Eternity Sunday

Today is Eternity Sunday. In some church traditions – such as the Anglican Church of Canada, what we call “eternity Sunday” corresponds roughly to All Saints Day. The Anglican Church celebrated All Saints on November 1, a Friday, and we could have had this service on November 3, the following Sunday. The name “Eternity Sunday” comes from the celebration in the Lutheran Church of Germany, where it is called Totensonntag (Sunday of the Dead). Evidently, Mennonites learned our practice from the Lutherans, so that the last Sunday of the Church’s year for us is “Eternity Sunday”, the day when we especially remember those in our congregation who have died since the last Totensonntag. This brief explanation helps me understand why I did not encounter Totensonntag in the United States. Swiss Mennonites have a different history than Russian Mennonites, with less interaction with Lutherans on our way into North America.

Next Sunday is the first Sunday in the Advent Season, a time of anticipation and preparation for celebrating the birth of Jesus, what some call “the great mystery of the incarnation”. Today, it is good that we bring the church’s year to an end by refocussing our hearts and minds on the reality of God’s Eternity. As a musical play (For Heaven’s Sake) puts it, “Aim for Heaven and earth will be thrown in.” Today, we want to aim for Heaven. We want to gain a glimpse of eternity so that we can live today in the light that comes from God.

Psalm 90

Psalm 90 is unusual in that it is attributed to Moses. It is a sober, even sombre, look at “God’s Eternity and Human Frailty”. We hear that our days are like a dream that fades when the sleeper awakes, or we are like grass that grows well, but soon the grass withers in the winter blast and is gone. We know the truth of these pictures. We have had enough funerals over the past year to remind us how short our time on earth is. Even when the person we remember lived for many years, their time is short. My Dad lived to 98 years of age, an old man. Yet his days also were soon over: 100 years ago is not very long considering the age of the universe, let alone when measured against God’s eternity.

We hear also that God’s time is “everlasting”. God simply is. There is no time before God; there is no time after God. The weight of God’s Eternity weighs on the psalmist so that he experiences it as something to be afraid of: “Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.”

This fear of God’s anger derives partly from the vision of God and eternity in the Old Testament. The usual name for the place of the dead in the Psalms is “Sheol”. Sheol is neither Heaven nor Hell. It is simply a place where the dead are … well, dead! The Old Testament in general does not speak about Heaven or Hell or Eternity. God was working slowly, gradually, preparing God’s people for God incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth. This fear derives also from an awareness of the frightening size of infinity – like looking at the size of the sky on a clear night and reflecting on small one is.

With this in mind, we see that the Psalmist draws the lesson, “¹² So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. ¹³ Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants! ¹⁴ Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. ¹⁵ Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil. ¹⁶ Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. ¹⁷ Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work of our hands!”

Philippians 3

From this vision, this glimpse of the God of Eternity we turn to Paul’s words in Philippians 3. Paul was a Pharisee, which is important for our thoughts today. In their debates with the Sadducees, the Pharisees were the ones who promoted the idea of Heaven as a place where God lives and to which God’s people may go when they die. So Paul lived his life as an apostle, anticipating an eternal union with God.

In the passage we read, Paul starts by saying that he has not yet obtained “this” or reached “the goal”. What goal was he trying to reach? The answer is in the previous verses: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Now this sounds like “Eternity Sunday”!

Paul’s view was that sharing in Christ’s suffering makes us perfect, like Christ, which in turn unites us completely with Christ in his resurrection. We are made to live forever with Christ! We are made to become real images of God!

Paul then encourages us to follow Christ fully, as he does, embracing the hardships of this life as Christ’s brothers and sisters, so that we also may receive “the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” He pictures two types of people – those who live as enemies of Christ and those who die with Christ.

Those who live as Christ’s enemies pursue physical pleasure before anything else. Those who embrace the cross of Christ are “conformed to the body of his glory.” This is a curious phrase. I take it to mean something like the way that Paul talks about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15: “⁵⁰ What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹ Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³ For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” These are just a few verses from a long description of “the body of his glory”, that is, of what waits for us in Heaven.

Excursus on Heaven

Let’s talk about Heaven for a moment – this place that waits for us beyond the bounds of space and time. I have already noted that most of the Old Testament does not say much about Heaven. We have the remarkable passage in Job, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” (Job 19: 25ff) A wonderful passage, but it doesn’t tell us what Heaven is like.

