Reflection on Romans 5:1-8

 

Romans 5:1-8 (NRSVue)

¹ Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³ And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
  ⁶ For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Reflection

“Look at that house over there.  It looks pretty good, doesn’t it?  I helped build that house.  I also almost ruined the entire thing!”  My childhood pastor was pointing to a house out my window as he drove me to church camp. 

“That second floor of that house was almost more like a ramp,” he continued.  “I spent the entire day building the walls on the far side of the house on the ground.  When we went to stand the wall up in place I noticed something right away.  The wall was too short.  Somehow, I had measured wrong.  The wall height was way wrong!”

He glanced over at me.

“You know what this means?  Either the second floor would be like a ramp, and people would literally be able to slide out of bed in the morning, or I would have to put in a step somewhere in the middle of the house.  It was ridiculous!

Luckily, my boss was preoccupied and didn’t see the problem.  He walked away.  I had some time to fix the problem.  But I couldn’t spend another entire day tearing down the wall and starting from scratch.  If I put in the step, the boss would notice.  And the ramped floor just…people used to put ramped floors in church social halls to keep people from dancing.  You notice that!  Can you see my problem?  I panicked.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was going to be fired!

I was so scared and frustrated at my mistake that I took my hammer and slammed it down on the floor, ruining a perfectly good piece of plywood right under my feet.  Great!  Now I would have to fix that!  I picked up the hammer and threw it as far as I could get it from the house.  It soared somewhere over the trees. 

‘That was stupid,’ I raged.  ‘Now I need to spend time searching for my hammer!  That’s time that I don’t have.  I’m so stupid sometimes.’

I needed to cool down.  I needed time to think.  I needed to just sit in my truck and cool down for a bit. 

Well, I have to tell you that at least one thing did go right for me.  When I opened the door of my truck, right there in circle of sparkly sunlight, like a gift from God, sat my hammer, right there on the front seat.  What a glorious sight.

And that sunlight?  It was sparkly because it was reflecting off the thousands of little pieces of glass from what used to be my windshield.  Complete nuclear meltdown does not even begin to describe my reaction.  My boss heard me.  The neighbors heard me.  My parents in Hawaii heard me. 

In just seconds my boss came running.  Great!  Here goes the job!

‘You just go home and rest for the night’ my boss said.  ‘We will talk more about this in the morning.’  I knew how that conversation was going to go.  I needed to start getting my resume ready.

The next day when I got to the job site, I saw that the wall was no longer too short.

‘I fixed it for you, you can relax,’ my boss said.  ‘All you had to do was put in a header on top of the wall to correct the height.  You can always justify the height.  No biggie.  You learn something new every day.’  And that was that.”

After wiping the tears of laughter from my face, I listened to the lessons that he learned that day.  He learned that “justify” means making something straight and acceptable.  He learned that bosses can and sometimes do forgive.  He learned that they usually want you to learn and be better.   He learned that you do not need to fix problems all on your own.  It was the boss who made things right again.  He also learned that you should measure at least three times before you make a cut. 

You only gain that sort of wisdom and character from making mistakes, being rescued from your mistakes, and then learning how to do it better. 

My pastor also learned another thing: his truck’s liability insurance was not going to rescue him from this self-inflicted damage.  How knew?

In other words, my childhood pastor’s story was the lesson Paul is trying to teach us in Romans:

“Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:1-5).

“Jira, just remember two things:  First, you are not perfect and you cannot become perfect.  Just try to build a house and you will learn that pretty quickly.  Second, remember that you can trust Jesus to forgive you and make things right again, just like my boss forgave and made things right for me.  Remember those two things: you are not perfect and Jesus is the one who forgives and makes things right, and you will always understand what faith is about.”

It was a catechetical lesson on God’s grace that a fourth grader could understand.  I honestly do not remember anything that I learned from the following week at Bible camp, except how to put Vaseline on the outhouse toilet seats so that the next person would sink fearfully into the hole.  We couldn’t wait to hear the midnight screams.

But I do remember that car ride.  I also remember what Paul meant when he said that because, “we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  I just think about cutting the wood wrong and when we are at our wits’ end, we can trust the boss to fix it.  That is faith.

That little faith lesson in the car mattered a lot to me. 

