Something New

The only thing I’ll say about this sermon is that I did get a few grossed-out looks from the congregation when I talked about where the water we drink has been.

Today I felt like talking about something new. So that’s the theme of today’s sermon: Something New!

So let’s start by looking at what it says in 1 John 4:15: “God is love”. Now wait: that’s nothing new. That’s an ancient, an eternal truth! Yes, I agree—this is an ancient, eternal truth, but I say nevertheless that this is something new. New, because God’s love constantly makes everything new, constantly opens up new possibilities, again and again restores and refreshes and revives and renews.

Here’s a good analogy: when somebody offers you a glass of pure cold water on a very hot day, and you drink it, you never say, “Phew, that’s old water!” Even though, in fact, it is… very old water. That water has been here on the earth from the very beginning of the world. Nowhere on earth is there any such thing as “new water”; no new water is being created. All the water located on our planet has already been drunk by countless people, animals, insects, trees, plants and has also been returned over and over again into the ecological system where it’s purified and refreshes and revives us yet again. And every time you pick up a glass of that fresh, clean, cold water, especially on a sweltering summer day, it seems to you that you are the very first living being in the whole universe to taste this particular glassful of crystal clear life-giving water, and it fills you with satisfaction and gratefulness. That “old” water is just about as “new” as anything you could ever wish for!

Of course, this is a limited, physical analogy for a spiritual truth. In fact, divine love unimaginably exceeds this analogy because, unlike water, God’s love actually does increase and grow; there is more and more of it; it unceasingly comes into new being, in God’s desire to bring about good for the objects of His love. It is always new, and… it has always been. It never grows old, and yet… there’s nothing older than it! God’s love is always able to open a new door for us in life, especially when we feel worn out, empty, useless.

In the Gospel of John 13:34, Jesus Christ speaks this command: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” This is a new command precisely because the life of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ unceasingly makes us new and capable to love in a whole new way, in unity with His desire to love through us. (Verse 35) “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

If we go back to the first epistle of John, in the fifth chapter we read the following words: (5:1) “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.” The whole secret of love—if it really is a secret—unfolds itself in this verse. In this one short verse is exposed the whole Gospel, the news of salvation, the meaning of life, new birth, even a glimmer of the eternal mystery of the Holy Trinity—from which proceeds all divine love. Imagine: all that in one verse! Let’s take it apart….

“Whoever believes...” Here’s faith, the key to reconciliation with God. For us it all starts with this, when by faith we receive God’s gift of eternal life.

“…that Jesus is the Christ...” Here’s the content of our faith, the central fact of history that changes our whole past, present and future.

“…is born of God.”   Here’s new birth; it’s an enlivened spirit, a new, living relationship with the living God in mutual knowledge.

“Whoever loves the father…” Here’s love for God; in the heart of the born-again person love is born for the Father who bestowed the new birth. This is love, born in the image of the eternally loving God, and the proof of that love is love towards His children, as it says, “…and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well” and we read further (v.2) “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.”

I hinted that a lesson about the Holy Trinity is found here, so what is it? The lesson is that our new birth arises exclusively thanks to the only-begotten Son of God. Thanks to the Only-Begotten of the Father we become “begotten” of God. Moreover, thanks to the eternal love ceaselessly communicated within the Holy Trinity, without beginning or end, the possibility is made real for us to taste and know and generate genuine love. Genuine love will always be love in the image of Him who loved and gave Himself for us, Jesus of Nazareth. Genuine love will always be a response of joy toward God the Father, with that same joy with which the eternal Son of God unendingly exults in the presence of His Father. And genuine love will always be the cause for obedience to the Father’s will, the natural consequence of a desire to bring Him pleasure. (Verses 3-4) “This is love for God: to obey his commands, and his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.”

The psalmist says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” “Taste!” “See!” That means, “Find out for yourself! Experience it!” Taste the fresh, clean, enlivening water of God’s love; it is water for the soul. This water is always new.

In Samaria on one hot day, Jesus, tired after a long journey, asked for water from a woman whose sins and griefs were totally open to him. Encountering her suspicion and curtness, and still not having gotten even a drop of water, God’s Son Jesus in all love offered her living water (read Jn. 4:13,14). These words sounded out to this woman on that miraculous day when she found God’s love and forgiveness, sounded out from the lips of Him whose love redeemed God’s creation, of Him whose Father one day will say, “See, I am making all new” and in His incomparable love He will wipe every tear from the eyes of His children. That’s the kind of love that sounded from the lips of Jesus to that poor woman on that hot day so long ago in Samaria.

Let that love sound in our hearts every time we draw near to God and each other. Let it reveal itself through us to those around us, in forgiveness, in patience, in help, in compassion and joyful fellowship. And let God's always-new love become for many the refreshing, enlivening water of new life in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. 

CATASTROPHE!

This one speaks for itself. I’ll just add that the approach here is one I find useful on rare occasions, i.e., where I mostly lay it out first in my own words and only then “cinch” it with scripture passages, left (mostly) to speak for themselves at the end. Oh, by the way, some reflection on Tolkien’s “eucatastrophe” played some role in prompting me to compose this sermon.


Every catastrophe has a future... and the future is God's.