We have also the descriptions in the prophets, notably passages such as Isaiah 65, which point towards “the Day of the Lord”. Again, they do not tell us much about Heaven itself; rather they point towards God’s Reign at the end of time.

What about the New Testament? Jesus begins many sayings in Matthew’s gospel with the words, “The kingdom of Heaven is like …” The trouble is, Matthew was writing for Jews who used “Heaven” as a way of saying “God”, so the same sayings in Mark and Luke begin, “The kingdom of God is like …”

Well, isn’t Heaven the kingdom of God? Yes it is, but you notice that we pray regularly, “Your kingdom come”. That means that in this sense, Heaven is something here on earth as well as in what we sometimes call the Afterlife. Which doesn’t get us much closer to knowing what Heaven in Eternity is like.

What about promises such as “no more crying there”, or perhaps the picture of “streets of gold”? Most of these pictures come from the book of Revelation – which sometimes quotes from other OT books, such as Daniel or Isaiah. In fact, last Sunday Lee used verses from Isaiah that could picture Heaven, but they refer to “the New Heaven and the New Earth”. The use of “New Heaven and New Earth” gets us closer to what’s going on.

You see, Heaven is so far beyond what we can imagine that the only way to talk about it is with images – such as pictures like the streets of gold (I prefer grass myself) to show how glorious it is, or like the wolf and the lamb lying down together to show how peaceful it is, or like the end of tears and death itself to show how full of joy and good it is.

In short, Heaven is the fullness of God’s presence. Heaven is what Paul is pointing us towards with his words, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Back to “Eternity Sunday”

What does all of this mean for us today? How does thinking about Heaven help us on Eternity Sunday. We remember our loved ones who have died. This is a good day to do so. Those memories are a complex mixture of joy and sorrow: That is normal; that is the way life is. But I think there’s something else even better for us to do today – and every Eternity Sunday.

Eternity Sunday helps us focus on Eternity for a brief time this Sunday morning. As we gaze across the endless span of time, we begin to see ourselves more clearly. We are mortal creatures with a short life span, as the Psalmist reminds us, but we are not made for mortality. We have many things that we have done in our lives, some good and some bad, but (as Paul reminds us) we are not defined by our past. We are made for Eternity. We are defined by God, who inhabits Eternity. As Paul puts it, our citizenship is in Heaven, and we live by God’s will here on earth, as Heaven begins to take shape even in our own lives.

In short, Eternity Sunday reminds us who we are and who we belong to. We are God’s creatures, and we belong to God. We live the way God wants us to, not the way that the world around us tells us to. We know the glory and love and joy of the Lord, even when we are caught in difficult situations here on earth. I can almost hear an old man standing on a cliff calling to us, “Remember! You are not a chicken! You are an eagle!”

As I lit candles for my parents this morning, I think they are echoing that old man and praying for me to live in the fullness of God’s grace. The writer of Hebrews suggests that kind of image (12: 1-2): “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

A Closing Illustration

There is a letter from the years just after the New Testament was written called “Letter to Diognetus” (written sometime in the 2^nd Century), in which a Christian disciple explains the Christian faith to Diognetus.

Christians are indistinguishable from other people either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by human curiosity. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives. 

They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all people, but all people persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. [This excerpt is taken from the Vatican’s translation, available online.]

Eternity Sunday refocuses our lives, and we not only aim for Heaven ourselves, but we also bring something of Heaven to all people around us. I referred to the musical For Heaven’s Sake at the beginning of this sermon. I close with a longer quote from the same song I quoted before:

Aim for the source of life that’s but reflected here;

Aim for the sea to which time flows;

Aim for Forever, it’s ever-lapping waves

One day will sweep the shore you know.

If you would save your life,

Then you must choose

To give away your life,

For what you lose—

Out at the end of time is what you win.

Aim for Heaven and earth will be thrown in.

Or, as C.S. Lewis put it more briefly, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”

Focus Statement: We are in the world but not of the world. We live in Steinbach but we come from “a far country”. Everyone around us has one set of values out of which they live; we have a different set of values. Think On It: What does it mean to be a “citizen of Heaven”?

Going Deeper Questions:

1.      What do you understand by “Heaven”?

2.      Non-Christians sometimes accuse us of being “so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.” What truth is there in this accusation? How does being “heavenly-minded” make us better here on earth?

3.      I have suggested that Eternity reorients us. Why do we need such reorientation? What are the most important kinds of reorientation that we need?

Steinbach Mennonite Church

24 November 2019

Texts: Psalm 90; Philippians 3: 12-21

Psalm 90

God’s Eternity and Human Frailty

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.