It has mattered each time someone has come up to me and said something like, “Why did my loved one die?  I must have done something wrong to deserve them to be taken away.  God must be punishing me!” 

Each time, I simply tell the truth as it was taught to me.  The truth is that we all build the house wrong.  You do not deserve to suffer any more than anyone else.  We all build the house wrong. 

But have hope because God is good, all the time.  God can salvage and rebuild something new and good even after the worst of tragedies.  Look at the cross.  God lost his Son, his loved one, as well.  Look how he raised him on the third day.  If God can salvage that, God can salvage even your tragedy.  And when your grief subsides, after the tears clear from your eyes, you may finally be able to see just how God has rebuilt your life.

That little faith lesson in the car matters each time someone comes up to me and tells me that, “This time the fighting went too far and the relationship is over.  What I’m going to do now?”

We all build the house wrong.  We are all weak.  We all say the wrong thing and do the wrong thing.  It is God who can salvage something from our mistakes, our weaknesses, and our tragedies in life.  Remember what the Apostle Paul taught:

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8).

So yes, when you have ruined the relationship, you can expect that the next number of months are going to be some of the worst that you have ever gone through.  It will be a time of suffering, period. 

But you can also remember that God is good, all the time.  God died for mess ups and sinners like us.  Have hope because God rebuilds lives and rebuilds relationships of mess ups and sinners.  God’s goodness will forever stay with you.  Have hope. 

After-all, hope “does not put us to shame” (Romans 5:5).  Hope remembers.  It remembers that God’s love is poured out abundantly, even when we build our lives in crooked ways.  Jesus can rebuild our lives for us.  He does this out of love.  Trust in that love.

Reflection on Romans 4:13-25

 

Romans 4:13-25

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

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

Reflection

He looked at his body, and it was broken.  Stones had smashed his limbs.  Scars striped his face from punishing blows.  He could not even talk clearly.  You could say that he had a face made for the written scroll.  The Apostle Paul admitted as much in 2 Corinthians when Paul conceded what others said about him, that his “bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible” (2 Corinthians 10:10).

It was not always this way for Paul.  At one time the Apostle Paul was a man who was put together, respected, and whole.  In Philippians he wrote that he once was, “a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:5-6).  He used to be so respected that when the authorities dragged the faithful Stephen out of the city to stone him, Saul (who would soon be named Paul) was there overseeing the proceedings and the Bible says that “witnesses laid their coats at [his] feet” (Acts 7:58).  He was respected.  He was put together.  He was a member of the privileged.

But, by the time he wrote the last of his letters, the letter to the Romans, he looked more like an outcast than a respected leader.  As he stared at his broken body, one could say that Paul had been brought to a point in life where he identified closely with people who were looked down upon, persecuted, forgotten, and outcast. 

Were he here today, he might identify with the girl with the severely upturned nose who yearned for a boy to ask her to dance.  He might identify with those who cannot afford new clothes and are ignored as potential friends.  He might identify with people who have a darker color of skin, who are automatically seen with suspicion.  In fact, Paul did identify with a class of shunned and ignored people: the gentiles.  In Jewish circles, those who were not given the law of God were considered less.  Those who did have the law were considered more.  You could say that though he is not a gentile himself, he knows what it is like to be seen as much less than others.

Whenever you crack open the book of Romans, as we are going to do this summer, you must keep this essential perspective in mind.  Paul, the once acclaimed Pharisee who became the Apostle Paul, as the years passed, truly saw himself as broken, disfigured, and weak in person.  He felt much stronger on the printed page.  He stated in 2 Corinthians that, “a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated” (2 Corinthians 12:7).  He continued to say, “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).

And there it was: “grace.”  When you cannot trust in yourself, when you can no longer pull it off with good looks and intelligent sounding smarts, when people no longer care if you are good and following God’s law, when other people’s hatred and stone throwing causes you to become a deformed monster, you have no choice but to trust that God cares and can make things right.  You have no choice but to trust in grace. 

Grace tells you that your worth is no longer defined by who you are, but rather by who God is and who God says you are.  Only when God showers you with grace can you begin to think that you are someone who God has made right, despite the faults and deformations.

