God is Still Speaking

Acts 2:1-21
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15


The United Church of Christ has a promotional campaign with the slogan, “God is Still Speaking”. I think that comes through loud and clear in today’s readings. God is Still Speaking. Jesus is no longer physically present with us. Just like the wind, we can’t see God. But God is Still Speaking.

It seems that on that first day of Pentecost the disciples spoke in tongues. Ecstatic speech had been known among bands of religious for centuries. But what is so amazing, the narrative tells us, is not that they spoke in languages they themselves did not know or understand, but that people from all over the known world heard them and understood that they were speaking about God’s deeds of power. The Holy Spirit gave them the words that enabled other people to hear about God.

In the gospel reading, Jesus says, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.” This idea of testifying or witnessing is a theme which runs all the way through the Gospel of John. The Holy Spirit continues to speak in our hearts and minds and tell us the mighty deeds of God, and not just tell us about them, but draw us into them. God is on a mission; a mission to reconcile all things, all beings to Godself. The Holy Spirit invites us into that great adventure by witnessing to us, by telling us what God is doing. And it is our challenge to testify to each other about God’s work in our lives.

God is still speaking. God is speaking today, in this moment. But God does not use a megaphone. God never forces herself on us… The voice of the Holy Spirit is often quiet. If you are not clear whether you are hearing Spirit’s voice or the voice of your own mind, know that the Spirit’s voice is always gentle and often quiet. Occasionally it erupts unexpectedly just as it did on Pentecost. Perhaps in a dream or an outpouring of prayer or a sudden realization you will feel God’s voice breaking into your life. More often it’s a quiet knowing, an inner conviction or something that someone else says.

God is still speaking. But we need to listen.
When the phone rings, I need to answer it if I want to hear from the person trying to reach me. And of course for that to happen I have to pay my phone bill. By having a phone and making sure that it is working, I make myself available for other people to reach me. There are things we can do to make ourselves available to hear God speaking to us and in us. The first is to listen, the second is to ask the Holy Spirit to help us, the third is to pay attention and the fourth is to testify to what we have heard.

God is Still Speaking. Are you listening? There are time honored practices for listening to God - quiet, meditation, contemplation, chanting, dream-work, gardening, journaling, the eucharist. When I am specifically asking for guidance about something, I ask God to tell me so clearly that I can’t miss it. Paul says in this mornings excerpt from Romans 8 that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought”. Isn’t that amazing? The Holy Spirit is not only God’s voice in us but God’s help to us in hearing it and in praying, in speaking with God. It is the Holy Spirit who is the great communicator and yet also the communication.

When God speaks we need to pay attention. At first it is just an inkling and we wonder – was that God? When that happens, take a risk and trust that you have heard God’s voice. Most often you’ll be right – sometimes you won’t – if in doubt discuss it with a trusted faith companion –the more you trust those inklings and the more you attune yourself to the voice of the Holy Spirit, the more you’ll hear. It’s a learned skillwhich takes practice, to hear God’s quiet indoor voice. Then it’s your turn to testify – to share what God is saying and doing in your life and in the lives of those around you.

Because God is still speaking, and God speaks to us in faith community. As we share the God moments in our lives so we enliven each other and help each other to hear God.  Sharing our experience of God’s voice is a gift that we give each other. Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears.” We are called to be imitators of Christ and so, imitators of God. The Spirit tells us what the Spirit hears – we too get to tell what we hear.

Let’s take a couple of moments to do that now. I’ve got more to say so I’m not going to ask you to share anything with all of us but please turn to one or two people near you and share something that God has said to you recently, something that seems important or true that you may have known for a long time but now has special relevance; or a God moment – a time recently when God showed up in your life….

…

We can continue those conversations after church over coffee.

God is still speaking. Sometimes people say that God has already said everything to us in his Word - the person of Jesus and in the written Word –the Scriptures. But Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” I think it’s reasonable to think that the Holy Spirit continues to reveal God to us and help us to understand things in new ways. After all are so many things in our world which are completely different from our grandparent’s experience, let alone the Palestine of two thousand years ago.

