holidays were festivals of remembrance – like Passover and Tabernacles – in which people reenacted the past. In this way they reminded themselves of what God had done for them, how he had worked, and what he was like. God’s people need to remember the past to live faithfully in the present. That is why, in Deuteronomy alone, the people are told to remember or warned not to forget more than twenty times!

We too must remember.

Dr. Shpancer also says that we don’t know how to wait for the future. He’s right. I’ve noticed that people my age and even older – retired, sometimes elderly – are impatient for the future, even though the future takes them ever closer to the grave. God made us future oriented and gave us the capacity to hope – and no one on the planet has better reason to hope than the people of Christ. But they must wait patiently.  

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God Is Our Context: The Timely God

Posted on December 22, 2020 by salooper57

In the church, the Advent season has always been a time of waiting. On the Church calendar, Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas. So, we wait. That is countercultural. Society does not wait.

Walmart doesn’t wait. They are plugging Christmas before the Thanksgiving turkey has been carved – or butchered, for that matter. The radio stations don’t wait. They begin playing Christmas music in November. The retailers don’t wait. Black Friday sales start weeks before Black Friday. The economists don’t wait. They’re publishing the Christmas economic outlook before Advent begins. If Mary had been like us, she would have delivered Jesus a month before arriving in Bethlehem—and that would have messed everything up.

We are not good at waiting, but God is. If we are going to get along with him, we must learn his ways. This is not because God is pokey but because we are his people, under his direction, like an orchestra under its conductor. It is (this is Colossians 3:12) “as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved” – because we are his people – that we “put on … patience.”

Still, a year is a long time to wait for the end of the pandemic and four weeks seems a long time to wait for Christmas. But consider how long God waited for Christmas. He began his Advent preparations thousands of years before Bethlehem’s silent night.

In the rubble of the Fall, a ray of light already beamed. Even before the curse fell on the man and woman, God spoke a word of hope: The serpent will bruise the heal of the woman’s offspring, but he will crush its head. Evil will not and cannot remain forever.

St. Paul says that God announced the good news in advance to Abraham that he would bless all the nations of the earth. Think about how long in advance that announcement was made: 2,000 years. God is not in a hurry.

To David, a millennium before Christ, God made a promise: his descendant, God’s king, would rule forever. From Isaiah, hundreds of years before the angel’s announcement in the skies of Bethlehem, the joyous gospel rang out: “Your God reigns. Your God returns. Your God redeems.”

Consider what this means. The patient God, the waiting God, the timely God was making preparations for millennia. I mentioned those preparations in the lives of Abraham, David, and Isaiah, but there were many others: Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and finally Malachi, who wrote the words we read earlier 400 years before Christ. God did not rush. He had no fears. His timing was perfect.

I have a favorite recording of the Beethoven Sonata Pathetique (or Sonata No. 8) played by my favorite Beethoven interpreter, Alfred Brendel. I listened to a different recording a while back and was left with the impression that the pianist was on amphetamines. Her dexterity was impressive. She played so quickly that her hands must have been a blur above the keyboard. But where was the feeling, the passion, the character of the piece? Brendel can also play with incredible speed when that is called for; but it is not always called for.

God’s timing is even better than Alfred Brendel’s. He doesn’t just hit all the right keys; he hits them in perfect time, sometimes with incredible speed. “In its time,” he says, “I will do this swiftly” (Isaiah 60:22), even in the blink of an eye. But God never gets ahead of himself. He is the master of timing. He doesn’t rush.

Christmas is the great example. St. Paul could say that it was “when the time had fully come” – not a moment before, not a moment later – that “God sent forth His Son…” (Galatians 4:4). God’s timing will likewise be perfect in the final movement of this great piece he is playing. Gentle and strong, slow and fast, adagio and allegro –even prestissimo. I expect there will be times when his hands will be a blur above the surface of the earth.

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God Is Our Context: Our Current Context

Posted on December 21, 2020 by salooper57

One of the most repeated sayings of 2020 must be: “I can’t wait until things get back to normal.” I’ve said it myself, or something like it. You’ve probably said it too. We’re Americans. We can’t wait in the best of times and COVID-19 has not been the best of times.