The more years that you spend on this earth, the more you learn that there will always be someone who thinks that they are somehow better than everyone else.  Along with that, you will learn that you tend to do the same thing.  It is true.  Have you heard or spoken these phrases?  “Kid’s these days.”  “Oh, that person.  They never get anything right.”  “What a ridiculous idea.”  “How can anyone love them?”  “What a disappointment.”  “What can you expect from someone like them?”

The whole idea is that if the person would only live the right way and think the right ideas, things would be so much better for them and for the rest of us.  Why not post God’s law everywhere so that everyone knows how to be good?  Why not post it in classrooms and in parks?  Why not print off copies and nail them to trees?  And why would we allow people to flagrantly ignore God’s laws?  How could that possibly be helpful to anyone, including themselves?  Why allow the godless to ruin everything?

And as more and more people are labeled as godless and the ones doing the labeling deem themselves as worthy, Paul feels a sort of kinship with the people who are thrown out, pushed away, and disliked.  He too suffers from such people who view him as godless, lawless, and a menace to society.

To those who think a lot of themselves, those who assume that they have a moral superiority, Paul would like to point out that the father of all nations, the foundational forefather to all people, the one in whom God invested with enduring promises of children and eternal legacy, Abraham, had been given no law from God.  The laws had not yet been handed down from the mountain.  Yet, God considered Abraham righteous.  Abraham was considered in right relationship with God.  Paul says that “The promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4:13).

God’s promise to Abraham was not a reward for following God’s law because there was no such thing as God’s law at the time.

Let us take that one step further.  People who do not have God’s law cannot be condemned by it.  They cannot be jailed by it because, as Paul say, “where there is no law, neither is their transgression” (Romans 4:15).  Just like you cannot get in trouble for fishing in a certain pond unless there is a law that says you cannot fish in it, so too those who do not have God’s law cannot be expected to follow it.  Abraham did not follow it.  The law had not yet been shared by God.  So, following the law was not what made him right with God.

The one thing in Abraham’s story that did make him right with God was that Abraham increasingly trusted in God’s promise to him.  That trust, that faith in God’s promise is the very thing that allowed him to have a relationship with God.  It is true, just look at Abraham.  Paul says that over time Abraham became “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore ‘it was reckoned to him as righteousness’” (Romans 4:21-22).

Trust…faith in the one who loves us and gives us grace is what living with the Lord is all about.  It is not about doing the right thing, though there is nothing wrong with doing good.  It is not about hanging with the right crowds or being of a certain status or being with a pure culture or anything else that we do or believe that makes us feel superior to others.  Since all of us are descendants of Abraham, all of us can trust in the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17).

The man was convinced that a relationship with God was just not in the cards for him.  The man was a veteran, and he was haunted nightly by the faces of those who fell to the ground in front of him and his gun.  The guilt was so much that the only way that he could move forward in life was to just convince himself that there was not anything good waiting for him in this life or the next.  He did not care if he lived or died.  He thought of himself as a lost cause and he pushed himself to feel less than everyone else.  He truly believed that a relationship with God was not in the cards for him, ever, because of what he had done of the battlefield. 

Then came the day that he heard that the little girl next door had to go to court to testify against another man who did her harm.  The offender was released on bail and there was great fear that he would harm the little girl before the trial. 

So, this veteran who did not care about his life, whether he lived or died, and who could not sleep anyway, camped out in front of her house at night; her own personal bodyguard. 

The little girl would look out each evening and see him at the end of her driveway, keeping her safe.  Seeing him allowed her to go to sleep.  The veteran was even there on the day of the trial, right next to her and her parents as they walked those dangerous steps into the courthouse.  She testified and the offender was sent away for a very, very long time.  And after the trial the little girl looked at the veteran and said, “Thank you.  You are my angel.  God sent you to me.” 

The man had written himself off from life, but God had not.  Like Paul, the man had overseen people’s deaths.  Like Paul, the man felt terribly broken.  And like Paul, God used him to give a gift of grace to someone else.  He discovered that God could use, even someone like him.  And because of that, the man grew to trust God.  The man was made right with God once again. 

After-all, any descendant of Abraham can trust God; anyone.  And anyone who God loves can have their life restored; anyone.  And anyone for whom Jesus died and raised from the dead is forgiven and raised up to a new life; anyone.  Abraham knew it, Paul knew it, and we know it too.  For what Paul declares is absolutely true for us all, “We hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law” Romans 3:28.  Because of God’s grace through Jesus Christ, you have been saved and restored.