It’s called “continuing revelation” – the idea that God is still speaking and that God continues to reveal new things to God’s people. The problem is that we have to know how to listen as a faith community not just as individuals.

In my twenties I lived in a spiritual community in Scotland for five years. One of the founders, Eileen Caddy, used to receive direct guidance which she wrote down every night and read to the assembled community in the morning. One day she was told that she must stop doing this. The community needed to go direct – to hear God speaking for themselves.

But when you have 200 people all thinking they know what God is saying, it’s a lot more complicated than just one person. It’s like that in the Church too. In the first few centuries people had to negotiate the truth – Paul might teach one thing, Peter another… but then the Church developed a central core of teaching which was authoritative. That fell apart at the Reformation when people began to read and interpret the Bible for themselves and now we have thousands of competing denominations, all with their own take on the truth.

Today it’s even more complicated. We are suspicious of anyone or any institution which thinks it knows the truth. But if we don’t have a way to check our own ideas and inklings with other people’s we can go way off on our own thinking that God is Still Speaking but just to me. In faith community we can hear others inklings and hear God speaking to us in a core of worship and the tradition which has come to us through generations of Christians.

That is why it is important they we, here at St. Benedict’s, are part of a wider faith community, the Diocese of El Camino Real, the Episcopal Church and the fellowship of the Anglican Communion. This wider community helps us to make sure that as we experiment, as we listen for God’s voice here among us and seek to further God’s mission, we do so with integrity and with care. There are disagreements in that bigger faith community, just as there are disagreements among ourselves. If there weren’t we really would be “God’s chosen frozen.”

Sometimes we find the rules and rhythms of the wider church cumbersome and restrictive. If God is telling us to make changes in the tradition then part of our responsibility is to work for those changes in the wider church. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church coming up in July is a time when our representatives gather to try together to hear what God is saying to us. I will be there, not as an official representative but as an activist, leading the continuing work to make the Episcopal Church fully inclusive of gay, lesbian and transgender people.

I ask that in your prayers in the nest few weeks, you will be asking the Holy Spirit to speak to you, to speak to St Benedict’s and to speak to the Episcopal Church, especially during General Convention. And that God will help us all to listen and to testify to what we hear.

Peace be with you

John 20:19-31

Personally I’ve never had any trouble believing in the virgin birth. After all, if we can believe that Jesus was resurrected why can’t we believe that he was divinely fathered? But I know that’s something that many people have big doubts about. I’ve had people tell me that they can’t join the church or they can’t be Christians because they just don’t believe that Mary was a virgin. It always amazed me that it’s such a big deal until a friend told me that a generation ago her mother was denied baptism because she didn’t believe it. People remember things like that for a long time.

I have my own doubts, just not about Mary’s virginity.

I have long doubted that God listens to the prayers of fat women. Much of my life I have been overweight and I have doubted that the Almighty is taking as much interest in my prayers as he would if I was at a so-called healthy weight.

I can’t however report that my prayers have become more effective as I’ve lost weight!

So we all have doubts, some rational, some not so much. Today’s gospel is such a blessing for those of us who doubt quite a lot.

Thomas missed seeing Jesus the first time he came to them. And he doubted. So much so that we often call him Thomas the Doubter. He missed the big event and he said he thought it pretty unlikely. He wasn’t about to be fooled by an apparition like the rest of the disciples who were so nervous and jumpy that any little noise seemed like a big deal. And then Jesus appears, and suddenly Thomas isn’t so sure of himself. It really is Jesus. Right there, standing in front of him. Just like they said.

Notice what Jesus says as soon as he arrives, "Peace be with you." "Peace be with you."

That is his loving response to our fears and our doubts, "Peace be with you."

Jesus doesn’t judge us because we have doubts. Jesus doesn’t laugh at us for not being sure, for wondering if God really exists or whether it’s just a nice bedtime story. Jesus stands in front of us and simply says, "Peace be with you."

