For the Love of Cheerios

Our focus statement today is, “God loves us in so many ways. When we steep ourselves in that love, it comes out into our lives.” One of the Going Deeper questions reminds us that God’s love often comes to us through other people, and today I am remembering a time when someone showed me a special kind of love many, many years ago.

 

I was 10 years old, I think. My best guess is that this happened in the Christmas of 1960, perhaps 1961. I lived in Africa (Zambia and Zimbabwe) until I was 15, with only two visits to my parents’ families back in Pennsylvania. When I was nine years old, we spent six months in Pennsylvania, and for those six I lived with my Uncle and Aunt in Woodbury, PA. Also, during those six months, I discovered Cheerios! 

 

Then we went back to Africa. We didn’t have Cheerios in Zimbabwe! We had lots of good food, but no Cheerios. I loved Cheerios, and I made it known that I wished we had Cheerios in Bulawayo. Of course, we didn’t. 

 

My Dad was the Bishop of our church (the BICC in Zimbabwe) there, and we lived in the Bishop’s house. It was a big house in the shape of an L, and he had his office at one end of the house. His secretary (Lois Davidson) lived in the office wing of the house and ate her meals with our family. 

 

One day, Lois was in downtown Bulawayo doing some shopping and she found a box of Cheerios in a grocery store! I have no idea why it was there or who imported it, but it was there. She knew I liked Cheerios, so she bought it and brought it home. She kept it in her room until Christmas and then she wrapped it up and put it under the tree. I got a box of Cheerios for Christmas! (Here, that would be a crumby gift. Then and there, it was special!) 

 

Out Going Deeper questions lead me to wonder, how did getting a box of Cheerios make me feel? Ten-year-old boys sometimes don’t know how they feel, so I can’t tell you how I felt then, but 50 years later I met her again. In between that meeting and the gift of Cheerios, when I was in my 40s, I was pastor of a church in Indiana, where her sisters (Edith and Esther) were members. Then, 10 years ago, we were visiting Indiana, and I heard that the three sisters were living in a retirement centre in Goshen. 

 

I decided to drive over to Goshen and visit them. I found Edith and Esther, living together in an apartment. They were glad to see me, and we had a short visit. It was good to see old friends again. Then I went to Lois Davidson’s apartment. She welcomed me with open arms! She invited me in. We had tea together and talked and talked, and I realized that she loved me and my family. I remembered that box of Cheerios. It was more than just a box of cereal. It meant that she was thinking of me when she was in the grocery store that day, 60 years ago, because she loved that 11-year old boy. As a 60-year-old man visiting her that day, I felt loved and cared for by our old family friend. I knew it was God’s love! 

 

There you have it! You can ask your Mom and Dad if they have ever experienced God’s love, shown to them through other people? May you can even think of a time when someone else has shown you that they love you, and you can tell your parents about it.

Note: I told this story as the children's feature for our Sunday Service at Steinbach Mennonite Church on May 2, 2021

A Cross-Shaped People

We have been going deeper throughout Lent, and now we come to the centre of the Christian story. The crucifixion stands at the heart of who God is and who we are. This morning, I want to look at this event through the eyes of someone who has studied the religions of the world for much of the past 30 years or so.

 

The Big Question

People in every place and every time have had to deal with the uncertainty and pain of living. Whether in a place beset by war and famine or in a peaceful country, people face the reality that life is uncertain. In the words of Thomas Hobbes, an English political philosopher who wrote 370 years ago concerning the natural condition of humankind: “the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” 

 

We may not go as far as Hobbes in our assessment of life, but in the past year, Covid-19 and climate change have both asserted our powerlessness in the face of natural events. Between the prevalence of human sin and the power of evil in our world, we are faced with an insoluble problem: Where does evil come from, and what can we do about it? Consider three answers common in our world, and then hear again the answer in the story at the centre of our faith. 

 

Buddhism 

The heart of the Buddhist faith is expressed in “the Four Noble Truths”. According to an article on Buddhism, found on the BBC’s website:

“I teach suffering, its origin, cessation and path. That’s all I teach”, declared the Buddha 2500 years ago. The Four Noble Truths contain the essence of the Buddha’s teachings. It was these four principles that the Buddha came to understand during his meditation under the bodhi tree.

