Christ Among Us, Showing Us Faith

Last Sunday, Paul introduced us to the concept of covenant through the lens of repentance: metanoia (a change of mind); shuv (turn around, return). It’s an important theme. Paul calls us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12) and to have the mind of Christ (Philippians 2, 1 Corinthians 2: 16). Thank you, Paul, for reminding us to turn from our self-centeredness to orient our lives around Christ.

Today, the conference materials remind us that this same Christ is among us and shows us the way of faith – an unwavering trust in God (which is, of course, the result of turning around and renewing our minds in Christ). We have two Scripture passages that show us this idea of faith, so we turn to them.

Genesis 17

The story in Genesis 17 is a curious one, with two basic parts. Abraham is now 99 years old, and Sarah his wife is 90. The story makes it clear that they were too old to have any children, but the second basic part of the story is a promise from God that Sarah and Abraham were going to have a baby. I can imagine our children’s response if Lois and I told them that we were trying for another baby – disbelief, shock, concern that we might have lost our minds.

Abraham and Sarah responded as our children might. In the verses we read, Abraham falls on the ground laughing at the idea. ROTFL, we might say. Sarah’s turn comes in Genesis 18, when three men (messengers from God) tell them again that she will have a baby. She scoffs at the idea, and that the men tell her that the child will be named “Isaac” – which means “laughter” or “s/he laughs”. Scorn and absurdity turn into joy and laughter.

The first part of the passage that precedes this prediction of Isaac’s birth is the use of circumcision as a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah. God stated that God would make Abraham’s family into a great nation with their own land. They were wandering nomads with no place to call their own home, and they would become not just a people, but a “multitude of nations” with their own place to call home. This promise has become a vision of our own lives as Christians – wanderers in this world on our way to “the promised land”, the new heavens and new earth, the new creation which we receive in Christ (2 Corinthians 5). In response, God asked Abraham to circumcise all the males in his family as a sign that he and his family had given themselves completely to God.

In verses 18 to 27, Abraham first reinterpreted God’s promise of a son to mean Ishmael. God said, “No. I mean it: Sarah will have a son, Isaac. Ishmael has his place too, but I mean Isaac.” So Abraham took Ishmael and all of his male slaves and circumcised them, and this action became the marker of what it means to belong to God’s People. I am not sure immediately what to do with this, so we turn to Romans to work out our next step.

Romans 4

Paul wrote the book of Romans to explore the place of Jews and Gentiles in God’s reign. The church at Rome was probably started by believers in Jesus who had been at Pentecost, described in Acts 2. This led to a Jewish Christian church, but given their location in Rome, they soon became a church of Jews and Gentiles mixed together.

One commentator suggests that this mixture was changed when the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome in the mid 40s. A church that had combined Jew and Gentile together in one body became a primarily Gentile church. Claudius evidently felt that Jews – especially those who had also become Christians – were stirring up trouble, and sent them out of Rome for a number of years. Then they filtered back into the city and resumed their lives in Rome, and therefore also in the church at Rome. The trouble is that the church was no longer sure how to combine Jew and Gentile in one body. This situation was a local variation of a problem that faced the whole of the New Testament Church, and Paul deals with it in depth in Ephesians 2. This situation also provides a clue for what is going on in the book of Romans.

In chapter one, Paul greets the Romans and proclaims his devotion to the gospel of God’s saving power for all people. He then observes that all people – Jew and Gentile – need God’s saving power. In chapter two, he looks first at the Gentile world and then at the Jewish world, saying again that God’s grace is available to all – Jew and Gentile. Both need God’s grace, and both can receive God’s grace by being “circumcised” inwardly – a commitment of the heart rather than an outward physical act.

Chapters three and four then show how faith in God fulfills this inward circumcision, where the law could not. Paul argues that Jews have had the blessing of the Law and that Gentiles now can join them through faith. In fact, as the verses we read say, Abraham had acted by faith in the first place, so that the path to God’s salvation, to reconciliation with God, was always a matter of trusting in God with the heart, an inward circumcision.

Synthesis

Abraham’s readiness to circumcise the men in his extended family (immediate family and the men who worked for them) was a sign of his faith in God’s covenant. The way that Genesis 15 puts it (another covenant passage), he believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness – quoted in Romans 4. Obeying the command to circumcise his family was a sign of faith. We are also part of God’s people, and we also find ways to make our commitment of faith visible to ourselves and to the world around us.

The Brethren in Christ of my youth had observable visible symbols of our covenant with God and the church. For example, we dressed in a distinctive way. Women wore head coverings that looked like an inverted bowl made of gauze. The stated reason for this covering was Paul’s words that women should cover their heads when they pray, and also as a sign of respect for the angels (1 Corinthians 11). It’s a curious passage, but it almost certainly did not mean that we needed a kind of official church uniform. Somewhere in the 1960s, members of the BIC decided that women could wear a simple hat to church and did not need the more elaborate covering.