Theological doubt can be very healthy. We humans are creatures of meaning – we are always constructing explanations and meaning for the events of our lives. We feel more confident when we have a sense of how and why things are happening the way they are. But sometimes our lives outstrip our theology. Something happens which throws our carefully constructed maps of the universe into disarray. It forces us to either abandon our faith or to grow.

It’s a scary time. Nothing seems solid any more. The disciples were in the middle of a period like that. Jesus had died but they thought and hoped against hope that he had somehow come back to life. How could they know for sure? What was going to happen to them? They had believed that Jesus was the Messiah but now he was dead or maybe not, and what would the authorities do when they heard the rumors? Would they come after his followers next?

The disciples gathered on the first day of the week – their new holy day - and they were afraid.

If you’re like me often when you gather your thoughts there is an undertow of fear. Fear that I’ve forgotten something crucial. Fear that there won’t be enough money. Fear of being alone. Fear of failure,

We all live with degrees of fear and anxiety. They are the cousins of doubt. When we come to God bringing our inner rooms of fear, Jesus comes to us and says "Peace be with you."

Often we think about prayer as a long list of things for which we are concerned, people who are in our thoughts, things done and left undone. I have found that when I am anxious, doubtful or fearful my prayer can circle back in on itself – that as I bring to God that which troubles me it starts to loom larger because I am focusing on it. I become more anxious rather than less. It’s not helpful.

It’s not helpful because I am so busy and preoccupied with my problem that I cannot see or hear God. I want to suggest an alternative way of praying for those of us who get caught in fear and doubt. I want to suggest that we focus not on the problem but on God. God never turns to us in anger or recrimination. God is always courteous, loving and gentle.

So when we pray, instead of talking about the problems, which God already knows anyway, I suggest that we focus on God by sinking into the place where we connect with the deeper and wider and greater reality which is the divine. It is a place of peace. Jesus comes to us and he looks at our doubts and our fears and says four words. "Peace be with you."

Let’s close our eyes for a moment and just hear him say that; "Peace be with you." "Peace be with you." … "Peace be with you." Can you let that sink into the bottom of your stomach and sit there like a calm, warm solid feeling of safety? "Peace be with you."

…

Peace before us, peace behind us, peace under our feet

Peace within us, peace over us, let all around us be peace.

Evil has no Clothes on.

Were you surprised when you got to church this morning to find out that today is Easter? No, I wasn’t surprised either. I look forward to Easter, for months beforehand I check and double-check the date – when is Easter this year? We prepare throughout Lent and Holy Week so when it’s finally here and we can say “The Lord is Risen” we have a sense of joy and arrival, perhaps even of relief, but no surprise. No astonishment.

So it’s difficult for us to put ourselves in the place of the disciples who were taken totally off guard by the tremendous surprise of Easter. All that Jesus said to warn them didn’t really prepare them for the heartbreak and the grief and then the amazing, unbelievable – can it be true- resurrection of their beloved friend and Master.

In order for us to even begin to understand Easter we need to go to a place of beginner’s mind. We need to allow ourselves to let go of our pre-conceived notions, all the things we learned growing up, let go of the lilies and the chocolate and the bunnies because that isn’t Easter. Easter is something far more grown up and serious and life changing and if we can even glimpse it for a moment we will never be the same again.

Mary Magdalene didn’t know it was Easter. She went to the tomb just to remember, to try to hold on to the memories and the hopes and the life and the dreams which had been wiped out, devastatingly destroyed when Jesus refused to use his power to oppose the authorities who killed him as a traitor. She didn’t recognize the empty tomb as Easter, it was just one more blow. Now even his body had been taken away from her. And she was so blinded by her grief that she didn’t recognize Jesus when he came to her.

Often we don’t recognize Jesus when he comes to us. The disciples never got the hang of immediately recognizing Jesus in his resurrection body, so it’s not surprising that we have to work to open our inner eyes to see Jesus the Christ present in our own lives. Mary was blinded by grief; we are blinded by many things.