1. The truth of suffering (Dukkha) 

2. The truth of the origin of suffering (Samudāya) 

3. The truth of the cessation of suffering (Nirodha) 

4. The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering (Magga) 

Found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/beliefs/fournobletruths_1.shtml

  

The truth about suffering is simple: All life is suffering. Suffering comes from human desire for change. If we give up all desire, suffering comes to an end. In short, Buddhism deals with suffering by giving up everything in life. The answer sounds a lot like Jesus, “The one who gives up life will live. The one who holds onto life will die.” The difference is that Buddhism says, “The one who gives up life will die and disappear forever.” At the centre of the Buddhist faith, the answer to human suffering is extinction, the complete and eternal loss of everything. 

 

This way of dealing with suffering – let go of everything – reflects the belief that nothing is at the centre of the universe. The Buddhist word for heaven, “Nirvana”, means “the perfection of nothing”. Let go of everything, and your suffering will come to an end. 

 

Islam 

In contrast to Buddhism’s view of God – God is “Nothing”, Islam sees God as Everything. All-powerful, completely Other, so far beyond us that there is only one right response for us to God: Submission. Life is full of hurt and pain, that is true. Muslims call this suffering, “kismet”, and they see it as dealt out by an all-powerful and all-knowing God. We can only submit to God. 

 

Think of the cry Muslims give as a form of rejoicing: “God is Great!” “Allahu Akbar”: Literally, “God is greater [than anything else].” One of the most common statements for a Muslim when making plans or discussing what will happen next is, “Inshah Allah”: “If God wills”. You can see how close Christians and Muslims are to each other. We agree that God is greater than any other power in the world, and we agree that God’s will is basic to our lives. My Dad would often add the phrase, “God willing”, to plans that we were discussing. 

 

So, Buddhism approaches suffering as inevitable and as something to help us let go of everything in life, and Islam sees suffering as inevitable and as a reason to submit to God. What about ordinary Canadians who have no particular religious faith at all. Students of religion call them “the nones”. How do they see suffering? 

 

Secularism 

One of the most common statements I hear when tragedy strikes is that we must find out what went wrong, “so that no one will ever be hurt like that again.” In this statement, I think we can see how many people around us view life and suffering. They see suffering as bad, and they think we can get rid of it. Every other religion in the world has seen suffering as basic to life and as having some role to play in helping us deal with life. Secularists just want to get rid of it. It is not good for us, and we should do whatever we can to get rid of it. 

 

My own view is that secularism shows its shallowness in this question, because history shows that life is incredibly difficult. Only people insulated from the pain and suffering of the world around us can suggest seriously that “this should never happen again”. When it happens again, they find that secularism has no answer to suffering, and they may become cynical and just tune out the painful experiences of others. 

 

The Christian View of Suffering 

Clearly, I have touched far too lightly on these worldviews. A proper consideration would take books, not a Friday morning sermon. Equally clearly, adherents of these religions could answer what I have said. If you have friends who hold to one of these, it would be worthwhile taking time to ask how they deal with suffering and pain and to listen to them seriously. They are worth listening to. 

 

Meanwhile, this is Good Friday, and we are Christians, remembering what stands at the centre of our faith. At the centre of Buddhism stands “Negation”; at the centre of Islam stands “Power”; at the centre of Secularism stands “Self”. What is at the centre of our faith? How does God come to us and enable us to deal with the suffering of life in this world? We have read the story of the cross again today. This is the centre of our faith. We worship a cross-shaped God who makes us into a cross-shaped people. The cross is a symbol of suffering and pain. Isaiah 53 is the song of the Suffering Servant. 

³ He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. ⁴ Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. ⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 

 

John 18 and 19 tell the story of Jesus walking the path of the suffering servant. When Jesus finished praying in the garden (John 17), Judas guides a detachment of soldiers, given the task of arresting Jesus. The soldiers are aware that something big is going down and they appear frightened, but they press on with their task. Peter draws his sword and strikes out to defend Jesus, and Jesus stops him from going further. The soldiers take Jesus to Annas, the father-in-law of the high priest, to go on trial for his life. 

 

We have then an interlude in which Peter denies Jesus. All his followers watch from a distance, and Jesus has to walk the path into death alone. “Jesus walked that lonesome valley. He had to walk it by himself. Nobody else could walk it for him. He had to walk it by himself.” The trial continues. Jesus is sent on to Caiaphas, the high priest, who continues the interrogation. The religious leaders are trying to find a reason to convict Jesus, but finally they take Jesus to Pilate. Pilate wonders why; they reply that only he has the authority to declare the death penalty. 