There is a lot we could say about 1 Corinthians 11, and we just won’t. I am happy to elaborate on it during the Living our Faith time after the service. It is enough for the moment to observe a positive function that the covering played. It meant that when a woman decided to join the church, she had to decide also if she was willing to be a full part of the community, accepting the authority of the community even in the way she dressed.

Men had our own plain dress that acted like a church uniform. One result was that when a BIC man or women went shopping in town, everyone knew that they belonged to the church. Sometimes when we think that people don’t know who we are, we are tempted to act in ways that we should not. We might lose our temper, or take something that does not belong to us, or in some other way act badly. But when you had the head covering on or were wearing the plain coat, everyone knew you were part of the church. It acted to remind us of who we belonged to.

The negative side of these practices was a kind of legalism that undercut the positive effects, and I’m glad that we gave up our church uniform in the 1950s and 1960s. But I do miss the benefit of wearing my identity as a follower of Jesus on my sleeve, so to speak. Do you think we can have the benefit without the legalism of the past? I think we can.

Living Out Our Faith

Paul suggests that Abraham demonstrated this applied faith. Listen again to Romans 4:

¹⁹ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰ No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²² Therefore “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ²³ Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone ²⁴ but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵ who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Abraham believed God’s promise of an heir. Paul tells us that our corresponding belief is belief in God who raised Jesus from the dead. This belief locates us in the season of Lent, in the 40 days of preparation for Holy Week, in which we remember the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the badge that we wear, which marks us as Christians. How do we live this out?

Next Sunday’s sermon picks up this idea, asking what Christians should look like, so I have to tread carefully here. I don’t want to end up saying now what I want to say next week! For today, then, I want to focus on the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In all of God’s interactions with Abraham and Sarah, God was creating a fuller and greater reality than they could imagine. The promise of many descendants expanded their horizons. In God’s interactions with us, God is also creating a new reality. We live in a world that defines success by power and wealth. People put their trust in their ability to control others and get what they want. God calls us instead to put our trust in Jesus, the one who died and rose from the dead. Our culture puts its trust in self-love; God calls us to put our trust in self-giving love.

Lent

We are in the season of Lent, the 40 day period that prepares us for the cross. Lent is modelled on Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, also given in the gospels as lasting 40 days. Jesus was tested by Satan in order to prepare him for his ministry, culminating in the cross. When we give up something for Lent – chocolate or Facebook or whatever we choose, we do so to prepare ourselves to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Jesus gave himself for us. Jesus shows us that God’s essential nature is self-giving love. When we take up our own cross and follow Jesus, we follow him in this path of self-giving love. We give ourselves to God on behalf of the world around us.

Some of our own Mennonite people still wear a distinctive dress, almost like a kind of physical circumcision – a visible sign that they have given their lives to God and to God’s people. We don’t have such a physical sign at SMC, but we do seek what Paul calls the circumcision of the heart – a sign of our covenant with God, a sign of our willingness to take up our cross and walk with Jesus.

That inward sign is self-giving love. Lois and I were talking with each other recently about friends of ours who have fostered a number of children over the years. They have opened their homes and their hearts to children in difficult circumstances. When you do that, you will almost inevitably experience the children’s problems yourself, and it won’t feel good. But you let them into your lives as a sign of God’s love and care for them; you give them a chance for God to work in their lives and give them new hope.

We have many examples from our own congregation of people who give themselves to others – providing rides to people, providing comfort and help to people, using their talents and abilities to make the world they live in better. I am encouraging us all to build on these examples and to allow God’s love to change us from within as we place our faith in the crucified and risen Christ.

May God give to us “circumcised hearts”, an inner volition, an inner will that seeks to follow Jesus in all our relationships with the world around us.

Genesis 17:1–17

The Sign of the Covenant

17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. ² And I will make my covenant between me and you and will make you exceedingly numerous.” ³ Then Abram fell on his face, and God said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁵ No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. ⁶ I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. ⁸ And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding, and I will be their God.”

⁹ God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. ¹⁰ This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹ You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. ¹² Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. ¹³ Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. ¹⁴ Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

¹⁵ God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶ I will bless her and also give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” ¹⁷ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”

Romans 4:13–25

God’s Promise Realized through Faith

¹³ For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵ For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.

¹⁶ For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, ¹⁷ as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. ¹⁸ Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So shall your descendants be.” ¹⁹ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰ No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²² Therefore “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ²³ Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone ²⁴ but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵ who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Questions: What does Faith ask of us? How does living in faith shape our thoughts and actions? The Old Testament Jews had circumcision as a sign of faith; what do we have?

Focus Statement: Abraham and Sarah believed God and oriented their lives to God’s will; we also orient our lives to God’s will every day.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Lent 2 February 25, 2024

Belief: The Heart of Peace

We continue our summer series on peace with the familiar story of Nicodemus and Jesus. Last Sunday, Michelle reminded us of the importance of prayer as a path to peace with God. The Lord’s Prayer provides us with a model for all of us to use as we seek a clear relationship with God.