Reflection on Matthew 28:16-20

 

Matthew 28:16-20

¹⁶ Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Reflection

“They worshiped him, but they doubted” (Matthew 28:17).  During my college years this was one of the single most important Bible verses to my life.  It was my life.  You see, I still went to worship but my mind was full of doubts every moment I was there.  I sang the hymns with those strong words full of faith (“Great is they faithfulness, oh Lord my Father”) but I greatly doubted the meaning of the words.  I trusted in the Lord but was not sure if he was even real.  How is that even possible?  But it was true and this Bible verse was a comfort to me because it explained my entire life of faith at that moment in time.  “They worshiped him, but they doubted” (Matthew 28:17). 

As I said, even though I doubted I still went to worship, I sang the songs, and I even got up front and read the scriptures when asked to help lead chapel.  That last part felt a little ironic.  There I was, standing in front of a bunch of other students, reading the scriptures to build up their faith when I doubted every word streaming out of my mouth.  But that seems to be how Jesus works.  Scared and homesick, freshman heard a word of comfort from the Lord, who seemed to be using the mouth of someone who was not sure if he believed a word of it himself. 

But I was not the first doubting person that Jesus used to proclaim the good news.  We read right here that there were followers of Jesus who worshiped Jesus and doubted him all at the same time up.  And up on that mountain of commissioning Jesus chose those doubting worshipers as the very people who would “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).  Jesus intentionally chose to use these broken and confused people who, at the same time, both worshiped him and doubted him.  That is just amazing to me that Jesus would do that.  Why not choose someone who trusts fully?  Why not choose someone who has been following God’s word for years and years without a single doubt?

I asked one of my religion professors that once and he replied, “Only people who doubt can smell what is false and fake.  People who doubt are the only ones who actually trust in the Lord as the Lord is and not who they wish God to be.  They refuse to be fooled into trusting false gods.  Do not lose your ability to doubt” he urged me.  “It is a gift.”

I was not so sure that I believed him.  The monks I visited one time on a trip with a religion class all appeared to have no doubts.  They seemed pretty good and holy to me.  They were doing God’s good work while they worshiped and trusted fully. But the Bible seems to agree with my professor; and besides, I had no way of knowing whether or not they had doubts.

The Bible teaches us that the Lord chose people who, at the same time, worshiped and doubted.  They were the ones chosen to spread his good news.  And if the Bible says it, I figured that I would have to be happy with that.  So, I adopted the Bible verse.  “They worshiped him, but they doubted” (Matthew 28:17). 

It is not like this dynamic of faith was completely foreign to me.  I have long remembered a time when I was very young that I was sitting on my dad’s shoulders as we wandered through a tractor show.  As he talked on and on with other guys about the tractors of their youth, I was drawn to look at the dark storm clouds that were barreling toward us in the Nebraska skies.  I pointed to the dark clouds, but my dad just kept talking.  What is up with parents and talking anyway?  Who has that much to say to anyone?  The wind started to pick up, and dust started to fly into my face.  Remember, I was very little, and I started to panic.  The wind became strong and I felt as if I was going to fall.  All I could imagine was a tornado coming to swipe me away as the rain started to pelt my face.  I grabbed tight with hands and started to cry uncontrollably, seemingly alone in the face of a storm that threatened to tear me apart.  I closed my eyes, crying uncontrollably and when I opened them again, I noticed that I was being held tight in my dad’s arms, held close to his chest with him whispering in my ear, “It’s OK, we’re inside now.  You are going to be fine.  I was here the entire time, Jira.  You don’t need to worry.  I am always with you.”

“I am always with you.”

The promise echoes in my ears still.  “I am always with you.”  Even as a child I both held tight and doubted, all at the same time.  “Next time don’t pull on my hair so hard,” my dad said rubbing his head.  “It is hard to run to shelter when your hair is being pulled out of your head.  You can always just talk to me when you are scared.  I will listen.”

He was right, not once did I talk to my dad as the storm approached.  I just pointed and panicked.  That seems to be the story of my life: just point and panic.  If only I had talked to him.  If only I had acted as if he was right there with me as he promised.  “I am always with you.”

