A Mind for What Matters: Philippians 4:1-9

Posted on April 29, 2020 by salooper57

(Read A Mind for What Matters below or listen to the sermon on YouTube. The sermon begins at 29:52 and listening time is approximately 25:00. In this passage, St. Paul points the way for working through bleak times, times of conflict, and anxiety.)

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable– if anything is excellent or praiseworthy– think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me– put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.  (Philippians 4:4-9 NIV)

This is the final sermon in a brief survey of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. We have been focusing on what this letter can teach us about the impact our thinking – our mindfulness, as people like to say nowadays (a term I think Paul would have commandeered) – has on our outlook, moods, and actions.

The instructions to be followed in this short passage are demanding, some might even say impossible. But the promises held out to those who follow them are almost outstanding. The thing for us to remember is that the ability to obey the instructions and gain the promises is dependent upon –we come back to it again – the way we use (or misuse) our minds.

Let’s start with the promises (or, really, the two-part promise). The first part of the promise is (verse 7): Given that we live a certain way, the peace of God will guard our hearts and our minds. Paul is using a word picture he knows will connect with his readers. Philippi was a Roman colony and a garrison city. There were retired Roman soldiers everywhere (including, probably, the church), as well as a large population of soldiers on active duty.

The word “guard” evokes a picture of soldiers guarding the garrison or some other high-value asset. The promise is that God’s peace, like a special forces unit, will guard a person’s heart (the control center, where decisions are made) and mind (the information center where conscious life takes place). When God’s peace guards us we are actively protected from bad decisions and unhealthy thinking.

The phrase “the peace of God” is found only here in the entire Bible. This is not just an inward peace – the kind one gets after a couple of drinks or a sleeping pill. This is the very tranquility of God (G.B. Caird), “the calm serenity that characterizes God’s very nature.”[1] God’s peace is more than the absence of fear. It is the presence of contentment, wholeness, and the certainty of wellbeing. It will guard our hearts and minds when we live a certain way.

But the promise goes even further. While in verse 7 the promise is that God’s peace will guard our hearts and minds, in verse 9, “God himself, the God of peace (of contentment, wholeness, and wellbeing) will be with us.” We will not only have the peace of God guarding us; we will have the God of peace accompanying us.

That’s the promise. But what about those demanding instructions? We’ll look at three of them, given in the context of a pressing, real-time problem. However, we’ll start with verse 1 to prepare us for what is coming.

In verse 1, Paul tells his friends, “This is how you should stand firm in the Lord.” “This” refers back to what he had just written, which was something like this: I want you to imitate me and the people in the church who live like me.

What was it about Paul that the Philippians needed to imitate in order to stand firm? It was his determination to keep “pressing on” (something which he states twice). His eyes are set on the mark and he won’t stop until he reaches it. He will become what God has called him to be and he won’t let anything stop him.

The way to stand firm, paradoxically, is to keep moving … toward Christ. The Christian life is like riding a bicycle. The only way stay upright is to stay in motion. Have you ever tried to balance a bike on two wheels while standing still? It’s not long before you’re not standing at all. So with us. When we stop pursuing Christ, we lose our balance and fall, usually hurting ourselves and the people around us. Want to stand firm? Keep moving.

Now, with that as background, we’re ready to look at the instructions Paul gives. As we do, we need to keep the promises that go with them in mind: the protection of the peace of God and the presence of God of peace. The first instruction, given previously and now repeated, is to rejoice always.

Really, Paul? Rejoice always? You have no idea what you’re asking. Working from home amidst a thousand interruptions. The kids are out of control. Can’t find toilet paper. Didn’t get my economic impact payment from the IRS, which I need to pay the mortgage. Will probably lose my job, which means no insurance. And you want me to rejoice?

To which Paul (from a dank, dark prison cell, where he has been quarantined for a long time, separated from friends and family, and waiting to hear the outcome of his trial, which might be death by beheading) answers, Of course! “Rejoice in the Lord always.” And in case you missed it the first two times I said it, “I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4).

Many people, hearing this, simply brush it aside as unrealistic and unfeasible. When you’re having marriage problems, when you can’t stomach your boss, when your hopes have been dashed yet again, when you’re sick, and tired, and in debt, how can Paul – how can God – expect you to rejoice? It’s impossible!

Yes, absolutely. It is impossible … for some people, but not for us – if our minds are undergoing a process of renewal. If our thinking hasn’t changed since we became a follower of Jesus; if we are still haunted by the same fears; if the same kinds of thoughts run through our minds all day that run through the minds of people who don’t belong to Jesus, rejoicing will be unrealistic and unfeasible.

But, if we are being “renewed in the spirit of [our] minds” (Ephesians 4:23); if we are being changed (transformed) by the renewing of [our] minds (Romans 12:2), then rejoicing will not only be possible, it will be occurring. This is what we’ve seen throughout this letter. How we think determines how we feel and how we act. Our minds are critical to our success in the Christian life. Some things that not only seem impossible but are impossible – rejoicing when we are deeply troubled, for example – become possible as our minds are renewed.

We need to appreciate how humans think. There are, of course, different parts of the brain – that amazing instrument the mind uses – which perform different functions in the collection and storage of information. When the mind uses that information, it does so (in large part) by storying. Humans use stories to categorize and contextualize information – information that would be practically useless without the God-given ability to make stories. Storying is an essential part of what it means to be human. When God “formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life …” (Genesis 2:7), he became a living storyteller.

The way we process marriage problems and bad bosses and recurring disappointments is through stories. That means if we categorize and contextualize information – including marriage problems and bad bosses – using the wrong stories, we will go wrong. Rejoicing will be simply impossible.

Here’s an illustration. A jet crash-lands on an island in the South Pacific. The survivors scramble off the plane and wade ashore. And then someone shouts, “There are blankets, clothing, and food in the cargo hold!” As soon as the significance of that dawns on people, everyone tries to get to get to the provisions first, afraid of not getting their share. People are stuffing bread and pretzels and meat in their shirts and trying to get ashore without their fellow castaways knowing they have provisions. Everyone is afraid of starving.

Disgusted by the riot on the beach, a husband and wife decide to explore the island. What they find just over the first hill surprises them: there are cows and chickens everywhere – must have been brought by a shipwrecked vessel a decade ago or more. There are fruit trees and pineapples – the valley is filled with them. There are even cases of dried food rations that must have been left behind when those first castaways were rescued.

Instead of trying to stuff a chicken and a pineapple into their shirts, they return to the beach shouting the good news to everyone and sharing the things they’ve brought back. Why the difference? The one group is telling themselves a story of deprivation and hunger while the other is telling themselves a story of provision and plenty.

Now, one of the things to notice is that the panic the people on the beach felt was real even though the story they told themselves was false. That’s how the stories we tell ourselves work. They affect the way we act and feel and think. But it is even more than that: the stories are the way we think, at least in large part.

During the Covid-19 crisis, the story many people are telling themselves is one of calamity, loss, and death. How do you think that will affect the way they feel and act? You already know: feelings of anxiety, sleeplessness, anger, accompanied by panic buying, hoarding, and arguments.

But when we came to Christ, our story got written into his story, which is not one of calamity, loss, and death but of love, and courage, and glory. That doesn’t mean we won’t have troubles – just read the laundry list of St. Paul’s hardships in 2 Corinthians 12 – but it does mean that whatever is happening in our part of the story is being written into a bigger, better, story. It’s the best story ever, by the best author ever, with the best ending ever.

When we not only know that in the abstract but story that in our thinking, we will be able to rejoice during Covid-19, during marriage problems, and crummy jobs, with pain-filled bodies. I am not saying it is automatic; it’s not. I am saying it will happen as we are renewed in our minds.

So the instruction to rejoice always – seemingly impossible on the surface of it – is entirely doable when our minds are being renewed. The next instruction (verse 5) is to “Let your gentleness be evident to all.”

Before we talk about how to do that, we need to think about what it means. The word translated “gentleness” by the NIV is not the word usually translated that way. A prominent Greek lexicon claims this word is almost untranslatable. People have tried with words like “gentleness,” “moderation,” “magnanimity,” but the ground this word covers is just too big for any one English word. In other places in Scripture it occurs alongside words like, “peaceable” (Titus 3:2), “open to reason,” and “rich in mercy” (James 3:17). It is a word that is used to describe Jesus by both Paul and by Jesus himself.

This “gentleness” (for lack of a better word) is displayed whenever a person doesn’t push to get his way because it is his way. It evident when a person doesn’t stand on her rights but, to help someone else, is willing to forego what she could rightfully claim for herself.