We not only dislike waiting; we fear it. We fear being left out in the cold. Whenever there is a surge in the pandemic, we rush off to the grocery store, afraid that if we wait another day there will be no more toilet paper. We speed off to the Speedway station because we heard rumors of a gas shortage.

The psychologist Noam Shpancer has written, “We respond strongly to—and synchronize quickly and powerfully with—our immediate, current context. When we have one dollar, having two dollars is a dream. When we have a hundred dollars, having two dollars is a nightmare. Our current context dominates our experience. We forget the past, can’t wait for the future, and interpret all of life by our current context.”[1]

We can’t wait – even for God. Why is he taking so long? Why isn’t he, like us, rushing around in a dither – doesn’t he care? Where is the God of justice?

But the Bible tells us that God is patient. Right after clarifying that “The Lord is not slow [but] … he is patient,” the Apostle Peter tells us why that is important: because “…our Lord’s patience means salvation” (2 Peter 3:15), St. Paul praises the “riches of [God’s] … patience” (Romans 2:4). When Peter wrote in his first letter that God is patiently waiting for people (1 Peter 3:20), he was echoing the prophet Isaiah: “…therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you” (Isaiah 30:18). How about that? We thought we were waiting for God, and all this time he has been waiting for us!

“We … synchronize quickly and powerfully with our immediate, current context.” We can hardly see beyond tomorrow. But God takes the long view. He sees the end from the beginning. There is no uncertainty with him, no fear, and no hurry. The better we know him, the more we acknowledge him in daily life, the more we become like him: confident and unhurried.

Worshipers take on the characteristics of the god they trust, whether that God is the Lord or an idol. The psalmist (Psalms 115 and 135) wrote: “Those who make [idols] will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” But it is also true that when we trust in God, we become like him: “…we, who with unveiled faces all contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness” (2 Cor. 3:18). That why “…he who believes [in God] will not hurry” (Isaiah 30:18). Those who trust in God become like him; and he doesn’t hurry.

[1] Noam Shpancer, Ph.D., “Lessons From the Pandemic: What Coronavirus Reveals About Us,” Psychology Today (3-23-20)

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What’s He Doing Here? Why John the Baptist Shows Up at Christmastime

Posted on December 19, 2020 by salooper57

Religious people can be odd. Saints can be downright strange. If there are any contemporary saints trending on Twitter or YouTube, it is more likely because of the weird things they say and do than in spite of them.

During the third week in Advent Season, the Common Lectionary’s Gospel readings are all about John the Baptist, whose life is celebrated each year in preparation for Christmas. If one of the qualifying marks of sainthood is strangeness – and such a case could be made – John must be at the head of the class.

He was born to aged parents. Were his birth to occur today, we would call it a miracle of modern science. When it occurred, friends and family simply called it a miracle. At some point, John moved from his Judean countryside home to the rugged desert between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. His diet was odd – he ate locusts and honey. His wardrobe was odd – he wore camel hair clothing. His life work was odd – he dunked people in the Jordan River for the forgiveness of sins.

John’s was a strange life and also a strange death. When he stuck his prophetic nose into the king’s so-called private affairs, the king cut it off. Well, not just his nose but his whole head. The king only did this because his stepdaughter – at her mother’s request – put him up to it.

Even John’s burial was unusual. His grieving friends had to go to the authorities – not the coroner but (quite possibly) the executioner – to request his body. As far as we know that body still rests in some ancient grave, absent its blessed head.

Why is this man, so odd in life and in death, renowned among Christians? He is recognized for his special connection with God. He was spiritual from birth. He received and recognized a calling early in life. He had remarkable spiritual discernment, hearing God speak to him and understanding what he said. He possessed vibrant faith.

He was also extraordinarily courageous. It takes courage to be different. It takes courage to speak against injustice to those who are unjust. John fearlessly confronted oppressors. It takes courage to speak truth to power. John did not hesitate to call out even the king himself.

John the Baptist is rightly celebrated for his uncommon humility. For a while, John was the most talked about man in the country. He was a first century superstar, an A-lister, a household name. He had an impressive number of followers long before Twitter.

That kind of thing can go to a person’s head. It is a narcotic of sorts. Take it away, and a person can go through withdrawals. But not John.