A number of recent events have me thinking about the meaning of “catastrophe”. We all know about the worldwide economic crisis that’s been going on for over a year now. We see that the nations of the world are in turmoil over what’s going on: the riots in Greece, the threat of total financial collapse in countries from Spain and Hungary to Japan. And as for America, the so-called richest country on earth... the reality is that America is essentially bankrupt. America can’t exist at this point without borrowing massively more than it actually has. I call that bankruptcy. A report last month on the generation of new jobs in the economy seemed very encouraging at first. 441,000 new jobs were created! Everybody said hooray! But then reality struck: 400,000 of those jobs were temporary jobs created by the government hiring people to collect the 2010 census! It turns out there were only 41,000 real new jobs last month. To make clear how bad that is, 150,000 new workers enter the job market every month. That means there were jobs for less than a third of them, not to mention the other 8 million officially unemployed and millions of others who don’t even show up on official records. That’s catastrophic.

And now there’s the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The southern coastline of America is turning red like blood. The fish and birds are dying. The water is turning into poison. They still can’t stop the oil that is spreading farther and farther. And it’s not only floating on the top of the water. It’s also forming a thick layer on the bottom—and that’s killing the sea creatures that depend on the ocean bottom for their food. It’s already a catastrophe and we still don’t know what else it will lead to.

Recently we had a catastrophe in my church denomination in America. Our “Bishop”, that is, the president or senior officer of the whole denomination, was killed in a car accident. Just 53 years old, with a wife and four grown children. In fact, he was planning to go to Canada the next day on a fishing trip with his sons. An overwhelming, heart-breaking shock—a catastrophe for his family, friends and a whole church denomination with thousands of members.

Catastrophes come into our lives, whether physically, emotionally, financially.... And people’s reactions to catastrophes include fear, anxiety, doubt, anger and loss of faith. And that brings me to the main idea of my sermon today, which is this:

If I don’t have a faith that’s prepared for catastrophe, I don’t have a faith that’s prepared for life.

Let me repeat it: If my faith isn’t ready for catastrophe, my faith isn’t ready for life.

Why? Because catastrophe happens. That’s reality. So if I don’t have a faith that’s prepared for reality, how can I have a faith that’s ready for life?

We don’t want our faith itself to suffer ruin, collapse, catastrophe. Therefore, we always need to be assessing our faith. Do I have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter what happens? Or am I hanging my faith on a particular scenario that I expect Him to produce in my life? That’s a critical question.

Why is it critical? The obvious reason is that it could decide whether or not your faith stands strong in the day of catastrophe. But I’ll quickly add that I’m not so naïve as to think that some stark, terrible “day of catastrophe” absolutely comes into the life of literally every single Christian. We don’t all lose loved ones in their youth. We don’t all suffer long-term, debilitating illnesses, or bankruptcy, or a broken home or public disgrace or injustice or persecution. Some people live comparatively peaceful lives from cradle to grave. But listen carefully: even if you’re in that category, the question I asked is still a critical question for your life: Do you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ no matter what? Or is your faith faith in a pleasant, preferred scenario you expect him to arrange for your life?

Why is that a critical question? QUALITY. The quality of our faith will determine the quality of our lives, the quality of our spiritual being and growth, the quality of our joy, our peace, our hope, our relationship with God, our existence. If we have a faith that’s ready for catastrophe—a no-matter-what faith in Jesus—then we have a faith that grows, grows deeply in the knowledge of God whether or not the catastrophe comes. If I don’t have a faith that’s ready for catastrophe in the future, then I don’t really experience the quality of life in Christ now. And if future catastrophe destroys my faith in Christ, I probably never had it to begin with.

I recall a woman I knew long ago, who went through possibly the worst catastrophe anyone can: the loss of a child. Her 18-year-old son was killed in a motorcycle accident. As a result she gave up her faith, saying she could no longer believe in a God who would let something like that happen to her.

Now I have to ask the following question, even if it sounds cold and cruel: Didn’t this woman know, before her son was killed, when she was still “believing in God”, that there were other mothers in the world whose sons were getting killed in motorcycle accidents?

Of course she did—how could she not? We all know it. It means, therefore, that, on a certain and very real level, she was content to believe in a God who let other mothers’ sons get killed in motorcycle accidents... as long as it wasn’t her son.

So, she didn’t really lose her faith, because she never had it to begin with. It wasn’t real-world, ‘no-matter-what’ faith in the Person of Christ; it was faith in a Preferred Scenario.

I know. I sound cold, cruel, unsympathetic: “You can’t know the agony in a mother’s heart, so you can’t judge!” No, I’m not unsympathetic. The pain I feel for her tells me I’m actually full of compassion. But I know that other mothers and fathers, and husbands and wives, and sons and daughters, and dearest friends, have gone through catastrophes just as awful but have come out of it with a living faith. Why? Because they had real-world faith, faith that works in the real world where terrible things like this happen. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ no-matter-what. As a result they came through the pain with God’s peace, hope, strength, joy—in short, a good reason to really live. “I have come”, Jesus said, “that they might have life and have it abundantly.”

If I speak what sound like hard words about that poor woman, it’s not from a lack of compassion but the opposite. It hurts to see her stuck in despair and bitterness, with no way out. I want to see her really know the comfort of God’s awesome power, the healing comfort of the living Christ. But as a rule that happens only when we have faith that’s prepared for catastrophe ahead of time.

And, I think, especially in these times we need faith like that! We need to check, evaluate our faith, and make sure it’s firmly fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ—no matter what happens. Because then our faith won't fail us—for He is "the same yesterday, today and forever". The future and eternity belong completely to Him.

“Heaven and earth will pass away”, Jesus said.

Catastrophe? You bet it is!