Today, we have the example of Nicodemus, who sought out Jesus with his questions. Jesus pointed him towards the necessity of a spiritual birth as the start of a spiritual life that will last forever with God. You and I have been born physically, and we live our natural lives here on earth until we die. Jesus tells us – as he told Nicodemus – that we must also be born spiritually if we want to live spiritually with God.

John summarizes all of this with what are perhaps the best loved verses in all of Scripture: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten son, and whoever believes in him [Jesus] will not die (spiritually) but can live forever (spiritually). God did not send his son into the world to condemn us, but that everyone might be saved through him.”

Excursus: A brief rabbit trail about that phrase “only begotten Son”. In chapter 1, John tells us that the creative Word of God came into the world, but the people he had prepared for his coming rejected him. Then he writes, “But to as many as did receive him he gave the right to become children [sons and daughters] of God, even to those who believe in his name.” Many translations leave out “begotten”, because it is an unfamiliar word (in Greek: monogenetes). But John 3:16 paired with John 1:12 shows us both how we are like Jesus and how Jesus is unique. We are like Jesus because we also are adopted into God’s family as God’s children, with Jesus as our elder brother. But Jesus is unique in that he alone is monogenetes. “Begotten” means that the child shares the DNA of the parents. Jesus shares the DNA of God – uncreated, eternal, pure Spirit (as well as fully human), all-knowing and all-powerful, and so on. Whatever we can say about God, we say about Jesus, because Jesus – the eternal uncreated Word – is God made flesh.

Believe in Jesus

I have two simple thoughts on this verse this morning. Here’s the first one. “Believe in Jesus”: What does it mean to believe in Jesus?

Suppose I asked you if you believe in Santa Claus. Most of us would respond by saying no. We mean that we do not believe that Santa Claus exists, although we know the stories about him. We may even use those stories in our own family’s celebration of Christmas. When our sons were young, I wrote several letters from Father Christmas about that year’s work of life at the North Pole. (I borrowed the idea from J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote a letter a year for many years, enlisting the mail carrier to bring it to the house with his own hand made stamps from the North Pole on them!)

When we say we don’t believe in Santa Claus (even while we use the idea of this strange man with a white beard), we mean that we don’t believe he really exists. What do we mean when we say we do believe in Jesus?

First, we mean that we believe that the stories about him in the New Testament are true, but the way John uses the words here goes deeper than simple belief that Jesus exists.

Consider a different example. Charles Blondin was a tightrope walker who lived in the 1800s. In 1859, he crossed the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope, a feat that he repeated many times after that. One thousand one hundred feet across the river and 160 feet above the water. Blondin demonstrated a remarkable belief in his own abilities, pushing a wheelbarrow across the rope, stopping part way to cook an egg and eat it, and even carrying a man (his manager) across on his back.

It's that last one that really gets me. Harry Colcord was the man who agreed to go on Blondin’s back. You could say that Colcord believed in Blondin. He trusted Blondin with his life. What happens if Blondin has to sneeze? I know that I would not have trusted Blondin with my life like that! You hear that phrase: “trust him with his life.” That’s what it means to believe in Jesus. It’s not enough to believe that Jesus lived. It’s not even enough to believe that Jesus is the Word made flesh, the incarnate Son of God. The verse goes deeper: “Whoever believes in him shall have everlasting life”: “Whoever trusts him with their life shall have everlasting life.” “Believe in Jesus” means to trust him with your life, just as deeply as Colcord trusted Blondin with his life crossing the Niagara Gorge.

Our theme for the summer is peace with God, with the people around us, and with the whole of creation. Last Sunday we heard of the path to peace: a life of prayer modelled on the Lord’s Prayer. Believing in Jesus walks on that path to find the heart of peace with God. As we trust Jesus with our lives, we fall in love with Jesus and experience God’s love poured over us. That love brings us peace with God.

An Integrated Life

This brings us to my second point: This peace operates at every level. Believing in Jesus leads to peace with God; and believing in Jesus leads to peace with our brothers and sisters in faith; and believing in Jesus leads to peace with the world around us, including the whole of creation.

When we find ourselves with a ruptured relationship, John brings us back to this verse: God loved the world so much that God gave us Jesus to believe in and receive life and peace. This point is easy to see and remarkably difficult for us to see and do in practise. Let me spell it out a bit and try to move beyond a simplistic answer to life’s problems.

Suppose you are married, and you have a conflict with your spouse. A common occurrence, which many of us have experienced. The integration of peace at every level of our lives means that the conflict ripples through every part of our lives, so that our relationship with God also suffers.

Similarly, if our relationship with God is weak, our relationships with others also suffer. If we participate in the abuse of the environment, that abuse causes conflict with others and with God. Conflict at any one level of our lives affects every other area as well, like plucking a spider web and watching the whole web vibrate. Like someone who kicks the dog at home because their boss (metaphorically) kicked them at work,

We have to be careful with this understanding of an integrated life. Sometimes people think that if I just pray hard enough – nurturing peace with God – then the conflict with my spouse will just go away. It doesn’t work like that. Remembering the various levels of conflict in our lives means that we work on reconciliation with our spouse, and we pray more, deepening our relationship with Jesus. We seek the renewed health of the environment, and we pray more, seeking God’s face. We pursue peace at every level of our relationships together.

