A Fork in the Road

Fourth Advent. The final Sunday in the Advent Season before Christmas Day. Waiting is almost over. Celebration is near. Our theme for this morning is the sense of hesitation and uncertainty that goes with our long wait for the Messiah. We have looked at the dark side of waiting: Frustration; Impatience; Despair; Hesitancy (or Anxiety and the necessity of choosing). These parallel the usual four candles in the light side of waiting: Hope; Peace: Joy; Love. Both the light and the dark are normally present.

In the children’s time, I described my sister’s experience of waiting for me to be born. A five-year old’s understanding could not grasp what was happening, as she waited in the African night for her mother or “Aunt Verna” to return. When Verna Ginder did remember her and bring her into the hospital, she found out what she had been waiting for: Me.

I am quite sure that my parents had actually told her about the baby she was waiting for, so at one level she must have known. At another level, in the darkness and uncertainty of the night, waiting all alone in the 1948 Ford Pickup, she felt a real uncertainty as to what the future held. Who knows how all of that shaped our relationship over the years? (It’s a good relationship!)

Psalm 80

Our responsive reading earlier was based on Psalm 80. Verses 1 to 3 call on God to restore God’s people. They are in trouble – probably during the time of the divided kingdoms and possibly written in the northern kingdom of Israel. (Of course, the historical context of the Psalms is often difficult to assess.) They are oppressed. They see little or no hope except for God, so they call on God to save them and restore their own country. Verses 4 to 7 locate the source of Israel’s trouble in their rebellion against God and thus also in God’s judgment on their rebellion. The Psalmist asks again for mercy and God’s salvation.

There is much here and in the rest of the Psalm that we do not consider today. For the moment, we note only that life is hard and dangerous. We all experience that, if only in the physical weakness that we experience as we get older. Like the Psalmist, we recognize that our only hope for eternity lies in God’s saving action, which is then described in the Gospel reading.

Matthew 1

The story of Joseph is brief. Joseph has no lines. He comes on the scene as a young man with a woman “pledged to be married” to him. We are given no details, but we can assume that their families had more to do with the choice than they did. Evidently, they did have the choice to reject the families’ decision – so we may assume that they could also accept the families’ choice of a mate. But their marriage set-up is quite different than how we do things today.

Joseph is looking forward to joining his bride-to-be. He imagines their wedding night and the children that would follow. Instead, he discovers that Mary was pregnant. He knows he is not the father, so he could conclude only that she had another lover. As an honourable man, he does not want to disgrace her, but he also cannot marry her, so “he had in mind to divorce her quietly.”

Then the angel shows up. We’re not told which angel. Luke tells us that Gabriel came to Mary to announce her impending pregnancy. Luke gives much more detail in the announcement than Matthew does. One senses that Joseph was almost an afterthought; he just wasn’t as important in this whole process as Mary.

Yet he was important. His decision to “divorce her quietly”, however honourable and kind, is a problem, so the angel came to him and said, “Marry her.” The angel adds that Mary was carrying a baby from God, however improbable that seemed to him, and that the baby would be named Jesus, which means “he saves”. He would also be called Immanuel, which means “God with us.”

So the baby in Mary’s womb would save Israel – indeed, the whole world, because in this baby Jesus God invades our world for our sake. All Joseph had to do was wait.

Waiting

Joseph agrees, just as Mary agrees. They both say, “Okay. I’m in.” Mary says it eloquently, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:37) Joseph says it silently; he just does it. We never do hear Joseph speak; we just see what he does.

They agree to take part in God’s action, and then they wait. We have used different words for that time of waiting: frustration; impatience; despair; and hesitancy. Waiting is hard work. I know this to be true from own personal experience.

Lois and I lived in Pennsylvania for five years, when I was pastor of a small church in Lancaster County. From there we went to Kentucky to the ESJ School at Asbury Seminary, where I trained for an advanced degree in mission studies. My dream was to continue to work with the mission of the church and to teach missionaries-in-training in a seminary setting. My dream was in fact exactly what I have done for the past 22 years at Providence.

We also spent four years in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Then the day came that I finished my mission studies. May 1993. I started looking for a teaching position where I could apply what I had learned at the ESJ School. I sent out applications. I had some responses and made some telephone calls. In 1995, I was invited to teach a missions theology course at the MB seminary in Fresno, which I did. The trouble is, they weren’t hiring. I taught a few courses at AMBS, but they weren’t hiring either. I took a church in Indiana as a half-time pastor from 1993 to 1997.

We learned a lot about waiting, and I can tell you that it is hard work. We experienced frustration, wondering why I had done three years of difficult advanced study, just to return to pastoral ministry. I already had my training for pastoral work from AMBS. I could have kept on working within the church. Why had we worked so hard, just to wait?

We experienced impatience. It’s time for God to open a door for us to go forward! I don’t think I felt despair – God provided us with jobs and a place to minister and a home in which to live – but I know what despair looks like! Hesitancy? I wondered if I was on the right path. I had joined in missions in response to God’s call on our lives, and I had trained as a missiologist as part of that call. Had I been wrong? Should I give up and do something else completely? We knew what anxiety feels like, and we were at a fork in the road of our lives, forced to choose.