Karen and I were talking to our neighbor a couple of days ago (while practicing social distancing!), and she was telling us about all the meanness and raging self-importance one finds right now on social media. That is the opposite of gentleness. We can blame the Covid-19 crisis – the unemployment, forced quarantine, and the stress – for our lack of gentleness, but it didn’t create it. It only brought out what was there all along.

There is a way not only to act gently but to be gentle but it (once again) requires us to undergo the process of being renewed in our minds. We are not going to act like Jesus until we start thinking like Jesus, and we will never think like him unless we are being renewed in our minds. And that means we need to be renewed in the stories we tell ourselves. We need to think in God’s story.

The belligerent people on social media are thinking in stories – stories of disrespect, misuse, irrecoverable loss. It’s just not God’s story. Whenever our story diverges from God’s story, we start believing we must be in control and, usually, that we need to be the hero. But when our story runs with God’s story, we know he is in control and Jesus is the hero. And he is not far off somewhere. He is near.

That’s why Paul adds in verse 5: “The Lord is near.” When that’s what we think, when we story the Lord’s nearness in our thoughts – his protection, his love for us, his determination to make everything right – then we won’t need to be in control and we won’t get angry when things don’t go our way. We can be gentle and forego our rights, confidant that the Lord will make things right.

This is what Paul wants Euodia and Syntyche, his friends from Philippi, to think and do. These women (verse 2), who had fought for the gospel at Paul’s side, were now fighting with each other. They were not living in gentleness. When they stopped pressing on toward Christ, they started fighting with each other. Without a doubt, they were each telling themselves a story but it was the wrong story, one in which Jesus was not near.

The next instruction seems the most impossible of all: “Do not be anxious about anything.” How often I have violated that command! I bet you have too. The word translated “be anxious” here is comprised of two roots, the first means “part” or “section” and the second has to do with “memory” or “stored thoughts”. Worry sections off our minds and – here is the thing – it shuts out God. It removes him from our story.

The way to deal with worry is to bring God back into our story or, better yet, bring ourselves into his story. His story is about love and restoration, about power and patience, and above all, about Jesus. It’s the story of Jesus, who did not stand on his rights but gave them up and suffered and died for us. And he was able to do that because he knew he was in God’s story, knew that God would raise him to life and to his throne.

How do I bring myself into God’s story? To begin with, we pray. In Greek, verse 6 has this kind of rhythm: “In nothing worry, but in everything pray…” Whereas worry sections us off – social distances us – from God, prayer connects us to him.

In prayer, we re-story our lives with God at the center of the story, which is where he really is. We re-story our lives with Jesus, who is ever so near, as the hero. Instead of demanding he do something, we make known our needs to him and expect him to do something – because we know what story we’re in! Instead of worrying about ourselves we present ourselves to be part of God’s story.

But we’ll never accomplish this while we are filling our minds with the anger, fear, and greed that characterize society at large. No, we must– Paul tells us – think about what is true, what is noble, what is right, what is pure, what is lovely, what is admirable – about things that are excellent or praiseworthy.

You’re more likely to find those things in the Bible than on social media, which means that if you are spending more time on social media than the Bible you are at risk for resentment, pettiness, and worry. There are, of course, other things that worthy of our thinking and meet many of the criteria Paul lays out. There are also things that feed our anger, nurture our fears, and inspire our greed. We are responsible for what we let into our minds.

One final thing: the renewal of our minds doesn’t happen as we sit in our La-Z-Boy thinking. In fact, it’s impossible to continue thinking rightly unless we’re acting accordingly. So Paul adds, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice” (Philippians 4:9). Our well-intentioned thoughts will fade into oblivion, like Lewis Carrol’s Cheshire Cat, unless we act on them. To pray right, to think right, and to act right is the key to experiencing the peace of God and living with the God of peace.

[1] Gerald F. Hawthorne and Ralph P. Martin: Word Biblical Commentary: Philippians. ©Thomas Nelson, 2003. p. 246

Posted in Bible, From the Pulpit, Peace with God, Sermons, Spiritual life, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Everyone Is a Storyteller: What’s Your Story?

Posted on April 25, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash

Every grasping, hoarding, angry person is telling themselves a story. So is every generous, sacrificial, compassionate person – but they are different stories.

The middle school Spanish teacher is a storyteller. So is the foundry worker and the clerk at the gas station. The theologian is a storyteller, as is the banker, the automaker, and the spy. Even the middle school Spanish student is a storyteller.

The stories we tell frame our understanding of the world and explain our experiences. Much of our thinking is done in stories. History is an exercise in storytelling. So is philosophy. So is science.

This is not some abstract truth. It is a daily experience. If you find a ten-dollar bill lying in the driveway, your brain automatically generates a story, or more than one. The bill slipped out of your pocket when you got out of the car to get the mail. Alternately, it fell out of the mailman’s pocket when he got out of his jeep to bring a package to the door. The story you tell yourself helps you know what to do with the ten dollars.

Some people are bad storytellers. The stories they tell are disjointed, illogical, and incoherent. (And, usually, people whose stories are incoherent have lives that are also incoherent). Other people are great storytellers. Their stories are taut, consistent, and plausible. They are not, however, necessarily true.

People who are followers of Jesus think in stories just like everyone else. We need to be good storytellers with coherent stories. We also need to tell stories that are true.

Consider what this implies. If we are to follow St. Paul’s instruction to be renewed in our minds, then the stories we tell ourselves need to be brought into line with the story God is telling through creation and redemption. Our stories must fit his story.

The human story has been diverging from God’s story since Adam. Go to the academy, for example, and listen to the stories being told, like this one from an Ivy League professor of biological sciences. “Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.”

The philosopher Dallas Willard said of this professor’s conclusions: “Logically viewed, this statement is simply laughable.” And Willard is right. Evolutionary biology does not research issues such as the meaning of life or the human state following death, nor is it capable of doing so. The professor’s claims sound much more like the dénouement of a story than the deductions of a science.

The stories we tell ourselves influence how we live, how we relate, and how we feel. If, in the story I tell myself, life has no meaning, that will affect all kinds of things: what I do with my money, how I think about my spouse, how I feel when someone hurts me, and what I do when I cannot acquire desired things by socially acceptable means.

If, in the story I tell myself, there is not enough to go around, I will behave and feel in predictably self-centered ways. We have seen this play out in real time during the Covid-19 crisis. Some people have deprived others by buying more toilet paper, disinfectants, and foodstuffs than they need. Other people have bought more than they need in order to give such things away. Both are operating within a story.

In the beautiful and coherent story Jesus told, a loving God knows what his children need and has promised to take care of them, freeing them from worry and releasing them to be generous with others. It is a story we need to tell ourselves again and again. It is a story I believe to be true.

Photo by Reuben Juarez on Unsplash

First published by Gatehouse Media.

Posted in Spiritual life, Theology, Worldview and Culture | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

There Is Love: Our Astonishing Hope (1 Cor. 15)

Posted on April 23, 2020 by salooper57

(1 Corinthians 15:19-28) If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.  (NIV)

I think it was Dr. Johnson who said, “Men live in hope, die in despair.”

I first heard that quote in college—not in an English lit class but in the Student Union, where I was playing ping-pong with my college roommate and dear friend George Ashok Kumar Taupu (Dr.) Das. He’s the one who taught me how to play and, looking back, I’m amazed at his patience. In our first games, he beat me 21-3 or 21-4 and, even then, I only scored points when he stopped paying attention.

But after months of playing almost daily, I had become competitive. He was still beating me every game, but by this time the score was 21-10, then 21-14, then 21-18 – and he was paying attention. I could see that he was trying.

It was during one of these contests – sometimes tied, sometimes the lead changing by a point or two – that the finish line came in sight for me. I could taste victory. The game nearly over – just a couple of more points – and I might finally win. But George buckled down, shut me down, and handed me yet another defeat.

I must have said something about how I almost had him or how I would get him next time. And that’s when our other great friend, our resident genius John Erdel, who was sitting there, idly watching the game, gave me his deadpan look and said: “Men live in hope, die in despair.”

“Men live in hope, die in despair.” What a dismal view of life. What a demoralizing view of death. Anyone who actually believed that could never live in hope – could only live in despair and die in despair. But the resurrection of Jesus means that we can live in hope, die in hope, and be raised in glory. The death and resurrection of Jesus is both the biggest thing that has ever happened in the world and the biggest thing that has ever happened to you, whether you know it or not. The resurrection is our assurance that hope will abandon us in the end.

As we saw last week – and if you missed that sermon, you should go to www.lockwoodchurch.org/media and listen to it online – our story is not that we will fly off to heaven after we die to live eternally as disembodied spirits. That’s Plato, not Jesus. Our story is that God has come to earth in Jesus and is, even at this moment, working out his plan for us and for the world.