“But my words will never pass away.” In the midst of catastrophe—unshakeable assurance, a rock-solid ground to stand on.

In 2 Peter 3:10-13 the apostle writes (read).

The earth and all that is in it will be burned up and dissolved. A catastrophe? Absolutely! But can you believe Peter says this is something we’re actually looking forward to? How can that be? Catastrophe and hope: how can they exist side-by-side? It’s impossible, isn’t it? No, not when we are in Christ. Because our whole faith is founded on a catastrophe and a glorious hope.

(Read Mark 15:22-26.)

“And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.” Catastrophe. Personal, physical, torturous catastrophe, lived through, moment by moment, drop by drop, to death.

(Read Luke 24:25-26.)

The Risen Lord is telling his disciples: No catastrophe... no faith! No suffering... no glory! And if you stop to think about it, Jesus is also saying: “No past... no future!” Because every present catastrophe, just like every passing second, is obviously, logically, going to immediately become a past catastrophe—a past catastrophe caught up in the rushing stream of time towards the future that finally belongs to God and His promises. “O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken...” If the catastrophe of the cross hadn't happened, there’d be no future.

(Read Luke 13:34-35)

The heartbreak of Jesus Christ: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem....” A past catastrophe, a future certainty. Your house is left to you desolate, but the time will come when you say, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” No-matter-what faith in Jesus perceives every Past and every Present in the light of the glory of a coming day. Yes, even when we perceive it through tears, just as Jesus wept.

Our faith is based on a catastrophe: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Maybe it seems obvious why I would call such a terrible death catastrophic, but... the resurrection? That's not a catastrophe, is it? Isn’t that something wonderful? Well, yes, it is – truly wonderful in every sense: great, amazing, miraculous. But it’s also catastrophic. A catastrophe is a total change of order, the turning upside-down of everything familiar; it’s an earthquake, an upheaval, a revolution, an end and a beginning. And the resurrection is certainly all those things. And we know the resurrection was really catastrophic for the devil: it obliterated, demolished, shattered the power of sin and death forever. Definitely a catastrophe, and what a glorious one—hallelujah! Without catastrophe we’d have no salvation, no faith.

Finally, I want to amend, to adjust a little bit, something I said before. I said that some people seem to get through life without major catastrophes. But please listen carefully: If we have this no-matter-what faith in Jesus—faith that sticks to Him no matter what else may happen—then I guarantee you we will suffer and catastrophe will come.

You might be thinking that if I worked for an advertising company they’d probably fire me, judging by the advertisement I just made for faith in Jesus.

Alright then, let me clarify what I’m talking about: If we have that kind of faith, then we will suffer because we share the sufferings of Christ, and we will experience catastrophe because, for one thing, Jesus will revolutionize our lives. (Philippians 3:8-10) “I count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord... that I may win Christ... that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings”, says the apostle, and I trust we can say the same.

Need I add that none of us can escape catastrophe in any case, because each of us has a date with eternity, the physical catastrophe of death. But if we’re in Christ, death is something we’ve already come to ultimate terms with, thanks to Jesus: (Gal. 6:14) “...God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” says the apostle Paul, and I trust we say the same. (Gal. 2:20) “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me: and the live which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” So says the apostle, and so says No-Matter-What faith in Christ.

At his own approaching appointment with eternity, when nearly everybody had abandoned him and the state was going to execute him, the apostle wrote to his dear son in the faith: (2 Timothy 4:7-8) “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith”—not “lost the faith”; kept the faith!—“Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”

When he could have protested that it was all unfair, and his friends were traitors, and God had failed him, instead Paul lived and spoke faith, no matter what: (2 Timothy 4:16-18): “At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Our faith was born in catastrophe and glory. Faith in Jesus, no matter what, will turn every catastrophe into an expectation of glory. Every catastrophe has a future, and the future... belongs to the Risen and Returning Lord Jesus Christ, “to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen!”

Two Questions on Forgiveness

This one essentially boils down in sermonic style key theological ideas I wove into a paper that I presented at a Dorothy L. Sayers Society convention some years ago. There I spoke on an article Sayers wrote, “On Forgiveness”, during WWII. That paper wove together Sayers’s views with thoughts from Charles Williams, William Blake, C.S. Lewis and others. Oh yes, and me. My small contribution there is distilled into the sermon here.

   (Read Ephesians 4:32)

   The apostle Paul tells us to forgive one another just as God has forgiven us in Christ. That naturally raises the question: how has God forgiven us in Christ? The better we understand that, the better we can forgive one another like God has forgiven us! We find a very helpful clue in Matthew 26:28 (read).

   So, God in Christ has forgiven us by suffering and dying, spilling His own blood for the “remission of sins”. That word “remission” means “putting away”, getting rid of them, making them gone, like they never existed to begin with.

   This raises two difficult questions, and in essence my whole sermon will circle around these questions.

   The first question: If we must forgive similar to how God in Christ forgave us, does this mean we must suffer and die every time we forgive?

   The second question: If not, and if we forgive simply by not blaming the one who offended us, and saying, “I forgive you”, then why was God not able to forgive the same simple way? Why the cross, the suffering, the blood and death?

   Two difficult questions. But in my opinion the answers to these questions happen to disclose the very essence of our faith. If we ignore these questions, we allow the very meaning of forgiveness and the sacrifice of Christ to slip out of sight.

