Hope is Unexpected Mercy

Matthew 11:2-11

Advent 3

December 15, 2019

William G. Carter

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.” Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Advent is a journey of hope. We are three weeks into the season and there is a clash between hope and expectation. They are not the same thing. One of the Advent hymns speaks of Jesus as “our hope and expectation,”[1] but one is not the same as the other.  

We expect what we have experienced before. If you are here on Christmas Eve, you can expect to sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” “Joy to the World,” and “Silent Night,” what we affectionately call “The Big Three.” We have heard them before. We expect to hear them again.

If you are the kind of person who takes a pro-active approach to getting Christmas gifts, you have every reason to expect no surprises. Just make a list of size, color, and website address of every preferred item, then distribute the list to family members. That’s how expectations work. No surprises.

In our household, we expect to sleep in on the morning of December 25^th, especially now that the kids are grown and gone. We expect them to show up around 11 for brunch, open some gifts, maybe catch catnaps on the couch. Sometime around 3pm, I will slice chicken, peel shrimp, cut up vegetables, and make a feast of Thai food. Our family has done this a dozen times. They expect it and it will happen.

How different this is from hope! Hope is greater than expectation. The range is deeper, wider. Christians hope for the world to be saved, even if we’re still waiting for it to happen conclusively. We hope for Christ to appear again, even if we cannot expect how or when he will come. Some Christians hope in what they cannot yet see.

There is hope, and there is expectation. John the Baptist sits in a prison cell and hears what the Messiah has been doing. He has been preaching the hope of the Messiah. What he hears is not what he expects. He said the Messiah would chop down every unproductive tree and throw it into the fire. But Jesus doesn’t even have an axe. He must have given that up when he left the wood shop.

John said the Messiah would come with the burning fire of justice. He would baptize with the purging flames of God. But so far, John hasn’t seen so much as a flicker or caught a whiff of smoke. When is the fire coming? Or the winnowing fork? Jesus is not at all what he expected.  

Now, if he had been paying attention, perhaps he would have noticed some clues. John took an ascetic approach, fasting from fat foods and living with discipline. He expected the same of anyone who followed him and waited for the kingdom of God. By contrast, the disciples of Jesus lived unconstrained lives. They ate and drank like everybody else.

So John’s followers went to Jesus and said, “How come we fast all the time, but you and your followers do not?” Jesus smiled and said, “There’s a party going on. Don’t you see?” No, they didn’t see. John had taught them to turn their back on the world, and Jesus was embracing it. (9:14-17)

Another time, John got in trouble for denouncing Herod Antipas, the local ruler and son of Herod the Great. He was an unsavory character who got rid of his wife and married his half-brother’s wife. John was furious. He bellowed so loudly in the wilderness that Herod’s new wife said, “You have to shut him up or shut him down.” So Herod put him in prison, which is where today’s story takes place.

By contrast, Jesus didn’t preach against a public official. Not directly, and not like that. Given John’s pursuit of purity as a precondition for God’s Kingdom, no doubt he wondered why Jesus didn’t speak up about such things. So he wanted to know: are you the One who is to come, or should we look for another?

There is evidence that John influenced Jesus. When Jesus started preaching, he began by using John’s same sermon: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” But while John remained in the desert, Jesus left the desert behind and traveled among the villages.

John Dominic Crossan, the historian, suggests this might have been a significant difference between the two. He says, “John the Baptist had a monopoly, while Jesus created franchises.” Now what does that mean?

Well, John took a cue from Jerusalem, where the one and only temple was established. In that time, if you wanted to purify your sins or offer a sacrifice, you went to the Jerusalem Temple. It was the only show in town, the one place where you could interact with the Lord of Heaven. It was the monopoly.

John appears in the wilderness and preaches the kingdom is near. Get ready. Scrub your soul. Get your sins washed away. And if you heard the message and wanted to do that, you had to leave where you were and go where John was located. He was the prophet, the forerunner of the kingdom, the monopoly of expectation. You went out to the Jordan River. That’s where he was.

Meanwhile, Jesus didn’t sit still. He moved around. He went to this village and cured a man who couldn’t see. He went to a synagogue in another town and cured a man with a withered arm. Then he went to the seashore and fed five thousand people. Then he rode in a boat to another town, cured a wild man and let the demons kill some pigs, and then said, “Don’t tell anybody,” which is precisely the way the word spread.

Everywhere he went, Jesus started another outpost of grace, one small kingdom franchise after another. John didn’t understand. How could he? He expected a big, dramatic event – a large scale Day of the Lord. What Jesus created was a movement, one soul at a time. How are you going to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven if it’s one person at a time?

Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for another? That is John’s question.