The powers of darkness of Jesus’ time did not want him preaching and challenging and, horrors, saving people. They didn’t want him going around telling people that their sins were forgiven and setting them free. The systems that keep us trapped depend on misinformation. They depend on us believing that we are separated from God, that we are miserable sinners who have to grovel again and again. The power elites of our own time specialize in creating monsters for us to fear, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Iran, Muslims, gays and lesbians. They specialize in keeping us alert. on edge, afraid that if we resist the system itself we will be unpatriotic, allowing enemy forces to get the upper hand.

We are blinded by the sleight of hand of politicians but much more so by the things we take for granted. That it’s important to look out for number 1 because no-one else will, that it’s ok to ridicule and make jokes about people with different views and life experience, that progressives and conservatives can’t be friends, that we have to take sides, that it’s ok to get angry and hold grudges, that if we’re not having fun it’s time to move on.

We are blinded my friends by the matrix of sin which has its fingers into the very structures and synapses of our brains.

It has tried to suck the life out of Easter by making it a fun frivolity, a time for chocolate, bunnies and eggs, for pinks and yellows and special recipes, a day with friends and family. A fun sweet popsicle of a day. Those things are great, but if we are tricked into thinking that that is Easter we are eating a diet of empty calories which will eventually leave us empty, starving and craving more.

Easter is so much more.

By raising Jesus Christ from the dead, God the triune one, demonstrated that the powers of this world, the matrix of sin which seeks to hold us in its grip, has failed. No longer need we be blinded by sin, no longer need we go with the mob, afraid to stand against them, no longer need we fear the retribution of an angry God.

In Jesus’ resurrection, God exposed the impotence of the sin matrix and the power of God in Christ over everything including everything that is not of God, everything that we would understand as human and sinful, everything that we know to be evil.

It’s like the old story of the Emperor who was very vain and wanted to look better than anyone else. He ordered a set of clothes from a highly regarded designer who wanted to teach the Emperor a lesson. The designed did not make anything, but went through elaborate fitting and refitting sessions so that the Emperor, who could not see the clothes he was trying on, thought he was missing something. He was too proud to say that he could not see this great internationally renowned designers work, and his courtiers were too what? Frightened? Conniving? Stupid? - to tell him themselves. So the day came for The Emperor to wear his new clothes in a grand procession. Everyone cheered and clapped and the Emperor was proud. Until he heard a small girl say, “But Daddy the Emperor has no clothes on!”

Evil has no clothes on! Jesus’ resurrection exposed the powerlessness of the dark forces. God is in charge, even when it doesn’t seem like it. Life is greater than death.

One day we will all be in a new world where it will be obvious to everyone that evil has no clothes on. Until then we get to live in this beautiful yet quirky world where we are constantly facing the sin matrix, in our own minds and everywhere we look. Jesus’ death and resurrection showed us that the way to resist violence, anger and backbiting is not to meet it with more violence, anger and backbiting, but to respond with nonviolence, lovingly, peacefully, steadily.

And that is Easter for grown-ups. The sin system exposed as ultimately powerless. And the invitation of our God to become the daughters and sons of Gods ourselves, like Jesus to meet darkness with light, like Jesus to meet violence with non-violence, like Jesus to experience power over sin and life everlasting!

The Lord is Risen! Alleluia!

Saved by God's Grace

Numbers 21:4-9
Ephesians 2:1-10

John 3:14-21

Today we continue our Lenten reflection as we practice looking at our readings from a different perspective. Rather than assuming that Jesus died on the cross to bear our punishment for sin, we are considering the idea that God did not need him to die. We are entertaining the possibility that Jesus died because the message he brought was so unpopular and so threatening to the powers of the world that they killed him. But that was not the end; Jesus the Christ was raised and in his resurrection God proved that he is more powerful than the forces of sin and violence.

