Who is the Captain of your Fate?

There is a common perception among some Christians that the God of the Old Testament is an angry God, ready to destroy people at the slightest provocation. At best, they see God as a grumpy old man watching everyone carefully to catch them having fun, so he can say, “Stop it!” At worst, they see God as a sadistic monster who delights in punishing people. With such a view of God, it is no wonder that some people want to get rid of the idea of God completely.

Alongside this angry God, many Christians also think that the God of the New Testament is a loving God, so unlike the angry God of the Old Testament that they are hardly connected. Jesus, people think, is the supreme example of love and acceptance, drawing children into his arms and spreading love and delight wherever he goes.

Of course, both of these views are caricatures. In the Old Testament we have wonderful gentle passages such as Psalm 23, which picture God’s love in clear and graphic language. In the gospels, we have Jesus speaking sharp judgments such as, “Then the king will have them thrown into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth!” Not so gentle Jesus, meek and mild!

Nevertheless, our problem remains. How do we bring together our picture of an angry God and a loving God? Should we just cut all the verses about God’s judgment out of the Bible? That would leave us with a ragged pastiche of pages, falling apart with so many passages cut out. What should we do?

Jeremiah 4 gives us the picture of the angry God, ready to judge. Paul, in 1 Timothy 1, gives us the picture of the loving and merciful God, ready to forgive and save and bring us to God forever. I want to explore these passages briefly, and then return to the question.

Jeremiah 4

These prophecies come on the context of the end of the southern kingdom. Israel had been carried off into exile by Assyria, and Judah now nears the end of its life as an independent country. By the end of the book, Judah is also in exile, in Babylon. It is no surprise, then, that Jeremiah has been called “the weeping prophet”, because his message is full of heartbreak and pain. These verses are no exception.

·         Verses 11-12: God speaks judgment, compared to the way that a hot wind shrivels up everything in its path. Such a wind could blow out the chaff, making what remains healthy, but this wind will simply destroy. Earlier in the chapter, Jeremiah speaks of the possibility of repentance, but by this point he speaks as though it is too late to repent.

·         Verses 22-28: God sees what God’s people have done. They are disobedient children, who deliberately rebel against God and go their own way. In other places (such as earlier in this chapter, and also in chapters 11 to 13), Jeremiah pictures the people of Judah as an adulterous lover, who runs after other men instead of after her bridegroom.

Although Jeremiah does not name the sins here, they are clear from the rest of the book. The people of Judah have rebelled against God in many ways – notably by oppressing the poor (a call to social justice) and by worshipping the gods of Canaan, especially Baal (a call to spiritual purity). The key problem in their rebellion is divided loyalty. They think that their worship rituals in the temple will protect them, but God knows that they have given their allegiance to other gods. God judges such rebellion relentlessly. As the closing verse of the passage puts it, “I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.”

1 Timothy 1

Paul is close to the end of his life as he writes to Timothy, his “son in the faith”. In the first verses of the chapter, he gives Timothy instructions for the younger man’s ministry. Then, in the verses we read, Paul reflects on his own life.

·         Paul recognizes that he had lived the kind of life that deserved harsh judgment. “I was”, he says, “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.”

·         Paul recognizes God’s mercy and love and grace at work in his life: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the foremost.”

·         Paul is an example of God’s grace at work in our lives, which leads to the kind of praise that we sang in one of our hymns this morning, “Immortal, invisible, God only wise”. God is perfect, and we are terribly flawed; yet God fills us with God’s grace and holiness so that we can be with God forever.

This picture of God is almost completely opposite from the way that Jeremiah describes God. What’s going on?

An Attempted Synthesis

There is a fairly obvious way to bring these two pictures together, whether or not we find it satisfying. There is an anger towards others that grows from hatred of the other; this we should ask God to purge from our hearts. Such anger also is far from the way that Jeremiah portrays God. Instead, Jeremiah suggests the kind of anger that goes with loving someone deeply and wanting the very best for them.