   I will discuss these two questions in reverse order, because the first one will remain unclear until we figure out the second. So again, the second question went “If we forgive simply by not blaming the one who offended us and by saying ‘I forgive you’, then how come God couldn’t forgive the same simply way, without the cross, the suffering, the spilling of blood and death?

   An important question!

   It will help us to look at Matthew 6:12, very familiar words in the context of the “Our Father” (read).

   “Debts”. The key word is “debts”: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

   What do we owe God, by rights? By rights, we owe Him our life , and all that is in it. This is love, faithfulness, holiness, truth, obedience, worship—that’s what Man owes God, since the very creation of the world! For all his belongs to God; it is all from Him and for Him.

   But what is sin? Sin is the violation of this order, the order in which we freely pay our debt of life to God with joy—sin ruins that order. When Man first sinned, he stole from God what belonged to God, which is life itself and everything in it, as I already listed—love, obedience, faithfulness, etc. Here’s a paradox-question for you: Can you steal from yourself? Can you steal from your own self what belongs to you? Can I steal my glasses from myself? As a rule the answer is no. But here’s the paradox: when Man sinned, he stole his own life! His life was his but he stole it. Stole it from whom? Stole it from God, because ultimately everything belongs to God. But not only from God, because Man couldn't steal his life from God without also stealing it from himself—depriving himself of it, forfeiting it.

   (Read Genesis 2:17)

   From his very creation, Man was a debtor to God for his life—for the life that came from God. And interestingly, there were two ways to repay God this debt: either to live, literally live this life for God, in love and the knowledge of Him, or to die, to forfeit the life that he couldn’t properly manage for God. In any case, life belongs to God and exists only for His glory’s sake.

   And so I return to the second question: Why couldn’t God simply say “I forgive” without requiring the suffering and death of Christ?

   I think the answer will be easier to understand, now that we’ve talked about “debts”.

   By not demanding from us the life we owed Him, God essentially relinquished the life that was owed Him, that belonged to Him. And this reality concretely materialized in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Because, you know, forgiveness doesn’t consist of words alone. Forgiveness is an act. Moreover, it is an act of forfeiture, of loss.

   If you owe me five dollars and I forgive you the debt, that’s all very well and good for you, of course—but I’ve lost! What have I lost? Five dollars, of course!

   Even if someone offended me in a more abstract way—let’s say it’s not money we’re talking about; let’s say someone was spreading gossip about me. If I forgive that person, what do I lose? I lose the right to expect moral compensation, to expect that he will somehow undo what was done, rewind time itself to make it so that the wrong never happened. By the way, who can pay off a debt like that? Who can rewind time? Nobody! And so it turns out that, by forgiving, I am actually liberating myself from the expectation of the impossible!

   And do you know how that expectation of the impossible manifests itself in life, what it’s called? Bitterness. Or, as one lady responded in a church where I asked that question: “Torture!” That’s right. It is. It’s bitterness and torture absolutely worth getting free of, because that’s just no way to live.

   And so, forgiveness is an act of forfeiture. Even if such forfeiture liberates the forgiver, all the same it's a loss. Forgiving us the life we owed Him, God Himself lost. He gave up, in the very Person of Christ, the life that was His by right, the life we owed Him. He carried Himself the full weight of the offense that no one could possibly have made up to Him.

   And there’s the answer to the second question. God so loved us that He gave His own life in Christ, to make up our debt, and this is forgiveness. That's "why" the cross, the suffering, the death....

   And now I think we can very briefly and simply answer the first question, which went: “If we must forgive one another similarly to how God forgave us in Christ, does it mean we also must suffer and die in order to forgive?”

   The answer is... “Yes”.

   Maybe not literally, and of course not to the salvation of the whole world, inasmuch as it’s not against us the whole world sinned or to us the whole world owes life itself. But, inasmuch as our Savior materialized all forgiveness and the source of forgiveness Himself, by His death, in love, and made us (as the apostle Peter says) “partakers in the divine nature by the power of His resurrection”, we have power—yes, and a debt!—to forgive in imitation of His forgiveness: by relinquishing, giving up, what’s ours by right and not expecting impossible recompense, by carrying, absorbing, the whole brunt of the offense and loss and so extinguishing it, and by trusting everything, with thankfulness and  total release, into the hands of Him who is faithful.

   Doing that, we liberate ourselves from the debts of our debtors; by the power of the Risen Life of Jesus Christ we die to the offense and live to God, in the freedom of forgiveness. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. That’s the great secret of forgiveness, and what a tragedy that it is a secret! Forgiveness frees the forgiver—yes, even God! God who’s forgiven us is now free to love His children without ever again recalling the sins that He has put away: “...This is my blood, shed for the remission.. the putting away... of sins....”

   So let us likewise free ourselves through forgiveness from every wrong done to us, in imitation of our God and Savior.  

   (Read Ephesians 4:32-5:2).

Easter Sermon IV: Two Conundrums

In spite of this being “Easter Sermon IV”, it is actually a very old one I preached, years ago, in our church as well as our college chapel. It is, in part, an extended reflection on an observation by C.S. Lewis, that only a sinless person would be capable of incarnating the perfect “repentance” (i.e., return to God, the Hebrew “shuv”, which means “returning”) of which, paradoxically, he was in no need personally (being perfect, repentance is inapplicable to him). The evil person, on the other hand, being in desperate need of repentance, is incapable of performing this good work. That is one of the “conundrums”. The other is the odd sort of distinction Paul makes in Romans 4:25 with regard to the “parts” of Christ’s redemptive work, i.e., which parts accomplished what. Finally, an observation of my own on the Baptism of Christ, an observation that arose in the course of my teaching the Gospel of Matthew at our college—to the effect that the Baptism serves as a depiction, in symbolic form, of the entire redemptive act of God in Christ—helps me to tie these two “conundrums” together theologically and resolve them... in a way that seemed appropriate for an Easter sermon....

