Palm Sunday 2011 – Love vs. Evil

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 04/17/2011

Palm Sunday is the day we remember how Jesus entered Jerusalem to great acclaim. A triumphal entry, it’s sometimes called, because people were excited, thinking that in Jesus they had found a king who would deliver them from the evil that afflicted them. They were right about one thing, but wrong about the more important things. They were right that Jesus was a king who was going to deliver them from the evil that afflicted them. But they were wrong that he was going to head up a military revolution against their oppressors. And because they were wrong about what Jesus was doing about the evil that afflicted them, they abandoned him as soon as they saw that his approach wasn’t their approach. In fact, when they saw his approach to evil, it was so different than what they expected, that they came to the conclusion he was doing nothing at all about the evil that afflicted them.

Have you ever felt that way? Ever gotten your hopes up that God was going to do something about the mess you were in, and then been devastated by the feeling that maybe he wasn’t doing anything at all?

King David expressed that feeling when he wrote psalm 22, 600 years before Palm Sunday.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me,

so far from the words of my groaning?

My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

by night, but I find no rest.

It’s a question we ask when we’re under assault from evil. It’s also the words of Jesus, uttered as a prayer while he hangs dying. It’s an intimate, gut wrenching question that’s in the orbit of one of the Big Questions lacing its way through the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. A question on which everything rides. When it comes to evil, the question of what God is doing about it matters immediately and practically to us. The question is this: What, if anything, is God doing about evil?

We may have other questions about evil, like “Why does evil exist?”, “Where does evil come from?”, “How could evil exist in a universe ruled by a good God?”, and so on. Great questions. Perhaps even important questions. But asking those questions first is a bit like waking up and finding yourself in a freefall from an airplane and asking, “Why does gravity exist?” “Where does gravity come from?” “What does the existence of gravity say about the physical and moral makeup of the universe?” What you really need to know is, “Umm, can anybody hear me? Is anybody going to do something about this?”

Because if God’s not listening, if he’s not doing anything about it – if he has in fact forsaken us - then humanity is just a footnote in cosmic history. Evil will most certainly destroy us. Making the rest of our questions about it irrelevant. (We might as well enjoy the fall until impact…)

On the other hand,  if God is doing something about it – if he is, in fact, not so far from saving us, not so far from the words of our groaning; if he does, in fact, answer; if we will, in fact, find rest – then we have good reason to hope. And hope gives us reason to act in cooperation with God. (Taking our free fall analogy further, if it turns out he’s falling right next to us, but has a way to land safely, that might inspire us to reach out and grab hold of him, and do whatever he instructs us to do…)

This week is Holy Week. The week we consider Jesus’ crucifixion and death, culminating in a day we call “Good” Friday. And we call it good because Jesus on the cross is the ultimate revelation of what God is doing about evil – Jesus on the cross is God’s answer to the words of our groaning. And it’s a good answer, the best answer. Jesus on the cross is God saying, “No, I haven’t forsaken you.”

Jesus on the cross is also God showing us how he’s defeating evil. If we want to know what God is doing about evil, so that we can have hope, and so that we can cooperate with him in our world, we’ve got to look intently at Jesus on the cross. If we look closely enough, and we have eyes to see, what we will see is that Jesus on the cross is God embracing the worst evil has to offer as he offers himself to love’s purposes, and exhausting evil’s power.

Which, like so many things about Jesus, is not at all what we might expect, is it?

Let’s back up a little and set the stage, so we can see the cross a little more clearly than the original Palm Sunday crowd did.

At the heart of the stories about Jesus is a knockdown, drag out fight with evil. When Jesus hits the scene, light is going toe to toe with darkness. Jesus regularly announced that the kingdom of God was at hand. And the kingdom of God is a meaningless phrase if it doesn’t include the defeat of evil.

Now, what evil hates most is love. And evil thinks by threatening our lives, or offering us an alternative source of life, it will cause us to abandon love. And usually evil is proven right. For a long stretch, in fact, evil had rarely been proven wrong.

Until evil meets love personified. Love that loves Love more than he loves his own life.

Take one of the first great symbols of evil, the wilderness. A stark reminder that a creation that started as a lush, richly inhabited garden has become a wilderness. What does Jesus do? Shazaam, turn it back into a garden? Nope. Goes out into it. For 40 days. Without eating. Alone. Totally exposed. Enduring the full hardships of life on this broken earth with all the rest of hungry, thirsty, and isolated humanity. And there, at his weakest point, encountering the Satan, the tempter, evil personified. And who comes away exhausted? Not Jesus. He comes away recharged and energized, ready to kick off his kingdom agenda. Jesus’ life is threatened in the wilderness, but he embraces the worst evil has to offer as he offers himself to Love’s purposes, and in the process, evil is exhausted, and Love’s purposes are accomplished.

How about the evil symbolized by sickness and injury and death? Jesus goes to the leper colonies and touches them, making himself vulnerable on the way to serving Love’s purposes, and in the process the lepers are healed. He lets himself be touched by the bleeding woman. He gets his hands dirty, spits on them, touches the blind man’s eyes. His good friend dies, and he opens his heart to the grief, weeping, and out of that grief Jesus raises Lazarus to life. Some aspect of Jesus’ well-being, his life, is threatened in all of these cases, but he embraces the worst evil has to offer as he offers himself to Love’s purposes, and in the process, evil is exhausted, and Love’s purposes are accomplished.

How about the evil symbolized by sinners and outcasts? He goes to eat with them, have dinner in their homes, tell stories, laugh with them, and in the end they are repenting and joining his kingdom mission. All at great cost to his own reputation and ritual righteousness. Jesus embraces the worst evil has to offer as he offers himself to Love’s purposes, and in the process, evil is exhausted, and Love’s purposes are accomplished.

Throughout Jesus’ life, evil threatens, sneers, makes horrible noises – storms, demons, opposition from powerful movers and shakers - but evil always runs out of steam in the face of Jesus’ love, unable to shake him loose from it.

Until finally, on Good Friday, evil makes good on its threats. Going to the cross, Jesus embraces fully and completely the full force of all the world’s evil as he supremely offers himself to Love’s ultimate purposes. And in the process, evil’s power is supremely exhausted, once and for all. And Love’s supreme purposes are supremely accomplished.

Introduce Mark 15:1-38…note major players: Pilate, Jewish leaders, crowd there for Passover, murdering revolutionaries, Roman soldiers. Encourage listeners to see all the different forms of evil colliding together at the cross (arrogance of Rome, corruption of Israel, ugliness of crowd, absence of disciples, shadowy, looming presence of demonic).

Play Mark 15:1-38 slides

Let’s spend the rest of our time today with Jesus in these last hours of his life, when Jesus is completely exposed, and all the evil in the universe has swept over the face of the earth, rushing together to gleefully destroy the very goodness of God.

At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.

This is something different from an eclipse [Passover takes place during a full moon – no solar eclipse possible during full moon]. This darkness is full of mystery and meaning. One of the towering stories in the Bible is the story of Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Often called the “Exodus” story. Prince of Egypt, 10 plagues, Moses, Pharaoh, parting of the Red Sea, etc. The 9^th plague is 3 days of pitch darkness covering the land. Mark’s readers are meant to think of that story when they hear of these three hours of darkness. The 9^th plague is terrifying enough in its own right, because it is the plague after which the Pharaoh puts all his cards on the table to Moses. “On the day you see my face,” Pharaoh said to Moses, “you will die.” The battle has escalated to the point of ultimatum.

But the real terror, the real horror of the 9^th plague is that it immediately precedes the 10^th plague. The killing of all the firstborn sons in Egypt. Including the Pharaoh’s firstborn. It is the 10^th plague that makes the way for Israel’s exodus from slavery to Egypt. Israel was protected from the plague by the blood of sacrificial lambs on their doorposts – the angel of death passed over them, thus the name of the feast.