It is from that perspective that I want us to look at the New Testament reading today, from the letter to the Ephesians. Scholars don’t agree about who wrote this letter but most think that it was not Paul but someone imitating his style. Its focus is the unity and reconciliation of the whole of creation to God through the work of the Church. I want to us to look at this passage quite carefully, section by section.

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.

I know that we all like to think that everyone wants the best for everyone else and that we can all get along if we’re courteous and careful to play well with others. But just a cursory glance at the news suggests otherwise. Or spend a few hours watching reality TV. So-called reality shows depict people in strange and extreme circumstances clawing their way up at everyone else’s expense. It is a battlefield where only the fittest or the slyest survive and it makes sense to do everything you can to be the one ultimate winner.

That is “the course of this world” is to put ourselves and our group first, even at the expense of others. It is to put our own interests above those of others regardless of the consequences. We can see this on a big scale in corporations who are so concerned about immediate profit that they exploit their workers and ignore environmental concerns. We can see it in the political moves of those who want to deny that global warning is happening because to take that threat seriously would mean government intervention in industry and government intervention in the market because effective action is not going to happen if we all go on doing our own thing and no-one is taking care of the long-term consequences.

The writer’s description of the sin-system is a little difficult for us. Many of us grew up in households which at least dabbled in the kingdom of God and so it doesn’t fit to say “All of us once lived among them – the disobedient – in the passions of our flesh.” Things are not as clear cut today as they seem to have been for the early church; the seven so-called deadly sins are much more subtle in our day. But when we look at the world we can see that humans are by nature children of wrath. It doesn’t seem to take much for us to feel so threatened that we start to view those around us with suspicion. It doesn’t seem to take much for us to begin to put down people who don’t think the way we do. In the rapid response world of the Internet we can flame someone we’ve never met much more quickly than we can think about the nuances of what they’re saying. Most of us only have to listen to the conversations in our own heads to recognize that we are by nature violent even if only to ourselves.

The traditional concept of original sin is individualized – we are each sinful from the moment of our conception. I certainly prefer the idea of original blessing – we are blessed with the calling and opportunity to become the adopted children of God. But human society has a dark side and we are all mired in it just because we live in a world of sin and violence. It isn’t any individual’s fault, it is the way things have developed over thousands of years and continue to develop. If we don’t stop the cycle.

Let’s go on to the next bit: “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-- by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Even when we were so caught up in the sin-system that we were spiritually dead, God loved us. God loves us even when we are totally turned away from him. As the gospel reading says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (Notice it doesn’t say anything about God giving Jesus to die a violent death, just that he gave his Son.) God is rich in mercy and great love so she has made us alive together with Christ and raised us with him. We are joined with Christ in his resurrection – Paul says that in our baptism we are joined with Christ and raised with him. And here the writer to the Ephesians says that we are raised with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places!!

Are we?

One of the important things to grasp in this New Testament living is the sense of both now and not yet. We are seated with Christ in the heavenly places - it’s a done deal, but we haven’t realized it yet, it isn’t actualized in our day to day lives.

How did we get here, to our seats in the heavenly places? By God’s grace we are joined with Jesus in his death, his resurrection and his victory over death and over the whole sin system. We no longer need to claw our way to the top, trampling over everyone else, because we are already here and no-one can take that away from us.

Let’s read on: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Our salvation, our joining with Christ and being reconciled with God and getting to sit in the heavenly places is not our own doing. We did not do it by managing to get everyone else voted off the island. We did not do it by pushing our way up. Neither did we do it by diligent hard work. It is the gift of God, freely given from God’s unconditional love. So now we get to live the way God made us, we get to be the people we were created to be, living in relationship with God and showing forth God’s kingdom in all we do and say.

God’s gift to us is forgiveness, God’s gift to us is love, God’s gift to us is Jesus the embodiment of the kingdom and the author of our salvation.

And Jesus said, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Moses held up a brass serpent on a pole and everyone who looked at it was healed from fatal snakebites. So too we must look at Jesus – we must keep our eyes on him as if our lives depended on it, for in a real way they do.