This pursuit flows from our commitment to trust Jesus with our very lives. We believe in Jesus means that we commit ourselves to him and his ways every day and every moment of our lives. As we do so, we bring God into the centre of the conflicts and disruptions of our lives, seeking God’s peace at every level of our lives.

Contrast to the World around Us

This pursuit of peace stands in sharp contrast to the world around us. Conventional wisdom tells us that when we find ourselves in a conflict, we should end the conflict as soon as possible and cut ties with the person with whom we are in conflict. People don’t change, we are told, and the only recourse to conflict is to get out.

There is real wisdom in conventional wisdom. If you are in an abusive relationship with your spouse, I do not counsel you to stay there, seeking peace: Sometimes you do indeed need to leave and not return. But our society has taken this truth much further.

The underlying belief for many in our society is that people don’t change; in fact, we would say, people cannot change. We hear voices that sway any conflict makes it clear that the person you are in conflict with is unsafe. Reconciliation is impossible. We hear them say they are bad people, and you must avoid them forever. This is the spirit behind what we sometimes call “cancel culture”, and it works to perpetuate conflicts rather than to bring peace.

In contrast to this stance, John reminds us that God gave Jesus for us. Jesus lived for us, and Jesus died for us. He took our rebellion against God into himself and rose from death to reconcile us with God. His victory over death is also victory over the power of evil in our world. Therefore, we can change. Therefore, we can reconcile – both with God and with other people. Therefore, we can live at peace with God and experience peace with others and with the whole of creation.

Conclusion

I remember a dramatic example of this pursuit of peace, with God’s love for us and our love for God at its heart. Fifteen or 20 years ago, Reaksa Himm spoke at Providence. He graduated from the seminary the year before I came, and he visited us again ten years later in 2006. He told us his story, which you can read in his book, The Tears of My Soul.

Reaksa was a survivor of the killing fields in Cambodia. He was shot by the Khmer, along with the rest of the people in his village. Somehow, he survived in the open grave where they were dumped and escaped into the jungle. In 1989, he left Cambodia as a refugee and came to Canada. He expected never to return, but God had other plans for him.

In his journey as a refugee, he left Buddhism and became a Christian. His conversion brought him peace with God, but his heart was tormented by the memories of his bitter experiences at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, including the death of his family. In 1998, he was invited to return to Cambodia as a Bible teacher to help train leaders in the young church growing there. He resisted, with the hurt and pain of the past strong in his life, but God would not let him rest. Finally, in 1999, he agreed and returned to Cambodia. In the years that followed, he started a school in his home village among the people who had helped to kill his family. Here is his description of returning to his home village:

Then on 6^th June 2003, I went back to the village where my family was killed. I discovered that four of the six men involved had been killed and one had moved to a different village. I met the remaining one. He was fearful of meeting me but I spoke to him of God’s love and forgiveness. By God’s grace I was able to forgive him and set him free in my heart.

        I thank God for sparing my life so that I can bring the message of salvation and forgiveness to my broken people. I also thank God for the healing of my hurt and pain that I had endured for more than 25 years. Now, I can see the glory and experience the joy of serving him in my hometown. (Sokreaksa Himm, 156)

Reaksa’s story illustrates the way that God’s love brings peace to every area of our lives – even if it takes our whole life to do so. Peace with God leads to peace with others and peace with the whole of creation. For God loved us so much that he gave his only begotten son, and when we believe in Jesus we receive everlasting life, the life of God’s Spirit that lasts forever.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

2 July 2023

Text -- John 3: 1 to 21

Christmas Sunday: On the Road to Rejoicing

Christmas Day has come and gone, and we gather together on Christmas Sunday. Advent comes to its conclusion today in this place, and we enter the season of Epiphany (the time when we mark the coming of the Magi). Our final word for the season is “Rejoicing”. We travel the road of redemption to its destination, the joy of receiving the Messiah, the one who brings life and hope to all people in our world. We consider our Scripture passages together and examine the shape and nature of this overwhelming joy.

Isaiah 61-62

The last chapters of Isaiah have an eschatological focus. They point to the way things will be at the end of all things, encouraging us to live today with the hope of ultimate salvation. The passage assures us that in the end God will make all things right. Isaiah was writing to people who saw how bad things were. They had been carried off into exile in Babylon. They had experienced restoration, but the new reality was not much better than the old. Although they were back home in Judah, life was hard and uncertain. In their distress, Isaiah says clearly, “God will make everything right, and the whole world will see it.”

We live in times that “try our souls”. We see things going wrong. I hear regularly from people who think that our world is doomed and that we can to nothing to save ourselves. God speaks to us also: “For as the soil makes the young plant come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.” He adds: “The nations will see your vindication, and all kings your glory; … You will be a crown of splendour in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”

In these times, we see God’s salvation. In these times, we rejoice that God is with us. In these times, we celebrate God’s grace and goodness in our lives.