From that story, which is our story, comes a transforming hope that will change the way we think, the way we feel, and the things we do. What happened to and through Jesus then can change us now, change us for the better. Let’s drill down into this passage and see why that is true.

Paul writes in verse 22: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” and later quotes the prophet Hosea (verse 54), “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” The resurrection of Jesus means that death’s reign of terror is coming to an end. Death has tyrannized our race since the time of Adam and Eve. The fear of death is a constant throughout history and around the globe. The fear of death lies behind, and feeds, all other fears. Life without it is almost unimaginable.

Susan Sontag, the atheist writer and filmmaker, was 71 when she died from cancer. The doctors and nurses tried to talk to her about death and help her prepare, but Sontag would not listen. The thought of death terrified her. She fought to keep it at bay. It was too terrible. She must not die.  

She thought of this world as a foul tomb, filled with the stench of decaying corpses, yet she didn’t dare leave it. “She thought herself unhappy,” her son said, yet she “wanted to live, unhappy, for as long as she possibly could.” Even though life was a nightmare, she was terrified of waking up.

Susan Sontag did not have the hope of the resurrection. But we who believe in Jesus, in whom his life is already present by the Holy Spirit, can face death courageously and even joyfully. The author of Hebrews writes: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

Contrast Susan Sontag’s fear with the courage of my good friend and colleague, our former Children’s Ministry Director, Amy Snapp. Amy has been battling cancer. Like Sontag, she improved and the cancer was in remission. Now it has come back.

I spoke to her yesterday. She is not hiding from the future. She told me: “I’m good. Ready to go. I’m not afraid.” Amy says she expects dying to be an adventure, like Lucy going into – and through – the Wardrobe in the Chronicles of Narnia.

When Amy mentioned Narnia, it brought to mind my favorite passage, which comes at the very end of book 7. The Lion Aslan, the Christ figure, says to the children: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”

(Now I am quoting.) “Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’

‘No fear of that,’ said Aslan. ‘Have you not guessed?’

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream has ended; this is morning.’

And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus, gives his people hope in the face of death. In 1973, during the reign of Idi Amin, the Butcher of Uganda, the people of Kabale were ordered to come to the stadium to witness the execution of three men. Bishop Kivengere asked for, and was granted, permission to speak to the men before they died. He approached them from behind and was surprised by what he saw when they turned around. Their faces were radiant. They smiled. One of them said, “Bishop, thank you for coming … I wanted to tell you: Heaven is now open, and there is nothing between me and my God. Please tell my wife and children that I am going to be with Jesus.”

The bishop thought the firing squad needed to hear that, so he translated their remarks into the soldiers’ own language. It left the firing squad so flummoxed that they forgot to pull the masks down over the Christians’ faces before executing them. The condemned men were looking toward the people in the stands and waving, handcuffs and all, and the people waved back. Then shots were fired, and the three were with Jesus.

The next Sunday, the bishop preached in the hometown of one of the three men. As he spoke, the huge crowd that had gathered erupted into a song of praise to Jesus![1] This is what the hope of the resurrection can do for us. It can free us from the fear of death.

In the resurrection, Christ cut death down to size. Through Christ, we can rise above our fear of death. The great English poet George Herbert said, “Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel” – he’s referring to the death and resurrection of Jesus – “has made him just a gardener.” When those who are planted with Jesus come up, they will be glorious as he is glorious.

But our hope is far greater than the hope that we will somehow survive death. The resurrection gives us reason to believe that we will be – that nothing can stop us from being – fulfilled, completed, perfected. Paul puts it this way: “The body that is sown” – gardener imagery again! – “is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power…” (vv. 42-43). And verses 52-53: “we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.”

Susan Sontag got it wrong. Earth is not a grave but a garden. This – weakness, sickness, inability, depression, aging, loss – is no more the whole story than the kernel is the whole stalk of corn or the acorn is the towering oak. God’s plan for humanity is not pain and suffering but joy and glory. It is not weakness but power. It is not sadness but joy. It is not the shame we know so well but a glory that eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor human mind imagined. (1 Cor. 2:9).

You, if you share resurrection life through faith in Jesus, will be happier than you can now conceive, stronger than you can now believe, and overflowing with the energy of love. The promises seem too good to believe and would be too good to believe, if we hadn’t already tasted this life, experienced this power, known this love.

Listen: the resurrection is the promise, the evidence, that the long and tortuous project known familiarly as Shayne Looper – substitute your own name, if you have Jesus and he has you – will one day be finished and it will be good. It will be very good. It will finally all make sense, when even Shayne Looper is crowned with glory and full of joy, bringing glory and joy to God himself and glory and joy to all the rest of us. This – nothing less, and certainly far more – is what it awaits the people of God.

But the hope of the resurrection is more than the hope – as great as it is – that we as individuals will be fulfilled. It is that all things in heaven and on earth will be made right, made good, made glorious. The resurrection means that God’s plan is unstoppable, and that heaven will make right every earthly wrong.

Sometimes that is hard to believe. I have seen things. I have stood in the ER with a family that hardly dared to breath as the doctor performed CPR on their son and brother, whose body lay before them, torn by a hideous gunshot wound. The doctor gave up. Too many times I’ve sat with families – sometimes a young dad and mom, the mom holding her child in her arms – when a nurse unplugged life support.

I’ve cried with too many people whose image of themselves was shattered like glass by the terrible abuse they suffered as children. You’ve known them too. We not only know them; we are them: the sufferers, the abused, the wronged, the fearful, the damaged. So what if the future holds inconceivable glory? The past holds unutterable pain. Even if we someday attain joy, will we not always be haunted by the suffering?

The plain answer is no. C. S. Lewis put it this way: We “say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”[2]

Listen to these words of hope from the throne of God. “‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new!’”  

The singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson put it to words like this.

“After the last tear falls, after the last secret’s told
After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone
After the last child starves and the last girl walks the boulevard
After the last year that’s just too hard

There is love…

Cause after the last plan fails, after the last siren wails
After the last young husband sails off to join the war
After the last, ‘This marriage is over’
After the last young girl’s innocence is stolen
After the last years of silence that won’t let a heart open

There is love
Love, love, love

And in the end, the end is oceans and oceans of love and love again
We’ll see how the tears that have fallen
Were caught in the palms of the Giver of love and the Lover of all
And we’ll look back on these tears as old tales

‘Cause after the last tear falls there is love.

There is love because, after the last tear falls, there is God.

Our hopes are audacious. They are stupendous. Our hopes are unparalleled and unrivaled. The Marxist hoped for a better world. The Christian hopes for a perfect one: a new heaven and new earth, where righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13). The hope of the most enthusiastic Marxist fades to nothing in the shining hope of the resurrection, the way a candle fades before the noonday sun.

Our hope is not just that our sins – worse than we remember and more than we can count – will not be held against us, though because of Jesus, they will not! Our hope is not just that our pains will be forgotten, swallowed up in bliss. Our hope is not just that our shame will be buried with us when we die and be left in the grave when we rise. Our hope is not just that evil and injustice will be destroyed, never to return. Our hope is that God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).

This hope is not like the Buddhist hope of Nirvana, in which the delusion of selfhood is finally extinguished and there is only the Unity. No, when God is all in all, we will still be us. Better than that: we will have become us for the first time, more ourselves than ever before, made to be with God and to be filled with God.

You see, what lies at the foundation of all existence is not subatomic particles or the so-called four fundamental forces. What lies at the foundation of all existence is the fundamental relationship: the overflowing, joyous relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And what rests at the pinnacle of all existence is relationship: the overflowing, joyous relationship of Father, Son, Holy Spirit and, by the triumph of grace, us.

This long story of bullets and wars, of marriages ended and innocence stolen, is different than you thought and better than you’ve dreamed. It is the story of the perfectly joyful, perfectly beautiful, perfectly perfect Trinity making perfectly joyful, perfectly beautiful, perfectly perfect beings of us and inviting us to join their party. Emptiness is not our future, but fullness, “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

Because of the joyful love of the Triune God, this is our destiny. This awaits us. And it has been made possible, made real, by the loving sacrifice and glorious resurrection of our man in heaven, who is also “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

This is why the resurrection matters. This is why we celebrate. This is why we hope. Amen.

(If you prefer to watch and listen to this sermon, you can find it on Youtube. The sermon starts at 25:17.)

[1] Colin Chapman, The Case for Christianity

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce ©1946. HarperCollins Edition 2001. p. 69.