When he reflects on this passage, scholar Dale Bruner focuses on the work Jesus was doing while John was in prison. The miracles happened in the outlying areas of Galilee, out in the sticks, what Bruner likes to call “northern Idaho.” You might expect the Messiah to go to the city, to do something big, to make a lot of noise, to set up golden flares and get some attention. That’s not the way he works.

As Bruner notes, Jesus has not yet attacked the evil forces of the reigning political or economic powers; he simply picks up the pieces left by those evil forces. Some would deride this as “an ambulance ministry, picking up the crushed victims of evil structures but failing to combat those evil structures themselves.”[2] The Christ simply drives around in his ambulance, healing this person, restoring that one, lifting up this one. For now, it seems that is the work he does.

John expects something bigger. Something grander. Something louder. He wishes his hands were unshackled, because he’d really like to scratch his head. Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for another? The question is still a live one. It lies at the heart of our Gospel expectations.

Back when I was new in pastoral ministry, I found myself surrounded by religious prophets like John. These zealots were fired up on the great issues of the day. They were going to eliminate nuclear weapons, to the glory of God. They were going to create enormous programs to eliminate hunger in the world. These friends would create rallies, go to the Capital, preside over an exorcism of a tank, preach in the words of the prophet Amos, denounce global greed and international indebtedness. Their passion was stirring.

That was thirty-five years ago. These days, most of those friends have left the Gospel ministry. A good number burned out. They couldn’t sustain the large-scale passion. They tossed in the towel. Or like John, they lost their heads.

And do you know who is still staying at it? The pastor of an 80-member church in a town nobody can find, preaching every week, making hospital calls, and taking casseroles to the homebound. He isn’t trying to change the world. No, but he’s part of a movement to give sight to the sightless, open ears of those who haven’t been listening, lift up those on weary legs, welcome home the leper, and preach Good News to people who would otherwise not get any good news. People like him offer hope through expressions of mercy.

I used to read this story and think, “Why is John the Baptist missing the point?” I’d kick him for a while and say, “Why don’t you get it?” Then it struck me one day that few of us really get it – and the reason why we don’t get it is that it’s so easy to miss.

Hundreds of years before Jesus, a prophet named Zechariah foretold a future savior: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming… He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim. He will cut off the war-horse from Jerusalem. He will cut off the bow and arrow, and command peace to the nations.” Now, listen – that’s the kind of king we need. Nobody is going to push him around. He has a lot of power. He has a lot of authority.

And Zechariah says, “Look again!” Here comes your triumphant king: he is humble and riding on a donkey. He is not riding the white horse of battle. The victorious king rides on the foal of a farm animal.[3] It’s no wonder that people trickle away when Jesus rides into the holy city. They want power and military might; instead they get Jesus.

In my devotional reading last week, I found a few lines from J.B. Phillips. He gets right to the heart of why it’s so easy to miss that what we’re looking for is already here. He writes:

What we are in fact celebrating is the awe-inspiring humility of God, and no amount of familiarity with the trappings of Christmas should ever blind us to its quiet but explosive significance. For Christians believe that so great is God’s love and concern from humanity that [God] himself became a [human being]. Amid the sparkle and the color and music of the day’s celebration we do well to remember that God’s insertion of himself into human history was achieved with an almost frightening quietness and humility. There was no advertisement, no publicity, no special privilege; in fact the entry of God into his own world was almost heartbreakingly humble.[4]

No wonder John doubted. God’s entry into the world was so quiet that even Jesus’ favorite preacher wasn’t sure it had happened. Before we criticize John for that, take note that this is how Messiah comes to us: not among the high and mighty, although he is certainly capable of it. No, he shows up among the disappointed, the misfit, the infirmed, the poor, and those who limp. This is where the good news in announced. This is where the Christ breaks in.

And if that is so, maybe we can look at Christmas differently. Maybe we thought Christmas is God’s gift to us. What if we could make Christmas a gift for somebody else?

In some quiet way, in the name of the Quiet Christ, go out of your way for somebody else. Invite into your home someone that you would rarely think to invite. Build into your family celebration somebody who isn’t related to you. Go down to the hospital or the nursing home and visit somebody. Make a generous gift to people who have far less than you. Put on a funny hat and sing joyful songs at the dreary shopping mall. Take some joy to somebody unexpected. Let hope be born through your works of mercy.

In the quietest of ways, God entered his own world in the birth of Jesus. Jesus grew up to continue the quiet workings of grace. In the power of his resurrection, he continues hie work, though largely unrecognized. What the world needs most is already here. Hope is already among us. And hope is best received by those who see what others overlook.

(c) William G Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] “Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers,” 4^th stanza

[2] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Christbook: Matthew 1-12 (Waco: Word, 1987) 409-410.