Jesus gives us the same promise.  As the disciples worshiped and doubted, Jesus gave them their great commission to baptize and teach, and then as if he knew how hard it would be for worshiping doubters to actually do this stuff, Jesus promises, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).  The same as my dad, he wants us to remember that he is there, we just need to talk.  “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Matthew 7:7).  Jesus is assuring us, “I am always there, you can always just talk to me.”

Now, I have to admit that in adulthood, prayer has not always been my strongest faith quality.  Give me a theological conundrum and I will explore ideas with the best of them.  Give me an impossible scripture and I will study until the wisdom of the scripture unlocks itself.  But prayer?  I have often continued to be a point, panic, and pull hair sort of guy.  So, people who have a strong prayer life have always intrigued me.

Recently I had a good conversation with one of these people of prayer.  Actually, the conversation was supposed to be about the nature of the Trinity: One God with three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, coequal, one but three, all of whom can be worshiped, praised, and to whom we can pray.  Feeling like we were standing firmly in my field of expertise, theology, where headiness prevails, the faithful woman started talking about God as the Trinity in terms of personal prayer.

She said, “There are so many times in life that I cannot make heads or tails of anything, so I will pray to a person of the Trinity.  When I have run out of ideas of what to do in any given situation, I will ask God the Father, who created everything, to give me the power to create something new and good and holy.  We are created in the image of God after-all.  I think that means that we have been given God’s power to create.  So, I pray to God the Father to help me create something new.

Of course, when I mess everything up, which, undoubtedly, I will do, I pray to Jesus to forgive me, yet again.  I ask Jesus to wash away my sin and ask him to guide me as I try again for a second and third and fifteenth time.

And when I am really struggling in life and feel like all life is being squeezed out of me, I pray to the Holy Spirit to breathe some new life back into me.  I prayed for that very thing while I was in the hospital, lying in bed after my stroke, hoping that I might walk and talk again.  I prayed to the Spirit to breathe some life into my family when my family and I were not getting along.  And do you know what?  The Spirit was there for me each time, just as Jesus promised.”

Is that not one of the most faithful explanations of the Trinity that you have ever heard?  She was so real in her discipleship.  She was a worshiping, faulty, doubter who prayed and trusted.  Jesus uses people like her.  Jesus chooses worshiping, faulty doubters who pray and trust to spread the good news of his kingdom where the powerless, the meek and the grief stricken all inherit the kingdom and find a place with God. 

So, next time that you are brought from the heights of faith, into the realm that fear and doubt as the storm approaches, look down and know that Jesus has a tight grip on you as you ride his shoulders.  Know that he is always with you.  Know that you can lean down and talk to him.  Know that you can talk to God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit as well.  And know that you are the right one to face this storm.  Your doubt is not your weakness; it is your strength.  It is what allows you to truly trust, not knowing the result or expecting anything really…just trusting because you have no other choice. 

In Jesus eyes, you are enough.  You are chosen as you are.  Jesus chooses worshiping doubters like you and like me all the time, and that has always proven to be a good thing.  Thanks be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Reflection on John 20:19-23

 

John 20:19-23 (NRSVue)

19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Reflection

What if I told you that the most important gift that you could possibly have is the gift of the Spirit’s fire?  And I’m not talking about the ability to stack and burn wood for smores.

It all has to do with that heavenly flame that came down on the disciples on that day of Pentecost.  The Bible indicates that the flame is access to God and access to God’s gifts.  Pastor Jira, what are you talking about?

In the very beginning of the Biblical story, in the very first pages of the Bible, we see the flame for the first time.  It is when the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, are cast out from the garden for not trusting and obeying God.  They ate the fruit of the tree from which they were not supposed to eat.  Because of that, they were cast out from the beautiful Garden of Eden, cast away from eating eternally from the tree of life, and cast away from walking and talking directly with God.  They were cast out of the gates of the garden and behind them was set a sword to guard the gate and with the sword was fire. 

That fire that separates humans from God comes back again and again in the biblical story as God arrives on the scene and tries through various ways to connect with God’s people in a meaningful way.

The fire is there when God calls out from the burning bush to Moses and asks him to step upon some holy ground.  Through the fire God connects with Moses.

The fire is there when God invites Moses up the mountain to get the Ten Commandments, the law that has the potential to bring peace to the world if only we follow it.  Through the fire God is trying to connect with us.