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There Is Love: The Hope of the Resurrection (1 Cor. 15:19-28)

Posted on April 19, 2020 by salooper57

What are the implications of St. Paul’s teaching (and that of the entire biblical witness) on the resurrection? That is what this audaciously hopeful sermon explores. I invite you to join for the premier at 11:00 this morning or to watch later. Since this is a worship service, there is about 20 minutes of worship prior to the sermon.

A joyous and blessed hope to you during this challenging time!

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Too Sophisticated for Idolatry? Think Again

Posted on April 18, 2020 by salooper57

Existence is like a river. History is a current. Whenever humans simply go with the flow, the current always carries them to the side of the river where the idols stand. Humanity is inherently idolatrous and idolatry is its besetting sin.

Moderns think of idolatry as something that died a natural death in the early centuries of the common era. Zeus fell on hard times. His children, no longer fed by the worship of the humans, grew emaciated and wasted away to nothing.

Hardly. They merely changed their names. Athena became Education. Ares became Technology. Hermes became Media. Plutus became Economy. Nike – okay, Nike stayed Nike. Humans merely shifted their hopes for success and security from the old gods to the new or, more precisely, to the same gods in different guise.

Idolatry was the great sin on the pages of the Jewish Scriptures, which Christians refer to as the Old Testament. Leading the Ten Commandments (or “Ten Sayings”) is, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Yet, Israel didn’t even wait for the ink to dry on the commandments (or the commandments to be engraved on the tablet) before breaking that first command.

We think that idolatry was not a problem for Christians. It’s a comforting thought but it is an illusion. St. Paul warns the Corinthian church to “flee from idolatry.” St. John ends his famous first letter with the admonition, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” These apostles saw idolatry as a very present danger.

But post-moderns would never fall for (or before) an idol. We are too sophisticated for that. We understand how things work in a way our ancestors did not. They attributed change and progress (and regress) to gods because they did not know physics, biology, economics, or medical science. We, however – or at least our physicists, biologists, and economists – do.

But we’ve done nothing more than update the dress and liturgy of the priests and prophets. We pay attention to them because of their relationship to the gods, as surely as the citizen of Delphi paid attention to Apollo’s oracle.

Take, for example, one of today’s most powerful, most feared, and most worshiped gods: the great Economy. This god’s name is known all over the earth. He has temples in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, and Frankfurt. He has priests serving in the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and around the world.

Economy’s prophets are some of the most influential voices on Capitol Hill (which is not altogether unlike Mount Olympus). Some of these prophets are respected (consider Warren Buffet) and others are dime-a-dozen fortunetellers. They are constantly making forecasts, with a “Thus saith the Lord” intensity that causes their hearers to tremble.

Idolatry has always been detrimental and never more so than now. When economy is deified, that is, when it becomes the idol Economy, two things happen: God is dethroned (in the eyes of the public), and people are dehumanized.

Wherever Economy is worshiped, people become ciphers. What one hears from Economy’s prophets are “the jobless numbers,” the number of new unemployment insurance claims, and “April’s numbers.” Human beings become statistics and their pain becomes irrelevant.

When Economy becomes a god, government is pressed into its service and citizens become its slaves. When this happens, Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” does indeed “perish from the earth.” Rather than securing the unalienable rights of people, government feeds the insatiable appetite of Economy.

Both those on the political left and the right accept this state of affairs without protest. It was a Democrat who slapped us in the face with the line, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and both parties have operated as if this is holy writ ever since. Idolatry always begins in the hope that the idol will make the worshiper’s life better, but always ends with the worshiper becoming the idol’s slave.

These great powers – Economy, Education, Technology, Media – can be made to serve the true God but cannot replace him. In this time of crisis, Christians must stubbornly refuse to put our hope and trust in the economy or any other idol. Our hope and trust belong with God alone.

Posted in Spiritual life, Theology, Worldview and Culture | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

First Stone in an Avalanche

Posted on April 14, 2020 by salooper57

Is it possible that we have drawn the wrong conclusion – or fail to draw the right conclusion – from the resurrection of Jesus? Has the church substituted a Pagan/Platonic application to the truth of the resurrection for the apostolic one?

If we treat the resurrection primarily as proof that we will live in heaven after we die, we are certainly on the Platonic spectrum. First Stone in an Avalanche examines St. Paul’s response to the Corinthians’ misunderstanding of the meaning of Jesus’s rising. You can: watch (YouTube, skip ahead to 18:46 for the beginning of the sermon) or listen (Lockwood Church website – scroll down to “Listen to Sermons”) or read below – whichever works best for you.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:20-26)

In the four Gospel accounts of the life and death of Jesus – this surprised me when I first realized it and it surprises me still – no one ever uses the word “resurrection” to describe Jesus’s return from death, neither the Gospel writers nor the people whose conversations they reported. They talk about how Jesus rose from the dead, but they never use the one word you would expect them to use: “resurrection.” It’s almost as if they were avoiding it.

That ought to raise a question in our minds: Why didn’t they use the word “resurrection?” The answer, I think, comes in two parts, the first of which is very straightforward: The Gospel writers did not use the word “resurrection” because the men and women whose story they were telling didn’t use the word. The fact that the writers refrained from using what is arguably the most important word in the vocabulary of the early church speaks volumes about their intention to faithfully recount what had happened.

Some modern scholars think that everything theological in the Gospels – especially everything that points to the deity of Jesus and his status as the Messiah – was invented by the Church and written into the Gospels in an act of historical revisionism. Those scholars believe that the healing miracles, the transfiguration and especially the resurrection never happened. They think the Church fabricated them as a way of elevating Jesus’s status and validating their faith.

Yet here we have the most important thing ever, the climax of all four Gospels and the core tenet of the Christian faith, and none of the writers even once give in to the temptation to describe it as resurrection. This is an overlooked and remarkably important evidence for biblical authenticity.

But that brings us to the second part of the question. Why didn’t the people in the story – Peter, John, the apostles, the women disciples – refer to Jesus’s return from the dead as “resurrection”? The doctrine of the resurrection was profoundly important to most first century Jews. It was a belief for which they were willing to fight. So, why didn’t Jesus’s apostles, the women disciples or even, after the fact, the fidgety chief priests, ever mention it?

I think the answer is once again straightforward, though it might surprise us. In the immediate aftermath of Jesus’s return from death, the disciples didn’t realize he had been resurrected. Now, they did believe Jesus had risen from the dead. The evidence overwhelmingly supports that conclusion. They did not, as some have suggested, think that Jesus lived on in spirit or as a “life force” or as a powerful memory, as people do when they point to their hearts and say of a deceased spouse, “He’s still with me and always will be – right here!”

No, the disciples believed that Jesus died; that he was stone-cold dead, dead as a doornail; dead and buried. And they believed that after three days he came back to life; that he was alive again, walking-talking-eating-drinking-alive! But during those first days, it did not occur to them that Jesus had been resurrected.

That may sound like a contradiction to you; it is not. The disciples had seen three people (that we know of) raised back to life after they had died: the daughter of Jairus, the young man living (and dying) in Nain and, most spectacularly, their friend Lazarus. These people had been dead – stone-cold, dead as a doornail dead – and Jesus had somehow brought them back to life. But the disciples did not think that any of those people had been resurrected. The idea never occurred to them – and it wouldn’t occur to them.

When they heard that Jesus was alive and then saw him for themselves – after having seen him horribly killed – they believed their Master had risen from the dead and were overjoyed. But that did not signify to them that he had been resurrected. In their minds, and in the minds of their contemporaries, resurrection was a different thing altogether. It didn’t happen here or there, to this or that individual. When it happened, it would happen to everyone in the world, and that would be on the last day. Resurrection was the inaugurating event of the age to come.

So even though Jesus rose from the dead and his friends knew it, they didn’t make the connection between his rising and the resurrection. In their minds, when the resurrection happened, everyone who had ever died would be raised from the dead – the righteous to eternal life and the unrighteous to eternal death. It took time and instruction – most importantly from Jesus himself – for the enormity of what had happened in that garden tomb to sink in. Jesus had not only come to life again after being dead, as remarkable as that was; death had been overcome and the resurrection – the coming to life of everyone who had ever died – had begun.

By the time we come to the early chapters of Acts, Jesus’s followers are using the word “resurrection” right and left. What changed? Over the forty-day period following the Passion, Jesus repeatedly met with his disciples and explained to them from the Scriptures what had happened and what it meant. In Luke’s words, “[B]eginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). By the time the events in Acts take place – beginning less than a month-and-a-half later – we find the disciples “proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead” (Acts 4:2).