[3] Zechariah 9:9-10

[4] J.B. Phillips, “The Dangers of Advent” in Waiting for the Light (Farmington PA: The Plough Publishing House, 2001) 22.

Hope is Replacing the Artificial

Matthew 3:1-12

Advent 2

December 8, 2019

William G. Carter

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

We begin a second week in the season of Advent, so we will talk about hope. Advent is the season of hope.

Today we encounter John the Baptist, that strange preacher in the wilderness. He dresses in the animal skins of an Old Testament prophet. He keeps to a desert-based diet. There is fire in his eyes and there is fire on his tongue. And everybody went out to hear him.

That might be the most curious detail. Why would anyone go to hear a preacher who yells at them?

I remember the preachers I have heard. There haven’t been many screamers, but there were a few. In the preaching class in seminary, we had a Baptist from New Rochelle. He introduced us to the rhythms and tones of African American preaching. His enchanting sermon was a forty-minute journey that seemed like a few ticks of the clock. When it was done, it had reached such a crescendo, we hadn’t realized he was yelling.

By contrast, there was another preacher who took to the pulpit to denounce our school’s investment policies. I guess he must have done a lot of research. His message was full of energy. It started at high decibels and went even higher. It was a ten-minute sermon and seems like an hour. All he did was yell. Nobody was listening.

And then, there was the preacher in Scotland, on the outskirts of Stornoway. That morning’s sermon was nearly an hour. Now, I know that sounds unbearable, but in that little town, they don’t go into comparison shopping. Everybody goes to church. He stood and spoke with passion and energy, rising to a high pitch. It was in Gaelic and I didn’t understand a word – but from the fire in his eyes, I knew exactly what he was talking about. When 6 p.m. came around, we went back to hear him again.

From experience, I know why everybody went out to hear John the Baptist. It wasn’t the volume. It was the passion. He meant what he said. He didn’t waste words. He got right to the point. And everybody came.

Certainly there was the spectacle of it all. Most of the other preachers were talking in their sleep. But when John spoke, everybody was wide awake. He spoke to their memory, evoking the prophets from 500 years before. He spoke to their future, pointing to the Messiah who was already on the way. When memory and the future come together, hope is born. “Repent,” he said with fire, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

John did his work at the Jordan River. That’s about 27 miles from Jerusalem, which people would have traveled by foot. That’s 27 miles downhill, a drop of about 3700 feet in elevation – just to hear the preacher! And then you have to walk back uphill. I don’t know a lot of people who would walk eight hours (each way) to hear a nine-word sermon. That’s about an hour per word, especially if you stop to take a breath.

But the people came. They came from all over. They came from Jerusalem and all the region of Judea. They heard John preach and had their sins washed away.

We had a conversation with our men’s group on Thursday morning. What would it take for people to confess their sins? To tell the truth about what they have done wrong and what they have left undone? What would it take to ‘fess up and say what’s really going on? The guys in the group said that’s a really good question.

Many of us get to that prayer in our worship bulletin and treat it like a speed bump. Just slow down a little bit and keep going. No reason to scrape the undercarriage of your soul. I often advise our worship leaders to slow it down even more. Give them 30 seconds for the silent confession; I know what some of them have been up to. Yet even then, it’s tempting to keep it light.

I ran into a friend who is going through a terrible divorce. The Pennsylvania law may say there’s a no-fault divorce, but it’s always more complicated than that. Certainly there’s the case for my friend. Hadn’t seen him since the news of the break-up. I caught his eye when nobody else was around: “How are you doing?” With a big plastic smile, he said, “I’m doing just fine.”

I pushed gently and said, “I’m here for you if you need me.” He smiled even more broadly, “Hey, I’m doing great.”

What would it take for any of us to be honest enough to reveal our own wreckage? Good question.

Down at the Jordan River, the Pharisees and Sadducees show up. What are they doing there? They represent the Jerusalem Establishment! The Pharisees were the Bible Keepers, guardians of morality, purists in every regard – and they come to hear the preacher who dined on locusts. The Sadducees were the high brows, the liturgical elite, the religious nobility, and the families from which all the highest priests were named.

There they are – traveling perhaps by chariot, to hear John preach and step up to the river for their turn to get baptized. Clearly, they believed this was the thing to do. All the peasants were there. The whole country was abuzz with the appearance of John.

Some suggest there might have been ulterior motives at work. The Pharisees hated the Roman army that occupied their land. If John declared God’s kingdom is near, that the Messiah is coming on his white horse of power, they might want to be first in line to greet him.

And the Sadducees? They were willing to give a pass to the Romans as long they didn’t interfere in their priestly duties and the commensurate income. Perhaps they came to keep an eye on the Pharisees, to make sure they didn’t rabble-rouse around the edges. Who can say?