Look at Joseph

Joseph had it worse than I ever did, and I notice two simple things in his example.

1) God always had the initiative. Sure, the Saviour of the world was coming, but God did it. God did the work of bringing the Messiah.

2) Joseph’s part was to play along, to cooperate. All Joseph had to do was accept God’s control and live his life waiting for God to act.

Both of these are useful models for us to imitate. We cannot save ourselves – in any sense of the word “save”. Only God can save us – physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. We wait for God to act in our lives. We invite God to come in. We prepare ourselves as well as we can, and we wait.

When God acts, we have a choice: We can go along with God’s movement in our lives, or we can chart our own path and do what we want to do.

I remember a crisis point early in 1997, after three and a half years of waiting at Christian Union BIC Church. I had not had any real offers, and I saw no real way forward to find a teaching position. I remember wrestling with God in prayer, asking why I could not find a place to use the gifts and training God had given me.

I had the opportunity to go to Zimbabwe that January and spend three weeks there working with the church. I remember agreeing with God that I could continue as a pastor, with occasional trips to work with the church in Zimbabwe, and that it was okay if I did not find a teaching job. Giving up my dream was hard [or giving up my version of what I thought God's call meant], but I was agreeing to walk the path God had for me.

Three months later, I got a call from the Dean of Providence Seminary. A month after that, I interviewed for the position of missions professor, and three months later we moved to Steinbach. The door that had been locked against us was suddenly open. The long wait was over. We had a new home, a new job, and all the opportunities that followed.

Hesitancy and Choice

This morning’s word is “hesitancy”. In the uncertainty that we experience in life, we hesitate between living God’s way and charting our own course. Like the Psalmist, we may be aware that only God can help us, but we are a self-reliant people. We want to find the right way forward ourselves, rather than waiting for the path God sends. So we hesitate between God’s way and our own way. In the problems around us, we begin to doubt God’s guidance, and we wonder if we are on the right path or should do something else. The story of Joseph shows him hesitating between divorcing Mary quietly or embracing her disgrace as his own.

Joseph’s example reminds us of that God is the only one who can save us. Our part is to wait for the Lord and to cooperate with what God does. 

Are you worried about the politics of the country? Maybe your party’s leader has just resigned, and you wonder if you should take strong steps to save the country. Remember that you cannot save the country; only God can. God gives you a task to do, a place to be. Sit there. Cooperate with God.

Are you worried about the future of the planet? Maybe you have heard about the melting ice in the Arctic and you wonder if you should take action against the worst polluters. Remember that you cannot save the planet; only God can. God tells you how to live. Live God’s way. Cooperate with God.

Are you worried about the future of this church? Maybe you have looked at the growth chart, and you wonder if you should try to fill the pews with some dramatic action. Remember that you cannot save the church; only God can. God calls you to come together with your sisters and brothers and to worship here – to take communion together; to sing our praise together; to pray together and to love each other; to do your part. Live God’s way. Cooperate with God.

I can tell you from my own experience that waiting is hard, but God is waiting with us: “Emmanuel” – God is with us. I can tell you also that Jesus comes in God’s time, and when Jesus moves, our job is to join in and move with him. When Jesus comes, we receive a gift far better than the gift my sister received that cool dark African night as she waited in the Ford Pickup. She got a baby brother, which is pretty special. We get even more; we receive God’s presence and God’s life both here in our lives today and forever in God’s eternity.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

22 December 2019

Texts

Psalm 80

¹ Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth ² before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.
Awaken your might; come and save us. ³ Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.

⁴ How long, Lord God Almighty, will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people? ⁵ You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have made them drink tears by the bowlful. ⁶ You have made us an object of derision to our neighbors, and our enemies mock us. ⁷ Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.

Matthew 1

Joseph Accepts Jesus as His Son

¹⁸ This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. ²⁵ But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Focus: What am I waiting for? When I call out to God, God hears me and restores my soul. I am a child of God, called beloved, and redeemed by grace.

Thought-provoking Question: Why is it so hard for us to trust God to take care of us in every situation of life? Why do we want to choose our own response to life’s crises?

Going Deeper Questions:

1. Joseph had a choice and accepted the path that made less sense on the face of it. What kinds of choices do we face? Are they at all like his? At one level, I don’t think they are, but the text implies that we are to do as Joseph did. Why?

2. What kind of control do we have when we face a crisis? Loss of control is a fact of life for all of us, and we don’t like it. What is left for us to do?

3. What is the social dimension of these questions? It is easy to personalize them and deal with our own individual crises, but Joseph’s choice was made on behalf of the world. How do our choices affect the larger society around us?

An African Memory: Waiting in the Dark

I remember Carol Concerts in Bulawayo’s Central Park. I remember the wonderful descant to “O Come all Ye Faithful” on “Glory to God, all glory in the highest” – sung in the small city hall at a combined choirs carol concert. I remember candles and music that shaped my heart as a child.

Advent is a different time than Christmas, even though it is the time was always had our Christmas concerts. Advent is for waiting, and my African memory is of a time I don’t remember, although I was there. An African memory of waiting in the dark for someone to be born.