¹ Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. ² Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

³ You turn us back to dust, and say, “Turn back, you mortals.” ⁴ For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. ⁵ You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; ⁶ in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.

⁷ For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed. ⁸ You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. ⁹ For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh. ¹⁰ The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. ¹¹ Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.

¹² So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. ¹³ Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants! ¹⁴ Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. ¹⁵ Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil.

¹⁶ Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. ¹⁷ Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work of our hands!

Philippians 3

Pressing toward the Goal

¹² Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³ Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. ¹⁶ Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.

¹⁷ Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. ¹⁸ For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. ¹⁹ Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. ²⁰ But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. ²¹ He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

International Chapel 2019

Many years ago, I heard Jon Bonk tell a story from East Africa. He called it the story of Indegi (the Swahili name for the eagle). I call him “Ukhosi”, the Ndebele word for eagle. Here is the story of Ukhosi and the Old Man. Note that “ukhosi” is like the word used for Lord in “Lord God” – “iNkosi”. Ukhosi is a majestic bird, almost the opposite of inkuku, the chicken.

One day, an old man was walking through the African bush. As the sun was going down, he came to a village and decided to stay there for the night. At the gate of the village, he called out, “Ekuhle.” (Is it good [for me to come in]?) The father of the village replied, “Yebo, umdala. Ngena!” (Come in, old man.) They sat and visited as food was prepared and a bed made ready. As they talked, the old man saw an eagle running around on the ground, pecking for corn with the chickens.

“Baba,” he said, “Why is Ukhosi running on the ground like inkuku?”

“Yes, umdala,” the father replied, “I found him on the ground when he was very small. He must have fallen from the nest. I raised him here with the chickens, and he thinks he is a chicken.”

The old man found this disturbing, such a majestic creature, reduced to pecking corn on the ground with the chickens.” “Baba,” he said, “may I try something.” “Of course, my friend.” The old man got up and went to the eagle. He picked him up and whispered to him, “Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” Then he threw him in the air to help him fly. Ukhosi fell to the ground with a thud.

The old man stepped over to him and picked him up again. Climbing into the tree to get some height, he whispered again to the eagle, “Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” Then he threw him in the air as high as he could. Ukhosi fell to the ground helpless and winded, then scuttled off to hide.

The old man pursued him and finally caught him. Climbing on top of the highest hut in the village, he repeated his words to the eagle, “Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” This time, Ukhosi fell even further and harder and lay on the ground trembling. He didn’t run away. It seemed to him that the old man would just catch him and torment him again.

The old man was discouraged and sat down to his meal with the people from the village, apologizing for his behaviour. Darkness fell, and he went to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. Finally, sometime after midnight, he got up and went searching for the eagle. He found him on a low branch, his head tucked under his wing like the chickens around him.

The old man picked him off the branch before the eagle knew what was happening. Then he started to walk out from the village. They walked across the plain. For hours and hours they walked. Ukhosi wondered where they were going. Then they started climbing. Their path wound higher and higher among the rocks, climbing up a mountainside.

The sun rose above the plain, shining brightly, as they came to the edge of a cliff looking out over the valley. Ukhosi looked down, amazed. He thought he had never been so high. The old man held him up and spoke aloud to him, “Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” Then he threw him as far from the cliff as he could, and Ukhosi started to fall. Faster and faster he fell, the wind whistling about his ears. He closed his eyes shut tightly and clamped his wings against his body as hard as he could, but the wind was too strong for him. It ripped a wing out from his body, and to steady himself he put out the other wing. Then the wind stopped, and he cautiously opened his eyes. He found that he was gliding in a big circle above the plain.

He tested one wing and then the other. Soon he was moving his eyes up and down in large gentle beats, and he began to rise still in big circles. He came level with the old man on the cliff edge, and as he turned to fly away for a new start and a new life, he heard the old man call after him, “Remember, Ukhosi, you are not a chicken! You are an eagle!”

1 John 4: 7-12

God’s Love and Ours

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

In the passage we heard earlier, John writes simply and directly: “God is love.” John’s letter is an extended riff on this idea – that the centre of the Jewish faith is (as Jesus said) to love God wholeheartedly and to love our neighbour the same way we love ourselves. To this idea, Jesus added the distinctive command: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Such love is the mark of the Christian life, and it derives from God’s nature as perfect love.

All of this leads to the question, “What is love, anyway?” I might say that I love soccer. The statement is true, but it reduces love to a kind of liking, however fanatical. When we say that God is love, we are not reducing God to a kind of super-fan.