As we heard, John the Baptist won’t have any of it. He calls them out as snakes. He accuses them of coming only to get a pass to keep them out of hell. He denounces their assumption that privilege will put them on the right side of God. “I don’t care who your granddaddy says he was; you’re all a brood of vipers.”

At heart, what is he saying? He is saying that they are faking it. That they are going through the motions. That they show up only for the benefits of an appearance. That they really have no interest in preparing a way for the Lord to reach their own hearts.

So we dwelled with the question in our men’s group: what would it take for people to truly confess their sins? It would have to be something more than noticing it’s the next item on the worship agenda. It would have to be the clear and present knowledge that God is truly knocking at the door, that the kingdom of heaven is just about here.

To put it in Jesus-language, to wake up and realize that the Light of the World is here, and he is going to expose every dark corner in our hearts, every broken deed whether done or left undone, every foul thought and every hurtful word. We might as well say what it is, because it will all be revealed sooner or later.

Here's how Frederick Buechner once put it:

“To confess your sins of God is not to tell God anything God doesn’t already know. Unless you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.” (Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC)

God can get to you, in other words. It requires making a way for God to come closer, removing the roadblocks, straightening the highway, lifting the valleys and leveling the mountains. No more excuses, just honesty. No more faking it or putting on appearance, just being real. This is our spiritual work for Advent: getting real. Replacing the artificial with the truth.

Every Advent, I re-read an essay from Alfred Delp. He was a Jesuit priest who resisted Hitler and the Nazis, and paid the ultimate price for it. Here is what he wrote from a prison camp, as a warning to his own nation when it was intoxicated with power and consumed with mendacity:

Advent is the time for rousing. We are shaken to the very depths, so that we may wake up to the truth of ourselves. The primary condition for a fruitful and rewarding Advent is renunciation, surrender. We must let go of all our mistaken dreams, our conceited poses and arrogant gestures, all the pretenses with which we hope to deceive others and others. If we fail to do this, stark reality may take hold of us and rouse us forcibly in a way that will entail both anxiety and suffering.

The alternative, of course, is to surrender to God, which is always a surrender to grace. We do not let down our guard and fear that heaven will hurt us. We let it down because heaven is moving toward us – and heaven can heal us. That is our ultimate hope.

So John the Baptist appears in the stark wilderness with a fierce promise. God is on the way. God will see us clearly. We cannot presume that God will take us as we are. This is the invitation to change, to drop our bad habits, to straighten out our souls, to name the brokenness that has been lingering far too long, and to present ourselves for healing.

We cannot do any of this on our own, nor do we have to. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Help is on the way.

So rather than cross our arms and say, “John’s not speaking to me,” let us move toward the One who is moving toward us. God’s intent from the beginning has been for us to live completely in Christ’s light, with no shame, but complete peace.

This is the Advent invitation, for you, for me, for all who can hear John preach. The Lord is at hand; turn around and come home.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Hope is the Holy Disruption

Matthew 24:36-44(51)

Advent 1

December 1, 2019

William G. Carter

Jesus said, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Today is the beginning of the Advent season, so I want to talk about hope. Hope is a big word, so it will take a while; four weeks, in fact.  For such a time as this, there is no better word than hope.

But what do we mean by that word “hope”? What exactly is it?

Some define hope as optimism, looking on the bright side, the expectation that all will turn out well. Left to my own devices, that’s what I have commonly thought.

·        I hope the snowstorm doesn’t keep us here overnight; I can’t say for sure, but I hope to get home.

·        I hope to get everything on my Christmas wish list; to tell the truth, I haven’t bothered to make a list, not yet, but if I do, I hope to get everything on it.

·        I hope the final Star Wars movie turns out ok, that good wins over evil; that’s a reasonable expectation for the ninth and final episode of a film series that has continued through most of my adult life.

Be positive – that’s the message. It is a peculiarly American message. 

There are a lot of preachers out there who have turned the Gospel into a success story. Believe it and you can become it, they say. It’s a message that sells pretty well among the poor. See some guy in a white suit and white shoes, flying around in his own private jet, in an arena full of people who want what he has. And he smiles and says, “You can have it.” He’s selling hope; except that’s not what the Bible calls hope, and it's not for sale.

What is hope? Is it wishing for something, even if you can’t be sure if it’s going to happen?

·       When you blow out the birthday candles, make a wish, and maybe it will come true.

·       When you’re finished with the Thanksgiving turkey, extract that Y-shaped bone, the wishbone; two of you tug on it, and the winner may get what she wants. Is that hope?

·       See the scenes of people risking their lives to save their children at wartime, or to cross a well-guarded border to pursue a better life for their families. They might not make it, but they hope so. It’s a form of wishing.