They now understood that the resurrection – the coming back to life of everyone who had ever died – had commenced. That brought them to the remarkable conclusion that the “last days” had begun and “the renewal of all things” (to use Jesus’s own words) was underway.

Easter celebrations frequently focus on the fact that we will continue to live after we die. As true as that is, it’s important to realize that most people believed that before Jesus rose from the dead. They believed that humans continue to live in some form (as ghosts or spirits or as some amalgamation of life forces) after they die. The resurrection of Jesus signaled something more radical and far-reaching than that.

No one has explained the implications of Jesus’s rising more thoroughly than the apostle Paul. When he first heard people say Jesus was alive, he didn’t believe a word of it. (We assume that people in the first century were gullible and would believe anything. That’s rubbish. They were no more likely to believe that a man three days dead would return to life than we are.) Paul never doubted it was a hoax—until he saw the resurrected Jesus for himself, and that changed everything.

From that time on, Paul could not stop talking and writing about the resurrection. In his biblical letters, Paul used the noun “resurrection” approximately four times as often as he used the noun “forgiveness”.  The verbs related to resurrection and forgiveness are even more out of balance. It is impossible to overstate the importance of the resurrection to Paul. As far as he was concerned, there is no “faith in Jesus” apart from belief in the resurrection.

Paul’s most comprehensive explanation of resurrection comes in 1st Corinthians 15. That entire letter was written around the idea that God is restoring all things, and the resurrection is central to his plan. And when I say “resurrection” I am referring to the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of all the rest of us. In Paul’s mind – and in the mind of the early Christians – the two cannot be separated. His resurrection is the guarantee of ours, and ours is the outcome and achievement of his. The bond between them is unbreakable.

Yet some people in Corinth were trying to break that bond. They couldn’t see how sophisticated intellectuals could believe in resurrection. Yes, they believed that God had raised Jesus from the dead, but they denied that the rest of us would be so raised. Death, they believed, unchains people from their weak and corrupt bodies and releases their spirits into the eternal world. To them, the idea that the spirit would be reunited to the body was repulsive.

Now look at 1 Corinthians 15. The central question in this passage comes in verse 12: “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” These educated Corinthians were affirming that Jesus had been raised but denying the resurrection of the rest of us.

In this chapter, Paul begins with the question of whether the dead are raised, then moves to the question of when the dead are raised, and finally to the question of how the dead are raised. It is a brilliantly organized passage. We don’t have time to look at all of it, so we’ll focus on the relationship between the miracle of Christ’s rising and our own resurrection.

Now remember than some of the Corinthians denied there is a relationship between the two. Paul insists that there is. He carefully avoids speaking about Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, as if they were two different things. Jesus’s resurrection is a part of the resurrection. Or it might be more accurate to say that the resurrectionflows out of Jesus’s resurrection. The two cannot be disconnected. There is one resurrection, but it happens in two phases. Christ’s resurrection is the first stone in an avalanche.

Why make such a fuss about this? Because Paul understood that the resurrection is about more than a spirit being united to a body following death. That is far too individualistic a way of looking at it. Resurrection is the pivotal event in God’s plan to “make all things new.” Resurrection inaugurates the last days, initiates the Great Renewal, and promises the glories of the kingdom of God. Resurrection is the threshold into the age to come. Most Jews believed that. What they didn’t know was that resurrection had already begun in Jesus. That was the astonishing good news the Christians had to tell. It was not just that people go on living after they die – everyone already knew that! It was that the new age had arrived when Jesus rose from the dead.

That is why, in verse 20, Paul calls Jesus “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (or died). In the first century, people understood the image of the firstfruits. Each year, at the very beginning of the wheat harvest, the Israelites sent their first ripe wheat as an offering to the Lord’s temple. Seven weeks later they went to Jerusalem to celebrate the completed harvest. Just as the firstfruits announced the harvest had begun and promised more to follow, Jesus’s rising announced the resurrection had begun and promised more to follow. We live in the period between firstfruits and harvest.

Behind this passage, remember, stands the idea that God is restoring creation. There are allusions to the first creation – recounted in Genesis one and two – everywhere in this chapter. That is intentional. There are seeds and plants, like Genesis 1; men and animals; birds and fish; there is the sun, the moon, and the stars. And in case we still haven’t made the connection, Adam himself shows up. Paul is thinking about creation … and recreation. The first creation floundered upon Adam’s rebellion and is dying. The new creation was established on Jesus’s obedience and is ready to rise. Look at verses 21-22: “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

“But,” verse 23, “each in his own turn.” Here is where the Jesus-follower’s understanding of resurrection goes beyond the ancient Jewish understanding. It didn’t change it (Paul’s view is still thoroughly Jewish), but it added to it; it clarified it. The additional insight was this: There is an order to the resurrection. It happens in phases. That’s the thing Paul and his colleagues had not previously understood. When he did, it changed everything. (And it should change everything for us, too.)

Christ’s resurrection was not simply proof that people continue to live in some form after they die. It was not just proof that death has been defeated, though it was certainly that. It was proof that the new age had dawned, that the ancient promises made by God – promises of a kingdom, a restoration, and a renewal – were being fulfilled. It was proof to the disciples, as Chesterton once put it, that the world had died in the night and that “what they were looking at was the first day of a new creation…”[1]

Judaism divided time into two ages: The present age and the age to come. The present age is a time of injustice and conflict. Paul referred to it elsewhere as “the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4), a time of growing corruption, from which people need to be rescued.

The age to come, on the other hand, will be the time of God’s undisputed rule, characterized by peace and justice – a time of prosperity, reconciliation, and joy. And, as everyone knew, the line between this present age and the age to come was the resurrection.

And here is Paul, telling us that the resurrection has already begun. The claim is staggering. The resurrection began on a spring morning somewhere around 30 A.D. in a Jerusalem garden when Jesus came out of the tomb and it will conclude when Jesus comes back from heaven. But if that is true, what has happened to the age to come?

That is a profoundly important question, and no one contemplated it more deeply than Paul himself. He believed that the new age had already dawned and that everyone who confesses Jesus as Lord is already part of the new creation (“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” – 2 Corinthians 5:17). The new age had dawned but the old age would not conclude until the completion of the second phase of the resurrection when the Messiah returns. The moon is still out but the sun has already risen. We live in the overlap between the arrival of the new age and the termination of the old one.

We frequently think of the resurrection as proof that we will go to heaven when we die but Paul thought of the resurrection as proof that God’s kingdom has come to earth while we live. The new age had dawned or, to be more precise, the new age is dawning. In the overlap time, we still have the sorrows, sins, and corruption of the present age. But we can already tap into the joy and peace and freedom of the age to come. The winds of that age are blowing across the borders of our time, and we can lean into them. We can know “the power of the resurrection” – the remarkable power to live the future in the present. It is in this overlap period that we learn to live “in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

There are battles to be fought and won during the overlap. There is a way of life to be learned. There is work to be done. So Paul says in the last verse of this chapter: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

Easter – the resurrection – means so much more than life after death. It means that we can live a different kind of life before we die, as we draw on the resources of the age to come. Most people live out of the past. For good or ill, they are molded (and often shackled) by their former experiences. But those with faith in Jesus Christ can break the mold by learning to live out of their future. They can learn to tap into the age to come, and so live in hope. They are formed by the future in ways that people who are shaped only by the past cannot imagine. They live, as Paul put it, “in the power of the resurrection,” and that sets them free to become all that God intends them to be.

If you want that kind of life – a future-oriented, God-empowered, old-habit-breaking, hope-producing life – there is one place to find it: in a faith-connection to the Resurrected One, Jesus. If you’ve already established a faith connection to the Living One, that kind of life is waiting for you – and us. Let’s learn to live it!

[1] The Everlasting Man. The entire quotes runs: “On the third day the friends of Christ coming at day-break to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.”

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Who Are You Looking For? (An Easter Message)

Posted on April 13, 2020 by salooper57

(I preached this Easter message on John 20 two years ago, as a conclusion to the Mary Magdalene story we had already begun. Because I tell this in a narrative style, it includes some imaginative elements – conversations, gestures – but I’ve tried to be careful not to contradict the biblical evidence. In some cases, the use of the imaginative elements is meant to bring out implications that are in the text.)

One of the difficulties in telling the Easter story is that there is almost too much material. Each of the biblical Evangelists gives us glimpses into the story from the perspectives of different people who lived it. One tells what Mary Magdalene sees. Another describes what the other women disciples see. Some tell us what Peter sees, one what John sees, another what Thomas does not see, and yet another what the Roman soldiers see. There are gaps in some stories and overlapping chronologies in others. Trying to put all that together into a cohesive narrative can be a challenge.