Often enough, we think of love as the sort of deep emotion that binds people together. Erotic love binds a couple together. Community love binds a family (biological or otherwise) together. Essential to such love is the sense that I am incomplete without the loved one. If I am left alone when my wife dies, I have part of myself ripped out. Such love is not simply caring for the other; it is almost a synonym for need. “I love you” is close to “I need you.”

God loves us, but God does not need us. God remains fully God, fulfilled within the eternal trinity, even without the universe God has created. So, “God is love” and “God loved the world so much” cannot mean “God needs us and is incomplete without us.” What then does love mean?

A friend of mine once said it this way, “Love means wanting God’s best for the other person.” Whether you are my friend or my enemy, whether I like you or not, saying that I love you means I want God’s best for you. I think that also describes God’s love for us. God made us as God’s images in this world. God made us to represent God in this world. God made us to care for each other and for creation. We fight with each other and destroy our environment, abusing God’s good gifts, but God continues to love us. God wants us to be all that God has made us to be.

Here’s where the story of the old man and the eagle comes in. I am uncomfortable making the old man stand in for God. Dropping the eagle off a cliff was cruel, and God is never cruel. But there is a connection. The old man was distressed that the eagle was satisfied with being a chicken. In the sense I have suggested, the old man loved the eagle. He wanted the eagle to be true to his nature as a majestic bird soaring through the skies.

Whatever we say about being thrown off a cliff, we can say this. God uses all that happens to us in our lives to make us into what God wants us to be. The US Marines have a slogan, “Be all that you can be.” The trouble is that they define what you can be. God wants something more - even more than anything we might want to be. God wants us to be even better than the marines. “Be all that God has made you to be!”

God has made us royalty, to rule with God forever. God is not as easily satisfied as we are and continues to mould us and shape us throughout our lives.Whatever happens in your life, know this: God is at work in you to make you into God’s eagles. As the prophet put it so many years ago, “²⁸ Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. ²⁹ He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. ³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary, and young people stumble and fall; ³¹ but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Providence International Chapel

13 Nov 2019

Hoping for Hope

We have just finished our “You asked for it” series, and today we have texts found in the church’s lectionary. The lectionary follows the church’s year – beginning with Advent, moving through the Christmas season, the weeks of Lent, and then Easter and Pentecost. Finally, there is this space between Pentecost and the next Advent, called “Ordinary Time” – that is, the ordinary time in which we live, showing in daily life what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

The various seasons of the church’s year each celebrate a particular theme or event. Advent deals with the preparation for the birth of Jesus. Christmas remembers that birth. Lent prepares for the death of Jesus. Easter covers Jesus’ death and resurrection. Ordinary time has no overarching theme. It is simply life as we live it. As such, the readings in Ordinary Time also cover a wide variety of themes.

Today, we have a Psalm that celebrates God’s goodness and grace towards those who give themselves into God’s care. Then we heard the story of Zacchaeus, telling of the beginning of his walk as a follower of Jesus. We could easily make this morning’s message an application of Lee’s sermon last week on the two ways. Zacchaeus chose to walk towards Jesus, giving up all that he had been in order to become what Jesus wanted him to be.

Psalm 32

This psalm is the second of seven so-called “penitential psalms”. That is, in this Psalm, David (presumably) confesses his sins and receives God’s forgiveness.

·         Vv 1-2: The blessing and joy of forgiveness. Living outside God’s love and care is painful; living inside God’s love and care is “blessing”. This word, blessing, is fuller than I can describe. It includes the idea that our lives are full of the spiritual gift of self-control (Gal 5), as well as full of joy and delight.

We use this word a lot in Christian circles. “Bless you!” when someone sneezes. “God bless you,” as someone leaves. The word “goodbye” comes from this “God bless you”. We pray for God’s blessings on our family and friends and on ourselves. What is blessing? A whole sermon is here! Enough for now to say that it includes the fullness of God’s presence and care, protecting and guiding us and giving us joy. Christians are happy people, or at least we should be!

·         Vv 3-5: When we pretend that there is nothing wrong with us and that we’re okay, life is hard and bitter. There is no “blessing”! Often enough, the problems we face are not our fault, but for all of us there is some rebellion, some sense of self-direction inside, which we need to confess to God. We stop trying to fix everything. We can’t, anyway! We turn to God and admit (that’s what “confess” means) our own selfishness, and we throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, on God’s mercy.