 

A side note here: John’s account reads like a summary of the story for people who know it well. He does not state the charges directly, nor does he give the details about Pilate that we find in the synoptic gospels. The details are not John’s concern. 

 

Their conversation functions to establish that Jesus is the king in ways that Pilate cannot understand. Pilate continues the trial by having Jesus scourged and then trying to set him free, but the religious leaders and people chant, “Crucify him!” Pilate asks, “Shall I crucify your King?” They respond, “We have no king but Caesar!” Every person must choose between the rulers of this world and Jesus, and they have made their choice. 

 

Finally, Jesus is taken out and placed on the cross, with the inscription above him, “The King of the Jews.” As he dies on the cross, the soldiers gamble for his clothes. Jesus gives John the charge to care for his mother. After a final sip of wine vinegar, he dies, with the words “It is finished” on his lips. As the hymn puts it, “The great transaction’s done!” Jesus lived our life and died our death. This is the centre of our faith. This is what the Christian story is all about. 

 

Suffering and the Cross 

Come back to the question with which we began. Buddhism says that pain and suffering come from life and calls us to give up life itself. Islam says that pain and suffering come from rebellion against God and calls us to submit to God. Secularism says that pain and suffering are accidents of existence and calls us to get rid of them. Christian faith does not place the answer at the centre of our faith. You can find Christian answers, but at the centre we find something else. We find a God who suffers and hurts with us. We find Jesus, dying on the cross for us. 

 

There are reasons for this death. Jesus breaks the power of sin with his death. Jesus enables us to reconcile with God through his death. We celebrate these wonders in our hymns and scripture readings. But something else is deeper. Here it is: Jesus died for us. Buddhism presents God as “Nothing”. Islam presents God as “Power”. Secularism presents God as “Self”. Jesus shows us God as Love. 

 

The centre of the story is that Jesus loves you and Jesus loves me. He doesn’t start by fixing our pain and suffering. Jesus starts by loving us. He comes into the room where we sit in grief and pain and sits with us. Remember his name at his birth? Immanuel. God with us. God is love. God loves us so much that God died for us. 

 

I have been listening to excerpts from the trial of Derek Chauvin in Minnesota. Where was Jesus as George Floyd lay dying a year ago? Lying on the pavement with him. Where is Jesus as the Army overthrows the government in Myanmar and slaughters peaceful protestors? Standing with the protestors as the bullets fly. When I was in the hospital last November, I could hear a friend fighting for life across the hallway. Where was Jesus as my friend struggled for his life in his last days? Lying beside him in the bed. Our volunteers in the SCO have walked with people in significant personal struggles. Where is Jesus as an addict fights the urge to shoot up again? Wrapped up in the struggle with him. 

 

Our Response 

If we take the cross seriously, we find that God comes to us in love and embraces us when we are at our worst. Our God is a cross-shaped God, and God calls us to be a cross-shaped church. That means that we love people around us, near and far. We never turn away from suffering and pain and say, “That’s their problem.” We embrace people with God’s love and fill up in our own bodies what was lacking in Christ’s suffering (Colossians 1: 24) – that is, we make God’s love complete by extending it in our own lives to those around us. 

 

In the Canadian Mennonite (March 15, 2021), Emily Summach quotes Rachel Held Evans in a fitting conclusion for us today: 

Death and resurrection. It’s the impossibility around which every other impossibility of the Christian faith orbits. Baptism declares that God is in the business of bringing dead things back to life, so if you want in on God’s business, you better prepare to follow God to all the rock-bottom, scorched-earth, dead-on-arrival corners of this world—including those of your own heart—because that’s where God works, that’s where God gardens. … It’s just death and resurrection, over and over again, day after day, as God reaches down into our deepest graves and, with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, wrests us from our pride, our apathy, our fear, our prejudice, our anger, our hurt and our despair. 

 

We come to the resurrection on Sunday. Today we celebrate the incredible love of God, who joins us at rock bottom and dies with us – because God loves us even more than we love ourselves. 

 

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church 

2 April 2021 

 

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 

The suffering and glory of the servant 

¹³ See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. ¹⁴ Just as there were many who were appalled at him – his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness – ¹⁵ so he will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand. 

 

53 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? ² He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 

 

³ He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. ⁴ Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

 

⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. ⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 

 

⁷ He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. ⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. 

 

⁹ He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. ¹⁰ Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. ¹¹ After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. 

 

¹² Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. 

 

John 18:1-19:42 

 

 

Theme: Deep in the shadows: Called deep into the story.