Luke 2

Luke 2 tells how two more people who had been waiting for God’s salvation recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Simeon was “righteous and devout” and spent much time in the temple. When Jesus was taken to the temple for circumcising, Simeon was there. He saw the baby and him in his arms and prophesied over him. He identified Jesus as the salvation of God’s people, and he told Mary that opposition to Jesus would pierce her soul as well. (One wonders what about Joseph; perhaps his words indicate that Joseph would die before the events he was prophesying.)

Then we meet Anna, a woman 84 years old, who had lived in the temple since her husband died – perhaps 60 years earlier. She also prophesied over the child, calling him “the redemption of Israel.” What is going on in these prophecies? They identify Jesus as the coming Messiah, and they point to his future ministry as the Messiah. Is there anything else?

I think that there is. Simeon is an old man (his age is not stated, but it is implied). Anna is an old woman. Both had spent their lives waiting for God to redeem Israel. Both are confident that Jesus is the Messiah who will bring salvation to God’s people. They join the growing crowd of witnesses in the text to Jesus’ identity. In Luke 2, we meet the shepherds and the angels. In Matthew 2, we meet the magi from the East. Here we meet representatives of the temple. They complete the crowd of witnesses, making the point that Jesus came for everyone – young and old, Jew and Gentile, men and women, rich and poor, educated and uneducated. Jesus comes with salvation for everyone. We rejoice, because Jesus came for each one of us. Nobody stands outside of Jesus’ saving embrace, except by their own choice.

The Shape of Celebration

One observes that the conditions of Jesus’ day looked no more hopeful than the conditions of the passage in Isaiah 61. We can expect, then, that the conditions of our day are equally the context in which God comes to us with salvation and a context that appears almost hopeless. The reason that we have hope is twofold: One, God is here, whatever our circumstances look like; and two the end of all things is certain. Remember that the season of Advent always prepares for the birth of Jesus and anticipates the return of Jesus at the end of all things. As someone has put the message of the book of Revelation, “God wins in the End.” That truth permeates everything we do now, and so we can rejoice.

Consider our theme song with which we have started each service this Advent. We began with it today as well. “We come,” anticipating what lies ahead. Why did we sing it today? We might have sung instead, “We’ve arrived.” But you see, we do not sing that final song of arrival until we stand in God’s presence in the New Heavens and New Earth. Our destination this Christmas is really just a way stop on the journey of our lives. We sing this truth in a Zulu song, “Singabahambayo thina kolumhlaba; siyekhaya ezulwini – we are pilgrims on this earth; we are on our way to Heaven.” We sing this truth in the old song, “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through. … If Heaven is not my home, Then Lord, what will I do?”

In my own field of mission studies, we call this truth “the Pilgrim Principle” of Christian living. We balance it with something else called “the Indigenous Principle”, which tells us that God lives fully in every culture and every people on earth. Both principles are true: God lives with us wherever we are, fully at home in our culture; and God calls us to our final home in the New Heavens and Earth.

The importance of these two truths is that they make us able to live with joy here and now, even when the situation around us is falling apart. We belong to God, and we live with the joy of the Lord wherever we are and whatever is happening.

Have you ever met someone who seems to rise above the troubles around them? Have you wondered what their secret was? Sometimes it is simply a matter of personality. Some people have a good digestion and nothing they eat ever seems to bother them. Some people have a good disposition and respond equably and calmly when trouble is bubbling all around them. Is that all there is to it? Can we learn to live out of the depths of God’s goodness and love, even when our external situation is hard?

Living for Heaven

Basic to the gospel is that we are called to live by the standards of God’s Reign on earth. That is, we live on the basis of the New Heaven and Earth, promised in Isaiah and reaffirmed in the New Testament. The Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew’s Gospel with parallels in Luke’s Gospel) is the clearest exposition of what it means to live this way. How do we move in this direction, when everything around us conspires to “press us into the world’s mould”?

Romans 12 (from which I took the phrase above) says that we offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God. The two people in today’s reading from Luke had their own way of doing just this. Simeon was moved by the Spirit to go into the temple. We can assume that this movement was not unusual in his life: He lived a life of worship. Anna “never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying.” She lived a life of worship. I suggest that this stance in their personal lives prepared them to recognize Jesus when he came. They could live by the end of all things in their own context, because they lived in the presence of God, who sees the end from the beginning.

How can we do the same? We participate in communal worship, and we engage in personal and private worship. We pray together, and we pray when we are alone. We spend time hearing God’s Written Word read aloud, and we spend time reading alone. The world is telling us its story all the time – a story of injustice and distress, a story of unfairness and darkness, a story intended to drive us to despair and to act selfishly and greedily in our own lives. We respond by spending time dwelling in God’s story, learning to recognize God’s presence in every situation, even in “this present darkness”. When we see God, we can rejoice.