·         Vv 6-7: In return, God gives us help and hope. The rising waters – not necessarily a literal flood, even in Manitoba! – cannot reach us. We are safe, even as the troubles continue to swirl around us.

The verses we did not read include God’s response, promising to protect and guide (verses 8 and 9), and then giving a general praise for the whole congregation, as they experience God’s goodness and grace (verses 10 and 11).

Luke 19

The story of Zacchaeus is one we know well. The incident takes place near the end of that part of Luke’s Gospel we call “On the road to Jerusalem”, which starts at the end of chapter 9. This section of the Gospel prepares the way for the Passion accounts of Easter week, giving about 10 chapters of Jesus’ teaching. Most of the miracles recorded in Luke occur in chapters 1 to 9; most of the teaching in chapters 10 to 19.

                                                                                                              

We begin the story as Jesus and his disciples enter Jericho. Their journey had started in Galilee, 80 some miles north of Jerusalem. Now Jesus has come almost within sight of his goal, about 15 miles east and a bit north. Just before entering the city (chapter 18), Jesus heals a blind man, who is then ready to follow him. In our passage, Zacchaeus chooses to follow him. Both the blind man and Zacchaeus stand in sharp contrast with the events that follow as Jesus enters Jerusalem. There, the religious leaders and the people reject Jesus, leading to the crucifixion.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector. As such, he made his fortune by over-charging people on their taxes and keeping the excess. Religious people and ordinary people alike hated the tax collectors, and all of his wealth could not hide from him the hatred that he encountered on every side. He had heard about Jesus, wandering slowly through the countryside teaching and healing. He had heard that Jesus was an unusual teacher. Perhaps he had heard that Jesus accepted people like him, whom nobody else liked.

In any case, when he went to see Jesus coming into Jericho, he found his way blocked by the crowds. He climbed up into a tree so as to see better, and there Jesus found him. Jesus called to him and demonstrated an immediate connection, full of grace and acceptance. He responded to God’s grace in a way that echoes the general theme of Psalm 32, and he received forgiveness and new life. He immediately demonstrated that new life in his commitment to make things right with everyone he had cheated – an endeavour that, if he followed through on it, could leave him impoverished. The story doesn’t tell us, but I wonder what he could have left after restoring everyone fourfold for any extra taxes he had collected.

It didn’t matter. Whatever he had left at the end, he also had something worth far more – “Today salvation has come to this house!” Jesus pronounced him a child of Abraham. Jesus made it clear that Zacchaeus was blessed, and Zacchaeus rejoiced in new life given him at that moment.

And Us?

What about us? I suppose we could read these two passages as a riff on the theme of the two ways that Lee preached on last week. So it is. I want to pick up on one piece of that theme.

The person who confesses before God [which generally also means confessing before God’s people] receives new life, with a joy and delight that the Psalmist describes with the word “Blessed!” What does this new life look like? When you confess yourself before God, what are you hoping for?

You will have to answer for yourself what you are hoping for. Perhaps the safety and security the Psalmist describes. Perhaps the inclusion in God’s people (and communion with God) that Jesus describes for Zacchaeus. In any case, I can tell what I think Jesus actually gives.

I mentioned safety and security – the Psalmist describes it this way: “⁶ Therefore let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found; surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them. ⁷ You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.” If this is a Psalm of David, we can say that this was not David’s experience at every point. He was safe – as long as he lived within God’s will.

I have just finished reading 2 Samuel with the story of David, and he was not always “safe and secure” after he became king. When he had Uriah killed and took Uriah’s wife for his own, he experienced the problems that flow from bad life choices. When his problems with the way he raised his sons led to Absalom’s rebellion, he experienced serious problems with his rule of Israel in the years that followed.

We can say, then, that committing our lives to God does not protect us from our own bad choices. We still experience the consequences of our own choices. Sometimes we experience problems that are not our fault. Are we still “safe and secure”? This is a hard question. What I can say with confidence is this: As we seek God’s presence, as we live “in Christ” – where Christ is like a physical space in which we live – we receive strength and grace to deal with the hard times of life. “Surely the rising waters will not sweep us away!” The waters of trouble are still there; we still experience them, but they cannot destroy us. I think that’s what happened with Zacchaeus.

When that happens, something else happens too. We are changed. We are transformed. We may continue to experience problems, but they no longer threaten us at the core of our being. We rise above them (to use a common expression).