Focus: We go deeper with Jesus to the centre of the Christian story, where we find the cross. The cross of Jesus is the centre of our lives as God’s people.

Called to Deep Hope (Hope Against Hope)

We have been considering variations on the theme of “deeper with God”. As the old hymn puts it, “Deeper, deeper in the love of Jesus/ Daily let me go;/ Higher, higher in the school of wisdom,/ More of grace to know. Oh, deeper yet, I pray,/ And higher every day,/ And wiser, blessed Lord,/ In Thy precious, holy word.”  

 

We began with “deep relationships” and progressed to “deep commitments”. We have sought “deep wisdom” and “deep healing”, leading to “deep growth”. Today, we seek a deep hope, deeper than the problems and struggles of our lives, deep enough to bring joy when griefs surround us. 

 

Isaiah 50 

Our passage from Isaiah is titled, “The Servant’s Humiliation and Vindication”. This is the third of four servant songs contained between Isaiah 40 and 53. Isaiah 53 is perhaps best known to many Christians – a clear reference to the trial and execution of Jesus, which we remember this coming Friday. Isaiah 50 is also a song that refers to the life and death of Jesus. Read this way, Jesus is the servant of the Lord, who is first humiliated and then vindicated. [Note: Jewish interpretation of these passages sees the servant of the Lord as the People of Israel; Christian interpretation as Jesus, the Messiah. It would be worth exploring these two interpretations in dialogue in another setting.] 

• Verse 4 portrays the ministry of Jesus as the teacher who brings understanding of God’s Word to the people. 
• In verse 5, the servant obeys God in his ministry and experiences the consequences of faithful service. 
• Verse 6 is quoted in Handel’s Messiah, referring to the trial of Jesus, in which he is stripped and beaten and prepared for execution. 
• Verses 7 to 9 then speaks words of hope in the darkness of the moment. In the experience of Jesus, these verses proclaim hope when hope is least evident. He maintains confidence in God’s goodness as he enters the worst time of his life on earth.

In the Servant’s Song, we hear this note: God is good, and we can hope in God even as we enter the darkness of difficult times in our lives. 

 

John 12 

We read the account of the Triumphal Entry from John’s gospel. Matthew, Mark, and Luke give similar accounts of Palm Sunday. John tells his own story – clearly the same event, but he was looking at it from a different perspective. We follow his view through the verses we read. 

• “The next day” in verse 12 locates the event just after Mary (sister of Martha and Lazarus) anoints Jesus’ feet in their home in Bethany, just after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus uses this anointing to speak of his coming death, and the entry into Jerusalem leads to that death. 
• We read that a large crowd of people were in Jerusalem for the Passover, now less than a week away. Apparently, they had heard of the way that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11), so when they heard that Jesus was coming into the city, they went to meet him. 
• Verse 13 records them picking up palm branches as part of their celebration, which gives today its name of “Palm Sunday”. [Where the people get the branches is a matter of some scholarly discussion.] They also start cheering for Jesus, calling him “the King of Israel”. 
• In verse 14, Jesus sits on a donkey to enter the city, and John explains that this action fulfilled the prophecy quoted in verse 15. 
• Jesus’ disciples only recognized the significance of this action after he had been executed and then raised from the dead. This last point is important: They did not recognize what Jesus was doing until later, when they had time to put the whole picture together.

In the next few verses, the Pharisees (and of course the other leaders who were threatened by Jesus’ ministry) realize that they are in trouble of being overwhelmed by the popular response to Jesus, and they set in motion the actions that lead to Jesus’ arrest and execution. The night is getting dark, and the shadows are gathering. 

 

Called to Deep Hope 

These events are familiar. Usually, we would have started our service this morning with the children acting out the “triumphal entry” (as we call it). We do this every year, and we know this story well. We know it so well that we may not realize how completely backwards the whole story is. Look at it again. 

 

“The Triumphal Entry” bears a name that suggests triumph and success and joy. The event leaves the Pharisees themselves saying, “The whole world has gone after him!” (verse 19). In fact, this parade is the beginning of the darkest hour. It ushers in the full weight of the religious authorities acting against Jesus, leading to his execution. Jesus himself knows well that this apparent triumph is the beginning of trouble. This upside-down series of events mirrors what we read in Isaiah 50, where the faithful action of the servant leads to punishment and scourging, a whip laid across the servant’s back. 