At the height of John’s popularity, a new figure burst on the scene. He took John’s message, expanded on it, and drew even larger crowds. John’s deputies complained to their leader that the new guy was syphoning off their audience. Presumably, they wanted John to sanction some new business plan for regaining market share.

Instead, John said to them (my paraphrase): “I told you that I was only the opening act. He must increase. I must decrease – which is just what makes me happy!”

Like all the great saints, John faced obstacles. He was arrested, incarcerated, and treated as a political prisoner. He was nevertheless content, for he had completed his calling to prepare the way for the true king. The man who would not be king followed the would-be king’s – that is, Jesus’s – progress from his prison cell. And that’s when he began to experience doubts.

Why was Jesus not doing the kinds of things kings do? Had John been mistaken? What if he had prepared the way for the wrong person? Thrown into doubt, he sent a message to Jesus asking if he really was “the one.” Even superstar saints sometimes doubt.

Jesus sent back an affirmative answer. Yes, he was the one. What happened next is awe-inspiring. Fully aware of John’s doubts, Jesus offered this assessment: “Of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist.”

John was a humble, strange, struggling man. He was also preeminent among the heroes of the faith.

(First published by Gannet)

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Christmas | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

ADVENTure: A Time to Rethink Your Life

Posted on December 16, 2020 by salooper57

(If you prefer would prefer to listen to this sermon, you can find a link at the bottom of the page.)

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”  (Luke 3:7-14)

V. 8: “Produce fruit in keeping with (or worthy of) repentance.” When I read this in preparation for today’s message, I couldn’t help but wonder why fruit production isn’t automatic in people who have repented. Why should John have to tell them to produce fruit? If they’ve repented, shouldn’t that just happen?

The answer has to do with the nature of repentance: it isn’t a one-and-done thing. Repentance – a rethinking of your life in the light of previously unrealized truth – takes time to process. Repentance is like a sunrise. It brings light to a mind that was previously dark, but the mind is a vast, undulating landscape. Repentance won’t shine on it all at once. Today the sun rose at 7:14 in New York City, but not until 8:02 in Coldwater. It takes time for the earth to turn into its light. It is the same for the human mind, with all its vast reaches. It takes time for the light of repentance to reach across it or, rather, for the mind to turn fully into the light.

Let me illustrate it differently. Larry Knapp and I were in a taxi in Dakar, Senegal, a metropolitan area of two-and-a-half million people, with hundreds of thousands of cars and hardly any traffic lights. There were hundreds of intersections with neither traffic light or stop sign. Then there were intersections with more lights than seems possible. Larry and I were in the last car in a caravan of taxis, taking us back to the place we were staying, but we got separated from the others in a roundabout. When our driver finally got out of the roundabout the other taxis had vanished. He entered a narrow alley and stopped. (We didn’t know what he was doing.) He rolled down the windows and pulled in the side mirrors, then he hit the gas. The G-force was like the Demon Drop at Cedar Point.

About a half an hour later, I had a repentance moment; that is, the light of a previously unrecognized truth began to shine: it became apparent to me that our taxi driver, who didn’t speak English or even French, had no idea where he was supposed to be taking us. That truth dawned on me our third time down the same street. Repentance happens when one realizes one’s true position in the dawning light of truth. I was granted repentance. I knew we were lost. But I didn’t know what to do about it; didn’t know how to produce fruit worthy of repentance.

John did not think of fruit production as automatic. It is something he told people to do, which means there must be some intent on our part. It is not all up to us – thank God, or we would have no hope – but we do have a part to play. We must bring our lives into line with our beliefs. When we realize – and this happens to repentant people repeatedly, across the years, from spiritual nativity through spiritual maturity – that our practice doesn’t match our profession, our life doesn’t match our doctrine, our walk doesn’t match our talk, we take steps to change. An unchanging Christian is an oxymoron. Christians must always be in the process of change for, as St. Paul says, we are being changed into the image of Christ, from glory to glory. We cannot be set in our ways and expect to know his ways. We can’t be stationary and follow Jesus at the same time. It takes a lifetime to take a life and make it fully God’s.

That’s not what we want to hear. We want a shortcut: religion or church or some spiritual practice that we can do and be done. People in John’s day felt the same thing. They wanted to rely on something else, something easier – in their case, their Jewish heritage – to make things right. So John says to them: “Don’t even begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our Father.’”