[The pictures are from Google images -- of the Central Park, but not of the amphitheatre where we had carols by candlelight, and of the City Hall where we also had carol concerts.

My older sister tells me the story. Our mother was waiting for a child, expecting her third baby. The life of her second was short – eight months long, before Dorothy died of malaria and was buried at our home in Sikalongo. [The picture below was taken in 2003, as Lois and I and our sons visited Sikalongo and reconnected with the memory of my sister, Dorothy.]

Perhaps as a result, mother went to the nearest hospital well before the birth of her next child. Livingstone was the nearest city with a hospital, so she and my sister Donna and another missionary, Verna Ginder, went down to Livingstone in a 1948 Ford Pickup.

I have wondered what they talked about. Verna had lost her husband to a tropical fever a few years before. Mother had lost her daughter to malaria. They may have identified closely with each other. They stayed in some government rondavels (a nice hut with a thatched roof) beside the Zambezi River, just above Victoria Falls. After several days by the river, mother announced that her labour begun.

[Pictures taken from Google images: the rondavel was probably not quite this nice, and this hospital -- in Livingstone, Zambia -- may be newer. But you get the idea.]

They drove to the nearby hospital in the 1948 Ford and hurried inside. I don’t know anything about the labour (although I am told I was the cause), but I gather that during labour the mother delivering the baby does not think about anything else. So Donna remained in the Pickup, momentarily forgotten.

I don’t remember what time I was born, but finally the time came, with the night well spent. Donna spent that same night in the dark of the African night, wondering where her mother and Aunt Verna were as she sat in the 1948 Ford Pickup. After I was born, someone thought of Donna. Maybe mother asked, “Where is Donna?” And maybe Verna Ginder rushed out horrified to make sure Donna was safe. Maybe Donna had fallen asleep; maybe she was just glad to see someone she knew.

In any case, they hurried back into the hospital so that Donna could find out what had kept mother so occupied. As a five-year old child, she was maybe less than impressed with the discovery of her baby brother. “That was why you left me alone in the dark?”

She has been a good sister, for which I am grateful, and mother was a good mother, for which I am doubly grateful. Her experience of waiting in the dark is a paradigm or model of the way we all are waiting for the night to end, trusting that God brings us this Christmas the joy of new birth and new life. Maranatha!

A Matopo Christmas

December 1958. It may have been December 22 – I am not sure. We lived then at Matopo Mission, 25 miles from the end of the tar on the Old Gwanda Road south ofBulawayo. In Manitoba, where we live now, Christmas comes with cold, up to minus 30 Celsius, but Matopo is in Zimbabwe, and Christmas means time for a picnic!

Every year the missionary family gathered a few days before Christmas for a picnic. We came from Matopo, Mtshabezi, Wanezi, and Bulawayo, 30 or so adults and children. In December 1958, we met at Matopo Mission, from where we drove to one of the “outschools” nearby, a place called Dopi.

At Dopi we unpacked the picnic, enjoyed our food and gifts and volleyball. Always volleyball when the missionaries played together. Then came the clouds and the rain. December in Zimbabwe is the rainy season, and we had a good tropical thunderstorm. With the rain pouring down, there was no choice but to head back to the mission, where we had enough room to finish our party inside, but there was a problem! A little spruit that we had crossed easily in our VW Kombis when we arrived was now a raging torrent, perhaps 100 feet across. [My childhood mind remembers 100 feet. Adult reflection suggests 20 feet is more realistic.]

The flood was too deep and swift and wide to drive across in our Kombis, so we went back to the school to make a plan. The adults decided that Frank Kipe and Al Book would walk back to the mission, hiking through the rocks of the Matopo Hills around the flash flood, get the Massey Ferguson diesel tractor there, and drive back to Dopi. [If other people remember differently about who hiked back to the mission, I defer to their memory.]

Meanwhile we waited in the school house. My Dad later recalled Elwood Hershey getting anxious about the long wait and piling wood on a fire we had built on the earthen floor of the school, until the sparks almost reached the thatched roof. When Dad pointed out that he might burn the school building down around us, Elwood hurriedly removed some of the logs.

My sister and Alvera sang a duet, “Deck the halls with boughs of holly.” We played games, sang carols, passed the time as well as we could while we waited for the men on a tractor.

Finally, Al and Frank arrived. We drove down to the river, which had sunk somewhat, but Frank still got wet driving through it, sitting on the tractor seat. The men took the spark plugs out of the VWs and then Frank towed us across. I remember lifting up my feet as the water ran across the floorboards of the Kombi. On the other side, the men dried off all the engines and reinserted the spark plugs. We finally got back to Matopo Mission about 1 a.m. [Again, the time is the memory of an eight-year old speaking 61 years later.]

The families from Wanezi still had a four-hour drive home. I suspect they put a long-distance call through to one of their number, who had not been able to join us. It might have been from Elwood to Dorothy Hershey, which would explain his frustration with the long wait and thus piling logs on the fire in the school house.

I probably went to 12 Christmas picnics, growing up in Africa. This is the only one I remember. A truly memorable Christmas Picnic.

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