 

In the same way, this beginning of trouble is God’s call to deep hope in our lives. Isaiah reminds us that God is good, and we can hope in God even as we enter the darkness of difficult times in our lives. The application of this truth to Jesus adds a special dimension to the experience of entering life’s shadows. Jesus did not need to be purified, but we do. Jesus did not need to enter into darkness, but we do. Jesus could have stayed with the trinity of persons within the Godhead, but we cannot. To enter the presence of God, we need radical purification. Without entering the shadows of this life, we cannot enter into the light of God’s presence. Jesus goes first to open the path for us and to light the path for us as we follow him into the shadows. 

 

This is a theme we have dug into often over the past weeks, so often that we might wonder why we need to say it again. We say it again because we have trouble really believing it. We return to this theme because it is a constant theme in our lives. I have reminded you before of the Friday prayer in the Anglican Prayer Book:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

Why does the prayer book give this prayer for each Friday of the year? Because we can pray the words easily without internalizing them. Repeated use helps to bring us to the point that we discover the truth of these words in our own lives. 

 

Finding Hope in the Shadows 

In last week’s bulletin, we saw some questions to help us think about the passages for today: Are you a glass half-full or a glass half-empty person? Are you a realist who hopes against hope or an optimist who thinks everything is fine as the boat sinks beneath the waves? What do you think Jesus wants you to be? 

 

I don’t know if you thought about these questions or not, but we can think about them now. Are you a realist or an optimist? Do you see possibilities or trouble when something starts to go wrong? I used to be an optimist – at least, I think I was. Now, I can see the problems ahead more easily than the possibilities. The answer to this question is probably more a matter of personality than anything else. I don’t think Jesus wants us to be one or the other. I do think that Jesus wants to do something in us and through us as we enter into the shadows of life. 

 

Some of us face hardships cheerfully; some of us face hardships fearfully. Some of us see clearly the possible problems that may come; some of us see clearly the possibilities for joy. All of us can rest in Jesus and follow him into the shadows. When we walk with Jesus, we begin to find something of what God wants to do in our lives. 

 

I think of my grandfather. He was a singer and teacher, a missionary and a minister. He and my grandmother went to Zimbabwe with BIC Missions in 1921. They came home in 1929 for a furlough. Their oldest son was then 13, and they made the decision to leave him with my grandfather’s brother, a teacher at Messiah College. But that brother and his wife refused to take responsibility for their nephew, and my grandparents found that their missionary career was over. Their belongings in Zimbabwe stayed there. Their relationship with the church and people in Zimbabwe ended without a chance to say goodbye. I don’t know how they processed the events, but I am sure it was a time of walking in the shadows. 

 

Why did these things happen to them? I don’t know, and I don’t need to know. I do know that Jesus had gone before them, entering into Jerusalem and facing his own death. I do know that Jesus provided for them as they processed a difficult change of plans. Grandfather was then 45 years old. Within a few years he had moved to Oklahoma, where he was superintendent of our church bible school in Jabbok, Oklahoma and then to California, where he taught Bible at our church college in Upland. 

 

Upland College was the scene of another time of darkness. When he was about 55, the college went through a financial crisis. In order to meet their budget, they cut the benefit that instructors had, allowing their children to attend the classes for no tuition. When they gave my grandfather a contract, he handed it back to the board chair and asked them to reconsider the child tuition benefit. The board chair simply kept the contract, and grandfather was out of a job. My Dad has told me how grandfather drove into the hills around Upland and sat under a bridge by the road, dwelling on what had happened to him. 

 

He was, I suppose, experiencing depression, brought on by the combination of financial hardship in the college and a personality clash with the board chair. Unemployed, in his mid-50s, wondering how he would provide for his family or do the work God had called him to do. For the moment, he and grandmother took a mission church in Pennsylvania. Eventually, she began teaching art at Messiah College, where they had started their lives together some 40 years before. Grandfather gradually lost his sight, and when I knew him, he could only distinguish light and darkness; he could not see me when we visited him. 

 

Again, I don’t know how they processed these events, and I don’t need to know. I do know that Jesus had gone before them, entering into Jerusalem and facing his own death. I do know that Jesus provided for them as they dealt with the loss of job and status and moved into their retirement years. The truth is that they had a hope that was deeper than the shadows in which they sometimes lived. Their hope was in Jesus, and they lived and died knowing that God cared for them. 