Many years ago, I heard Jon Bonk tell a story from East Africa. He called it the story of Indegi (the Swahili name for the eagle). I call him “Ukhosi”, the Ndebele word for eagle. Here is the story of Ukhosi and the Old Man.

One day, an old man was walking through the African bush. As the sun was going down, he came to a village and decided to stay there for the night. At the gate of the village, he called out, “Ekuhle.” (Is it good [for me to come in]?) The father of the village replied, “Yebo, umdala. Ngena!” (Come in, old man.) They sat and visited as food was prepared and a bed made ready. As they talked, the old man saw an eagle running around on the ground, pecking for corn with the chickens.

“Baba,” he said, “Why is Ukhosi running on the ground like inkuku?” [He didn’t say it, but “ukhosi” sounds like the word for Lord, and inkuku just means a silly chicken.]

“Yes, umdala,” the father replied, “I found him on the ground when he was very small. He must have fallen from the nest. I raised him here with the chickens, and he thinks he is a chicken.”

The old man found this disturbing, such a majestic creature, reduced to pecking corn on the ground with the chickens.” “Baba,” he said, “may I try something.” “Of course, my friend.” The old man got up and went to the eagle. He picked him up and whispered to him, “Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” Then he threw him in the air to help him fly. Ukhosi fell to the ground with a thud.

The old man stepped over to him and picked him up again. Climbing into the tree to get some height, he whispered again to the eagle, “Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” Then he threw him in the air as high as he could. Ukhosi fell to the ground helpless and winded, then scuttled off to hide.

The old man pursued him and finally caught him. Climbing on top of the highest hut in the village, he repeated his words to the eagle, “Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” This time, Ukhosi fell even further and harder and lay on the ground trembling. He didn’t run away. It seemed to him that the old man would just catch him and torment him again.

The old man was discouraged and sat down to his meal with the people from the village, apologizing for his behaviour. Darkness fell, and he went to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. Finally, late at night, after midnight, he got up and went searching for the eagle. He found him on a low branch in a tree, sleeping with his head tucked under his wing like the chickens around him.

The old man picked him off the branch before the eagle knew what was happening. Then he started to walk out from the village. They walked across the plain. For hours and hours they walked. Ukhosi wondered where they were going. Then they started climbing. Their path wound higher and higher among the rocks, climbing up a mountainside.

The sun rose above the plain, shining brightly, as they came to the edge of a cliff looking out over the valley. Ukhosi looked down, amazed. He thought he had never been so high. The old man held him up and spoke aloud to him, “Ukhosi, you are not a chicken. You are an eagle!” Then he threw him as far from the cliff as he could, and Ukhosi started to fall. Faster and faster he fell, the wind whistling about his ears. He closed his eyes shut tightly and clamped his wings against his body as hard as he could, but the wind was too strong for him. It ripped a wing out from his body, and to steady himself he put out the other wing. Then the wind stopped, and he cautiously opened his eyes. He found that he was gliding in a big circle above the plain.

He tested one wing and then the other. Soon he was moving his eyes up and down in large gentle beats, and he began to rise still in big circles. He came level with the old man on the cliff edge, and as he turned to fly away for a new start and a new life, he heard the old man call after him, “Remember, Ukhosi, you are not a chicken! You are an eagle!”

We are God’s eagles living in a world that wants us to think we are chickens. We are made like our Lord. We are, if you will, of royal blood, even if we think that we are cheap and weak and worth little. You and I are worth the world. Jesus died for you. Jesus died for me. God transforms us so that we live in the problems of our lives as God’s children. “They who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings as eagles. They will run and not be worry. They will walk and not faint.” Remember, my friends; you are not chickens. You are eagles!

Texts

Psalm 32: 1-7

¹ Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
² Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.

³ When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
⁴ For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.

⁵ Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

⁶ Therefore let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found; surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them.
⁷ You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

Luke 19: 1-10

19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. ² A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. ³ He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

⁵ When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

⁷ All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” ⁸ But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Steinbach Mennonite Church

3 Nov 2019

Going Deeper Questions:

·         Who is the old man in the story? I don’t think he is God – that doesn’t quite fit. So what does he represent? Where does God fit in all of this?

·         What is the connection between repentance and blessing? What is “blessing” anyway?

·         What part does our choice play in the situations we face? We can’t just choose a good life, so what do we choose anyway?

·         What are you hoping for when you confess? Are you hoping for Heaven – or freedom from Hell – or a good life on earth? What are you hoping for?