Jesus knows that he now is the firstborn who is to die to make the way for humanity’s exodus from slavery to evil. Not the son of the pharaoh, but the son of Man and the Son of God. Humanity has been crushed by the weight of sin and death and evil, and God sends his Son in to take their place, to feel its weight upon his own shoulders and to be crushed by it. To embrace the worst evil has to offer in all its fullness, and to exhaust evil’s power upon him at the cost of his very life. The blood on the doorpost to God’s kingdom is God’s own blood, the true lamb.

And so we hear him say those agonized words, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” If there is an answer, we do not hear it on that Good Friday.

When evil is raging, questions abound and answers can be hard to come by. And on that Friday, evil is raging and good. It’s an ugly kind of rage: a drunken rage. Drunk with power, drunk with lust, drunk with arrogant pride, drunk with the certainty of victory, drunk with the blood of the innocent one. No, there might not be nearly as many answers as there are questions on that Friday, but there is one answer.

This is what God is doing about evil. He is coming into its playground. Getting his hands dirty. Getting his knees bloody. He is drawing all of evil’s attention upon himself. He is exposing himself to the fullness of evil’s power, and he is allowing it to exhaust itself upon him.

If we have eyes to see, let us see. The cross is what God is doing about evil. Let us look with holy awe at Jesus upon it. We know the weight of the evil we face in our lives today. On the cross, out of his love for us, he has embraced the full force of that same evil. Evil may huff and puff, and threaten to blow our houses down, but with Jesus’ last breath, he exhausted evil of its power over us. The shadow of darkness in our lives is overshadowed by the shadow of the cross.

Let us put our trust in Jesus as he put his trust in the Father even when it looked as if he was left alone. “My God my God, why have you forsaken me?” is a prayer with seeds of hope at its heart, isn’t it? It’s my God. My God. Why have you… Even in the darkness, in the silence, He is ours and we are His. Not even the full force of evil can change that. Even in our confusion, in our frustration, in our blindness, our cry goes to God, because we know that he hears.

And we know that he will act on our behalf. Because there, as Jesus cried out with those words, the answer becomes clear. There on the cross, our words coming from his lips, our words in the face of evil, asked by Jesus on our behalf. And in that moment, the one asking the question for us becomes God’s answer to us. I am your God and you are my people as surely as this beaten and bloodied servant is my Son. I have not forsaken you as surely as my Son has not run from evil. I am near to saving you as surely as my Son is near to death. I am near to the words of your groaning as surely as my Son’s groaning is nearly at an end. [the question answered by the answerer asking it with us…]

Let us look to Jesus, yes, and trust in Jesus, yes, and learn from Jesus, too. Learn what he would teach us as we seek to implement his victory over evil in our lives and in our world. This is the way God’s kingdom is established, and this is how it takes new ground. We offer ourselves to Love’s purposes, embracing whatever Evil might throw at us along the way, in the confident expectation that Evil’s power has already been exhausted. This is why we call it faith, is it not…? A life that requires us to follow Jesus by learning to love Love more than we love our lives.

Practical Tips:

1. Memorize this refrain from Psalm 22, and pray it every day this week as a lament:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me,

so far from the words of my groaning?

My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

by night, but I find no rest.

2. For the sake of Love, enter someone’s mess with them, knowing that it will probably be messy for you as well. Not randomly, but because the Spirit is leading you. And stay there until Love’s purposes are accomplished. [personal and/or ministry application]

3. Repent of attachments to your life instead of Love. Have they prevented you – out of fear of Evil’s power to take life from you - from forgiving? From loving your enemies? From showing mercy? From blessing the poor? From praying for the sick? From casting out demons? From announcing good news?

Colossians 1: The Kingdom of the Son He Loves

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 04/10/2011

Invitation to turn to Colossians 1v13-14

For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

For He has rescued us from the (dominion: exousias, authority or free reign of darkness) and brought us into the (kingdom: basileian, dominion, rule or royal power) of the Son he loves (suggesting Jesus after his baptism), in whom (which) we have (redemption: apolytrosin, a release effected by the payment of a ransom), the (forgiveness: aphesin, sending away from the bondage) of (sin: harmartion, missing the mark).

A fundamental human woe is the free reign of darkness in our world, our lives. For the Colossians, at the socio-political level, it was experienced in the oppressive rule of Rome. In the same way the Libyans or Egyptians or Sudanese or North Koreans or Cubans or on and on might experience it today. There seems no force capable of keeping the will of darkness in check; darkness does what it pleases, and those under its exousias or dominion are powerless against it.

Depending on our race or gender or socio-economic status or other factors that influence our basic experience of life, we may identify with this expression of the dominion of darkness as well. A young person bullied and teased and ostracized in his or her peer group knows the dominion of darkness. A young girl abducted and enslaved in the sex trade knows the dominion of darkness. A black person who grew up under Jim Crowe laws knows the dominion of darkness. A woman in an abusive relationship, suffering domestic violence, knows the dominion of darkness. A child whose parents are fighting constantly while they hide in their room knows the dominion of darkness.

Sometimes the dominion of darkness is experienced at the level of ongoing misfortune. A devastating tsunami. Chronic illness. Disabilities. Repeated betrayals. One bad break after another. Failure after failure. Hope after hope, dashed. The short end of the stick always pointed in your direction. It’s as if no matter how much we sing “The Sun’ll come out tomorrow…”, the darkness of night just keeps having its way, and it’s so dark we can’t even find our bottom dollar to bet it.

And as we all know all too well, the dominion of darkness isn’t only external. The person with an addiction to alcohol, or prescription drugs, or pornography, or overeating, or gambling, or the approval of others, or power, or the accumulation of wealth, knows the dominion of darkness. The person in whom anger or bitterness or depression or jealousy or fear and anxiety has gotten a foothold knows the dominion of darkness. Dare I say none of us are unscathed by the dominion of darkness.

When Paul writes about the exousias, or dominion, of darkness, he understands darkness not as an impersonal reality, like the darkness of night, but a malevolent, personal reality, more like the smoke monster on “Lost,” except that it can’t be controlled. Evil with intention and will to destroy everything under its dominion. Evil whom it pleases to enslave and exploit God’s good, free creation. Paul understands the darkness to be a something that is more like a someone than not a someone. Someone who relishes his dominion and does not let it go easily, like a slave-owner who has built an empire on the back of slaves, and is loath to let them go free.

It’s not as if someone who is living in the dominion of darkness can just say, “Oh, you know what, this isn’t a very good life. I think I’ll move over there to the kingdom of the Son God loves. I hear they have very good schools, low taxes, lots of bike paths and 2% unemployment.” No. When you’re living under the dominion of darkness, it is pitch black dark. You will wander in circles trying to get out.

Escape is insufficient on its own, as darkness still has an ownership claim over us. We will get captured and thrown into solitary. And the bondage or imprisonment that comes from missing the mark remains, as well. We won’t know any other way to live, and it will terrify us to even think of leaving, as much as we long for it at the same time.

Yes, living in the dominion of darkness is the woeful condition of humanity. Our only hope is rescue.

And what Paul is telling the church in Colossae, what he’s telling us, is that God has rescued us. That he has reached into the darkness and rescued us from its dominion over us and brought us into a new reality, where someone else, someone as different from darkness as day is different from night, is in charge of what happens. And in this new reality, we have been set completely, totally free. [101 Dalmations…from Cruella De Vil to Roger & Anita Radcliffe]

When Paul uses this language of rescue from enslavement and being brought into a new place ruled by the Son he loves, he’s calling two important stories to our minds. One story is the story of the Exodus, and the other is a related event in the life of Jesus, his baptism in the Jordan River.

The Exodus story is the great story of rescue in the Hebrew Scriptures (Passover on April 19^th). Israel had been enslaved for generations, 400 years, in Egypt. Enslaved to the Pharaoh, who was truly a prince of darkness to the Hebrew people. But God intervened, and through a deadly struggle, brought Pharaoh and the Egyptian people to a place where they let the Hebrews go, sent them away. Pharaoh had a change of heart as the slaves approached the banks of the Red Sea, and began to chase them with his army. But God parted the Red Sea, the people walked across, and then the waters of the sea closed on the pursuing Egyptian soldiers and the Pharaoh, ensuring Israel’s rescue. And then God was present with them in powerful ways as they made their way in fits and starts to the promised land, learning how to be free people and no longer slaves. So when Paul wrote about rescue from dominion to another, people couldn’t help but think about the Exodus.