 

Grandfather lived his last years at a place called Messiah Home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a retirement home run by our church. The board chair, whose actions led to his loss of a job 20 or so years before, had fallen ill and lay near death. Those with him asked if they could do anything for him. He asked them to bring John Climenhaga to pray with him. I don’t know what exactly was behind that request or what grandfather thought of it, but he went and prayed with the board chair. Two old ministers in the Brethren in Christ Church, both near the end of their days, knowing that they had hurt each other, approaching the end of their lives in the hope of their common Lord. 

 

Conclusion 

You notice that I am being careful not to say that Jesus’ example sets us free from pain or hardships. I have told a piece of my grandparent’s story. I could have told other parts as well. I cannot say what exactly God was doing in their story, but I am confident that they discovered a deep hope that went deeper in their lives than the loss of job or dreams, deeper than anything that can happen in this life. 

 

Palm Sunday. A reminder that great triumph often precedes great hardship. Next Sunday, Easter Sunday reminds us that great hardship also leads to great triumph. We will not anticipate that triumph yet. Instead, we live in the space where Isaiah acknowledges the pain that the servant of the Lord feels. We live in the moment where clouds gather on the horizon, telling of the storm about to break around us. 

 

I have used a simple story of my grandparents’ lives. I could have used a story of systemic distress and injustice, something perhaps that those who work with the SCO could tell us. I could have used stories from the political world or from our own history of fleeing from Russia. In all these stories, the same truth holds: Jesus has gone before us, entering into Jerusalem and facing his own death. Jesus provides for us as we face the darkness of our own lives and times. Our hope is deeper than our fears, and God is stronger than death. “Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why so disquieted within me? Put your trust in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.”

 

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Palm Sunday, 28 March 2021

 

Isaiah 50:4-9a

The Servant’s Humiliation and Vindication

⁴ The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 

⁵ The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. ⁶ I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. 

⁷ The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; ⁸ he who vindicates me is near. 

Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. ⁹ It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

John 12:12-16

Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem

¹² The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. ¹³ So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” 

¹⁴ Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: ¹⁵ “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” ¹⁶ His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.

Focus 

As we follow Jesus into Holy Week, we sense the rush of the crowds and seek the deep, steady current of God’s steadfast love, calling us to deep hope in the One who comes in the name of the Lord. 

 

Thinking Ahead Questions 

Are you a glass half-full or a glass half-empty person? Are you a realist who hopes against hope or an optimist who things everything is fine as the boat sinks beneath the waves? What do you think Jesus wants you to be? 

 

Going Deeper Questions 

1. In the sermon, I said that God is good, and we can hope in God even as we enter the darkness of difficult times in our lives. How does God’s goodness “fix” the problems that we face in life? 

2. We have heard many times now the theme of trusting God in times of trouble. What benefit is there in hearing this theme more than once? 

3. Do you think optimists or pessimists are closer to the way God wants us to be? 

4. What is “deep hope” anyway? How does deep hope work in our lives when we’re experiencing the problems of this world?

Deep Calls to Deep

Psalm 22 

Psalm 22 begins with words that are burned into the Christian psyche, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew records Jesus’ anguished cry, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (Matthew 27:46; see also Mark 15:35) – quoting this verse in the Aramaic language. The Psalm itself continues for 21 verses of something close to despair: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.” 

 

Have you ever felt this kind of pressure? Have you ever been forced to go so deep within yourself that you wonder if there is any hope for relief? Keep the memory of such times in your mind as you hear the verses that we read from verse 22 on. The Psalmist continues: 

• I will praise God when I stand in the congregation of God’s people.
• All of God’s people should praise God.
• When I was in trouble, God heard me and helped me.
• God hears and helps all who are in trouble. That’s the kind of God we serve.
• All the families of the earth should also praise God, for God saves all of them.
• Even those who die bow down to God. Future generations also will serve God forever.

A regular recitation of praise! A complete contrast to the pressure and despair of the first 21 verses. We can assume that in some fashion beyond our ability to understand, God brings joy and safety to people who have given up all hope. If you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of the marrow of your bones. 

 

Mark 8 

The Gospel reading moves in an opposite trajectory from the Psalm. Psalm 22 moves from despair to hope; Mark 8 begins with the feeding of the four thousand, continues with the healing of a blind man, and comes to a climax with Peter’s great confession, “You are the Messiah!” The public response to God’s presence in Jesus’ ministry is growing, and an observer might think that “the best is yet to be”. What happens next?

• Jesus tells the disciples about his coming death and resurrection.
• Peter responds to his words by saying, “Don’t talk like that!” Jesus rebukes Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”
• Jesus gives the crucial teaching: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”
• Jesus adds that God will embrace those who embrace this teaching, and that God will reject those who reject this teaching.