I’m not going to try to put it all together this morning – there is not enough time for that. Instead, I’m going to tell the story, at least for the most part, from the disciple Mary’s perspective. There are so many Marys in the Easter story that we need to differentiate between them. This one is routinely distinguished by the town she comes from: Mary of Magdala, or Mary Magdalene or, for short, the Magdalene.

When Mary first met Jesus, her life was an absolute disaster. Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “We all have our demons,” but Mary had hers and enough for several other people besides. She was alone, afraid, and confused. Her life was like a bad dream from which she could not wake up. No one was able to wake her up. For the most part, no one even tried; that is, until Jesus.

He woke her up. He gave Mary back her life. He drove away the demons and, in their place, gave her something she had never known: acceptance. And when he accepted her, so did his friends. For the first time in memory, she felt included, wanted. She was part of something, and that felt good. She didn’t always act right, and she knew it, but these people didn’t push her away because she was weird or because she didn’t have it all together.

She owed her life to Jesus. He had given her peace, and hope, and friends. And he had given her God; taught her to know him as her Father, who loved and cherished her; taught her to trust him. Jesus had done more than just save her life, which was hardly worth saving; he had given her a new life. She owed everything to Jesus.

So imagine how she felt when on that dark Friday her savior, friend, teacher – her everything – was killed. It was like they were killing her too. What would happen to her new life, new friends, and new hopes, without Jesus? Without Jesus to hold them together, would her friends turn away from her, the way everyone else had done? With Jesus, she had the prospect of living in God’s kingdom. Without Jesus, she had no prospects—she had no life. And, she thought, she soon might have no friends either.

But for now, her new friends were letting her hang around. She was staying with them. She cried with them, worried with them, got angry and cursed the Romans. She went with them to find the tomb on Friday, the day Jesus was killed, and went with them on Sunday to perform the burial ritual.

Mary was from Magdala in Galilee, and didn’t really know anyone in Jerusalem, but during Passover she was staying in a house with some of her Jesus-friends. As soon as it was light, they were supposed to meet up with some of their other friends at Jesus’s tomb. It was the women’s job to prepare a body for burial, and they were not at all sure that the men had done it properly.

Before dawn, Mary and a few of the women she was staying with, started for the tomb. They were almost on top of it, in the dull light of early morning, before they realized that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. Well, not just rolled away. The fantastically heavy stone looked like it had been pried loose and tossed aside. The women just stared for a moment, wondering what could have happened. Why force the stone right out of its track? No one who had a right to enter the tomb would have done that. And then Mary’s quick mind came up with an answer: Grave robbers. Someone has stolen his body.

Her mind was quick, but her feet were quicker. Before the others could stop her, she was running and yelling, “I’m going to get Peter!” If anyone would know what to do, it would be Peter.

She ran all the way back to the city, through its narrow, still quiet streets. By the time she reached the steps that led to the upper room apartment where the apostles were hiding, she was breathing hard and had a terrible pain in her side. She pounded on the door and, when no one answered, she pounded louder. Still no answer, so she began calling: “It’s me. It’s Mary. Something terrible has happened. Open up.” The door slowly opened, and she went in. All the apostles were on their feet. They looked haggard, like they hadn’t slept in days. They also looked scared.

Mary went straight to Peter and said: “They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him” (John 20:2). Peter just stood looking at her, as if trying to make up his mind. Then he pushed by her, went down the stairs, and started running. Young John bar Zebedee ran after him. The others just stood looking at each other.

A few minutes later, Mary was on her way back to the tomb, but this time she walked. She felt weak and was still breathing hard. As she walked, she thought about what had happened; tried to put the pieces together. The people who killed Jesus – disgust welled up within her at the thought of them – must have taken his body from the tomb. It was a final act degradation, their last attack on his dignity: to deny him a proper burial. In Jewish culture that was tremendously important. So, of course, they didn’t want him to have it.

When she finally got back to the garden tomb, Peter and John had already been there and gone. Her friends were also gone – for good? she wondered. She stood outside the tomb crying, utterly desolate. For a few minutes, her grief didn’t permit her even to think. She was not merely grieving; she was the embodiment of grief.

After a while, her sobbing quieted. She walked over to the tomb, bent low, and looked in. She saw what she took to be two men sitting on either end of the stone slab where Jesus’s body had rested. They asked her why she was crying, and in a kind of fog she answered, “They’ve taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.” Then she turned around.

When she did, she saw through her tears someone standing a little ways off, and she thought he must be the groundskeeper. He, too, asked her why she was crying. She didn’t answer, but she could have said, “Because everything I had was taken from me. I’ve nothing and no one left. I am the most pitiful person on earth.”

When she didn’t answer, he asked: “What are you looking for?” (The “what” could refer to a person or an object.) How was she supposed to answer that? What was she looking for? In all the cosmos, there was only one thing worth looking for. She was looking for the one who gave her hope, gave her love; the one who gave her herself. Even though he had died, she was still looking for him. She knew that if she didn’t find him, she would lose herself.

All this was going on in her. But what she said was, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Mary’s mind was stuck, like a needle on a record, and all she could think about was finding her master and saving him from some final degradation. It was all that mattered. The world around her was fading and she herself was fading. The darkness was descending on her. She was falling back into the darkness before Jesus, when she had her demons and her demons had her.

It was the voice that saved her. Some people say they never forget a face. I’m not one of them. My brain is not hardwired for video but for audio; I remember voices. When my dad died, a man I had not seen or spoken to in 20 years called the house, and I knew him immediately. I suspect Mary was like that. Voices registered with her in a way that faces didn’t, and in the gathering darkness of her soul a voice reached her. The Voice reached her. It was the same voice that had called her out of darkness once before, when she was a lost sheep and had heard the shepherd’s voice. “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” (John 10:3).

The Voice called her by name. All it said was “Mary.” And the voice that had in creation turned darkness to light did the same thing once again. The darkness melted away and through the tears in her eyes, she saw him. The one who once walked in a Garden in the cool of the evening now walked again in a Garden, on the morning of the new creation.

She said to him, “Teacher!”  It didn’t even dawn on her to ask him what had happened or how it was possible. She just knew he was there and because he was alive, she too would live. She grabbed hold of him, but after a moment he said, “Don’t hold on to me. Go tell my brothers!”

She didn’t argue. She went, her third trip that day along that route and it wasn’t even 8:00 AM. She didn’t understand what had happened, but she knew everything would be alright. She wasn’t afraid anymore. As long Jesus was here, she would be fine. Everything would be fine. She went back to the upper room – Peter wasn’t there; hadn’t come back – but she said to the rest of them: “I’ve seen the Lord,” and told them what happened.

They didn’t believe her. She’d never been a very stable person. She was distraught; hysterical. She needed to calm herself. But then Mary and Salome and Joanna and the others came and told them the same thing: “He’s alive. We’ve seen him. He told us to come and tell you.” But they didn’t believe them either.

They said, “You’re delusional. You’re seeing things.” One of them said something like, “They’re women. They’re emotional. They saw something they didn’t understand, and they’re blowing it all out of proportion.”

Someone asked John what he and Peter had seen. John told them that Mary was right: the stone cover to the tomb had been forced and Jesus’s body was missing. But they didn’t see any angels, and they certainly didn’t see Jesus himself.

One of the men said, “There, you have it. You saw someone about Jesus’s height and size, but it couldn’t have been him. Look, you haven’t slept for days, and you’ve hardly eaten anything. Combine that with shock and grief, and, uh, feminine emotionalism, and you have the explanation for what you saw.”  

Someone asked John where Peter was, and John said, “I don’t know. I asked him if we should go back, and he just said, ‘You go.’ He didn’t tell me where he was going.”

That afternoon, Cleopas and his wife, one of the women who swore she’d seen Jesus, left. They were going home to Emmaus, and that was a seven-mile walk, and it was already getting late. It was clear she didn’t want to go, but he had made up his mind. The festival was over, and if he wasn’t back at work, there’d be in big trouble.

The day was winding down when Peter finally returned. He knocked twice, and everyone inside froze, thinking the temple guard had found them. When he said, “It’s Simon,” they all breathed again. The door was unbolted and, almost before he got inside, everyone was talking. “Peter: John said the body is gone.” “Mary said she saw him.” “So did the other women. They said they saw angels, and then they saw him.”

“They’re delusional,” someone snapped. But Peter held up his hand and waited for them to get quiet. Then he said, “It’s true. I’ve seen him.” And then they believed. Or wanted to. Except for Thomas, who had barged out of the room earlier and had not returned.