The pillar of fire is there above the tabernacle in the Israelite encampment as they wandered through the wilderness.  God dwelled with the Israelites and led them through the wilderness.  Through the fire God leads the people.

The fire comes down on the Temple in Jerusalem when it is dedicated, God new home, where God will dwell with God’s people.  It is the place where blessing and forgiveness will be granted by God through a sacrifice of fire.  God is behind the fire, working to connect with God’s people in a meaningful way.

Do you see a pattern going on here?  The Bible is telling us that it is through the fire, stepping back into the garden, that allows us to connect with God.

And that brings us up to the day of Pentecost.  Previously, God’s dwelling place, beyond the fire, was in a garden, then in a bush, then on a mountain, then in a tent, and then in a temple of stone.  But, on Pentecost, God chooses to dwell in Christ’s people.  The fire of the Holy Spirit comes down from the heavens and lands upon the followers of Jesus Christ, making them the new temple; making them the new dwelling place of God; making us the new dwelling place of God.

The Holy Spirit, the fire of God, comes and makes Christ’s followers the gate of access to the divine.

Have you ever considered that biblical truth; that you, as a member of Christ’s body…Christ’s church…are now the gate of access to the divine? 

I know, I know, I can hear the jokes already: “Well, I might be God’s gate, but I am a rusty one!”  “So and so might be a gate of to God, but they seem to always be locked!” 

Jesus was well aware that we might lock the gate.  Jesus says in John 20:23, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  Jesus is well aware that his people might lock the gate. 

That is why he tries to teach us things like: “Knock and the door will be opened to you,” and “You must forgive seventy times seven times.”  Jesus wants to impress upon us that we are the only gates that he has, and if we are not willing to open up, people will suffer.

But those early Christians did not lock their gates.  No, those early Christians were immediately open to using the gifts that the Spirit wanted to share with the world. 

They immediately spoke in people’s own languages on that day of Pentecost so that everyone could hear the saving news of Jesus Christ.  Peter did not close his gate as he stood to speak of Jesus and preached the promise that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21).

We see the apostles, Jesus closest followers, gifted with many powers that can only be described as coming straight out of God’s life-giving garden. 

After the Spirit’s fire landed on the disciples, not only were they given the gift of this breath of life that can speak in other languages, but some went from Jerusalem and did many amazing things in Jesus’ name.  They did things like healing the sick and preaching with power in the face of danger. 

 

Peter was even given the ability, by the power of the Spirit, to bring someone back to life: Tabatha. Tabitha was beloved by her community because she clothed the poor and assisted those in need. And when she died, Peter was given the power through the Spirit to bring that viral woman back from death to life, back to her people. 

 

This all sounds like the power of Jesus Christ, because it is!  Jesus pours this power of the Spirit on “all flesh.”  Peter preaches, “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17).  That means that these gifts of the Holy Spirit are poured out on all kinds of people, including even you and me.  Imagine, even you might have the power from Jesus Christ to raise someone from the dead, just like Peter!

I did it once! I too brought someone back to life, kind of, or so it seemed.

You see, when my granddaughter, Trinity, was very little she loved caterpillars and one time we collected one of these soft little things and put it in a jar with holes.  She loved that caterpillar like a pet. She would take it out and let it walk around on her fingers, tickling her the entire time. She loved to just sit and watch it move around mesmerized by that little piece of God’s creation.

Unfortunately, even though we put leaves and water into the jar with it, apparently, we had not chosen the correct leaves for a caterpillar to eat.  One morning after I came back home from driving Trinity daycare, I looked in the jar and saw that Trinity’s tiny little pet had died.

I felt so sad and so heartbroken for Trinity.  So, I did what any other loving grandfather would do, I brought it back to life by going outside and finding a replacement caterpillar. Those things are everywhere. And, with that, it was back to life!

OK, I did not bring it back to life, I just replaced its life; but who cares about the details, it was alive again and Trinity would continue to live happily with her little pet.

You have no idea how happy; because when she came home and looked in the jar she screamed a scream of joy.

“What is so exciting?” I asked Trinity.

“Before I went to preschool, I looked and saw that my caterpillar was dead. So, I prayed that it would come back to life.”

“You prayed that it would come back to life?”