The same truth emerges as from Psalm 22: If you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. 

 

This Lenten Season 

Last week, our theme called us into the depths of the seas, a call to deep relationships. This week, our theme calls us into the depths of the woods, a call to deep commitment. I have a personal feeling about both of these themes. 

 

Thirteen years ago, I experienced something like a depression that almost crippled me – a bout with acedia, a kind of spiritual lethargy. Healing for that time came to me in a series of dreams. In the last dream, I was floating in the sea, an image that makes little sense, because I don’t swim and I’m afraid of the water. As I floated there, I realised that the sea was the sea of God’s love and that I was completely safe, no matter how the waves might toss and swirl about me. 

 

Fifty-two years ago, I went out into the woods with my sophomore class in college. We planned to spend the night at a cabin owned by our faculty advisor. The rest of the group did so, but I got separated from the others during a walk through the woods just before dark. I spent the night lost in the woods and walked out the next morning through a cathedral-like setting of the trees in the light of dawn. Being afloat in the sea and being lost in the woods are both experiences that lie deep within my memory. 

 

In both cases, a time of distress led to a time of joy and delight. How do we bring these images – deep in the water and deep in the woods – together with the Scripture passages we have just read to reflect on our commitment to God and to each other? 

 

A Synthesis 

Consider again the common theme that emerges from the Scripture readings: If you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. We are by nature self-centred. We are by our natures inclined to think of everything that others do in terms of how it affects us. “What’s in it for me?” is the essential question that we ask constantly, even if we do not ask it aloud. I have wondered, for example, why the Lord’s Prayer includes the line, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” I think that part of the answer is that by nature we evaluate everything in terms that place ourselves at the centre. 

 

When we nurture this self-centredness, Christian theology defines it as pride. It is the essential sin, mimicking the way that Adam and Eve chose to be “like God” and replace God at the centre of their own lives. If pride is the essential sin, then a reorientation of our lives, placing God at the centre, is the essence of salvation. We use terms like “dying to self” and “living for Christ” for describe this reorientation of our lives. 

 

Apply this insight, then, to our overarching theme of developing deep commitments to God and to each other. Any relationship that exists primarily at the level of a self-centredness can only be a shallow relationship. Deep commitments require investment in the other: God invested God’s self in us by sending Jesus to die and rise for us. In response, our deepest commitment to Christ and the other comes when we are joined in Christ. We can use an image for this joining – “the body of Christ”, in which Christ is the head and we are the body itself. Or in a non-biblical and mechanical image, we are joined to each other the way that the spokes of a bicycle wheel are joined to each other – through the axle at the centre (the person of Jesus) and held in place by the hub of the wheel (the Holy Spirit). 

 

If we want deep commitments, we begin by recentering our lives in Christ. This truth brings us back to the insight from the Scriptures: If you want to know God in the depths of your being (or recentre on Christ), you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. 

 

How Does this Happen? 

For the past several months, I have been struggling with high blood pressure. When my blood pressure rises too much, I feel pretty miserable. By listening to my body, I have learned to recognise when I am internalizing stress and tensing up. I have also learned to relax intentionally, and when I succeed in relaxing, I can feel my high blood pressure subside. Relaxing feels so good that I wonder why I haven’t relaxed intentionally all my life! I think I can tell you why. 

 

Relaxing means letting go, letting go of my need to control what is happening and letting go of my need to fix everything. In the terms we have been using, relaxing means not needing to be at the centre of everything, not being in charge. Such letting go is so hard that it has taken a real physical problem to force me to do it, and even now I can do it only imperfectly. As we have said, if you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. 

 

A Cautionary Tail 

You may have heard recently in the news of the situation with Ravi Zacharias. After his death, it became clear that his public ministry, however successful, concealed a long period of time in which he abused his power and position to take advantage of a number of different women. One source (Patheos.com) describes the situation like this:

 

Like most people following the Ravi Zacharias scandal, I knew the full report of his misconduct would be bad when it came. The only question was how bad. Now that it’s dropped, we have the whole ugly picture. Calculated side deals, manipulation, Inception-like layers of deception. A man who publicly preached the vital importance of private virtue, yet ostracized anyone who dared to scratch the facade. For those on the outside of the scandal looking in, the story may not seem particularly shocking. Why should anyone be shocked that a powerful, charismatic religious figure gamed the system for sexual perks? But within the evangelical and apologetics communities, the shock-waves are going to be felt for a long time to come.