   First conundrum: (Romans 4:25) “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

   Usually we think of salvation as one whole; we say, “Jesus died and rose to save us.” But in this verse, Paul seems to divide salvation into two parts. He says that Jesus died for our sins, but was raised to justify us. Now what can that mean? Why is the resurrection especially connected to “justification”? Paul said it, so it must mean something!

   Second conundrum: How can a bad man do a good thing? What I mean is this: Repentance is a good thing; it means giving up your sins and returning to God. But who needs to do this good thing? A “bad” person, of course. And the worse he is, the more he needs to do it! But the worse he is, the less he can do it. Now, a perfect person could easily do it... but he doesn’t need to. So there’s the paradox! The worst person most needs to repent, and he can’t. The perfect person can easily repent, but he doesn’t need to! And even if the best person did, in some sense, repent, what difference would that make for the worst person? It doesn’t help him, does it?

   So those are our two conundrums. And now, even though our focus today is Easter and resurrection, I want to spend a few minutes reflecting on the baptism of Jesus Christ. Why? Because there is a theological picture in this baptism. And I think the picture will help us to solve the conundrums I’ve laid out and at the same time help us more deeply celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection  and all it means for our lives.

   (Read Matthew 3:1-17)

   In this baptism we can see the whole story of salvation concentrated in one moment and one person. The story is acted out symbolically, concentrating on Jesus as he embraces this “Baptism of Repentance”. Now, John the Baptist was horrified that Jesus would do such a thing. Right before this, John was announcing that the Messiah was coming to baptize with fire and the Spirit! But here Jesus appears on the scene and what do we see? Do we in fact see the terrifying Lord of hosts radiating fire on His enemies, like John’s words would lead us to expect? Not in the least. Instead we see a simple man at the riverbank, humbly waiting in line for his turn. You know, it reminds me of Revelation where the elder tells the apostle John, “Look! The Lion of the tribe of Judah!”, but when John looks, what does he see? A Lamb.

   John the Baptist did his best to stop Jesus. He knew exactly what this baptism meant, and what it meant was: Jesus didn’t need it! Because it meant repentance. He seriously tried to stop Jesus from going into the water, probably several times, saying, “You mustn’t do this; it isn’t right; I can’t baptize you– you should baptize me!” (Just think about what that means....)

   But Jesus says, in effect, “Come on, John, let’s get on with it! This is the way it’s meant to go. We’re supposed to do exactly this, to accomplish the total fulfillment of God’s righteousness.” And with that Jesus goes into the water and... repents.

   Now you’ll tell me, of course: “Wait! Jesus didn’t repent, because he never sinned. Besides, the text doesn’t say that he repented.”

   In answer to the first objection: yes, I know Jesus never sinned. We’ll talk more about that in a moment.

   In answer to the second objection, the Scripture clearly says that this mass baptism John was holding out there on the Jordan River was a baptism of repentance. It was “Repentance Baptism”; in other words, if you do the baptism, you are repenting. You can’t separate them; that’s how John preached it, that’s how everybody took it. And when Jesus submitted to it, neither he nor John stopped to make a preliminary announcement: “Attention, everyone! Let’s make it perfectly clear that in this one special case this is not ‘Repentance Baptism’! There’s absolutely no connection in this case between the two ideas!” You see, to say that repentance wasn't implied when Jesus got baptized is practically the same as saying he wasn’t baptized at all. Because “Repentance Baptism” was the only kind of baptism going on out there that day. And that’s the one Jesus took.

   In front of everybody and without clarification, explanation or modification, Jesus submits to exactly the same baptism as all the others. Others are going down into the water confessing their sins, “I stole from my brother! I told lies about my neighbor! I had adulterous thoughts!” And now Jesus goes into the water, too, like the rest. Perfectly natural for anybody watching to assume Jesus was a sinner like them. Why wouldn’t they? They didn’t know who he was. Maybe they noticed Jesus didn’t confess any sins before he went into the water; maybe they noticed that John didn’t want to baptize Jesus; maybe they thought that was rather odd.... Nevertheless, Jesus goes down into the water, like a repenting sinner.

   Now imagine John’s total bewilderment. What in the world is going on here? It’s all upside-down, all wrong.... It makes me think of Jesus’ disciples later, when to their horror they witnessed Jesus hanging on the cross – their feeling must have been similar: “This can’t be happening; it’s all wrong.” But here’s the thing: it wasn't wrong. Precisely so Jesus was supposed to “fulfill all righteousness”. The only one who never needed to repent, the Perfect One, does a “Repentance Baptism”. But for what? For whom?

   In our imagination, let’s look and watch that Baptism story again and see the story it tells: Jesus comes out of the crowd, heads for the water, goes under it, comes up, heaven opens, the Spirit descends, a voice speaks. I believe that Jesus is telling John, and us, that this very picture itself is fulfilling all righteousness. But how? In what sense? Let’s take the picture in parts....