I remember the Scottish proverb from 1628, when I was a little boy: “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.” Or the wisdom of Perry Como, 1951: “If wishes were kisses, I’d still be kissing you.” Or Frank Herbert, the science fiction writer: “If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast our nets.” Sadly, wishing doesn’t make it so. It falls short of what the Bible calls “hope.”

So what it hope? Listen to Jesus describe the coming of the Son of Man, not the first coming, nor the intermediate arrivals, but the final coming: “It will come like the flood of Noah, a total surprise; people will be eating and drinking and going to weddings – and BAM, then it comes.”

“So will it be with the coming of the Son of Man,” he says. Two folks will be picking vegetables in the field; one is taken and the other is left. Two peasants will be grinding out the grain. One will be taken and the other is left. Which one do you want to be? The one who is taken or the one who is left? I don’t know. If it's like a flood, I hope to be left. Either way, that’s missing the point. Hope is not a preference. Nor is it a privilege.

No, do you know what hope is? Hope is a punctured sky. Today, that’s my definition. Hope is when we are going about our business down here, doing our chores, living our lives, thinking this is all it’s ever going to amount to anything – and God sticks a finger through the dome above our heads and we discover there’s something so much more.

Hope is hearing the Son of Man is coming. Suddenly you realize the world is not going to stay the way it is. The systems that demean and defraud are not going to stand. The flattening of human relationships into use and abuse will no longer be the rule. The reduction of human life to empty consumerism will not abide.

Here’s the real question for Black Friday: did God create us in the divine image and blow Holy Breath into our lungs, so that we could get another half-price flat screen TV? I hope not.

Christ is coming. That is the truth that punctures the sky. It rips the lid off the closed systems of human operations. It is light that floods the darkness. It is love that exposes all the hurt that God’s people have done to one another. It is the announcement that cruelty, greed, ignorance, and rebellion have run their course; now it is God’s turn to rule over human life.

If all we hope for is a pair of socks and an air fryer for Christmas, it’s not much of a hope. But if God has broken in somehow, if the Living Christ has spoken a word we can no longer ignore, if the Holy Spirit is stirring the pot and something new is bubbling up, that’s where hope comes to us. Hope is a gift from God, a summons to wake from sleep and embrace God’s future.

That’s how the prophets of Israel understood hope. Isaiah is the one we hear today. God gives him a glimpse of the day when people will take hammers and pound their weapons into farm tools. They will bend all their spears into pruning hooks that they can use to tend their vineyards. The vision punctures the status quo.

Somebody I know worked for a company that made armaments, heard Isaiah’s vision, and said, “That wouldn’t be good for business.” All I could remember was Charles Dickens and the words of Marley’s Ghost: “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.”

He pushed back and said, “OK, but do you know how disruptive that is?” Sure do; and when Jesus Christ comes in power and glory, do we really think this tired old world is going to keep going on the way it was?

This is our hope, our disruptive, holy hope: that Christ is coming, once and for all. While we wait, Christ remains with us, invisible but frequently noticeable, silent yet still speaking, comforting while yet agitating. He is like a prophet of God who is not content to let us sleep. And he is so much more than a prophet.

So take heart, my friends. Keep your heads up high. Sink your confidence into what God reveals among us. Trust what you have heard but cannot yet see, for every word is true.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

The Ideal King Has Wounds

Colossians 1:11-20, Luke 23:33-43

Christ the King

November 24, 2019

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

I was twenty-five years old when I discovered a new hymn. Having grown up in the church, I thought I knew them all. We sang from the old red Presbyterian hymnal in the church where I grew up, the 1955 edition with all the hymns that were fit to print. Thanks to our pastor, we sang them all. I learned as much faith from those hymns as I ever did from pulpit or classroom.

So when the graduating class at my seminary took a poll to select our graduation hymn, I naturally made a lot of suggestions. My family took me to church every week. I was loaded with recommendations. To my astonishment, I was vastly outvoted. My classmates picked something I had never heard and never sang. When I inquired, a friend said, “I think it’s a Lutheran hymn.”

I had never heart of it. He said, “You never heard it? What’s wrong with you?” A few weeks later we lined up to process down the aisle of the Princeton University Chapel. The organ fired up, a brass quartet blended in, and we sang, “Lift High the Cross, the love of Christ proclaim.” It was stirring. It was powerful. It was triumphant -and therefore a little weird.

“Lift High the Cross”? Celebrate the crucifixion? It portrays the death of Jesus as a joyful event, puts the “good” in Good Friday. Have you ever considered how strange that is?

Years ago, the gothic chapel at Duke University was rented out for a movie set. The film was Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The original film was filmed at Duke before it recently was re-created for cable TV. The producer booked the chapel during spring break, and then erected a gallows on the lawn outside the chapel. They filmed a terrifying scene of an execution outside of this enormous Christian chapel. Word spread, critics called it sacrilegious, tempers flared.