Some of the women had brought food during the afternoon: bread and fish, lentils and wine, and now people were picking at the food as they talked and argued and wondered what it all meant. And then suddenly everything changed. It’s hard to describe. Some felt the room had grown brighter. Others felt like a fresh wind had blown in. Others, like a snatch of a song had wafted in through a window. They were aware that something had changed before they were aware of what it was.

And then they saw him, Jesus, standing right in the middle of them, though the door was still bolted. At first, the disciples we were so startled they recoiled. They couldn’t move or speak or even think; it was like they were under a spell. But Jesus just laughed and said, “Shalom.” Then he said, “What – you think I’m a ghost?” and he laughed again and showed them his hands and his side. It was really him. The marks were still there. He asked them, with a sparkle in his eyes, if they had something to eat. They gave him a piece of fish and he made a show of eating it: “Mmm, that’s good.” Then he laughed again, and the spell was broken.

They all they gathered around him. Some of them touched him, wanting to make sure he was real—that they weren’t dreaming. He wasn’t a vision or a ghost. He was as real as ever – almost more real, they felt, though they could not have said what they meant by that. They heard his voice, they felt his breath, they received his commission.

Then he was gone. That was disconcerting. They wanted him to stay, to be with them like before. But they realized that he did not belong to them; they belonged to him. He was not at their beck and call; they were at his.

When Thomas returned, everyone was talking at once. They told him that Jesus really was alive. He had come here. He stood right there. He talked to them. He ate a piece of fish. Thomas waved them all off with a sweep of his hand, looked at Peter, and said: “Well?” And Peter just nodded: “It’s true.”

Thomas’s reaction was not one anyone would have expected. He got angry. He said something like, “You’re all crazy. You’re as crazy as those women.” They tried to explain it to him again, tried to argue with him, but he got even angrier: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” Thomas was a stubborn ox, and he always had been. He was one of those guys who had to learn things for himself. He got the opportunity a week later.

Their patron was allowing them to continue to use the upper room. They weren’t so afraid anymore, except for Thomas, who insisted on keeping the door bolted, in case the temple guard came looking for them. It was Sunday evening, and it had been a week since any of them had seen Jesus. They were uncertain about what they should be doing, but they were certain about Jesus – except Thomas. When anyone would say something about Jesus, he would just put his right index finger to his left palm, as if to say, “When I see the marks and me put my finger where the nails were…”

And then it happened again. It was as if the candles flared or a breeze blew through the room. And there he was, standing right in front of Thomas. “Shalom,” he said, his whole being radiating joy and laughter. Then he said offered his palm to Thomas, pointing with his index finger, and said, “Put your finger here…Reach your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas said, “My Lord and my God.”

We preachers often end the story there, but that was not the end of the story. They would see Jesus again and again over the next forty days, always at the time and place of his choosing. They would sit with him and learn from him and begin to understand that what had happened was part of a bigger picture: God was undoing the ancient curse, bringing to an end the rule of death, and forming a people for himself around Jesus. Jesus told them the story was not over; in fact, they had a key role to play in it: to announce the Good News of God and make disciples to Jesus. He promised he would be with them in the effort and that God would support them in response to their prayers.

Those disciples played their role well and with courage. They turned the world upside down with the good news of what God had done – and was doing – through Jesus. They died long ago, but the story didn’t. Sometimes we get the idea that when the first disciples died, the story paused for a commercial break. We feel like nothing important is going on now. After the break, we’ll have the wrap-up, the return of Christ and the resurrection. But this is no commercial break. The same story is going on right now, we are a part of it, and it is still being chronicled. Ours may not be The Acts of the Apostles, but The Acts of the Branch County Christians is good too, and it will declare the glory of God.  

Let me close with this. I took the title of this sermon, Who Are You Looking For? from Jesus’s question to Mary. But there’s another question, at least as important, that we should ask: “Who is Looking for You?” Remember how, in the garden, after the first man and woman rebelled, they hid from God, but he went looking for them? Remember how Jesus went and looked for the Apostle Philip, and called him? How he went looking for the man who had been born blind, and found him? Remember how, in Jesus poignant stories, the shepherd went looking for his lost sheep, the woman went looking for her lost coin, and the father for his lost son? The truth is, as Augustine put it, we couldn’t look for God had he not already found us.

Who is looking for you? When God looks for people, he calls them. He called to Adam in the Garden, and later to Mary in another Garden. He still calls. Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:27), and he calls them by name (John 10:3). The Scripture gives examples: In Genesis 22, God called. “Abraham, Abraham.” In Exodus: “Moses, Moses”; Later it was, “Samuel, Samuel”; “Martha, Martha”; “Simon, Simon”: “Saul, Saul.”

When he called those people – some of the greatest people in the Bible – he for some reason repeated their names. But Mary heard the first time. That’s the way I want to be.

God still calls people by name. If you’ve heard the Voice speaking to you, answer! Whatever you do, don’t harden your hearts – that’s the great danger. (You know how people do that, right? They don’t, “No!” They say, “Okay … but later.”) The one sure symptom of a hard heart is poor hearing. Hardening your heart plugs your ears. That is why the psalmist says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart” (Ps. 95:7-8a). If God is calling your name, please answer.

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RESURRECTION: Mary Magdalene (Part 2)

Posted on April 12, 2020 by salooper57

(If you missed yesterday’s Holy Saturday post, you might want to read it before reading today’s post. Happy and Blessed Easter to you!)

As the three of us approached the garden, I got worried. During the Sabbath, some of the men were saying that the stone had already been rolled over the entrance to the tomb. If what they said was true (and they were sure that it was), there was no way we could move it. I said that, and Salome said, “Well, who can we get to roll the stone away?” We were still talking about it when we came the garden. Because it was still pretty dark, we were almost at the tomb before we saw what had happened.

We just stood there. Nobody said anything. Nobody had to. I knew immediately what had happened. Those dogs who had murdered the best man who ever lived had taken his body out of the tomb so that we couldn’t give it a proper burial. They had taken it somewhere and were probably doing horrible things to it in order to disgrace him even more. They hated him so much that they weren’t satisfied with killing him, they had to shame him too.

The other girls just stood there, but I ran. They said, “Mary, stop! Where are you going?” But I didn’t stop. I just shouted, “I’m going to tell Peter.” If anybody would know what to do it would be Peter. Somebody had to tell him (and the others) that they had taken his body.

I ran all the way. My side burned like fire and I looked like a fool, running into the city like that, but I didn’t care. The men were still in that same upper room, and when I got there I had to stop and catch my breath. At the top of the stairs I pushed the door, but it was locked, so I knocked and called. I heard the bolt slide and John bar Zebedee stood there, blinking into the morning light.

John’s Story, Part I

This is how John might have told his story.

After what happened, we thought they’d come after us too. We talked about it all night long. We were staying – hiding, really – in the upper room of the house that belonged to John Mark’s father. I didn’t really believe they were coming after us, but that’s what everybody kept saying. Well, everybody but Peter. He wasn’t saying anything. I don’t think he said a single word.

And we kept talking about Judas. I could hardly believe he did it. I mean, I looked up to him, at least at first. How could he do it? Thomas kept saying that Judas knows where we are, and when the Sabbath’s over, they’ll come for the rest of us. We ought to get back to Galilee as soon as possible. We needed to disappear.

But like I said, I didn’t really believe it … until somebody started banging on the door like they were trying to knock it down! I almost jumped out of my skin. Everybody got real still. I can still remember how big their eyes were – except Peter’s. He never looked up from the floor.

Then we heard Mary’s voice. “Let me in!” I drew back the bolt and opened the door. She looked wild – her hair was blown back and her head covering was missing. She pushed right past me and asked, “Where’s Peter?”

As soon as she saw him she said, “The stone isn’t there. Mary and Salome – they stayed. I came back to tell you. I ran the whole way. They’ve taken his body, and we don’t know where they’ve put it.”

That got Peter’s attention. He seemed to think for a moment, and then it was like something boiled over in him. He got up and went outside without saying a word. I followed him. When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he began to run. So I ran too. I knew where he was going and, since I knew Jerusalem a lot better than he did, I knew how to get there faster. (Not to mention I’m fifteen years younger than him!)

I got to the tomb and it was just like Mary said. The stone was laying off on one side like it had been tossed there by some kind of giant. Everything was perfectly still. There was no one around. I bent down and looked into the tomb.

Then Peter got there, huffing and puffing. He sort of pushed me aside and went right in. Then I went in too. And it was just like Mary said. His body was gone. But it was the weirdest thing. The burial shroud and the sudarium – the head cover – were lying on the slab. The sudarium was folded up perfectly. Why would anyone take his body and leave the burial cloth? And who would take the time to fold up the sudarium? It didn’t make any sense, but what else could have happened? That was the real question – what else could have happened – but we didn’t know enough to ask it.