   Jesus comes out of the crowd, steps forward as one of the people, participating in their Repentance Baptism – but more than “participating”, he will actually do the perfect Repentance Baptism for them, like they can't. He steps forward as one of them; He won't stand aloof from the people. To the contrary, he will in a sense be them, for them—but on a level and dimension beyond anything they, or we, could conceive. Jesus will carry their guilt in a repentance and surrender to the Father’s will like no one else could. And why? So he might make them new, in himself. This will fulfill all righteousness. This will make righteousness real in every single person Jesus carries in his heart down to the waters of repentance.

   So Jesus stepped out of the crowd, and then headed straight for the water. Nothing would stop him. This was what he came for....  “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me.” “I must do the works of my Father”; “He set his face toward Jerusalem”. Exactly like Jesus headed straight into the water, that’s how he headed straight to the cross. John couldn’t stop Jesus from getting into the river; nothing could stop Jesus from fulfilling the Father’s will. nobody could stop Jesus from going to the cross. No one ever obeyed the Father like this before. This also fulfills all righteousness; this also makes righteousness real. Real, in Jesus.

   Then Jesus went down under the water. Just like God will bring Jesus’ soul down into the very depths of death, on that day when Jesus cries from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”, breathes his last breath and dies, the day he is buried in the earth. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   Then, Jesus immediately came up from the water. Just as three days after his death, he came up from the earth, out of the grave in glorious resurrection. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He is RISEN!” Death couldn’t hold God’s Holy One. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   Then heaven opened. Just as heaven opened to receive the Son of God 40 days after the resurrection. In Jesus’ ascension, heaven and earth are united, and we have access to the Father through Him. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   Then the Spirit descended. Just as the Spirit descended again on Jesus’ people, the Church, in fulfillment of Jesus’ promise: I will send another Comforter; I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you; I and the Father will make our dwelling place within you. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   Then the voice spoke from heaven: “This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.” God blessed His Son, openly announced His perfect pleasure in Him before all the people. There will be another day when the whole creation, the whole universe will recognize God’s Son. And at His Name, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. This also fulfills all righteousness.

   You know, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden, righteousness died. The right relationship for which God created man— died. Ever since then, God in His grace has labored in human history to restore—yes, to fulfill—this righteousness, make it real again.

   The crowning conclusion of this divine labor was righteousness’ ultimate materialization in Jesus. And in the Baptism this stunning story is portrayed in miniature—it’s acted out; it’s announced to the entire creation. It all happens and “comes true”—in Jesus’ personal identification with the people, in His self-sacrifice for them, in His resurrection, and in His renewal of them; they become a new and righteous people by Him, and this surely fulfills all righteousness.

   No wonder Jesus wouldn’t let John stop him but said “We have to do this....” The heart of God couldn’t settle for less.

Romans 5:16 “Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. 18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

   In verse 19, Paul talks about the obedience of the “one man”, and I can’t help picturing the one man Jesus stepping out of the crowd, to do it all, the one man Jesus on the cross, paying for all, the one man Jesus coming out of the tomb, having won it all.

   It makes me think of Matthew 7, as well, where Jesus says we must “enter by the narrow gate and the straight path.” I know we usually picture a long straight path – that’s our earthly life – leading finally to a narrow gate – that’s the gate of heaven. But I truly don’t think that’s what Jesus is talking about. If you read it carefully, you’ll notice that Jesus talks about the narrow gate first. Only then comes the straight path. First we enter the narrow gate, and why is it narrow? It’s narrow because, ultimately, it all boils down to one man. The gate is Jesus, and the righteousness he fulfilled. Over all the millennia of human history, God was narrowing and narrowing this gate down to one man—through Noah, Abraham, Israel, then one tribe of Israel, then one family from that tribe, then one child from that family. God brought the whole eternal work of redemption to fulfillment, finally, in this one man—the one who stepped out of the crowd that day, and said to John the Baptist, “Let it be so, John, because this is exactly the way we must fulfill all righteousness.” We enter the kingdom only through the narrow gate, the One Man, surrendering to his will like he surrendered to the Father’s will. And then, after entering through him, we walk the long, straight path—with its sacrifices, tests, temptations, purification and sanctification. And that way, “all righteousness” continues being fulfilled, continues happening, in us.

   So this finally brings us back to the two conundrums we started with: why is it the resurrection of Christ, specifically, that justifies, and how can a bad person do a good thing; i.e., how can a sinner do the right thing and repent the way he should? Perhaps you already realize that these two conundrums are really one.

   And the answer should be clear now, especially if you remember that the verb “justify” means “to make righteous”. It’s only because of the resurrection that Jesus can bring the righteousness fulfilled in his life into our life. No resurrection—no justifying! Only because he is alive can Jesus’ righteousness live in us. His righteousness lives because Christ lives. In His earthly life, Jesus incarnated the truest repentance and self-surrender to God, he lived out unwavering obedience that presses forward, every step closer and closer to God, no matter the cost, through every fire and test. Which is what every sinner ought to do; which is what no sinner can do. But Jesus did it. And now He can do it, and does do it, again: in you and in me... because he lives. “Because I live, you also will live”, Jesus tells us. “Living”, for Jesus, is nothing else than living for God. That’s perfect repentance, that’s righteousness, that’s sanctification, that’s life in the risen Lord.

  And when does this life, this righteousness, this sanctification happen for us? Not just on the day we become a believer, but every day of our life. The whole Christian life is a life of repentance, in the sense of return to God. It’s a continual returning, ever closer and closer, from imperfection to perfection, from darkness to light. This is the life Christ made real for us when we couldn’t. This is why Jesus stepped out of the crowd. This is why Jesus rose from the dead. This is why the Risen Lord lives in our hearts: to fulfill all righteousness.