When the chapel preacher arrived on Sunday morning, here’s this gallows erected outside his church. It wasn’t just any Sunday. Spring break coincided with Palm Sunday! People were furious. He said, “Now, wait a second. I agree this is scandalous, horrifying, and wrong. But if you look inside the chapel, right behind the altar, you’ll see the cross, an instrument of capital punishment. If we are true to the Christian story, the cross was a first-century Roman gallows.”[1]

He's right about that. The Roman Empire crucified troublemakers to display as a bad example. That’s why the crucifixion of Jesus took place right along a heavily traveled highway outside of Jerusalem. It happened at Passover, when the traffic was higher than any other time of the year. The message was clear: don’t do what these people did. Keep in line or this could happen to you.

Crucifixion was a brutal death. Arms extended, full weight of your body bearing down, the prisoners died of suffocation. It could take three to five days, unless you were beaten severely as Jesus was. Then it might take three hours.

And that anybody would look on this scene, and then sing, “So shall our song of triumph ever be: praise to the Crucified for victory… Lift high the cross!” What is it, that turns this horrible, wretched scene into a moment of triumph?

The New Testament suggests a lot of answers, all based on the deep reflection of people of faith. One of the most common is that “Jesus died for our sins.” (1 Peter 3:18). We hear that a lot, even say it a good bit. It’s a scapegoat idea, drawn from the sacrifices of Jewish temple religion. In the 16th chapter of Leviticus, the priest presents a goat to be sacrificed – a scapegoat. The blood of that pure animal atone for the sins of the people.

Some Jewish writers like the apostle Paul thought of the cross of Christ this way. As he wrote to the Corinthian church, “God made (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21). Paul says this was done “for our sake.” Christ died for sins.

Over the years, as Christian people thought about this, and thought some more about this, theological circles were added. Some declared it was God’s will that Jesus should suffer, drawing on the words of the prophet Isaiah. Then somebody else said it was God’s intent from the dawn of time to send Jesus to die; however that seems to speed by all the life-giving work that he did (the healings and the feedings) and all the life-giving wisdom he taught. Everything is reduced to the cross, an event set on autopilot at creation.

The problem with reducing all this is that it ignores the mess that people generally keep making of things, and the original intent of God to make a beautiful world in a beautiful universe. As surely as we can say “Jesus died for our sins,” we can equally say he died as a result of our sins. People crucified the Lord. The cross is a collision between the will of God and the willfulness of human beings. It is the worst thing we have ever done.

So why do we lift it up high? What’s the Good in Good Friday?

Well, listen to what Luke hears. In the third Gospel, the Son of God comes into our midst with prophetic love for all, and we do away with him. Just like all the prophets before him! It’s an enormous mistake. We do our worst – yet on the cross, God in Christ does his best. Luke hears Jesus say, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Or to translate that more literally, “Father, forgive them, they are clueless…”

According to Luke, that is the recurring diagnosis of the human family. It’s still going on. Breathe in toxic substances, and we wonder why our lungs are damaged. Put toxins in the atmosphere, and we wonder why the weather goes haywire. Sell weapons to people of other nations and wonder why they turn on us. Give violent video games to our children and wonder why they are combative and unable to concentrate. We know better, but we don’t really get it.

So hear Jesus pray: “Father, forgive them.” That’s the prayer that he offers with that sign over his head, “This is the king of the Jews.” Father, forgive us, all of us. I tell you the truth, the Gospel truth: my life depends on the answering of that prayer. So does yours.

When Christian people speak about the cross, one way or another they declare it is inevitable. Either God set it up or people cooked it up. It could be either; it’s probably both. What matters is what happens there: Christ prays for forgiveness – for the cancelling of the sins that put him there – and we trust God has answered this prayer. That’s what make all the difference.

In the high language from our reading in Colossians, the event is a reconciliation, a balancing of accounts, a cancellation of debt and debtors. It’s the making of peace between heaven and earth, and it happens, says the text, “through the blood of his cross.”

Is Jesus the scapegoat? The sacrificial Lamb? Is he the Passover lamb, as the Gospel of John suggests? Is he the innocent victim of the Gospel of Luke? All the above, and then some. The truth about Christ and what he has accomplished is far great than one specific description . . . because he is the king, the true king even on the cross.

To speak of Jesus and what he has done will always lead us to the brink of paradox, which is exactly how the New Testament portrays the immensity of his grace. We will have a taste of this in the hymn by Sylvia Dunstan which we will sing in a few minutes. The title itself is a paradox: “You, Lord, Are Both Lamb and Shepherd.” Well, which is it? Is he the Lamb? Or is he the Shepherd? The New Testament says, “yes.” Listen to what the hymn goes on to declare:

Clothed in light upon the mountain, stripped of might upon the cross,

Shining in eternal glory, beggared by a soldier’s toss…

You, who walk each day beside us, sit in power at God’s side.