For example, using the example that Jeremiah gives, a parent may show anger towards a child who deliberately acts in ways that will hurt the child or others. The anger and hurt that the parent feels are a direct outgrowth of parent’s love for the child.

I remember a day many years ago when I was in Grade 11. I had dallied too long getting ready for school and I missed the school bus. My mother had to drive me to school several miles away, throwing the rest of her day off schedule. When I got home, my father gave me a letter – two and half typed pages, in an envelope on which he had typed, “To My Only Son, whom I love deeply.” The letter described my tendency to wait until the last minute to do things and my tendency to make excuses for choices that were clearly my fault. Dad was deeply grieved at personal habits that he knew would make my life harder, and so he wrote me a strongly-worded letter to help me to change. The depth of his feeling was the depth of his love. I have that letter in my desk at home and pulled it out before writing this sermon.

You can probably give us other examples of far more difficult parent-child conversations, and you know what I mean by saying that the depth of our hurt as parents is also the depth of our love. Sometimes that hurt shows itself as anger. That’s what happens in Jeremiah 4.

Another example from other passages in Jeremiah – of an adulterous lover – is more graphic. God presents the picture of a bridegroom whose bride spends their honeymoon pursuing other men. Reversing the picture makes the same point: Any one of us would be both hurt and angry if our spouse, husband or wife, would pursue another lover. We know people to whom this has happened, and we know that the more you love your spouse, the more such betrayal hurts.

What shows us clearly that God’s love is deeper than God’s anger is the fact that God does not give up on Judah, even when God brings the judgment of exile on the people. In the case of an adulterous lover, our response is to end the relationship. Instead, God works ceaselessly to restore the relationship. This is not the action of a God whose essence is anger; this is the action of a God whose essence is love. In this portrayal of God, Paul’s gratitude for grace make sense.

A final point before we continue: Jeremiah describes the sin that leads to such anger as social and spiritual. A basic sin in Judah at that time is the sin of greed and economic injustice. The people thought that proper forms of worship would compensate for their sin, and they persisted in worshipping Baal and worshipping Mammon (or Money). I suspect that this sin is a point of connection with our society. We also in Canada are given to the pursuit of money and wealth. This leads us to the “Going Deeper” aspect of this sermon.

Going Deeper

The question of God’s love and God’s anger is not just an academic exercise, designed to provide fodder for a college dorm bull session. Serious issues are at stake, and the most serious is the question of who is in charge of our lives. The title of this sermon comes from a poem named Invictus by William Ernest Henley. The poem begins: “Out of the night that covers me,/ Black as the pit from pole to pole,/ I thank whatever gods may be/ For my unconquerable soul.” It ends with these words: “It matters not how strait [narrow] the gate,/ How charged with punishments the scroll,/ I am the master of my fate,/ I am the captain of my soul.”

Written in the 19^th Century, this poem expresses an indomitable spirit that many people admire. And rightly so! Henley wrote the poem as he faced one physical problem after another, including tuberculosis of the bones and the amputation of his left leg. At the same time, I hear an echo of human pride as expressed in the words of Milton’s Paradise Lost, when Satan exclaims, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!”

Henley celebrates the indomitable human spirit that surmounts every challenge, closing “I am the captain of my soul.” But is this something to celebrate? An indomitable spirit based on the lordship of Jesus Christ is good, but one based on solely on the self is simply pride. It is precisely this self-sufficiency that Jeremiah challenged and that Paul renounced. One of Paul’s most common self-descriptions was as “a slave of Christ”. There is a fundamental truth of life – that everyone is a slave of something. None of us is really the master of our fate. All of us will die. In the end, we can make nothing certain.

This is the question that thinking about God’s love and God’s wrath drives us to: Who is your master? Jeremiah puts it negatively: Because you [people of Judah] refuse to bow to God, God will force you to bow! Paul puts it positively: Because he has surrendered to Jesus, God has acted in grace and mercy and love to transform him. Both of them ask us: Who is your master?

It is a harder question than it seems. We are really good at hiding our deepest selves from ourselves. It is also a more important question than we realise. Eternity hangs on the answer.