We know this truth well enough. Let me illustrate with a simple example from my own life. Lois and I have been married for over 43 years. Even before we were married, we knew that we both loved to play Scrabble. We have been playing games of Scrabble – one after the other – for over 43 years now! When we finish one game, the tiles go back in the bag and we draw to start a new game. The board is open on our dining room table as I speak this morning.

Sometimes I draw good tiles, making it easy to find high scoring plays. Sometimes I draw bad tiles, making it hard to find anything to play. When I draw good tiles, all is sweetness and light. When I draw bad tiles, I may complain ever so slightly for just a moment. Well … maybe for more than a moment and maybe not so slightly. Once in a while, Lois suggests that we just stop playing while I calm down.

I don’t want to complain about difficult tiles – it detracts from the pleasure of playing the game, but it has become a deeply ingrained habit. How do I change that habit? Not by saying, “Stop it!” Not by complaining that I complain too much! The only way I know to break a pattern of acting or feeling that I don’t want is to replace it with a new and better pattern. The only to break a bad habit is to replace it with a new good habit. If you have similar struggles, you know what I mean. You can’t stop losing your temper with a driver who cuts you off by telling yourself to be nice, but you can learn new ways to respond when something happens that you don’t like. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes God’s Spirit working in you to give you the ability to keep going. But you and I can change; we can become people who live by God’s standards all the time.

Some Examples

I think of communities that have tried to incarnate God’s Reign in their lives together on earth. Reba Place Fellowship in Chicago is one such. Since 1957, a number of people have gathered together in intentional communities to encourage and support each other. In the process, they have experienced social struggles and personality conflicts and charismatic revival. What marks them, in my estimation, is their persistence in seeking to create new patterns of kingdom behaviour in place of the patterns that characterize Chicago as a whole.

I think of revival movements (as we sometimes call them) such as one that broke out at Asbury College and Seminary in the 1970. It lasted for several years and transformed lives quite remarkably. I was able to see the effects of the revival in my own student experience at Asbury Seminary over 20 years later. What marked the revival most, in my estimation, is the way that God moved in the hearts and lives of those who were waiting for God to enter their lives.

[As a sidelight, I would add that you cannot “plan” a revival. I have been in many such services, when people have tried to coerce God’s Spirit into doing what they think they need. It doesn’t work that way. We wait for God to move in our lives – and like Anna and Simeon we rejoice when God comes down.]

I think of a missionary friend who grew up in a broken home and left home to join the navy. He lived a rough and difficult life, rebelling against all that we would see as good. His lifestyle led him to the end of his own resources, and through a Christian friend he found new life in Christ. I knew him in Zimbabwe as an adult. He was unfailingly cheerful, facing difficult situation with grace and humour. I only discovered how difficult his early life was when I read his life story, written by his wife. What marked him, in my estimation, was the way that new patterns and new life were so deeply ingrained in him that the old ways were completely squeezed out.

What’s the point? We are on the road to God’s Kingdom. This Christmas Sunday, we have come to the end of Advent, from where we can see our destination. We see Jesus, the baby and the Son of God. Jesus is the Messiah, the Saviour of Israel. Jesus is also our Messiah, our redemption. We give ourselves to Jesus individually and corporately. We worship him together and individually. And we work out the implications of this corporate and individual relationship by living out God’s Reign in our lives.

As C.S. Lewis puts, “Aim for Heaven, and you will get earth thrown in. Aim for earth, and you will get neither.” Jesus brings Heaven down to us, and we embrace him and his reign on this earth.

 

Christmas Sunday          Steinbach Mennonite Church          27 December 2020

Focus: Walking the road of revelation results in overwhelming joy. The waiting is over. Jesus has come! We rejoice in the incarnation—God in the flesh—God with us!

Going Deeper Questions:

·         How do we celebrate “God With Us”? Which celebrations mean the most to you?

·         How can we connect our Christmas celebration with daily life?

·         How can we keep the good things we say at Christmas from becoming bromides, nice things that we say but they don’t really mean anything?

·         How can we help those who simply cannot rejoice in this season?

Texts

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

¹⁰ I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. ¹¹ For as the soil makes the young plant come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.

62 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her vindication shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch. ² The nations will see your vindication, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow. ³ You will be a crown of splendour in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

 Luke 2:22-40

Jesus presented in the temple

²² When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord ²³ (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord’), ²⁴ and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: ‘a pair of doves or two young pigeons’.

²⁵ Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. ²⁶ It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. ²⁷ Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, ²⁸ Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

²⁹ ‘Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. ³⁰ For my eyes have seen your salvation, ³¹ which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: ³² a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.’

³³ The child’s father and mother marvelled at what was said about him. ³⁴ Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: ‘This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, ³⁵ so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

³⁶ There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, ³⁷ and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. ³⁸ Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. 

³⁹ When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. ⁴⁰ And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.