Many Jewish people believed they would be “grandfathered in” to the Kingdom of God through their connection to Abraham. They thought that admittance into God’s kingdom – being accepted by God onto his side – hinged on one’s ethnic heritage. If you were a Jew, you were in, unless you did something stupid and became a heretic. But John would have none of that. People were counting on the fact that they were Abraham’s children, but John told them they were the children of vipers – of snakes. Now God will even accept snakes if they are willing to become real men and women, but he will not run a DNA test to decide if they’ll get in. He doesn’t accept people on the basis of race or ethnicity.

Of course, people in our day already know that. The idea that acceptance with God could be race-based is anathema to us. But do we substitute some other identity marker in the place of Jewish ethnicity? We might. We might think, “I’ll be alright because I am a church member.” Or because I am a preacher’s kid. Or because I’ve gone to church all my life. God will take me in because I’m a Calvinist or an Arminian, a Presbyterian or a Free-will Baptist.

Listen: God will take you in because you are blood-bought. Because Jesus died for you. You don’t get into God’s kingdom – you’re not accepted onto his side – because you’re religious or because you are a church member. God doesn’t check to see if you’re good looking, or rich, or poor, or smart, or Catholic, or Protestant, or white, or black. Stop depending on such things. Depend on God who gave his Son Jesus Christ so that you could join him. Trust him.

The people John was talking to thought, “We’re alright the way we are. We don’t have to do anything.” John says: “Think again. The axe is already laying against the tree trunk. It’s just a matter of time before the Woodcutter goes to chopping.”

John is letting them know a time is coming when it will be too late to make changes. The time for change is now. Later may be too late.

John was like the guy we used to see regularly in TV shows and movies and comic strips – the guy who wore the sandwich board sign that read, “The End Is Near.” The guy was always a comic relief figure. He was a joke, a crazy person, and we all knew it. The end is near … that’s just nuts.

But it’s not nuts; it’s biblical. John the Baptist believed it. So did Jesus. So did the Apostles Peter and Paul. They all believed a day is coming when it will be too late to change sides. Call it “the end” or call it “the judgment”—call it what you will; it’s coming, and John was ringing the fire alarm. He urged people to rethink their lives in the light of it.

And people in John’s day connected to that message. They felt it was true, but that’s not always been the case. It was in John’s day; the message it home. The same was true in St. Francis’s day and Martin Luther’s day. It was so in the 1830s through the turn of the century in our country. But at other times and in other places that same message has failed to connect. In Malachi’s day, people dismissed it. Toward the end of St. Peter’s life, people scoffed at it. People living in Rome when St. Thomas Aquinas was on the scene, made light of it. And that message certainly does not connect with most Americans in the early years of the 21st century.

There seems to be a time when the Lord may be found and a time when he may not be. Remember what the prophet said: “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6). There have been historical eras when many people sought and found the Lord; when he was near, and many people turned to him. There also have been eras when that was not the case, though even then there are personal moments when God draws near and individuals realize the message is true.

The people who heard John understood he was telling the truth, but they didn’t know what to do about it. The sun was rising but they didn’t recognize the landscape or know how to travel it. They chose to align themselves with God and his cause, but they didn’t know how to go about it. So they asked John (verse 10), “What should we do then?”

John’s response has implications for us. It helps us understand how to produce fruit worthy of repentance. He told the people, “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.” In case you’re wondering, John is not advocating socialism. If he were, he would say, “Force the man with two tunics give up one.” But he is not talking to the state here; he’s talking to people.

But neither is this capitalism. John does not say, “Let him who has two tunics recognize a financial opportunity in the limited supply and high demand.” It is not eastern bloc socialism nor Western-style capitalism John wants; it is kingdom of God love. Repentance – the rethinking of your life in the light of God – opens your eyes and heart to the people around you and to the God who watches over you.

Notice that John didn’t give people some traditionally “religious” thing to do. When they asked, “What should we do?” he didn’t answer, “Fast for a week, spend the night in contemplation, read the Bible through, light a candle, say a prayer.” John understood that repentance doesn’t lead us to go somewhere else to do something religious. It causes us to live differently right where we are. If John were talking to us, and we asked, “What should we do?” he would tailor his response to our setting. He probably wouldn’t say, “Go to a monastery and take holy orders.” He’d say to kids, “Treat your parents with respect. Let your sister borrow your clothes.” He’d tell adults, “Use your bonus to help your neighbor who is unemployed. Drive your aunt to the doctor. Spend time loving and interacting with your family.” Repentance works itself out right where we are as it moves us to where we should be.