 

There are many hard lessons to be learned from this, including lessons about the culture that enabled Ravi to get away with his crimes for so long. It is now emerging that multiple people failed to act on what should have been clear warning signs, simply because they were blinded by loyalty. Ravi’s two-faced act made it beyond unthinkable to them that he might be concealing sin of this magnitude. And so it continued to lie concealed, right up to the day of his death.

 

The writer (Esther O’Reilly) observes that a basic problem undergirding the scandal was the extent to which Ravi Zacharias was in control of the whole organization that bears his name. He did much good in his ministry, but the fatal flaw at the heart of the whole was his control of every aspect of the ministry. Like the One Ring in Lord of the Rings, this level of control consumed him. “All power corrupts …” 

 

O’Reilly continues with a comparison to another prominent Christian of the last century: 

 

As I was reflecting on all this recently, my mind went back to another figure who was a “celebrity Christian” in his own way, …. This figure also had a magnetic appeal, also had a lucrative and popular ministry, and also used his platform to address the challenges of the Christian walk. …. I’m speaking about Christian singer-songwriter Rich Mullins…

 

He had first entered the business as a callow, troubled twenty-something, full of demons and wholly unprepared for the Nashville machine. After one of his tapes landed in the hands of a young Amy Grant, he went overnight from eccentric Bible college alum to CCM star. …. Where most artists feared failure, Mullins found himself terrified of his own success. The story of how he worked through that terror is instructive, inspiring even, though not conventionally so …. One can glean elsewhere that Rich was chronically depressed and battled a complex of addictive tendencies, including a lifelong struggle with alcohol abuse. …

 

In spite of all this, Rich was able to take enough initiative to set up a strong accountability network for himself. … He cut himself off from the bulk of his wealth, entrusting it to a board of local church elders who paid him an average working man’s salary and distributed the rest to charity. Recalling this decision …, his brother David reflects “I don’t know if it was the strength to do it or the utter terror of not doing it. I don’t know. Probably both.” …

 

Rich also spoke openly, though tastefully, about his struggles with lust as a lonely single man. … He tells an embarrassing story on himself about an incident in a German train station where he and his best friend were having a highly explicit accountability “talk,” unaware that the only other man in the station was listening with understanding. At one point, the man leaned over and asked, “Excuse me, are you Rich Mullins?” As Rich puts it … , “I had to think back over our conversation to decide whether I was or not. But then I decided that I must be.” …

 

O’Reilly concludes her analysis with a quote from Rick Mullins himself,

Maybe when God calls us, it feels like a pain. And for years in my own life, I tried to drown that pain. I tried to avoid that pain. I tried to fill that ache with all kinds of what I can now look back on and see was a lot of stuff that was destroying me, corrupting me. And to listen to the call of God means to accept some of the emptiness that we have in our own lives. And rather than always trying to drown out that feeling of emptiness, instead of always trying to fill it with a lot of junk, to allow that to be a door through which we go to meet God. 

 

If you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. If you want deep commitments to God’s people and the people around us, you will make them only as you enter into their pain and hurt and find God there. Sometimes we name this openness “vulnerability”. Today we have named it as releasing control of our own lives and opening ourselves to God and to each other. “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me – a prayer to the God of my life.”

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church 

28 February 2021 

 

Focus statement: We are transformed by God as we follow God’s voice along the path of life, a voice calling us to deep commitment. Even when our path leads deep into unfamiliar woods, as we lose ourselves, we are found. 

 

Going Deeper Questions: 

1) I said that developing a deep commitment to God and others require openness about our own struggles. What are the dangers of such openness? Can we be “too vulnerable”? 

2) How can we live the kind of de-centred life (re-centred on God and others) if we have not fallen into radically selfish ways in the first place? What if you were brought up to think of God and others naturally? Do we still need to be saved from our selfishness? 

3) What do you think is the basic reason that so many television pastors and evangelists have fallen into addictive habits of sex or drugs or some other failure? 

4) How are we different from them? 

 

 

Psalm 22:23-31

²³ You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! ²⁴ For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him. ²⁵ From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him. 

²⁶ The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever! ²⁷ All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. ²⁸ For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. 

²⁹ To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him. ³⁰ Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, ³¹ and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

  

Mark 8:31-38

Jesus predicts his death

³¹ He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. ³² He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 

³³ But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

The way of the cross

³⁴ Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. ³⁶ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? ³⁷ Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? ³⁸ If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”