Romans 6:8 “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.”

   God made man to be righteous. Thanks to God’s great love and grace, man will be righteous. Because Jesus lives, you and I can live—really live. Because he returned to God, you and I can return to God, every day. He lives in us to make it happen. As the apostle writes, “the life he lives, he lives to God.” The life he lives in us, we live to God. Paul writes, “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus”. We can do this, for Christ is risen! He lives in us to do what he has always done: the will of the Father. We show we are his when we let him fulfill that will. To save us He died, to justify us He rose. And in the power of His resurrection, He invites each of us to enter by the narrow gate, the gate of His own risen life, and walk the straight path with him, in a life of return to God, in his strength, no matter what the cost. Let us glorify the risen Lord Jesus Christ by surrendering our life to him, so that in us and with us he can go on fulfilling the righteousness that glorifies the Father.

Easter III (2010)

Yet another Easter sermon! This sermon was, oddly enough, prompted by my “leisure reading”—a book called “Hope Against Hope”; the author: Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam who died in a Soviet prison camp in 1938. The book made me think... about a lonely, “anonymous” death in a prison camp; about the untold suffering of the countless “unknown” in this world who never “got [or get] a break”; unhappy lives that end in unhappy deaths, lives that are as fully and richly known to themselves as mine is to me but seem to go unrecognized, unshared... or even if shared and cherished, as Mandelstam’s was with his wife and friends, to be coldly, criminally dispensed with by such an evil as Stalin. The intense and intensely personal passage of death, the question of its meaning, and what it means to whom, and how all of that played out in the death of Jesus Christ as much as any other human being... and how that continued to “play out” right into resurrection... that’s the train of thought, more or less, that yielded the following sermon, which I delivered in my church during the Easter season (not on Easter itself, as I was home sick that day).


[A language note: several times in the sermon I refer to Jesus’ “final word” on the cross, but that doesn’t quite work in English, of course, where it’s three words: “It is finished”. In Russian (and, if memory serves, in the original Greek of the scriptures) it really is expressed with just one word. The Russian word is “sovershilos”, the past tense of a verb meaning (much as the Greek verb it translates) to perfect, bring to completion, commit (e.g., a crime), carry out, perform (e.g., like a duty). The final “s” in “sovershilos” is a suffix that makes the word reflexive (or “passive” if that makes more sense); thus, “it” is completed/finished. Finally, there’s no need in Russian (or the Greek) to literally express “it” here, so a result the whole thought is expressed in just one word. I will continue to refer to Jesus’ “final word” in this sermon, even though it is actually three words in English. But now you know why.]


Also, I am quite aware that the following phrase, “...poorest, last remaining inhabitant of a deserted village” is loaded with contradiction/tautology: if you’re the only person in a village then you’re obviously the poorest, not to mention the richest, one there, and if you're still there, then the village is manifestly not “deserted”, at least not entirely. So be it. Cut me a break and take the sentence on the level of what it means to say rather than the “mathematical” exactitude of its logic – thanks! “Poorest” means “very poor”, as in “poorest person imaginable”, and “deserted” here implies, of course, “by everybody except you”.


Finally, for an Easter sermon, it may seem to focus a lot on death, but then... what would resurrection be without death?

   “I was dead and, behold, I am alive forever and ever!” (Rev. 1:18)


   The psalmist says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills— where does my help come from?” (Ps. 121:1) That’s fine, but what if you can no longer lift your eyes to the hills, or to heaven, because death has closed your eyes? What then? Moreover, what if you died rejected, abandoned, cursed by this world? What does it mean then to “lift your eyes to the hills”?


   One day the eyes of a man known as Jesus of Nazareth closed in death. There was no life left in them; they were lifeless matter, just like stone. In this, Jesus was the same as every other descendant of Adam who ever died. He left his body utterly dead... and the word “dead” doesn’t mean “almost alive”; it doesn’t mean “potentially alive”; the word “dead” signifies non-living matter, no different in that sense from stones, or air, or the paper the pages of my Bible are made from. Jesus died, and the body he left was cold matter; those eyes were no more organs of sight then than the hair on our heads of the pebbles on the seashore.


   But what happened? Jesus opened those eyes. Imagine. Eyes that had been dead—no longer eyes, even—opened at the instant of glorious resurrection power. And everything in Jesus—his body, his hands, his heart, his mind, his spirit, his eyes—all was Life. And I think... could it be, maybe at the moment, those lips that had been dead and now were become Life, pronounced anew that final word: “It is finished”?

   Who knows? It’s possible! Because “It is finished” doesn’t only mean “It’s over”; it can also mean “all is begun”. When all your preparations for a dinner, for example, are finished, that's when everything can begin! Life itself testifies that when all it finished, then all is begun; there is no ending without a new beginning. Only when the earthly life of Christ ended on the cross—“It is finished!”—only then could the resurrection of Christ also be “finished”—carried out and done. And only then did everything begin for you and me: (read 1 Peter 1:3).


   Christ’s resurrection is the source of a new birth for us all. Only that life which had never been before—the life of the resurrected Christ, the life shining through eyes that once closed in death—only that life gives new birth. For a new birth must come from a new source.