“It did!  Look Opa, it did!” she proclaimed.

Like Peter, she prayed that her friend would come back to life, and it did.

Needless to say, it has now been revealed that she may not have that gift of the Spirit after-all.

But, luckily for her there is a whole list of other gifts from the Holy Spirit, some of which she does have, and that is why we will be celebrating her confirmation today.

The Apostle Paul give us this list: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the benefit of everyone.”  Then he lists the gifts: the utterance of wisdom, the utterance of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy (or truth telling), the discernment of spirits, various kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues.  Each one of us does not have all of these gifts, but together as a community we have them all, and through these gifts “all flesh,” all people will get to experience the power of God.

However, there is one gift that, for some unknown reason, Paul does not put on his list; but Jesus does.  It is the gift that every single one of us can share with others.  It is the most important gift of the Spirit of God that you could possibly have; the one that I promised to tell you about at the beginning of the sermon. 

Jesus blows this gift of the Spirit onto his followers very soon after the resurrection as the disciples are locked away in a fear-filled room.  John 20:21-23 reads, “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

The most important gift that you have been given, the gift that previously only God could provide, but now you can provide since you are the temple of God, is forgiveness.  The Holy Spirit has given you the gift to forgive as if it comes right from God.

Never underestimate the power of this gift.  God thinks it is the most important gift.  In fact, God’s son went to die on the cross to forgive the world.  Jesus thought it was so important that he staked his life on it.  Forgiveness has that power to keep someone chained up when it is withheld and has the power to set someone free from a life of despair when it is granted.  Never underestimate the power of the gift of forgiveness.

I know of woman who divorced her husband because he had done and said terrible things, too many times and hurt her in too many ways.  She was right to get out of the relationship.  But the strangest thing happened years and years later as the end of life drew near.  The man became very ill, and she invited him to come and live with her.  She took him to his doctor’s appointments.  She fed him as he became feeble.  She whispered to me before he became so feeble, “You know pastor, we even sleep together again” she said with a slight giggle.  “He asked for forgiveness, and I gave it, and that was that.”  He died in the arms of his wife.  That is the power of forgiveness.

As a called and ordained minister of the church of Jesus Christ, I have that authority to forgive sin as if God is forgiving it.  But so do you.  The Spirit of God has landed on you with fire, and through the fire in you, the world can peer in and connect with God.  Through you, the fiery gate to God’s holy temple, the world can experience the greatest gift ever given: forgiveness.

Reflection on John 17:1-11

 

John 17:1-11 (NRSVue)

¹ After Jesus had spoken these words [to his disciples,] he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, ² since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³ And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. ⁵ So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
  ⁶ “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, ⁸ for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹ I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. ¹¹ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

Reflection

Jesus prayed for you.  Have you ever stopped to think about that?  Jesus prayed for his followers.  We get to hear the words of his prayer right here in the gospel of John.  And since Jesus prayed for all his followers, that means that Jesus also prayed for you. 

It is like the night that a childhood friend of mine walked past his mother’s bedroom door after using the bathroom and overheard her talking.  There was no one else in the house.  His mother and father had divorced recently, so he could not imagine that anyone else would be in the bedroom, so he thought anyway.  He put his ear to the door and distinctly heard his mother praying to God for him.  She prayed that the divorce would not bring harm to his life.  She prayed that he might walk in better, less destructive ways.  She asked for forgiveness for all the ways that she was failing him as a mother.  What was the most remarkable thing to my friend was not what she prayed about, it was the very fact that she was taking the time to talk to God about him.

“She yells so much at me, I didn’t realize how much she cared.”

She prayed for him, and he was blown away by that simple fact.

Jesus prayed for you and me.  I am blown away by just that simple fact.  The breath of God that spoke the world into being, the very wisdom of God that brought order to the chaos waters that swirled about before creation, the Word of God who made our world into something beautiful and wonderful, the very hands and feet of God in the flesh, took the time to assume a posture of prayer with those hands and feet, and of all things that he could have prayed for, he chose to pray for you and me; his followers.

I need that reminder.  In a busy world with too much to do and too little time to do any of it well, in a lonely world where you are surrounded by people but few stick around to talk, in a world where tragedies and unexpected complications remind us that death is like a snake in the grass, just waiting to strike, I need the reminder that Jesus is not too busy or oblivious to stop and pray for even someone like me, and someone like you.