And the story of Jesus’ baptism is similar. People in Israel were under oppression from Rome, and longing for God to rescue them as he had rescued them from Egypt. And so they were going into the Jordan river to be baptized, signifying their repentance, their turning back to God, so that he might hear them and respond. In a sense, re-enacting the Red Sea drama as a way of inviting God to bring rescue. And along comes Jesus to be baptized with them.

Only, when Jesus is baptized, the Jordan river doesn’t part; the heavens do. And the Holy Spirit comes down on Jesus like a dove, and a voice thunders, “This is my Son, whom I love, with whom I am well pleased.” It was Jesus being anointed as the true King. It was God’s answer that rescue was here, coming, on its way. So when Paul wrote about the royal rule of the Son he loves, people couldn’t help but think about Jesus’ baptism, which also made them think about the Exodus from Egypt, and what kind of new Exodus God might be up to through Jesus.

Now how does any of that matter to us? Well, it matters because of what it tells us about what God has done for us through Jesus.

Paul writes that in Jesus, or in Jesus’ kingdom, under his royal rule, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Remember, when God rescued Israel from Egypt, Pharaoh pursued them as if they still belonged to him. And even when they were wandering around in the desert on the way to the promised land, they still sometimes complained and longed to go back to Egypt, where they at least had food to eat.

The payment of a ransom releases us slaves to darkness from the ownership claim. The Darkness cannot pursue us and enslave us again. This is what God has done for us in this new Exodus, where he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us to the kingdom of the Son he loves. He has redeemed us, ransomed us, given us a release effected by a payment that purchases us and makes us His, so that we do not belong to the darkness any longer.

How did God do that? Powerfully, and mysteriously, through Jesus’ death on the Roman cross. The first Christians saw Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as a sort of ransom payment to the darkness, a payment that purchased all of our freedom.

You can think of it this way, perhaps. God made us as his children, and has a first claim on us because he created us. But we made a deal with the devil, as it were, when in our free will we chose to turn away from God and do as we pleased, which was really as the darkness pleased. We willingly sold ourselves into slavery, with the darkness as our master. We thought we were buying life for ourselves, but all we bought was death.

God’s heart was broken by our enslavement, and out of his love for us sent Jesus. Jesus, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Jesus, like us in every way, except one. He never participates in the deal with the devil as all the rest of us have. He never eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; he eats only from the tree of life. He lives freely, pleased only to do God’s good pleasure. His every loving word and action a light shining in the darkness’ squinty eyes.

And this enrages the darkness. The darkness has the 99, but all it can fix its beady eyes on is the one it doesn’t have, the one who exhibits no fear in its presence. So the darkness conspires to take Jesus’ life from him. The darkness is used to getting what it wants.

But in its bloodlust, the darkness is blind to the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is the one human being on the face of the earth who does not belong to him. And if the darkness takes Jesus’ life, that life will become a ransom for all of the lives on which the darkness does have a legal claim, effectively rendering those claims null and void, forever illegitimate.

And although it gives Jesus no pleasure to incite the darkness, Jesus is willing to give the darkness what the darkness clamors for, if it means that the Father will get what he wants. Because what the Father wants is what Jesus wants as well: all of God’s beloved but enslaved children rescued. This is the joy set before him even as the darkness rushes in.

And so Jesus stands before the darkness’ unwitting representatives, and presents no defense to their accusations. And the darkness does what the darkness pleases, which is to take Jesus’ life; and Jesus does what both pleases the Father and breaks the Father’s heart, which is to lovingly give his life for the sake of his enslaved and estranged brothers and sisters. And as Jesus hangs on the cross, darkness comes over the whole land, enjoying what it believes is its finest hour. Only it is not the darkness’ finest hour; it is its final hour.

The darkness claims Jesus’ blood as it soaks into the earth, but Jesus gives his spirit to his Father in the heavens. And that moment marks the moment the ransom is paid in full. The darkness has what it has wanted, only to discover that the currency of the old creation has been devalued and is now, officially, worth nothing. Because the Father begins a new creation in the resurrected Jesus on the first day of the next week. A new creation that he begins as the resurrected Jesus breathes his Holy Spirit God’s newly redeemed children. And the darkness can rage all it wants now, but the ultimate cheater has been cheated, and has lost everything it had deceptively stolen from the Creator.

So what Paul is saying is that even though darkness has had its way in our lives, now we are under the authority of the Son God loves, and the darkness cannot make a claim on us again. Every intrusion the darkness makes on our lives is illegitimate and destined to be repelled. Does the darkness of Rome look to be having its way? We have been rescued and brought into Jesus’ kingdom; Rome has no claim on us. Oh sure, Rome may take our lives as the darkness took Jesus’ life, but that will only be turned into new creation as Jesus’ death was turned into new creation. Do any of these external circumstances or forces seem to be having their way? We have been rescued from them and brought into Jesus’ kingdom; none of that darkness has any claim on us. Oh it may take our lives, but that will only be turned into new creation.

But what about the darkness inside us? What about that bondage we experience from our sins?

Paul says that in the kingdom of the Son God loves, we have been released from that bondage as well. It no longer imprisons us. Forgiveness has come to us in the presence of God through the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit within us leads us into freedom, just as the cloud by day and the fire by night led the people of Israel into the promised land, in spite of all their wandering and complaining.

Healing, driving out demons, hope and freedom that come with the announcement of good news are signs of the royal power of God’s beloved son. They are part of rescue. An indication of the release from the dominion of darkness that has come, is coming, will come in fullness one day. They are signs that say the authority of darkness is at an end. They say the bondage of missing the mark is in jeopardy because God is coming near.

This is what it means for us to be followers of Jesus, to be people who have placed our faith in his good news. It means that we can live in confidence that the 2^nd Exodus has begun, ignoring the fearful threats of the darkness and trusting the strong voice of the true King. It means that we can live as people who are bearing witness to the 2^nd Exodus with expectation that Jesus’ Royal Rule will be breaking into the here and now, with authority and the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit.

And if you are not yet a follower of Jesus, this is what you are invited to participate in by placing your trust in the rescue God has initiated through Jesus. You are invited to take his hand outstretched in rescue, to turn your back on the darkness that has had its way in the past in your life, and to recognize the Royal rule of the Son God loves, in whom there is redemption, the forgiveness of sins…

Colossians 1: I’ll Have What She’s Having

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 04/03/2011

Invitation to turn to Colossians 1:9-14

Everything that has life has at least 2 properties in common. Living things grow – which requires a continual stream of life-giving sustenance – and living things leak – which also requires a continual stream of life-giving sustenance.

Seeds get planted in the ground, and a shoot springs up. A miracle of life. Thank God. Now, though, it needs food, sunlight, water to grow and develop into the fruit bearing tree it is meant to be. The miracle merges into the slow dance of maturation.

A baby being born is a miraculous thing, inspiring, holy, incredible. And then begins the work of feeding it, caring for it, helping it grow and become who it is meant to be, doing what it is meant to do, and that, by the grace of God, joyfully and thankfully.

A friendship begins with a set of serendipitous connections and chemistry. A joyful miracle that has its own momentum for a time. Yet, like every other miracle of life, a friendship needs nourishment if its capacity for multiplying life is to enlarge and not diminish.

A church is a miracle of life. The zoe, the life-giving energy at the heart of the universe, carried on the seeds of Jesus’ good news, lands in human hearts and explodes with the life of the ages, the life of heaven here and now, bringing salvation to those who receive it. The first evidence of its existence, the tulips poking through the thawing ground of the old creation, according to Paul’s letter to Colossians, is love in the spirit.