Only when we keep our eyes on Jesus, on his life and teaching and his presence here today, can know that we are raised with him, seated in the kingdom of heaven, the daughters and sons of the Most High God.

What’s the Problem with “Jesus died on the Cross for our Sins”?

This week someone told me that they couldn’t deal with the “whole Christianity thing”. When I asked which bit was particularly difficult to swallow, she said “well the whole thing - Jesus dying for our sins.”

We learned it in Sunday School, we hear it from all the prominent preachers and televangelists. Everyone knows that Christianity is about Jesus dying for our sins because we are such schmucks.

But is it?

Since about the 11^th century the Church has taught that Jesus died on the cross because God’s sense of justice meant that someone had to die for our sin. So God as Jesus took it upon Godself to die in our place. This was further developed during the Reformation when our degradation in sin was stressed together with God’s grace which allowed Jesus to die in our place and saves us from our sin. Today lost of questions are being asked about everything including whether this makes sense with what we know about God.

We know that Jesus taught us to be peaceful, forgiving and to avoid violence in all its forms and that Jesus practiced non-violent resistance. If Jesus is the Christ, one of the three Persons of the Trinity then what is true of him must also be true of the Father/Creator and of the Spirit. So God must be non-violent (or else Jesus is not God, but that’s a whole different conversation).

If God is non-violent then why would he demand that ANYONE die a violent death in order to achieve “justice”?

Here’s the alternative: Jesus the Christ was incarnated as a human man to show us the kingdom of God which he embodied in his life and explained in his teaching. We humans were so enmeshed in the sin-system that people couldn’t stand his message and killed him. By resurrecting Jesus, God demonstrated another aspect of God’s kingdom – complete and total victory over the sin-system whose most powerful weapon to keep us all in line is the fear of death. Those of us who choose to sign up for the kingdom of God now get to demonstrate by our lives that we are part of that victory.

If it wasn't Lent I'd say "alleluia".

Christ Crucified

1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom but we but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul is talking about how foolish the gospel seems. This is true today too. Often people don’t realize that they are looking for Christ because they are looking for something different. They think they know the Christian message and it isn’t for them.

Today we might say, “Jews demand signs, Greeks demand wisdom and Americans require proof.” My good friend says that she’ll believe in God when God starts answering her prayers, by which she means that she’ll believe in God when he does what she wants and fixes her life. That is not what God is about. God will work in partnership with us when we are ready and willing to turn our lives over to her and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us.

We are used to images of God’s son hanging on a cross. But if we were not, the idea of a Messiah hanging limp, powerless and in agony on a cross would be an absurd contradiction. It cannot be the Christ, the Son of the High God, the one who has dominion over the nations of the earth. If it were truly the Christ wouldn’t he just get down and walk away?

He could have done just as earlier in his life when the people mobbed and tried to stone him, he simply disappeared into the crowd and walked away. Why did the Christ allow himself to be crucified by mere mortals?

Because it was the fulfillment of his mission. A couple of weeks ago we heard that Jesus at the beginning of his ministry was preaching the good news of the kingdom of God. That was what Jesus came to do – he came to show us the kingdom of God. A kingdom which is quite different from the kingdom of the world. Even today after 2000 years of us trying to live into Jesus’ teachings and Jesus’ example, the world we live in every day is quite different from the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of the world is based in the sin-system of violence and fear. A quick look at the news is enough to make the point. We spend our time competing for what we believe are scarce resources. Those who want to be President spend time and vast sums of money trying to prove that they are better than their fellows, not by demonstrating their abilities and arguing policy, but by putting each other down. The country is gripped by fear of an unstable economy, the possibility of attack, of others having as many nuclear weapons as we have. While we are in the clutches of fear we turn on each other and cannot cooperate to address the very real problems of poverty, hunger, homelessness and global warming that threaten human flourishing.

Jesus’ mission was to open our eyes to the possibility of living in another kingdom, the kingdom of God a place of love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness. mercy, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. Jesus’ mission was to invite us to enroll in that kingdom so that like him we could live free of the downward drag of the sin-system which takes fear and resentment and turns it to anger and hatred and violence.