Life after Death: The bread and butter of Christian Faith

Today we begin a three-part series on death and dying. I begin this morning, and Lee will develop the theme further in parts two and three. We conclude on the afternoon of November 22 with another “foodless faspa”.

One might say that the purpose of Christian living – indeed, of human living – is to learn how to die. Everyone who has gone before has lived and died. All of us in our turn will complete our lives by dying. It is the Christian belief that the hard passage of death, which is sometimes felt as a curse, is in fact God’s great gift to us. Death is the door to eternity, with the offer that eternity is filled with God, what one songwriter has called “the land without tears”.

If this is the case, then in Paul’s words we “walk in the resurrection”. We live the way God wants us to live now, because resurrection life is already bubbling inside of us. We explore this foundational idea this morning through two Scripture passages and ask what it means for the way that we live.

Job 19

These verses from Job 19 are best known for the wonderful aria in Handel’s Messiah, “I know that my Redeemer liveth” – just after the Hallelujah chorus. They are interesting in that Job speaks them in the midst of complaints. This chapter begins with the words, “How long will you torment me and crush me with words?” Job is speaking here of his friends, who are not helpful in their efforts to explain what is happening, but just before the verses we read, he says, “Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.” Then Job turns and a song of unlikely praise and hope breaks out: “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.”

This is an affirmation of pure hope, but it is a hope that proves to be true. Within the Old Testament we find little about the afterlife; people did not think much about what we call “eternity”. Even in Jesus’ own time, when the Pharisees had begun to teach the reality of the resurrection, many still believed that after death there was only “the grave”, Sheol, a place where the dead are … well, dead. When faced with his own death, Job breaks out in assurance that somehow – even if his troubles kill him – he will be alive with God. God is his Redeemer.

1 Corinthians 15

Paul spells out the foundation of that hope in 1 Corinthians 15. The first eleven verses of the chapter provide a summary of basic Christian belief: Christ died for our sins; Christ was raised; Christ lives, and we can know him. In much of our preaching and Bible study, we emphasize the teachings and ministry of Jesus; Paul reminds us that his life and teaching rest on the foundation of his death and resurrection. Christ died, and Christ was raised: This is the beginning of our lives in Christ.

Verses 12 to 19 of our text make the point clearly. If there is no such thing as resurrection (as the Sadducees claimed in Judaism), then even Jesus was not raised. If Jesus has not been raised from the dead, our preaching and faith are useless. Everything hangs on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Without that, we are bound by the patterns and structures of sin, in which we live our lives. Paul puts it this way: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Verses 20 to 28 develop the point.

·         Christ has been raised from the dead

·         Everyone died in Adam’s sin; everyone rises in Christ’s resurrection

·         Christ wins the victory [over sin and death] first for himself, and then for all who belong to him

·         When Christ rules over every other authority and power in the universe, he will hand his authority over to the Father.

·         The last “enemy” to be defeated is death

·         The final two verses are complicated. I read them to mean: Christ’s final victory re-establishes perfect order in the world, in which God the Father reigns through God the Son and all people take their place in God’s “New Heaven and New Earth”.

 Bringing the Scripture into our Conversation

What does all of this have to do with us today? I know a Mennonite who is attending a Catholic Church. I asked him if he could become a Catholic. He replied, “The trouble is I would have to affirm that I believe the whole of the church’s doctrine, and I don’t think I can. As I Mennonite, I promise to do something, and I can do that!” I would disagree with him: Mennonites also “believe something”, but he is right that we emphasise Christian living over Christian believing.

That being the case, what does it mean for our daily lives to believe in the resurrection of Jesus? We will pursue this question more deeply in the Going Deeper time, but I give one consequence of this belief for us to consider.

We all live on the basis of what we believe is most important in life or fundamentally true. One of the best ways to find out what a person really believe is true is to consider what that person actually does. If someone says, “I believe that we should love everyone and help anybody who is in need when they are in need”, but we observe that person acting in a hateful way, exercising a destructive power over the person in need, then we can conclude that  their real belief is something different. By their actions, they have proclaimed, “I believe in using power to benefit myself before anyone else.”

What does a life lived in the truth of the resurrection look like – both the resurrection of Jesus and our own death and resurrection? In Romans 6, Paul writes:

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? ² By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? ³ Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

 

We walk in newness of life. We walk in the resurrection. We have “died to sin”, and we live in his resurrection. Let me list some possible ways that we can “walk in the resurrection”.

·         People in our world live fearfully. We are taking measures to deal with the threat offered by Covid-19, including holding our Going Deeper class as a Zoom session this afternoon, instead of meeting in the sanctuary. We take proper precautions, but we know that God is “King of the universe”. A Zulu song we used to sing in Zimbabwe says, “Even though we walk in danger and evil on this earth, we are going to Heaven.” We do not need to be paralyzed by fear, whatever we face.

·         Unfettered individualism is a strong value for most people in Canada. Although we value our individual freedom and the equality that God has placed within us, we do not insist on our absolute right to do whatever we want to do. We recognize that we live in mutual submission as brothers and sisters, children of God. We do not rule over each other, but we do care deeply for each other.