What will nourish this love in the spirit so that it grows into maturity? What will nourish us, this ecclesia, this church into the fullness of God’s great purposes for us? What will nourish you, you who have recently trusted the good news, and turned from your old way of living to follow the way of Jesus? What will bring you back to health, you who began to run hard after Jesus when you first heard the good news of God’s grace, but somehow began to eat a fast food diet in your hurry and now cholesterol is clogging your veins and you find yourself short of breath?

[I’ll have what she’s having… from “When Harry Met Sally.”]

In the scriptures, it’s as if humanity is at a diner, and we’ve all been ordering the same-old same-old. And somebody comes along, and eats something that no one knew was on the menu, and whoa! That Jesus has a whole different .,/kind of life than anyone we’ve ever seen. I’ll have what he’s having. Colossians 1 is describing Paul’s prayer that the Colossians would hunger after and feast on the food that Jesus feasts on.

⁹For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, ¹⁰so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹²and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his people in the kingdom of light. ¹³For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

We’ve been rescued from the dominion of darkness; we can abandon the food we used to eat there. And we’ve been brought into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins; and we are invited to dine at the King’s table.

So which entree will we choose?

Let’s hold that thought for a minute, back up, and try to peer into this text to figure out what Paul is saying here, at a fundamental, foundational level.

There is something more than meets the untrained eye going on here.

Setting the stage for these verses, there is discussion of God’s grace, his favor, which leads to peace. The good news of God’s kingdom, the good news of Jesus the king, landing, taking root, bearing fruit. Love itself being worked into flesh and blood relationships of human beings, terraforming the earth. Once dead lives, now freshly God-breathed like Jesus’ resurrection body, forming together in love-factory churches loyal to the true king.

There is something more than meets the eye going on here.

Here, in these verses there is the Father, and there is the Son, and there is the Holy Spirit, and there are these people in whom new creation is taking place, among whom the life of the ever-creative, ever-self-giving, ever-loving triune God is being breathed. And they – the trinity and these image-bearers – are increasingly tangled up, woven together. These people filled with the knowledge of his will through wisdom and understanding given by the Spirit. Living lives that live up to the one whose name they bear, pleasing him. The explosive, glorious power present in the trinity setting off controlled nuclear reactions in their lives, enough power to withstand the most devastating of tsunamis.

There is something going on here, something more than meets the eye.

There is garden language: growth, fruit, work. There is the language of knowledge, the knowledge of God’s will, and the knowledge of God. And there is more, words about God’s will, about pleasing him, about light, and kingdoms, redemption, forgiveness.

Yes, there is something going on here.

But

what,

exactly,

is going on here?

What’s going on in Colossae is what’s going on all over the world now that Jesus is risen from the dead and his Holy Spirit is blowing across the face of the earth, carried on his followers announcement of the good news. What’s going on is new creation. And Paul wants to draw our attention to it.

Are you familiar with the biblical story of the first creation? Do you recall how it began with God’s true word: “Let there be light?” Do you remember how God’s will was expressed over and over, let there be, let there be, let there be? And how there was. And there was. And there was. And do you remember how God was pleased? How his creation enjoyed his grace, and peace. How he called it “good.” And do you remember how the scene shifted to a garden? A garden to be tended by people. People in whom he breathed his breath of life. Who were animated by his Spirit. Who didn’t have yet any knowledge of Good and Evil, per say, but only knowledge of Him. Who were charged with bearing fruit in every good work that they did with him in the Garden. (Go forth and multiply! And what is fruit but the multiplication mechanism of the tree?)

Of course, we know what happened to the first creation. Against God’s loving will, but allowed by God’s risk-taking will, we ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And – like a sugar rush from too much cotton candy - that heady knowledge quickly displaced our knowledge of God as we became, effectively, our own gods, sitting in the seat of judgment over ourselves, and one another. We became drunk on the fermented fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We have, all of us, been inebriated ever since, fumbling in darkness, enslaved to the wine of judgment, and to the master vintner, the Accuser himself.

Yet here, in this prison in Rome, and in this small town under Roman rule, the great undoing of the first creation is itself being undone. A new creation is underway. It begins, as the first creation did, with Jesus – the logos, the word made flesh, dwelling among us. The true word of his good news, the news that mercy has triumphed over judgment in his death and resurrection, the news that a sacrifice has satisfied every last accusation, the news that the Forgiver of Sinners, not the Accuser, has had the last word, the news that the Vineyard’s true master has come home, and his drink brings freedom, not slavery, the news that the Father’s grace is present in Jesus, the good news of great joy for all the people, that good news is taking root and love in the spirit is growing up to displace a garden choked out by the weeds of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So now that love is growing, now that new creation has begun, what is it that Paul is praying for? He’s praying that this church be filled with the knowledge of God’s will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives. The knowledge of God’s will, God’s heart, God’s desires is what the new creation that we are in Christ needs. It’s what it needs to grow, and to thrive, and to be about the mission Jesus has for us.

We don’t need a new or better perspective on what is good and what is evil. That horse has been beaten to death. That’s like a drug addict thinking all they need is a better drug, and everything will get better. That won’t get us where we need to go. That causes decay, not growth. It creates more puncture holes; it doesn’t re-fill leaky vessels.

What we need is what Adam and Eve needed. We need the fruit of the tree of life. Which is, after all, the knowledge of God’s will, isn’t it? Isn’t life what God wills for us? Didn’t Jesus say, I have come that you might have life, and have it to the full? Isn’t his will that our wills and his will would be joined together as one? Isn’t that what it means for his kingdom to come? His will being done on earth as it is in heaven? Isn’t that what truly gives life?

³¹ Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

³³ Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

³⁴ “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

John 4

Here’s the thing: If you have the knowledge of good and evil, you don’t need relationship to take the next step, do you? You just make a judgment, and you act on it. Which means your next step doesn’t have to be in love. Which means, sooner or later, it won’t be. Which means even if your judgment was “correct” in some abstract sense, your steps are without love. Because although we may like to be our own gods, the god that is me is not love. And soon enough, all of those steps take me to a place where I am eating with pigs, having blown my whole inheritance.

Lives animated by God’s love must be nourished and directed by a new creation knowledge of God’s will, not by our decaying creation knowledge of good and evil.

At the center of the decaying old creation is the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. At the center of the new creation is the fruit of the knowledge of God’s will.

Consider how acting out of the knowledge of good and evil can get in the way of love in the spirit when it first springs up in our lives, and how being filled with the knowledge of God’s will prevents that…

[examples…]

[3 stories: Judy & Mike (“Seek first the kingdom…”), Wedding dream, Parable of Prodigal Son]

The only way to have a knowledge of God’s will is in the context of relationship. What do you want of me here, God? Of us, here, now, in this situation? And if we take a trusting step in that direction, it will be a step in love, won’t it? Because God is love, and we are walking in his love. And if we get it wrong, it’s not the end of the story. It’s part of the story. Because we are in relationship, so his Spirit can convict us, and we can repent, and take the next step with a deeper understanding of his will.

And those steps will lead to a life worthy of the Lord (after all, that is how all of the Lord’s steps were ordered, was it not?

¹⁹ So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. ²⁰For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing.

John 5:19-20

These are the steps that please God in every way (Remember what the Father said of Jesus, who only did what he saw him doing? “This is my son, with whom I am well pleased…”).

And those steps will bear fruit in every good work, because love multiplies where judgment formerly divided.

And every step we take from our knowledge of God’s will helps us know God better.

And every step becomes food for us – empowering us with power according to his glorious power.

Which gives us what we need to follow Jesus on the path to the cross, patiently, giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of his people in the kingdom of light (what is the kingdom of light, but the place of God’s rule and reign where his will is done like it was first done by light? – let there be light, and there was light!)

Practical Tips:

1. Keep a diet record. Maybe for a day. Maybe for a week. Write down every time you eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Every time you think to yourself about someone else, or even yourself, “That was/is wrong. That bothers me.” At the end of the fast, see if there is any correlation between your diet and how animated you are by love vs. how animated you are by other motivations. When you’re done, show it to somebody who you think is animated by love. See if they respond to you with judgment, or by joining you in asking for you to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will for you with regard to your spiritual nutritional habits.