The path which Jesus took was the path of non-violent resistance. He did not fight violence with violence but taught a different way; to resist violence in every form but to resist it in a way which takes away its power. When the soldiers came at night to arrest him, one of Jesus’ companions made a clumsy attack and cut an ear off the high priest’s servant. Jesus said, “Put your sword back in its place for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53)

Jesus did not especially want to die but it became the only way forward. He knew that death was not the end and that it was better to die than to fight back with violence. He knew that it was God’s way to accept death rather than resort to violence.

A crucified Messiah. The final victory of the sin-system. The one who claimed to be the son of God dying at the hands of his enemies.

But we know that it was not the end. We know that Jesus the Christ was resurrected. That he won the day, not the powers of sin and violence.

And that is our hope.

We too can resist the sin-system. We too can live not in a violent way but in a strong gentle way like Jesus of Nazareth. Who, we heard in today’s gospel reading, resisted the commercialization of the temple.

The sin-system always attempts to take the things of the Spirit and corrupt them. When we are called to prayer and meditation, there are immediately catalogs of things that we need to meditate – the right cushion, the best bell; when we decide that God is calling us to live simply, there is a glossy magazine to help us buy the right products.

The kingdom of God is not a commodity to be bought and sold. It is not a system to make us feel good and make our lives easier. It is not the key to happiness and prosperity. It IS a hard path of non-violent yet strong resistance to all that seeks to corrupt and distort the gift of God to us in creation and in Godself.

Christ crucified is a symbol of our faith because it is the ultimate image of faith and love. Faith that God will not allow violence to win. Love because it is God’s peace offering to humanity. Christ crucified is the ultimate symbol of non-violence resistance – the God of the Universe allowed himself to be humiliated, scorned and physically injured rather than fight back in kind.

The empty cross is also a symbol of our faith, because we know that the crucifixion is not the end, that resurrections follows, and there is our hope.

Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

Christ will come again.

Jesus is God's Peace offering to Us

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

Today we start Jesus’ journey to the cross and beyond. Our gospel reading is a familiar one about taking up our cross. The other two lessons put this in the context of a discussion of faith and being reconciled to God. The first lesson told us that even in the face of death, Abraham believed God’s promise of a son and it was “reckoned to him as righteousness” and in the second lesson Paul parallels that with our faith: Abraham believed in God who fulfilled the promise: Christ-followers believe in God who raised Jesus.[1]

Righteousness is a word which is sometimes misunderstood because we talk of someone who is smug and hypocritical as being self-righteous and sometimes shorten that to say “she’s very righteous”. That’s not at all what the Bible means. God is often described as righteous, because he does what is right – in fact he is the epitome of what is right. So when we are made righteous we are reconciled with God – we are made to be at peace with the one who exemplifies righteousness. We do not make ourselves righteous – our participation is through our believing in God’s willingness to make God her promises, and in God raising Jesus so that we might have a way out of the sin-system.

During Lent we are re-examining ideas about how that reconciliation between God and man was facilitated by Jesus’ death and resurrection – how we are made one with God – which is often called the atonement – the at-one-ment. So the last few sentences of the second lesson are important for us to think about in more detail.

“Faith will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”

We are so used to hearing words like these and interpreting them as the Church has interpreted them for the last thousand years that we have to work to see them in a new way. But the Holy Spirit is constantly opening our eyes to new possibilities and challenging us to get out of our ruts and think about things from a different perspective. A literal translation of the Greek puts it in slightly different words: “Who was handed over for the trespasses of us and was raised for the justification of us.”

“Who was handed over for the trespasses of us” does not actually mention death but it makes it very clear that God is the one taking the action. Jesus and the atonement that comes through his life death and resurrection is God’s initiative. Earlier in Romans (3:25) Paul uses the unusual word hilasterion. He says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a hilasterion by his blood, effective through faith.”