Verse 12 is surprising. The last people we would expect to connect to John’s message, the most despised people in Israel, the tax collectors, came asking for guidance: “What should we do?” 99 out of a 100 people in Israel in John’s time would have said, “Quit working for the Roman government. Give up being a tax collector.” But that is not what John said. He told them, verse 13, “Don’t collect any more than you are required to.” Once again, he understands that repentance tales place where a person is, not where he ought to be. Repentance is the most practical thing in the world.

Verse 14 is just as surprising as verse 12: “Then some soldiers asked him, ‘And what should we do?’ He replied, ‘Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.’” These soldiers may have been Jews. Herod had some troops stationed in Judea and, if these were his troops, they might have been some of the same men who would soon be sent to capture John and detain him in Herod’s prison. But they may also have been regular Roman army, Gentiles from the Syrian garrison.

Once again, John met them right where they were. He didn’t tell them to do anything that was too difficult for them. He didn’t tell them to leave the military, for example. They were soldiers, and it was as soldiers that they would produce fruit worthy of repentance.

In those days, as in ours, most soldiers were stationed far from home and had no connections to the people living around them. Soldiers often bullied locals and some even extorted money from them. If locals didn’t pay “protection” money, soldiers would report them for anti-government activities, which was a capital offence. Soldiers frequently complained about their pay. At the beginning of Tiberius’ reign, there was the famous “frontier mutiny,” that began as a protest by soldiers over their pay but turned ugly and led to many deaths.

So, John tells them to stop strong-arming people and be satisfied with their pay. Again, repentance works itself out where people are, in their daily lives. John didn’t demand anything that was impossible to do, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. If you have two tunics and you give one away, you’re going to have to do the wash twice as often, and your wife may be mad at you. Your friends may make fun of you. If you’re the only tax collector who isn’t getting rich, who is not doing what everyone else does, your peers won’t want anything to do with you. If you’re a soldier who doesn’t act like the other guys, you’ll get mocked and harassed.

There is a cost to joining God’s side but there is also gain. You get a much simpler life. You get hope. You find friends who are real.

Repentance helps us rethink our lives in the light of the God who sees us and not just through the eyes of the people around us. If you only see yourself through the eyes of the people around you, you will never be free. You’ll never be yourself. Without repentance you cannot become your true self. May God give us the blessed gift of repentance!

If I see myself through your eyes, I will be limited by your expectations. If I see myself through God’s eyes – even though that reveals all the bad stuff – I will be stretched by his plans for me. I will become more than I could ever be without repentance. God, give us the blessed gift of repentance!

But even when we see previously unrecognized truth, we may not respond in the best way—we may not produce fruit worthy of repentance. The fire alarm may wake us up, but we may go back to sleep or head back to familiar paths. Research shows most people don’t respond when a fire alarm rings. Instead of leaving a building immediately, they stand around and wait for more information. In 1985, a fire broke out in the stands of a soccer match in England. When the television footage was examined, it showed fans took a long time to react. They didn’t move towards the exits until it was too late. 56 people died.

Research also shows that when we do move, we tend to follow old habits. For example, most people try to exit through the same door they entered, even when a nearer exit is available. A fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Kentucky left 177 people dead. Forensic experts believed that many of the victims tried to go out the way they came in, even though there were fire exits. They got caught in a bottleneck and couldn’t get out it time.[1]

What is there for us today in this strange prophet’s ancient message? I’ll mention three things. First, there is a fire coming, a fire of judgment and a time of change, and John sounds the alarm. That warning is at the heart of the Christian gospel and our hearts tell us it is true. Don’t try to escape it by going back the way you came. There is a nearer door, the only one that works: Jesus. Go through him. He once said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved…” (John 10:9). Go to him. Join him. Ask him to take you in.

Then ask God for the blessed gift of repentance for yourself and for your friends. You can’t manufacture it, any more than you can manufacture the sunrise, but you can enter it. You can see what to do in its light. If you think there is nothing for you to do, that is proof positive you need to ask God for repentance.