And what Jesus asks on our behalf is so on point.  It might not seem like it at first.  The Gospel of John is full of so very many words, but when you can untangle those words, you find that they are so on point and so relevant to our own prayers.

Jesus prayed, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him” (John 17:1-2).

Again, this may sound nothing more than a sentence of tangled words, but it is helpful to know that the word “glorify” in the ancient Greek language simply means: “reveal.”  So, Jesus prays that God the Father reveal or let us clearly see Jesus, the Son.  He asks this because Jesus truly wants to clearly reveal or show us the heart of God the Father.  Another way of putting it is that when Jesus hears us ask, “God, show me” or “God lead me” or “God I don’t understand” Jesus desires that our eyes might be opened to truly see him, because he is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

Just a few years ago I was talking with a woman who feared death.  Of course, we all fear death in one way or another, but it was causing her major panic attacks.  She could not sleep.  She feared losing her husband.  She feared what the last moments of life are like and feared what might or might not be beyond.  She kept saying, “I want to know.  I just need to know.”  “Can you tell me?” she pleaded.

I prayed for her.  I prayed for her a lot, asking the same things that Jesus asked, asking that God might allow Jesus to show her what she needed to see so that she could finally find some rest and peace in the face of these anxiety-filled questions.

I think of another conversation that I had with someone else who was spared death, but asked over and over again, “Why am I still here?  What does God want with me?  What reason did God have for keeping me around?”  Behind the questions I could hear a yearning for life to finally be over, but for some reason God had chosen for life to not be over, and the person desperately needed to know why.

Again, I prayed.  I prayed that this person might not be kept in the dark.  I joined Jesus in his prayer to God the Father that this person might be able to look at Jesus and see these secrets of the Father that seemed so elusive.  I prayed that Jesus might show them the Father’s heart and the Father’s plan and purpose for them. 

Again, I said that I joined in Jesus’ prayer because he prayed that when we look at him, we might see something that would give us hope in the face of fear and in the face of uncertainty and not knowing.  Jesus prayed that we might see God through him, and I was praying the same thing.

And praying the prayer of Jesus made me think of other prayers Jesus that Jesus prayed, and that led me to a great and wonderful realization through which Jesus did give some peace and hope.

I thought about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane as his own death approached.  I thought about how Jesus asked for the cup to be taken from him.  I thought about how he questioned his purpose and whether he was on the right track and questioned if death was the only way.  I thought about the words of his prayer that held all this fear and confusion: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

“Yet, not my will but yours be done.”  The words of the prayer lingered with me.  “Yet, not my will but yours be done.”  I thought about the absolute trust behind those words.  It is a trust that says, “I don’t want to drink a cup of death, but if that is the way, then I will trust it.”  It is a trust that says, “I don’t know exactly what you expect of me, but I will trust that your will is the right one.”  And I thought about how that sort of trust in the face of fear and confusion is none other than the beginning of eternal life.

Jesus teaches us, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent” (John 17:3).  Eternal life is trusting in God the Father and trusting in Jesus who reveals the heart of God. According to Jesus trusting him is living with God, both now and into eternity.  Eternal life is trusting the one who holds onto us and does not let us go, despite our fears and questions, despite our misgivings about what the future holds or our purpose.  Jesus prays to God the Father, “All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them” (John 17:10).  We belong to God, no matter our fears and no matter our confusions.

If I could resume that conversation with the woman who feared death so much, I would show her that Jesus too feared and had misgivings.  But I would also show her that above all Jesus trusted in God the Father.  And that relationship made all the difference.  That relationship of trust allowed him to go to the cross.  That relationship of trust allowed him to love the world.  There are some questions that we just cannot answer, but we can trust the one who holds all the answers.

And If I could resume that conversation with the person who questioned their purpose now that they continue to live, I would point out how Jesus questioned his own purpose as well, but he trusted that where God the Father was leading him would impact people with a life-changing and world-changing love.  That love would give all who are held close by the Lord true life with God that lasts forever. 

Let us pray, Lord let us see you, truly see you, and show us how you trusted God the Father.  Give us that sort of trust so that you can turn us from all our fears and confusions, allowing us to truly live.  Amen.