We walked back by the way I’d come. I had all kinds of questions, but Peter still wasn’t talking. When we got to the house, Peter just kept walking. I asked him where he was going. He didn’t answer. I asked him what I should tell the others. He said, “That’s up to you.”

Mary, Part III

I followed Peter and John out of the door, but they ran and it was all I could do to walk. As I walked down the street, I could feel the darkness descending on me, like it had in the old days. I was so afraid that I was going back into that.

By the time I got to the garden, Peter and John were already gone. None of my friends (Mary, Salome, Joanna – none of them) were there. It was just me, alone again, just like it used to be. I started to cry. After a few minutes I bent down and looked into the tomb and I saw two men in there. Before I could say anything, one of them asked me why I was crying. Or maybe both of them asked, I can’t remember. A kind of fog had descended on me. I said something, something stupid, like, “They have taken my Lord away and I don’t know where they have put him.”

I turned around and the rising sun all but blinded me. There was a man standing there, just a few feet away. He said the same thing the other men said: “Woman, why are you crying?” I thought – it doesn’t make any sense now, but I thought – that maybe he was the one who took the body, so I said to him, “Sir, if you’ve carried him away, tell me where you put him and I’ll go and get him.” I know it was a stupid, but it was all I could think of.

Then he said, “Mary.” Just that. Just “Mary.” And I knew it was him. I looked again and it was like the darkness lifted. I said to him, “Rabboni!” It didn’t even dawn on me to ask him what had happened. I just knew he was there. He was alive. I grabbed hold of him, but after a moment he said, “Don’t hold on to me. Go tell my brothers!”

I didn’t argue. I went – my third trip along that route and it wasn’t even 8:00. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I knew everything would be alright. I wasn’t afraid anymore. My master was here! As long as he was here, I would be fine. Everything would be fine. I went back to the upper room – Peter wasn’t there yet – but I told the rest of them: “I’ve seen the Lord,” and told them what happened. They didn’t believe me. Then Mary and Salome and Joanna and the others came and told them the same thing. They still didn’t believe them either. Then Peter came back. He didn’t say much. He just said, “It’s true. I’ve seen him too.”

John’s Story, Part II

Everyone got really excited. We were all talking at once (except for Peter, who was still really quiet). But Thomas said, “This is crazy. You’re crazy. I’ve got to get out of here before I’m as crazy as all the rest of you.” He went out and slammed the door, and I pushed the bolt again and locked it.

For the next few hours, everybody was talking to everybody else, all at the same time. We tried to get Peter to tell us what had happened, but he only said, “It’s true. He’s alive.” Sometime later, while we were all talking, there was a … a sudden change. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s as if the candles flared brighter. It was as if music had just played. I think we all felt it; I know I did. And then there he was, standing right in the middle of us. It was him. At first we were so startled we couldn’t move. But he laughed; laughed and said, “Shalom.” Then he said, “What – you think I’m a ghost?” and he laughed again. He showed us his hands and his side. It was really him. The marks were there. He took some fish and ate it, and laughed again.

We gathered around him. I touched him. I guess I wanted to make sure he was real—that I wasn’t just dreaming it. But he was as real as ever – almost more real, if you know what I mean.        

Epilogue to John’s Story

(1 John 1:1-3) That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 

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Holy Saturday: Mary Magdalene’s Story (Part 1)

Posted on April 11, 2020 by salooper57

(I wrote this a couple of years ago and offer it for you Holy Saturday observance.)

Here’s how Mary Magdalene might have told her story.

When they killed him, it was like they killed me too – the me I was becoming; the hopeful, happy me. The me that people liked, that had friends. Before Jesus, life was a kind of blur. I just moved from thing to thing, from person to person, but nobody really cared about me and, to be honest, I don’t think I really cared about anybody – including myself. My life was a nightmare.

Then I met Jesus and everything changed. It’s like I woke up. For the first time since I was a little girl, somebody really cared about me. And it wasn’t just Jesus; his friends cared about me too. They became my friends. They took me in, made me one of them. They talked to me, listened to me, laughed with me, sometimes laughed at me—but I didn’t mind because they really liked me. I don’t know how to say it… For the first time I could remember, it wasn’t just me. It was us. I was saying things like, “We should go to the market. We should bake some bread. It felt so good to say “We.”

But we were us only because of him. We all knew it. He was the only thing that held us together. He was our heart. One day I said to Mary and Salome, “We would never have become friends if it wasn’t for him.” And they agreed. Salome said, “We’d never become anything, if it wasn’t for him.” But we were something with him! How exciting it was when we entered Jerusalem together with all the rest of the Galileans going to the festival. They shouted to him – to our Jesus – “Hosanna! Blessed is the King of Israel! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

And then he was gone. They took him. They killed him. And they might as well have killed me too. Without him to hold us together, I was sure we would all fall apart. None of those people I called my friends would have said “Hello” to me on the street, if it wasn’t for Jesus. Now that we’d lost him, I was so afraid I would lose them too.

On the day it happened, we (Salome and Mary and me, and a few of our friends) followed the Council Member and his people to the tomb, and only left in time to get back before Sabbath started. But we made plans to meet when Sabbath was over to see to it that his body was properly prepared for burial. Our people have very strict customs, and we were all afraid they wouldn’t be observed.

Since we were almost all from Galilee and were staying in different places around the City, we made arrangements to meet at the tomb just at first light. Salome and Mary and I would come together, since we were all staying in Bethsaida. His mother, Joanna, Mariam (Clopas’s wife), and a few others were coming from the City.

(Postscript: Tomorrow, on Easter Sunday, we will add the next part of Mary’s – and John bar Zebedee’s – shared story.)

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Oddest Things Jesus Ever Said: The Top Four

Posted on April 11, 2020 by salooper57

I’ve been thinking about the oddest things Jesus ever said, the ones his first hearers thought crazy. One could make a case for quite a few of them: “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away” or “Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” There are many others but let me give you my top four.

Number four on the list: “My flesh is real food, my blood is real drink.” That not only sounds crazy, it seems perverse. Jesus’s first hearers found it repulsive. It shocked his own disciples and many of them left because he said it.

Number three on my list is this: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Jesus lived approximately two millennia after Abraham yet claimed that Abraham had seen his day – whatever that means – and rejoiced. When his hearers objected to this, he said: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Those disputing with him had already accused him of being out of his mind. Now, they were sure of it.

Number two on my list of (seemingly) crazy sayings comes from the night Jesus was betrayed. His disciples were confused by something he had just said and Philip, who always appears confused when he shows up in the Gospels, said to Jesus: “Show us the Father, and we’ll be satisfied,” (That tops the list of craziest things the disciples ever said.) Jesus replied, “Philip, don’t you know that anyone who has seen me has seen the Father?” That was like saying, “You want to see God, Philip? You’re looking at him.”

From my perspective, the most off the wall thing Jesus ever said was spoken to his friend Martha after her brother’s untimely death. He had offered her what seemed like a trite religious platitude: “Your brother will rise again.” Martha, not in the mood for platitudes, answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” To which Jesus responded – my number one saying for strangeness – “I am the resurrection.”

First century Judaism was divided into two major camps: those who believed in resurrection and those who did not. The two camps are represented in the New Testament by the Pharisees (who believed) and the Sadducees (who did not). But whether you fit into the Pharisees’ camp (as most people did) or into the Sadducees’ camp, you would at least agree on what you disagreed on.

Resurrection was, in first century Jewish thought, a worldwide event in which everyone who ever lived and died would be returned to life and given a body suited to the new age. The idea is from the Old Testament, including this passage from the prophet Daniel: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

So when Jesus said to Martha: “I am the resurrection,” it sounded to her as if he were saying, “The coming alive from the dead of all the people who ever lived – that’s me. That’s what I am.”

To say, “I am the resurrection” is like saying, “I am the creation” or “I am the end of the world.” Were anyone else to say that, we would conclude he was deranged. But when Jesus says it, it’s different because he’s different. If anyone could be the resurrection – the coming to life of everyone who ever died – it would be him.

It turns out that the resurrection – this coming to life of everyone who ever died – is not waiting for the end of the world. It’s already begun, as Jesus knew it would, with himself. But there is an order to it, as St. Paul teaches: Jesus, the representative human, first; followed, at his return, by those who belong to him; and then by everyone else.

As with all Jesus’s “crazy” sayings, this one only seems crazy because we do not understand ourselves or the world in which we live. This claim is full of meaning and hope. It sums up God’s ancient promises in Jesus who, far from being crazy, is history’s smartest person.

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