You, who preach a way that’s narrow, have a love that reaches wide…

Worthy is our earthly Jesus! Worthy is our cosmic Christ!

Worthy your defeat and victory; worthy still your peace and strife…

You, who are our death and life.[2]  

All of it is true – and it is held together in the truth of God. A month from tonight is Christmas Eve. We will light candles and sing, “Silent Night, holy night, Son of God, love’s pure light…Jesus, Lord, at this birth.” Have you ever considered the immensity of what we sing? That a child, born to peasants and laid to rest in a feeding trough, is the ruler over all things. It’s mind-boggling. It doesn’t compute easily – because it’s that enormous. It’s the stuff of paradox.

Or the subject for today: the profound truth that the King of the Universe rules from a cross. A couple of jokers put a sign above his head that said, “Here’s your king.” He has no crown, so they weave him a crown of thorns. He has no royal robe, so they give him a make-believe robe, make fun of him, and then take it back and gamble it away. He possesses nothing, yet he gives us everything – for he prays, “Father, forgive them.” Rather than punish us, God answers that prayer.

So maybe we shouldn’t live by punishment, since God has forgiven all of us.

·        Maybe we should be careful about punishing others, since God in Christ has already forgiven them.

·        Maybe we should lighten up and refuse to punish ourselves, since God in Christ has forgiven us too.

·        Maybe we could reconsider a lot of the ways the evil world works and work a good bit harder at living by mercy, if only because the mercy of God is the only reason any of us are still here.  

I think that’s the good news. What do you think?

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] https://indyweek.com/culture/screen/forgotten-handmaid-s-tale-movie-filmed-durham-missing-link-classic-novel-hulu-hit/

[2] Sylvia Dunstan, “You, Lord, Are Both Lamb and Shepherd,” Glory to God, # 274.

Equipped for Every Good Work

2 Timothy 3:10-4:5

Ordinary 31

November 3, 2019

William G. Carter

Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.

A good friend tells how he learned the Bible. It wasn’t in church or Sunday School; no, by the time he was old enough to sit still for all of that, he already knew the scriptures. It began on his mother’s lap. From the time he could remember anything, his mother used to read to him a chapter from the King James Bible, a chapter a day. If he wiggled, she said, “Be still. You need Jesus.” He later discovered that’s how she was raised, too.

She was no fundamentalist, but she had been raised to take scripture seriously. It is a gift from those who came before us, offered to keep our lives rooted in the love and justice of God, so that we are able to withstand whatever life throws at us.

And when my friend’s mother was dying, he sat beside her bed to read her a chapter out of that same, well-worn King James Bible. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.”

So old Paul says to young Timothy, “As for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” 

What is the first Bible passage that you learned? When did you learn it? Think back for a minute and see if you recall.

That favorite psalm, Psalm 23, is one of the first engraved on my memory. I don’t know if it came first from church or at home, but it’s never left me. As the English translations of scripture change and evolve, that old version from 1611 is the one that sticks with me. I don’t spend enough time in green pastures. Nor do I sit sufficiently beside the still waters. But my soul has been restored over and over again. The One who restores it is the Creator of the green pastures and still waters. The Bible names it, even before I believe it.

When Paul speaks of scripture, he is thinking of his Jewish Bible. Not the Christian Bible, because that was far from finished; this letter would not be declared authoritative to the church for another three hundred years. Paul was referring to the Torah, to the foundational stories. God created the heavens and the earth, God created you and me and declared us “good.” When we went bad, God wiped out the world with a flood, saving only Noah’s families and the animals; then God realized that punishment was a big mistake and put the rainbow in the sky as a perpetual Post-It note: “Don’t do that again.”

Then God said to Abram and Sarai, “I choose you to be a blessing to all the families on the earth, with descendants as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore.” That’s when the story got interesting. And Paul says, “Everything we need to know is there in the book.” Do you want to know who you are? Where you come from? It’s in the book.

Someone in one of our Bible reading groups was grumbling about the book. Specifically, she and her group were reading through the prophets. I could sympathize. The prophetic books are full of unpunctuated sermons, mostly written as free-verse poetry. You can’t tell who is doing the speaking – is it God? The prophet? Or the people? Can’t always tell.

It’s also difficult to tell the context. God was speaking through the prophets over hundreds of years. A lot of things can happen over eight hundred years. But if your country is coming unraveled, and your leaders are lying to you every day, and the very few at the top of the food chain are getting exponentially richer while everybody else is struggling, suddenly the biblical prophets make a lot of sense especially when they speak of justice and righteousness and truth.