Finally, start where you are, otherwise you’ll never start at all. Start living out what you know in your home, in your closest relationships, and where you work. If your faith doesn’t even make it home with you today, it’s not realistic to think you’ll make it to heaven with it someday.

(Click here to listen: http://lockwoodchurch.org/media/131783-505499-1673658/religion-in-real-life-luke-3-8-18 )

[1] Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (W.W Norton & Company, 2013), pp. 122-123

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What Story Are You Living In?

Posted on December 12, 2020 by salooper57

The county in which I live has the second highest positivity rate for COVID-19 in the entire state. The county with the highest rate is right next door. Our governor has extended the restrictions placed on gatherings. The compulsory closure of businesses continues.

Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash

With businesses in our state and around the country shuttered, Congress is still at an impasse over the next coronavirus relief plan. They will almost certainly agree to something – political survival likely depends on it – but it will be too late for many businesses and the people they employ.

More bad news. Dr. Anthony Fauci and other infectious disease specialists are expecting a surge of coronavirus illnesses just in time for Christmas. Doctors and politicians are urging families to avoid holiday gatherings this year. The effect of a COVID-19 Christmas on relationships, suicide rates, and the economy is unknown but ominous.

We live in a constantly changing story and, in America at least, we do not agree on what the story is. Is it the story of a convincing victory by the Democratic presidential contender or is it the story of massive voter fraud and an election hijacking? Is it the story of a devastating pandemic or of media hype?

Because we cannot agree on the story, we can hardly talk to each other. There was a time when there was broad consensus on the outlines of the American story. Certainly some of the plot lines – who was best qualified to carry the story forward, for example – were open to debate, but we mostly agreed on the story’s major themes.

This was largely true of both men and women, home-grown and naturalized citizens. Because of slavery, black Americans saw the past differently, as did people of Indigenous American descent, who were subject to broken treaties, theft of land, and mass extermination. But even within these groups, the future story held a similar shape.

If America is to move forward together and thrive, Americans need to share the same story. It must be an inclusive story, one that takes in men and women, birthright citizens and immigrants, people of different races, ethnicities, and religions. To accomplish this, we need more than a Commander in Chief in the White House. We need a Storyteller in Chief.

Donald Trump has not been that kind of president and I don’t know that Joe Biden fits the role either. But if Americans continue telling different stories, they will continue going different directions, and we will be indivisible no more.

Some Americans, however, have a resource that others lack: faith. They know themselves to belong to a larger story, a metanarrative. The remarkable chronicles of the United States and those of all other nations are but subplots in a story that began before the Americas were “discovered” and will continue into the age to come.

Christopher Wright, the Director of Langham Partnership International, frequently asks people, “What story are you living in?” A person of faith is able to give an answer that goes well beyond saying, “I’m living the COVID-19 story,” or “I’m living in the story of the return of nationalism,” or even, “I’m living the story of a terminally ill person.” They can say, “I am living in the Creator’s story and, though it is filled with ups and downs, it has a happy ending.” Knowing their story enables them to understand their identity and grasp their hope.

Philip Greenslade believes it is possible to “indwell” the biblical story in such a way that a person begins to “look out from the biblical world with new eyes onto our postmodern lives.” People who live this way stop “trying to make the Bible relevant” to their lives and instead find their lives “being made relevant to the Bible.”

Wright adds, “Our lives should be governed by this great, overarching story of the Bible. Our present should be shaped by the biblical past and the biblical future. This is our narrative. This is who we are…”

We cannot know who we are until we know what story we are in. If it is the biblical one, as I believe, its climax has been reached but not its end. There are good things ahead.

(First published by Gannet)

Posted in In the News, Theology, Worldview and Culture | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

ADVENTURE: Mission Inevitable (Luke 3:1-6)

Posted on December 10, 2020 by salooper57

Between now and Christmas, I will post audio of the Adventure sermons from 2018. The series is meant to prepare worshipers to celebrate Christ’s birth and anticipate his return.

This first sermon finds striking similarities between the world in our day and the world in the days of John the Baptist and discovers that his prescription for an unhealthy world is still the best one available.

ADVENTURE: Prepare the Way (Listening time: 21:37)

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