2. Try a judgment fast. Maybe for a day. Maybe for a week. Every time you think to yourself about someone else, or even yourself, “That was/is wrong. That bothers me,” follow it up with the prayer: “I’m sorry, Lord, the only forbidden thing that matters to me is that I’m not allowed to eat that fruit.

3. Ask for some of what he’s having. Start your day for a week with this prayer: Jesus, fill me with the knowledge of your will for me towards every person and decision and situation, because I want all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, and nothing else. Use that prayer again whenever you’re tempted to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil throughout the day. And then, in faith, love, decide, act out of the knowledge that comes after that prayer.

Colossians: Full-Blooded Love

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 03/27/2011

³We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all his people— ⁵the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true word of the gospel ⁶that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world— just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. ⁷You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, ⁸and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

Colossians 1:3-7

The true word of good news arrives – and once it is received and understood as the truth of God’s grace (favor), it gives birth to love.

Messenger of emperor would arrive with news of military victory (euangelion - good news / god-spell) and it would give birth to fear. Fear that things would never change. That the power of the oppressor was growing. That those out of favor had less reason for hope. That the oppressors would now be even wealthier, and the subjected would be even more disposable.

Jesus’ took this word – good news – and turned its meaning upside down for the oppressed.

The true word of the euangelion has come to you - good news arrives at doorstep (remember life before the internet?) - that the true king has defeated the oppressor. That favor for the oppressed is here. And when that good news was received and understood, it would be experienced as grace. And hope would come. And love would take root. Most of all love. Because threat was gone, and the breath that breathed the news was love among us.

Imagine, where fear had taken hold all over the known world, now love was growing up in its place. Before, people afraid of the future, of one another, shrinking, petty, bitter, cowering. Now, they are anticipating and welcoming God's good future into their present, embracing one another as brothers and sisters - even those who had been enemies. Growing, generous, thankful, confident.

Paul, the author of this letter, is in jail because his whole life is about this euangelion of Jesus business. So his eyes are peeled for evidence that the good news is having an impact, evidence that the seeds of God’s words are being planted and taking root. How does he know? What is he looking for?

The thing that tips Paul off that something real is happening is love in the spirit. Not knowledge or wisdom or the holiness or obedience to a new moral code or religious fervor or anything else. That stuff shows up all over the world all the time. Whatever. But Love? Not necessarily good feelings about one another, but acting towards one another in the way that we do when we are neither afraid of one another nor afraid for our own futures. Lust, anger, lies, bitterness, jealousy, rejection, etc. being replaced by kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, acceptance. Love in the spirit. That’s the real deal. That’s new creation breathed by King Jesus.

“love in the Spirit” = “agepen en pneumati”

We hear spirit and think “Holy Spirit.” Your translation probably even capitalizes “Spirit” to indicate this. But we miss something when we see this as religious language. The author of Colossians is using non-religious words to communicate something that is happening because of Jesus’ good news landing on their doorstep, being brought into the kitchen, and poured over during breakfast. Pneumati is a word that means spirit, yes, but also breath, and wind. It is a concept that has its earliest roots in the ancient observation that when people died, their breath went out of them. That their breath contained some kind of animating life force, some kind of spirit. (wind as that which animates nature…)

And so present in this idea of love in the spirit is the idea that the animating force at work in the Colossian church is love herself. That every action is love-breathed. Breathed by the Holy Spirit, yes, of course. But more than that, that the animating life-force of God – the breath of him who is love himself, the love out which creation was first breathed and that raised Jesus to new life, inaugurating a new creation through the good news breath of Jesus, that breath of that love, that spirit – has been breathed into the lungs of the Colossian church, and is now animating their lives. Now carrying the life of the age to come to every cell of their body, empowering movement and action and words that cooperate in the new creation purposes of King Jesus. Movement and action and words laced with love in the spirit.

[Shelby’s story… “That’s all because of you, Shelby.” “No, Mom, that’s because of God working through me.”]

Great commission: “Go into all the world and announce good news to all creation…” There is sometimes a fervor about this that results in a watered down form of love. Stems from the idea that the main point of the good news is securing eternal destinies, and because death may visit at any hour, unexpectedly, we must vigorously win souls. And so we bear witness to the saving love of God in Jesus with a pointed sense of urgency about the person’s response to our message. Turn, or burn. It is motivated by love. It is a loving act. But it can produce an anemic form of love. And when an anemic form of love is set up on a pedestal as the highest form of love, we are shooting for the wrong target, and we fall short of love in the spirit.

What do I mean by anemic? Anemia is a condition where someone doesn’t have enough healthy red blood cells to deliver oxygen to the body. So the blood is pumping, but it’s not fully accomplishing its life-giving goal. (Fatigue, pale skin, irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, cognitive problems, cold hands and feet, headache…) It’s possible for our love to be that way. It’s still love, but it’s not fully accomplishing its life-giving purpose.

Think about the most fully developed kinds of love we experience naturally in life. Let’s call it full-blooded love. Love for our family, our spouses, our children, our parents, sometimes our closest friends. It’s ever-present love that motivates loving actions across the spectrum of loving actions. You are inclined to act in love towards those people regardless of your concern for their eternal destiny, aren’t you? If they are hungry, you want to feed them. If they are sad, you want to comfort them. If they are hurting, you want to care for them. If you discover something joyful or helpful of life changing, you want to share it with them so that they can share in the benefits. You care about the little things in their lives – enough to sacrifice your own concerns to bless them in the little things. And of course you care about the big things, too. You might risk your life and well-being for them, if needed.

In fact, if the only thing you cared about for your children was their eternal destiny, you might hope they would die in birth so as to avoid concerns about them rejecting Jesus when they got old enough. They’d miss out on a lot of good stuff in this world, but in the grand scheme it would be the safest bet for them, right? (clearly, this is an absurd way to look at it, but it does shed some light on something off, doesn’t it?)

Now consider the less developed kind of love we tend to have towards strangers, towards the other, towards those who are not “us.” [the us continuum: self / immediate family / extended family / closest loving community / those who share our values, perspective, objectives / those whose fate is tangled up with ours / those who we could lose without losing much immediately / those who are strange and inscrutable to us / those directly opposed to our values, perspective, objectives / those we view as evil…]

Outside of the first two levels, day to day struggles, challenges, hurts tend to be of little concern to us. If our paths cross, and they are in some form of grave danger, or have experienced a tragedy, we will sometimes be moved to anything from self-less kindness to great acts of heroism on their behalf. Especially if they are on the nearer end of the “us” spectrum. This is a form of love, but it is ultimately anemic. Once the tragedy passes, or the grave danger relents, our love tends to slip away too.

And so what love can become in some “Christian” settings is trying to keep before people the pressing danger of eternal torment (or tragic stories) so that we don’t turn inward, but stay outward-focused in love. This is why anything that threatens this motivation is perceived as a threat against love (Controversy about Rob Bell’s Love Wins, for example). If we aren’t sufficiently worried, what will motivate us to announce good news, to make disciples of Jesus? As if love for Jesus that leads to obedience isn’t enough of a beginning motivation. As if obedience to Jesus won’t lead us into love in the spirit. As if John 3:16 should have read, “For God was so afraid for the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever would share his fears might still get hit by a bus, but not without first getting a ticket to heaven.”

But in Colossians, or anywhere else for that matter, love is not pictured like a dying fire that needs stoking, like some kind of fervor. No, not at all. In Colossians, love is pictured as something growing, like buds on a tree, like the first shoots in a garden. All it needs is the regular rain of the good news of God’s grace to be soaked up in the ground.

Fervors are usually fueled by some form of fear, not love. But a garden is a patient thing, tended with love.