Conclusion

We will come back together in the Going Deeper time to talk about these questions, and about any other questions or issues you may have. Meanwhile, I challenge each of us here this morning to consider whether we are following the example of the people of Judah – living for ourselves, expecting God to care for us because we go to church, or the example of Paul – living for Christ, whatever it costs and wherever it takes us.

I know what our forebears would have said. They gave up everything to follow Christ faithfully. What will you say? What will I say?

Steinbach Mennonite Church

15 September 2019

Text

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

¹¹At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse— ¹²a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them. ^…

²²“For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.” ²³I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. ²⁴I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. ²⁵I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. ²⁶I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger. ²⁷For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. ²⁸Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.

1 Timothy 1:12-17

¹²I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, ¹³even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, ¹⁴and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. ¹⁶But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.¹⁷To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Focus

Many people see God as a harsh judge and turn away. Some Scriptures sound like that is the case, but is it really? Why does God judge so fiercely (as we read Jeremiah)?

Some Questions

·         What are the judgment passages of Scripture for (as in Jeremiah)?

·         Are you satisfied with this way of bringing God’s anger and God’s love together? Or does it seem to you that speaking of God’s anger simply contradicts God’s love?

·         How can you or I tell who or what is the “master of your/my soul”?

·         When someone says, “Jesus is my Lord and Master”, how can you tell if they are speaking the truth?

·         How can we become people who really follow Jesus with total allegiance?

The Meaning of Death

A little more than two years ago, we gathered here to say goodbye to my father. Now we are saying goodbye to Verna Mae Climenhaga, his wife of 24 years, our step-mother and grandmother. Those of us in the next generation are aware that we are now on the front lines. With that awareness, I want to reflect on the meaning of death. This is a different question than, “What is the funeral for?” The most important part of the funeral is the committal service: “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” The funeral recognizes and enshrines the great transition from this life to the next, the final transformation that Paul describes eloquently in 1 Cor 15:

For behold I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. … For this corruption must put on incorruption and this mortality put on immortality! Then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory!” Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the Law. But thanks be unto God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

I am asking instead about death. The great task of life is learning how to die. Death is one task that none can shirk. Whether we have been wealthy or in modest circumstances, whether we have had good health or lived with pain and disease, whether we exercise power in this world or have lived under the rule of others, we all die. What does it all mean? We are all engaged in the search to answer this question. I hope primarily to honour Verna Mae as we remember her and to stimulate your own thinking as you and I continue to prepare for the end of this life.

Verna Mae

Our beloved step-mother and grandma and sister and aunt and great-aunt was born in 1932. Her birthday was the day before my own, on May 29. She entered the BIC Church at Conboy BIC, close to the birthplace of the BIC Church as a whole. She spent some years at the Navajo Mission in New Mexico, where my wife was then a small girl. She once told us that she remembers Lois and Carol (Heise) and Nancy and MJ (Heisey), four girls at the mission, peering in at the window at this new arrival to their home. Years later, in the BIC Missions Office, our paths were again intertwined, as she sent out the cheques that supported Lois and me in our work with BIC missions. Then, in 1993, two years after our mother died, Dad and Verna Mae were married in the Conoy BIC Church. Now the intertwining of our lives on this earth comes to an end as we say goodbye.

We say goodbye to someone who taught our family much. One mothers’ day, my father recalled the women in his life – his mother, my mother (Dorcas), and Verna Mae. His comment about Verna Mae was significant: “She taught me to accept people without judging them.” John Climenhaga and his descendants always enjoyed a good argument. It took Verna Mae’s quiet presence in Dad’s life for him to see the strength of simple acceptance. [Of course there were others in the family who knew how to accept people well, but this simple acceptance was a special gift in Verna Mae.]

Verna Mae also helped others to implement their dreams. When the old Missions Handbook came to an end (in 1978), Wilmer Heisey had the idea of listing the names of all those who had served with BIC and other mission agencies from the beginning in the 1890s to that point in time in 1978. Verna Mae coordinated the massive task of working through the relevant documents and compiling the list – a wonderful resource to researchers, as I can attest.