When I was growing up during the Civil Rights era, we didn’t hear anything about the Bible’s prophets. They were not mentioned in our Sunday School material. We never heard any of them speak, unless it was the week before Christmas, and old Isaiah would say, “The Messiah is coming!” That was how it was in the white church where I was raised.

Meanwhile in the African American churches, they heard from the prophets every week. Martin Luther King Jr. loves to preach sermons on texts from the prophet Amos. His “I have a dream” speech was inspired by the dreams of the prophet Isaiah. When they tried to get King to quiet down, he could quote the prophet Jeremiah, how the good news burned within like a “fire in his bones.” In response, he was treated like a prophet. Somebody tried to silence him as they tried to silence all the prophets – yet his voice rings out. He found his voice in the Book.

The prophets of God speak of the holy day of judgment that cast out the evildoers and establish God’s justice. If we didn’t have the scriptures, we would be misled to think the evildoers will always win. But we know better. We have been shown the mind of God.

We have the Torah, God’s instruction; we have the Prophets, God’s light in every season of darkness. In between, we have proverbs, the love poetry of Solomon, the wisecracking cynic of Ecclesiastes, and we have the Psalms. It has been said – and I now believe – that everything we need to know about God is in the Psalms.

The overarching theme of the Psalms is that God rules over all things. Take note that it doesn’t say that “God is in charge;” that is a distortion by those who have control issues, but rather it says God rules over all things. “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence.” Of course, the people of earth ignore that and chatter away. If we spent more time in silence, we might discover that God inhabits silence.

The Psalms declares our help is not in the mountains. The mountains are where the fake minor league deities of the Canaanites hang out. They can’t save you. They merely invite you to consume more and waste what you have. God is so much bigger than that – for God created the mountains, and created the storms, and created the sun and the moon and the stars. So who are we? We are the children that God created a “little less than the angels.” It’s in the book. That’s why we have the book.

Keep thumbing through the Psalms, and you find the deep questions and paradoxes that beguile us. Why do the wicked prosper? How long will selfishness and perversity persist?  Why does God linger when we are in trouble? The Bible is honest enough to ask what we are afraid to ask. As surely as we read the Bible in our search for wisdom, we discover that the Bible reads us. God knows who we are – because God rules over all things.

So when the Bible announces how God so loves the world to enter the world through Jesus and rescue us, that’s good news! And when the Bible calls us to join in the work of Jesus, we know who we are, we know what we’re up against, and we know who is ultimately going to win – for God rules over all.

I suppose people come to church for all kinds of reasons. Some people come because they like to sing, others because they like to eat. Some come because they are seeking something important to do.

There’s that story of the Jewish man who asked his father, “Why do you go to synagogue?” “There are many reasons why a person would go to synagogue,” replied his father. “Take Silverberg. He goes to synagogue to talk to God. Me? I go to synagogue to talk to Silverberg.”[1]

There is no shortage of reasons why we are here. At the heart of them all is the central act of opening the Bible and releasing it into the air. This is the book that contains the Breath of God. As one poet says so well,

I open the Bible and a wind comes out of the book.

I close the Bible and the wind keeps blowing.[2]

That’s the true meaning of “inspiration” – the Spirit of God blows this Book alive and “we are equipped for every good work.”

Without the scriptures, and the preachers and teachers who open it, we are prone to a lot of opinions. As in the days of Paul and Timothy, there is no shortage of crazy ideas and looney tune notions.

One so-called “spirit store” sells high-priced quartz crystals, professing if you hold them a certain way, they will reveal the mysteries of the universe. Wow, the mysteries of the universe, you say? You still need to pick up a quart of milk on the way home.

Somebody else declares she is true-blue guru and invites you to the mystic waterfall of a South Seas island. The price tag for the trip is $12,000. Before you go, ask her: how did you get to become a true-blue guru? “I paid somebody else, took the trip myself, and there the earth called out to me.” Really? Well, you still need a ride home from the airport.

“Put your hands on the television set and you will be healed,” says the preacher with the white shoes and the hair that defies gravity. Wow! Does this mean that I can get along without medical insurance? Hmm… did you ever notice those faith-healers don’t work in hospitals?

So we come together, open the Bible together, and wait for God to speak. Sometimes the Voice is immediate. Other times the Voice is mediated through human words and deeds. Most of the time the Voice seeps in secretly, sinks down deeply, to be brought alive when the time is right.  

Old Paul says to young Timothy - and old Timothy says to us - “As for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” The scriptures are the meeting place for God and God’s people. And they are sufficient “to equip us for every good work.”

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Quoted by Thomas G. Long, “Why Are We Here?” The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Vol. 10, issue 1, p. 52

[2] From Tom Troeger, 2001 meeting of the Homiletical Feast.