If we must have a fervor, let it be spring fervor. Spring comes after winter with inviting, inevitable warmth, not fearful fire. Spring is new creation we can’t wait for, that gets our blood flowing, our pulse quickening with anticipation. Spring makes us delight in the sun with wonder afresh. Spring brings us out of our comfortable houses and into the weary world full of new possibilities.

Full-blooded love, love in the Spirit, shrinks the “us continuum” with a loving embrace. Wouldn’t love that is mature see everyone like we naturally see a member of our family? Or as Jesus says, like ourselves? Wouldn’t full-blooded love have concerns for the day to day concerns of life for every person whom we are called to love? Isn’t that how God loves? Wouldn’t full blooded love see the “good news of truth” as good news for every situation, for every person in every setting? Wouldn’t we be compelled to love by that kind of love, effortlessly and naturally, by the animating love within us and among us and around us, without the need for impending crisis or devastating tragedy?

[examples..]

Think how this might even change the way we love someone in the face of impending death…

Anemic: Turn, so you don’t burn after you die – double fear, fear of dying ratcheted up, fear of hell after that. Man, I was already scared of death, and now you’re telling me that fear was not only justified, but that it should have been much worse!? Oh, but you’ve got a solution for me – thank goodness! Wait a minute…isn’t this the way people get people to buy things? Are you just trying to sell me something!? I’m dying, and you’re trying to get me to buy something? Love’s there, but it can get buried under all that fear.

Or, another approach, fueled by love in the spirit: Impending death may be unsettling you, producing fear. Jesus has overcome death; trusting him frees you from that fear, let me offer you this good news as an antidote to your fear. That’s the loving thing to do, is it not? Perfect love driving out fear.

May the good news of Jesus bear fruit among us. May love in the spirit burst forth among us like spring after a long winter.

Practical Tips:

1. Take a blood test. Determine if you’re becoming anemic or full blooded in your love. Think about the last person God brought into your life or to whom he called you to go who perhaps had not yet heard and truly understood the good news of God’s grace. In what ways did love animate you towards that person? Did you think, “If I were in their shoes, what would I experience as God’s grace towards me” – and then endeavor to do or be or say that? Or was it something else, something less? Were you distracted from that kind of love because you were afraid for them, or afraid of them? Or did you ignore them, out of concerns for your own future?

2. Take a good news supplement. Anemia is always a result of some sort of deficiency. Love anemia comes from a good news of grace deficiency. If you think your love might be getting anemic, consider meditating on Ephesians chapter 1. Memorize it if you can. Don’t worry about understanding it all, at least at first. Just let the good news of grace contained in it wash over you. When that love has driven out some of your fears, lift up your eyes to the people around you and see how you might love them, buoyed by and with confidence in that love.

3. Encourage one another to full-blooded love. We must tend the garden of grace by giving voice to the good news that we don’t need to be afraid. Of anyone. That we don’t need to be afraid for the future. That we can act like even our enemies are our brothers and sisters. That we can act like a good future awaits. That we can act like love is going win.

Colossians: Grace & Peace

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 03/13/2011

Invitation to turn to Colossians…

Colossae, a small town in Phyrigia, one of the Greek states under Roman rule. Previously an important city, but had diminished in significance. Probably founded by a pastor named Epaphras, who it seems traveled to visit Paul, imprisoned in Rome. Paul wrote this letter from prison, and sent it with Epaphras to encourage the church in this rural town.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to God’s holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ: Grace and peace to you from God our Father.

Col 1:1–2

Grace to you and peace from God our Father. (prefer translation that places “to you” after “Grace”)

Grace. Charis. A variation on the Greek greeting, “Chaire,” meaning “Greetings.”

Grace meaning favor. A heart inclined towards. That which affords joy, pleasure, sweetness, delight, charm, loveliness. That which a mother has towards her newborn child as he is placed upon her chest. Grace. What the local Olympic hero feels from the town when every place he goes, he is told, “Your money is no good here.” Grace. The way the bride’s gaze lands upon the groom as he receives her from her father. Grace. The light that comes to your friend’s eyes when you visit her in the hospital room, a light that says, “I’m glad you’re here.” Grace. The unexpected and hardly conceivable thing sometimes communicated in the unforced words, “I forgive you.” Grace. That which is present in every freely given gift. Grace.

Coupled with the Jewish greeting, “Peace.” Eirene, the Greek word standing in for the deeper Jewish word, “Shalom.” Everything right between and within persons. That which is experienced (in its most concentrated form) in a welcoming embrace, in a true homecoming. It’s like the embrace between the Father and the prodigal son. It’s a husband and wife reunited in long lost love after being estranged from one another. It’s a bear hug between brothers. Shalom. It’s Han and Chewie exchanging the look that says no matter what kind of hard time we give each other, I’d die for you in a heartbeat. It’s the feeling you get when you walk into a home filled with a family’s love, and you’re a part of that family. Shalom. It’s the kingdom of God at work in the human heart, it’s mercy triumphing over judgment, it’s the forgiveness of sins, it’s swords being beaten into ploughshares, it’s lions lying down with lambs, and it’s the new heavens and the new earth, fully integrated in God-breathed new creation. Shalom.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Charis and Eirene.

Favor and Shalom.

Paul, a delegate of King Jesus serving at the pleasure of God, has a message to deliver to those others who are set apart as belonging to King Jesus, those who are made family together, brothers and sisters, by their faith in the King. This is an authorized message, bearing the seal of the King. It is a blessing, the weight of the Holy Breath behind it. It is the agenda the whole letter seeks to further.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Paul is in prison for his service to the wrong King. Unwilling to declare that Caesar was Lord, and holding fast to his allegiance to Jesus as Lord, the Romans imprisoned him. Grace and peace are the furthest things from him in this world. He is out of favor. He is the one those in power have their heart inclined against. He is in forced exile, cut off, isolated; Shalom, it might seem, put out of reach.

And yet,

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Charis and Eirene.

Favor and Shalom.

Of all that could be said, of every hope that could be offered, why this brace of blessings? Why grace to you and peace from God our Father?

Because the very things stripped from Paul in the natural world are the very things God is doing on the face of the earth in and through his growing family. And Paul will gladly suffer the loss of what this world has to offer if it shines a light on what the light of the world has to offer. (Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness—the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people.)

Grace is the essence of the good news of Jesus the King. And Peace – the Shalom kind of peace – is the salvation that it brings. If the grace of which Jesus conceived is truly received, and grace in its turn is announced by its recipients in every conceivable way, then the heavens will grip the earth with unshakeable shalom, and unshackled love will have its way once and for all.

Grace and peace. This is the salvation unique to Jesus among all other figures in religious and spiritual history.

Consider: What if the universe is fundamentally relational in nature? Quantum physicists even suggest that, at the very core of matter and energy, are mysterious and unexplainable relationships. That particles can maintain relationship with each other over vast distances of space, despite having no mechanism to communicate with each other. And that every observer has an impact on what is observed, simply by engaging in observation. If the basic building blocks of the universe are relationally charged, might that not be a sign pointing to a deeper reality?

What if what matters, ultimately, is how we stand in relation to the gifts and responsibilities we have been given, how we stand with one another, and how we stand with God?

Imagine I have wronged you. Imagine I thoughtlessly cut you off in traffic, causing you to spill hot coffee all over your freshly detailed car, and perhaps even burning your hand. And imagine you pull up alongside of me, and give me a “hey, dude, what’s up with that!?” look. And imagine I attempt to show you my ring finger, but instead its neighboring and longer finger takes its place. And then you wave me off, disgusted. And then we both arrive here at the church parking lot, getting out of cars, face to face. Something has happened to our relationship. It has taken a hit. Whatever Shalom might have been present when our alarms went off is disrupted. Something stands between us and embrace, does it not?

Things of this nature, less severe and more, less ill intentioned and more, happen across the face of the earth, day by day, year by year. Shalom between us and one another is disrupted – we have hurt one another by sins of commission and omission. Shalom between us and our gifts and responsibilities is disrupted – we have not stewarded them well, or abandoned them, or exploited them for selfish purposes, or failed them. Shalom between us and God is disrupted – we blame him for things we cannot control, or we’ve cursed him to free ourselves for other pursuits, or we’ve gotten bad information about him and turned our backs on him for one reason or another. And grace, grace seems in short supply. Bitterness, anger, judgment, envy, hate, jealousy, disappointment – there is plenty of that to go around.