·         Most people in North America believe in what peace teachers call “the myth of redemptive violence”. When one is attacked, the idea goes, a righteous person may respond with violence. It is wrong, they say, to attack other people first, but, like Popeye defending Olive Oyl, the good guy is justified in demolishing the bad guy. We follow the teachings of Jesus. As we “walk in the resurrection”, we recognize that we do not fear what may happen to us if we pursue peace. We can live for peace in everything that we do – in our families and in our jobs and in our nation and in our relationships. Another Zulu hymn says, “Peace in this world of sin: the blood of Jesus pours out peace.” Amen! As we sang earlier, “We are people of God’s peace as a new creation.” We live for peace and remember the peace of God on this Peace Sunday in Canada.

·         Many people are willing to cheat on a deal if it gives them an advantage, or to cut corners on a job if they can get away with it, or take something that they want without paying if no one is looking. We follow the teachings of Jesus. Our “yes” is yes, and our “no” is no. We do what is right when people are watching and when they are not. We walk in the resurrection.

 

In short, we live by the standards and values of God’s Reign, even while we are in this life. If the resurrection is real, if we have died to sin and live “in newness of life”, we look different than people around us. We act the way Jesus teaches us to act, filled with his Spirit.

 

The Personal Side

As I work on this sermon, I have been diagnosed with unstable angina. I feel the precariousness of human physical life. How does this message about the resurrection and life after death speak to me in my human frailty? I speak cautiously now. It is easy to say that God comforts us in our weakness. It is harder to face that weakness squarely.

 

Note how Job speaks. “My heart faints within me.” I know what he means! Note how Paul speaks. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” The problems and troubles of this world are real. Jesus warned his disciples just before his crucifixion, “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” Jesus was speaking especially about the persecution that they would face as his followers, but the truth applies more broadly.

 

I have referred several times to Zulu hymns. African hymnody often picks up the theme of the trouble we face in this world – “this world of trouble”, “this world of sin”, and so on. They have it right: Life is hard, and death is harder. Death would make us fear and turn against God if it could. Then we read the whole verse and we see, “in me you may have peace.” We hear Jesus, “take courage; I have conquered the world!” Death may be God’s enemy, but in the resurrection, Jesus brings us the death of death. We are enabled to walk in the resurrection, knowing that even death cannot finish us.

 

This is a great truth, and this is a hard truth. Death teaches us to rely on God. As someone said in our Going Deeper Time a few weeks ago, death forces us to rely on God. We cannot overcome death, but we can rest in God, who has conquered death. This is the reason that Paul says (1
Thessalonians 4: 13f): “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.” We grieve at death, but we know that Jesus rose from the dead and will bring us also with him at the end of time. We will rise with Jesus and live forever with Jesus.

 

Conclusion

This then is the hope of Christian living – that we live and die in Christ, so that we do not need to fear death. We can live in this life the way God wants us to, and when the end comes, we can die in Christ – and live forever.

 

I think of the words of another great hymn, “Abide with me”. This was written by a pastor who was near the end of his life. It is essentially his last words to his congregation.

1. Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
   When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.
2. Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day; Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
   Change and decay in all around I see—O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
3. I need Thy presence every passing hour; What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s pow’r?
   Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.
4. I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless; Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness;
   Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.
5. Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;
   Heav’n’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee; In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church

8 November 2020

Going Deeper Questions:

·         What does the resurrection of Jesus mean to you? Why is it important?

·         Mennonites have emphasised the importance of how we live, not just of what we believe. What difference does the resurrection of Jesus make in the way that we actually live day to day?

·         How do you feel about the fact that each of us will die? Paul calls death the last enemy to be defeated. If death is God’s enemy, how can we welcome death as a friend?

·         What are your favourite Scriptures that speak about death and dying?

 

Texts:

Job 19: 23-29

²³ “O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! ²⁴ O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!

²⁵ For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; ²⁶ and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, ²⁷ whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

My heart faints within me! ²⁸ If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him’; ²⁹ be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.”

 

1 Corinthians 15: 12-28

¹² Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³ If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; ¹⁴ and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. ¹⁵ We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. ¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. ¹⁷ If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. ¹⁹ If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

²⁰ But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. ²¹ For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; ²² for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. ²³ But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. ²⁴ Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. ²⁵ For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶ The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ²⁷ For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him. ²⁸ When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.

 

The Land Without Tears (Ralph Carmichael)

Thru the night of regret and sorrow flow my shameless tears

Lost from sight was that glad tomorrow, naught but wasted years.

In my weakness I knelt to pray

In his kindness I heard him say:

“I’ll take you safely across the way, across the way

Into the Land without tears. Without tears. Into a land without tears.”

 

Now I know he’ll walk beside me thru the darkest night,

As go, he’ll be there to guide me in the path that’s right.

When I come to the close of day, when he speaks I will hear him say,

“I’ll take you safely across the way, across the way 

Into the Land without tears. Without tears. Into a land without tears.”