   “And in God’s great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope”—‘living’ because Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ and Son of God, is now alive forever—“through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”


   “From the dead.” All was lost, and all in this world on which it was possible to hope, was dead. And then, and only then, God gave birth to living hope in Jesus, who was dead but now is alive forever and ever. The resurrected Christ is the source, the eternally new source, of eternally new life.


   Jesus’ resurrection is the birth of a new birth for us all. Without that resurrection our new birth would never have been born in Him. But there would never have been a resurrection if not for that death. Before those eyes could open anew in glory, they had to close in the universal loss of death.


   I say “universal loss of death” because, having become Man, God embraced the death that belongs to all people, the death that awaits each of us from the moment of birth, the death that, for each of us, exists uniquely and separately and makes each of us solitary before God. There’s a paradox for you: death is the ultimately personal experience that is everbody's experience. That’s the paradox: each of us has to go through what no one can go through... except “me”—in this case, each of us being a “Me”. Though all people die, only one person can die his own death, and as far as that goes we’re all equal. No matter who you are: an emperor or the poorest, last remaining inhabitant of a deserted village dying in utter obscurity; no matter who you are, how you lived, who’s nearby—if anyone at all!—the very last experience of life you experience alone, alone before God. At the moment, the moment of departure, no labels, no roles in life define you. You aren’t Mom or Dad, you’re not a boss, you’re not a doctor, not a friend or enemy, not rich or poor, not a husband, not a wife—you’re just you, the “you” you were from the very moment of your birth: you, departing, not on the shoulders of your friends but by yourself, alone. And no matter how much those around you may love you, just as those last faithful few who stood by the cross to the very end loved Jesus, all the same the ultimate moment of departure, the moment of passage, belongs to you alone. And in that we are all the same; you could be a concentration camp prisoner or the most powerful dictator, but in that we are all the same. Death is the personal, singular instance of meeting eternity. It closes the eyes of each one separately, singularly, and God knows the death of each one singularly.


   In order to fully embrace what we all go through, Christ had to embrace what only He alone could go through, that is, the personal, unique, singular death of one human being—His. He had to close his eyes, too, in death’s ultimate alienation from this world. When Christ took his final breath on the cross, he tasted to the absolute last drop what it means to be a human being come to life’s end.


   There’s the depths of divine love for you. Dying his own human death, which no one else could die, God became like all humans who must die their own human death, including the most anonymous, friendless, forgotten child of Adam there is right now somewhere on the Earth—and at any time, I think, there is someone somewhere on Earth who fits that description. And now the death of such a so-called “nobody” shakes the entire universe because, now, that death, precisely in its uniqueness, is like the death of the Only-Begotten Son of God, like the death of God Become Man. And so Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus God’s Son, Jesus Christ, made the personal death of each of us an occasion for hope. Why? Because He opened His eyes again.


                                      (Read 1 Peter 1:3 again.)


   “I was dead, but am alive forevermore....”


   Very long ago, a man named Abraham left his house, his country, his motherland, his heritage, his gods, his past and, yes, his future as he had always understood it. He left all this at the summons of the one living God, for whose sake he was ready to be a wanderer and alien in this world. And at just an age—75 years old—when a person has every right to expect that life’s tempo will decelerate, that the time for new adventures has passed, it so happens that at just that age God calls him out—literally, out of everything familiar to him, to go who-knew-where.


   In the 13th chapter of Genesis, starting from verse 8, we read (read 8-13).


   Abraham had already left his country and come to the land where the Canaanites and Perizzites lived, where there were plenty of dangers and threats. Here he is, already at a rather advanced age. He has no son to leave an inheritance to, and now he’s even conceded to his nephew, who took for himself the best part of the land. So here stands Abraham, in essence with no future. We could understand it if he said to himself, “How did I wind up here? What am I doing here? Why did I come here? What sense is there at all in my life now? What was it all for? Did God really need me to come and close my eyes in death here instead of Haran? What’s the difference? In any case, this is the end of my story.”


   But Abraham had faith. One day he accepted God’s revelation, in which the promise was spoken: (read Genesis 12:1-3).


   And here at last it is done, finished. Abraham stands on the promised land. But he’s still an alien, foreign, nobody in this land, and to all appearances his life is approaching its conclusion; it seems to be the end, over, finished. Yes, he did once accept God’s promise, but it’s totally unimaginable at this point where that promise could take him further. And precisely at that moment the Lord God speaks to Abraham: (read 13:14-18).


   “Lift up your eyes... and rise. Walk through the length and width of the land, for I will give it to you.”


   That’s the power of a new birth into a living hope. That’s the power of the divine might of resurrection: Lift up your eyes, Abraham. Lift up your eyes, Son of God. Lift up your eyes, every child of God redeemed by the holy blood of the Lamb. Lift up your eyes and rise. Walk through the length and width of the land, for I am giving it to you.


   That is hope reborn, when all earthly hope has failed you: “I was dead but now I am alive forevermore”, says the One who took our mortality upon Himself, Jesus Christ.


   “All authority in heaven and earth are given to me,” says the One who was rejected and killed, Jesus Christ, Whom God the Father exalted, giving Him the Name that is above every other Name.


   “I am coming soon!”, says the Glorified One, the eternal Son of God who once cried out in the tortures of the cross, “It is finished!”


   “I lift my eyes to the hills: where will my help come from?”, asks the psalmist. “My help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” And the One sitting on the throne said, “Behold, I am creating all things new.”


   Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy has given us birth into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. “Into a living hope!” “Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?”


                                                   It is finished.