Now back to you and me standing outside our cars.

The Koran suggests an image of the scales of justice. That what matters, in the end, is the sum total of our actions, good and bad. And that if, in the end, the scales tip towards the good, all will be well. We will be received into Paradise to enjoy our reward. Which is a notion that holds a great deal of intuitive appeal to us.

But in a relational universe, it falls a little flat. What if I recount to you some of the wonderful things I’ve done…? Is that enough to restore Shalom…? Not likely. And if Allah lets me through the pearly gates, you perhaps might take issue with him and his scales.

What about Buddha? Here’s a story of Buddha’s approach to sorting out broken Shalom. [read story of the spit…]

There is, no doubt, great wisdom and challenging perspective present in that teaching. But it doesn’t set things right in a relational universe. It does eliminate a whole heck of a lot of sin – the sinful responses to sin sin. But part of the reason that Shalom is broken is that I am broken, and in my brokenness, I caused a rupture in Shalom between you and me. You may not have made the tear worse, but the tear is still there. Buddha gives a way forward, but Buddha’s way – at least, as best as I can understand it – doesn’t seem to attend to the disrepair left behind. And disrepair is a difficult foundation upon which to build an incorruptible new creation. Which is what we are all longing for, is it not?

Enter Jesus.

Grace to you and peace from God the Father.

Charis and Eirene.

Favor and Shalom.

Grace, Charis, Favor. This is the good news Jesus announces to us, demonstrates for us, embodies. Our present circumstances and condition do not indicate the Father’s heart towards us. Nor can we project his posture towards us by our posture towards him. The kingdom of God is near, at hand, here. In Jesus, he is inclined towards us, with goodness and mercy. Even in our distress, our mourning, our pain, our sin….

When Jesus is incarnated... (peace on earth, goodwill towards humankind…)

When Jesus heals…

When he invites…

When he dines…

When he blesses…

When he dies… (no greater love has anyone than this, than he lay down his life for his friend…)

This is the grace available to me in the nearness of God’s kingdom announced by Jesus, standing outside of the car. Grace that I trust by repenting… And this is the grace available to you in the nearness of God’s kingdom announced by Jesus, standing with me outside of the car. Grace that you can trust by extending forgiveness.

Grace, Charis, Favor. This is what we receive by trusting it. By trusting Jesus. This is what we place our faith in as we follow Jesus in giving it away to others. By repentance. By forgiving. By serving. By generosity. By practicing self-giving love. By loving our enemies. By speaking words of encouragement. By healing the sick. By casting out demons. By serving the poor. By working for justice. And on and on.

And what grace makes way for is peace. Eirene. Shalom.

First with the Father, of course. As we receive the grace of Jesus, we are delivered from exile. We become his brothers and sisters. We become adopted children of his Father. His Spirit is deposited in us, testifying with our spirit that we are God’s children. That all is right between us. That we are at home at last in his Kingdom.

And as we give grace away, expressions of exile all around give way to peace as well. To Eirene. To Shalom.

Forgiveness…

Service…

Generosity…

Repentance…

Just to name a few.

And this is how the Kingdom comes. This is how the heavens establish a foothold on the earth. This is how the gospel takes root. This is the good work begun in us that Jesus will bring to completion.

Peace. Eirene. Shalom. In every incarnation. Jesus, all in all, holding all things together, reconciling to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Practical Tips:

1. Repent to somebody. Do you perceive a lack of Shalom in a relationship? Perhaps you sinned. Perhaps you had a sinful response to sin. Own your bit and repent. It will be a step of trust in the Grace of God. Watch the kingdom come and make new foundations for shalom.

2. Forgive somebody. Perhaps somebody sinned against you. Perhaps somebody had a sinful response to your sin. Recognize the debt you are owed, and cancel it, in your heart at least. Watch the kingdom come and make new foundations for Shalom.

3. Give the Prince of Peace a chance. Trust the salvation Jesus offers for the disrupted Shalom between you and God, and you and yourself… Take note of the absence of peace in both of those areas, and decide to surrender your best attempts to make those things right and instead become his follower, responding to his invitation to come to him so that he can give you rest…

Hebrews 12: An Exercise in Receiving Gifts

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 02/27/2011

[to Zion video…]

⁴In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. ⁵And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as children? It says,

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,⁶because the Lord disciplines those he loves,and he chastens everyone he accepts as his child.”

⁷Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? ⁸If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate children at all. ⁹Moreover, we have all had parents who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! ¹⁰Our parents disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. ¹¹No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

¹²Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ¹³“Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

¹⁴Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. ¹⁵See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. ¹⁶See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. ¹⁷Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done.

¹⁸You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; ¹⁹to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, ²⁰because they could not bear what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.” ²¹The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.”

²²But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, ²³to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Hebrews 12:4-24

Running underneath this whole passage is a powerful truth. For the student of Jesus, in light of Jesus’ good news of the kingdom, life is an exercise in receiving gifts from God’s hand (and then going on from there). Jesus is a gift to us, and so we receive him, and we run with him to receive all the gifts that he is showing us the Father is pouring out on the face of the earth. Our brothers and sisters are gifts, and so we receive them, and we run with them to receive all of the gifts that they are showing us the Father is pouring out on the face of the earth. Our enemies are gifts, and so we receive them, and we run together with them. Now, and because Jesus is risen from the dead, and exalted to the right hand of God, when he is our Lord, Life is gift, and blessings of every sort are gift, and even discipline is gift if it’s from the Father, and even redemptive suffering is gift, if it joins us to our savior in his suffering. And so we receive the gift, and we run. Our new lives in Christ have begun as a gift, and so we run freely, as those for whom it is true that everything we have is gift we have received. We run freely, as those for whom it is true that more gift than we can possibly imagine awaits us. We are free to risk, because what we are risking is gift that we were given in the first place. And we are free to risk, because even if we should lose everything, what awaits us is a gift beyond even the gift we lost.

This truth is at the heart of why the passage says “God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.” Discipline is the tool we use to teach our children how to live so that they will thrive in the world they are entering as they grow up, is it not? They take something unauthorized, and we discipline them so that they will trust us to give to them what they need when they need it, and even to give them more than that, plenty to enjoy. They try to manipulate with tantrums and charm and deception, and we discipline them to teach them that they don’t need those tools in relationship with them – we love them and will provide for them out of that love. They get bitter and pout and complain, and we discipline them to teach them to control the storm that rages in them, because that storm will run their lives if they let it, and because that storm is stirred up by an ill-informed understanding of what is theirs by right, and what is gift. [Colin example…?]

As you may remember, the big theme in Hebrews is encouragement for us to join in the forward movement of God. Regardless of the risk, to run, like Jesus, with Jesus, the race set before us. The race that takes us out of comfort and safety and into deeper, more personal, more intimate, more vulnerable relationship with God. And with one another. And with the hurt and brokenness of this world. Because of the joy set before us. Because, through faith, we can see God’s good future ahead of us. Because, through faith, we see the heavenly Jerusalem. Because we have confidence in the promises of God’s kingdom, enough confidence that we welcome the beautiful reality of his rule and reign into the present every time we are faithful to Jesus, every time we forgive, and love our enemies, and pray for healing, and offer thanks in difficulty, and give generously, and sacrifice selflessly, and worship wholeheartedly, and pour ourselves out without demanding anything in return.

Here, towards the end of the letter, the author is holding twin realities in hand, offering them both to us as encouragement.

Reality 1: the race is hard, and that’s good, not bad. The hardness does not mean you are running the race in vain, or running the wrong race. Just the opposite! You are beloved children of a Father who is training to run this race so that you can know the joy set before you. The discipline you are experiencing is love, not punishment. So be encouraged. Go after it. Fix your eyes on Jesus, don’t give up!