These memories bring me to the question, “What is the meaning of death?” which in turn brings us to the passage we read from 1 Corinthians 15.

1 Corinthians 15

In this chapter, Paul spends a lot of time and space on one central subject: the resurrection. He begins by naming this as the core of the gospel. That core consists of several affirmations:

·         Jesus Christ (Jesus the Messiah) was crucified for our sins

·         Jesus was dead and buried

·         Jesus was raised on the third day

·         Jesus appeared to the disciples and even to Paul.

In these affirmations, we find the gospel; we find God’s desired shape for our lives. God created us to be in relationship – with each other and with God. We have rebelled against God, breaking relationship with each other and with God and with all of creation. God desires reconciliation and does everything possible to restore these broken relationships. That is why Jesus died for our sins – to restore the relationship. That is why Jesus rose from the dead – to give reconciliation “power”. That is why Jesus appeared to so many and comes to you and to me still today – to make reconciliation in our lives a reality.

There’s a lot to unpack there, and Paul takes the rest of a long chapter to unpack it. Just one small piece for us here: Jesus died, rose, appeared, and ascended to God the Father to restore relationships. What is the meaning of life? Reconciled relationships. What is the meaning of life’s end, death? Reconciled relationships.

What will we wish we had done more when we die? Will we wish we had made more money? I doubt. Will we wish we had spent more time with family and with friends? Probably. We are wired for relationship, and time spent with others is worth more than money earned. Relationships made right – with God and with each other – are the core of Christian faith. When someone dies, we remember that life and death are about relationships more than anything else.

Death is an impenetrable curtain, and none of us can report what we see beyond. Recently, a good friend died of cancer. We were talking together and he said something like this, “Jesus cared so much for relationships that I am confident I will meet my loved ones in Heaven. I don’t know what that will look like. I can imagine joining my loved ones who have preceded me in Heaven, and starting to exclaim about what is around me, and then someone (probably Dad) saying, “Hush! Look there! You see Jesus coming?” But my friend is right. Relationships are the centre of our faith – right relationship with God and right relationships with each other. Verna Mae is with those whom she loved on earth, and most of all, she is with Jesus.

So What?

As I said, this reality – the reality of the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus – is the central reality of our lives. Verna Mae lived and died on that basis, the source of all love and acceptance in human relationships.

C.S. Lewis wrote a little book (The Great Divorce)in which he imagined what the borders of Heaven might be like. He imagines various of the bright people from Heaven. Near the end of the story, Lewis sees one of the “great people of Heaven”. Here is how he describes it:

… All down one long aisle of the forest the under-sides of the leafy branches had begun to tremble with dancing light; … Some kind of procession was approaching us, and the light came from the persons who composed it.

First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers-soundlessly falling, lightly drifting flowers, … Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, noone who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done.

… I have forgotten [what she wore]. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face. “Is it? … is it?” I whispered to my guide. “Not at all,” said he. “It’s someone you will never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.” “She seems to be … well, a person of particular importance?” “Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”

“And who are these gigantic people … look! They’re like emeralds … who are dancing and throwing flowers before her?” “Haven't ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”

“And who are all these young men and women on each side?” “They are her sons and daughters. … Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.”

Can you see Verna Mae there? I can! She lived quietly and lovingly, embracing the people she met without question. I believe that Jesus has greeted her already, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Not everyone sees life the way that I have just described, and we can discuss such questions at other times and in other places. Here, this morning, this day of remembering Verna Mae and of committing her to God, we affirm that the central meaning of life is found in loving God and loving each other and loving all of creation. Not in power or in money or in any of the other places that we look, but in building and restoring relationships wherever we can.

When Dad said that Verna Mae taught him to accept people as they are, he expressed a central piece of her identity – as one who simply lived at peace with God, with others, and with herself. She died at peace with God, and now she lives in the glory of Peace Incarnate.

7 September 2019

Messiah Village

Text

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

The Resurrection of Christ

15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ² By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

⁹ For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. ¹¹ Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.