Hilasterion is often translated sacrifice of atonement – in less pompous language we could call it a peace offering. But what’s amazing about this is that the hilasterion is being offered by God. In Jesus God is making a peace offering to humanity. Because we have become mired in the sin-system which perpetuates violence and oppression we also see God as violent and oppressive. But God has brought us a peace offering and in accepting that offering, in believing in the loving and powerful God who raised Jesus from the dead, we are freed from that system.

Going back to that literal translation of Paul’s words, “Jesus was handed over for the trespasses of us and was raised for the justification of us.” God gave Jesus to deal with our sin and raised him from the dead. In his resurrection we are vindicated and justified, just as he is. He is victorious over the sin system which tried to eradicate him – yes he died but it didn’t stick. So too we can be victorious over the meanness, the bad habits, the sins which drag us down and sometimes seem so powerful that they will suffocate us.

Before I end I do want to offer some thoughts on taking up the cross but let me just mention parallelism; in Jewish poetry there are frequent parallels – we see them especially in the psalms. A quick example from our psalm this morning: “For kingship belongs to the LORD; *he rules over the nations.” (Ps.22:27) – there’s not a great deal of difference between “kingship belongs to the Lord” and “he rules over the nations.” There is a subtle difference which enhances our understanding.

I think Paul is using a similar rhetorical devise when he says, “Jesus was handed over for the trespasses of us and was raised for the justification of us” – those are not two entirely different and opposing things but very similar concepts.

There seems to me to be parallelism in the two parts of the gospel reading too. In the first part Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to be killed and raised. Peter pulls him aside to say that this is outrageous and he mustn’t even consider putting himself in such danger. Jesus has a strong reaction, “Get behind me Satan!” I am sure that Jesus had had similar ideas to Peter’s – it would have been much easier not to go towards Jerusalem, not to head towards that painful encounter with the darkest forces of the sin-system. But to turn back would have been to follow his human nature and inclinations not his divine calling. In order for God to hand Jesus over “for the trespasses of us” Jesus had to be obedient and willing.

In the second part of the reading Jesus says to the crowd "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” If we think of this as paralleling the conversation with Peter then it is amplifying or adding in some way to what he just said. So he’s saying – if you want to be my followers you also get to take up your cross.

It’s not the same cross that Jesus had. But each one of us if we are truly to be Jesus followers get to play our part in opposing the forces of the sin-system. That’s what it means to be followers of Jesus – we can no longer be unconscious participants in the kingdom of this world which is caught up in power plays, greed and violence – we have to take our own stand against it.

The sin-system is so pervasive that there are a million different ways to oppose it and we all get to resist on several fronts at once. There is the pain and difficulty we experience within ourselves as we grapple with the residue of traumatic and painful experiences – yes we all have them – and seek healing so that we can be serene in the face of adversity. There is the temptation in our personal relationships to be critical, to complain and make jokes at other people’s expense. This is a huge temptation in faith community where we are constantly living with each other’s beauty and grace AND each other’s failings. Adjusting our expectations and behaviors to accommodate the broken places in each other without being critical but rather unconditionally loving and at the same time maintain healthy community – that is standing up to the sin-system.

And then there is the temptation to believe that we are powerless and so to do nothing in the face of oppression and exploitation in our society. It has been said that “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” Needless to say I would expand that to include good women. We are called to take up our cross and oppose evil in all its insidious and subtle forms in ourselves, in the church and in society.

The good news is that Jesus rose again! In doing so he completely and ultimately broke the hold of the sin-system, so we are not fighting a losing battle. God has provided a peace offering so that we may be reconciled with God and enroll in his kingdom. We can choose to be on the winning side.

Jesus was given for our trespasses - to break the hold of the sin-system – and he was a peace-offering given by God so that we might become righteous – at-one with Her. In our eucharist we are invited once again to participate in that meal of coming-together-oneness with the divine. It is God who invites us into her presence to become participants in the kingdom , members of the Body of Christ, daughters and sons of the most high God!

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[1] Frank J. Matera, Romans