Reality 2: every step of this race is gets its energy and power from the place the race started, and by the place the race ends. Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. It is a place of joy, of love – not of fear. And since we are sent on our way by love and with joy, and since we are heading, with joy, towards love, every footstep can be different.

Background: Two mountains, Sinai vs. Zion. Love at a distance, leaving room for fear, vs. Perfect love, which drives out fear.

Israel is set free from slavery in Egypt, receives the law at Sinai, and from there enters the promised land. All of which was a good thing, but ultimately not enough. Ultimately something pointing towards something better that was coming in Jesus. And the response of the Israelites to Sinai was fear and trembling, which God used to ultimately work his purposes, but which was not enough to open the door to new creation. And fear gets in the way of running this current race of joining in the forward movement of God. [stage 2…]

Now, we have been set free by Jesus from slavery to sin, and we have received his Holy Spirit in Jerusalem, on Mount Zion – the upper room an open doorway to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the place of God’s dwelling that will be joined to the earth when the Kingdom of God comes in its fullness, God come close in love made complete in Jesus. And now we are running the race that leads to that new promised land, not a land to be taken by sword, but by forgiveness. This race leaves from a place where perfect love has driven out fear, and leads to a place where fear serves no purpose, so we can run this race generously, with no fear. [stage 4…]

We are not used to a life founded on love, on receiving, on gift. We are used to a life founded on fear, on taking, on something owed to us. What happens when life is founded on fear, taking, something owed to us? We become aggressive, manipulative, bitter.

Think about the garden of Eden. The whole garden provided as gift. But we feared we were missing something. Something that should have been ours by right. So we took. And the peace was broken. Death entered. Shame. Fear. Cain killed his brother Abel, and Abel’s blood cried out from the ground. What did it cry out for? For vengeance. Something had been taken from him, and the blood draining from his fallen body wanted someone to take it back. All of our training is how to live in a world where we must take what we can, and where we must defend what we have from others who want to take from us. It is a world full of fears. Fears that someone will take from us. Fears that drive us to take for ourselves. Fears that leave us bitter.

Apart from the work of God in our lives through the gospel, our whole orientation to the world around us is fundamentally corrupted by the desire to take. It leads us to have expectations and demands, and when those expectations and demands are not met, we go off the rails of love. Everybody owes us something. We want something from everybody. Respect, maybe. Attention. Consideration. Loyalty. Favor. Support. Ego stroking. A whole host of practical things. And when we inevitably don’t get it, we have one of two sinful responses. Response 1 is that we try to take it, either through coercion or manipulation. We get aggressive, show our power, leverage the other’s weakness. Or we try guilt trips, or the silent treatment, or passive aggressive behaviors.

The problem with all of this is that it’s rooted in fear, not love, so it chokes out the life we are meant to receive from God and one another as a holy gift. No matter what God or your spouse or your kids or your friends or your neighbors or co-workers give you, if you take it from them as something you are owed instead of receiving it as a gift, the love is stripped from it. If you take it through coercion or manipulation, the love is stripped from it. And with the love stripped from it, it has no capacity to give you true life. And it won’t, therefore, be enough. So you will demand more. And take more. [examples…] Or, if you can’t get any more, or you give up on the possibility of getting what you need from them, you are in danger of response 2.

And response 2 is that we get bitter, and out of our bitterness, the relationship sours.

That’s what the root of bitterness is all about that this passage warns us to avoid. What is bitterness but our response when we fail to take what we think belongs to us, or when someone takes something from us, or when we think someone has been unjustly given more than we have? We are afraid that our perceived lack will, in the end, cost us something that matters, that we will lose out because we do not have what we are supposed to have. And so we are bitter.

That is not how life works in God’s good future, in the kingdom of God, in the new creation, when life is founded on love. What happens when life is founded on love, joy, gift? We become generous, free, risk-takers. The life of faith is the life of a person who receives everything and takes nothing, because everything good is a gift, and the giver of the gifts loves us and is not stingy with his gifts. The life of faith is the life of a person who recognizes that all that they have is a gift to be generously given away to others for the sake of God’s kingdom. For the sake of being like the giver. For the sake of demonstrating that the giver can be depended on. For the sake of opening the universe’s door to the gifts that have been stored up since the dawn of time. Because the gifts come from love, and the joy in them can only be unlocked when they are received as gifts, but never when they are taken as something owed.

“See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God…that no one is sexually immoral, or profane like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son…”

The race is all about the grace of God, the gifts freely given to his beloved children. Notice this exhortation about sexual immorality right here in the middle – so many forms of sexual immorality are about taking something that hasn’t been given as a gift; so much of having one’s sexuality consecrated to God is about receiving from God as good gift what he has given you, and giving yourself freely to that gift. That’s why there is this comment about Esau, the eldest son of Isaac, who had the gift of the birthright in his hand as a gift, and let it go to take a single meal he desperately wanted.

Every taking robs from you the possibility of truly enjoying a gift – tapping into the kind of joy that comes from the heavenly Jerusalem. When we take anything or anyone as ours instead of receiving as a gift given in love, even a good thing loses its power to bring life and joy.

Money, for example…take any amount and it won’t be enough. So you strive for more. And more. And more. And it is never enough. But receive any amount as a gift from God, and it is always more than enough…

Any relationship, for example…take something from the person as a demand, and you will always be left wanting more – and therefore becoming aggressive, or manipulative, or bitter. But receive what is given as a gift, seeking to give what you are called to give in love, and whatever is received as gift will be a container of joy. [we see this in parents of children with great difficulties so often, do we not? And how often is just the opposite the case in parents of children with great possibilities…?]

The life of the kingdom of God is all about enjoying the grace of God so that we are free to run, and risk, and give, knowing that the gifts will never run out.

This is why the author of Hebrews fixes our eyes on Jesus. He is the one who came to take nothing from us, who received everyone his Father gave to him as gift, who risked everything and gave away everything for the joy set before him, and who now has become our joy, the gift given to us that frees us to never need take from anyone, anywhere, ever again. His blood does not cry out “vengeance!”, but rather, “forgiveness!” Forgiveness to all of us who have taken from him. Forgiveness to all who have taken from us. Because this is the age of grace, of gift, of the kingdom of God.

This is why the author of Hebrews fixes our eyes on Mount Zion, the city of God, the future coming Kingdom that has already come near in Jesus. We need not be concerned with any outcomes with respect to our relationships with others, with respect to our work in this world, with respect to our service to God. The ultimate outcome is already in view,

You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, ²³to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

All that remains for us is to fix our eyes on Jesus, receive the gifts of grace abounding around us, and run, and receive, and run, and receive, and run, and receive, and while we run, give generously, forgive, risk, join God’s forward movement in the world without fear, full of faith.

Practical tips (to be done 1 step at a time):

1. Find the pain. Identify a painful relationship or role. Maybe look for one that sometimes inclines you to bitterness. Your spouse? Child? Parent? Friend? Work situation? Ministry?

2. Note the gain. Identify what you feel entitled to from that relationship or role, or if not entitled to, what you were hoping to gain from it, or want to get out of it; those things you are tempted to find a way to get from it, whether through aggression or subtler manipulation. Recognize that some of the pain you feel in that relationship or role comes from not getting what you “should” get out of it. Writing these things down may be helpful.

3. Trade the gain for the gift. Resolve to receive the person or people in that relationship, or the challenges and struggles of that role, as a gift. A gift to be received with joy, regardless of its current capacity for blessing. (Remember, Jesus received us as we were, with joy, as gift – even when we brought him, mainly, death.)

4. Lace up your shoes. Recognize that all of those things you have written down are already secured for you in Zion, from which your journey has begun, and to which your race is leading you. And that the one standing between you and them (mediating them) is Jesus, no one else. And that he will ensure you have what you need, when you need it, because he loves you. So run, and receive, and run, and receive, and while you run, give generously, forgive, risk, join God’s forward movement in the world without fear, full of faith.