Tight Lines

The philosopher in me slips out now and then. I see that the message for Pentecost this Sunday is the second sermon this year I’ve given a title with the word “truth” in it. Our text is John 14:8-17, the end of which is the first mention of the Paraclete, John’s unique term for the Holy Spirit.

“Paraclete” has been variously translated as “Advocate,” “Counselor,” “Helper” or “Comforter.” It means literally one “called alongside,” and implies support and encouragement. It had a primarily legal sense in the Greek world, so the idea of an advocate in court should be heard in the term.

It’s tempting to take John’s naming of the Paraclete as the “Spirit of Truth” and go off on a rant about how little our present culture cares for truth and how often truth is distorted or ignored. That’s all well and good, but probably not at all what Jesus had in mind as He promised the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth.

Instead, with the Paraclete/Advocate concept in focus we can see the Spirit as the one who comes to the aid of believers by presenting the truth. This is the Gospel truth, the truth about Jesus. The Spirit is the one who instructs the Apostles in the Gospel and sends them out to bear witness to its truth. Like an honorable attorney in court, the Spirit’s aim is to bring the truth to light.

In verse 17, Jesus goes on to say that the Spirit of truth “abides with you, and he will be in you.” It’s the Spirit who comes down upon the disciples on Pentecost to push them out into the streets of Jerusalem speaking the truth they have come to know about Jesus. From that point on, the understanding is that the Holy Spirit lives in every believer with the same goal of presenting the Gospel truth.

I’m going to be thinking about how that same Spirit of Truth moves us out into the world to witness to the Gospel.

Last week I got a call to tell me that Brian, a leader among our friends at Church of the Servant King, had dropped dead of a heart attack after coming in from a run. I’ve known Brian for about twenty years and he was a bit younger than I am. He leaves behind his wife and two teenage children.

Then this week the evangelical world received the news that Dallas Willard lost his battle to cancer at age 77. Willard was a professional philosopher who turned his intellect toward writing about very practical matters of Christian discipleship and life. Willard’s writing about character and discipleship are part of the influence on me which is producing this series of sermons on the seven central Christian virtues.

So I feel very much in need of and prepared for thinking this week about the virtue of hope. And today, Thursday May 9 is Ascension Day, which our church will observe this coming Sunday. This is a holy day completely centered around hope. Acts 1:1-11 gives the first disciples, together with you and me, the promise that Jesus will return. Jesus’ departure into heaven is not the end of the story, but the beginning of a season of hope for His return.

As I contemplate the passing of Brian and of Dallas Willard I know that they will be mourned and missed. Brian’s memorial service will be here in our sanctuary on Saturday and everyone expects the place to be packed to capacity as we remember this good man. I imagine something on an even larger scale will happen in regard to Willard.

There will be tears and sorrow at those gatherings, but I am also very confident that a large portion of the preaching will be devoted to the hope we have which reaches beyond death. The virtue of Christian hope is a way of life which reaches beyond what ordinarily passes for hope in our lives. Our hopes for marriage, success, good health, grandchildren, and so on, all have termination points, ultimately in our own deaths. Yet the Christian hope is one that looks beyond those end points to an eternal future in God’s kingdom. Death gives way to resurrection, just as it did for Jesus. Parting gives way to return.

Dallas Willard constantly emphasized that Christian virtues like hope have a very practical outcome in daily life. If we really do hope in God through Christ, it will show up in the way we live. As the angels told the disciples, hope is not standing around waiting to see what happens next, it’s actively living in new ways because of our confidence in the outcome, the return of Christ and the completion of God’s kingdom.

Writing in 2006, Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. reviewed Willard’s work saying:

He is a brilliant, modest, immensely experienced Christian older brother, calling to us from the Resurrection side of things. His books all call out, in one way or another: Come on over. It’s going to be okay to die first. You have to do it, and you can do it. Not even Jesus got a resurrection without a death, and he’ll be at your side when you surrender your old life. Trust me on this. If you die with Jesus Christ, God will walk you out of your tomb into a life of incomparable joy and purpose inside his boundless and competent love.

Our friend Brian also lived a life of hope which showed up in the way he treated those around him. Street people, people with handicaps, all received tangible, visible love from Brian that showed his hope for them which went beyond their limitations or situations.

Whatever your situation or sorrow this week, I pray that God will renew and strengthen your hope. It may even be through occasions of sorrow like our community’s loss of Brian and evangelicalism’s loss of Dallas Willard. Our Lord is teaching us not to focus on the departures, but to go out and live hopeful lives confident in His return and the restoration of all things.

Habit gets a bad rap these days. It’s an insult to call a person a “creature of habit,” suggesting that the one who lives life by rote, by a set of habitual activities, is almost beast-like, somehow sub-human.

Instead we prize novelty and spontaneity. The person who is truly living is the one who finds herself free to do as she pleases on a moment’s notice. She is not bound by convention nor even by her own customary way of acting. One Hollywood film after another suggests that the best way to live is to overturn the habits and patterns of years and head off freely into the great spontaneous unknown.

The problem with this low view of regular and habitual behavior is that it absolutely ruins any basis for the development of character, of what used to be called “virtue.” A good character is nothing more than regularly, habitually doing what is good and right.

When we place our trust in another person we do so because we’ve found that they habitually do the right thing or treat us well. If we find that what we thought was a pattern of kindness, generosity and patience might any moment be overturned and a person fly off in other directions, trust evaporates.

The Christian faith has traditionally placed three virtues or habits above all the rest, the triad of faith, hope and love which appears at the end of I Corinthians 13. We also find Paul commending the church at Thessalonica for exemplifying these virtues in verse 3 of our text for this Sunday, I Thessalonians 1:1-10.

For the next few weeks I plan to look at these three Christian virtues plus the four virtues Christians inherited from classical Greece, typically called the “cardinal” virtues: justice, prudence, temperance and courage. This coming Sunday we will focus on faith, which is the root of all the others and for which Paul most commends the Thessalonians.

For now it’s enough to say that faith is way of living, a habit of trusting God. It’s the regular practice of living in such a way that our actions are directed toward God. That’s very different from our usual understanding of faith as primarily belief. Faith certainly involves what you believe, but it only becomes the virtue of faith as you develop of habit of action which trusts in God.

May God give us grace to grow in all the virtues.

I was the only white boy at the birthday party. I have no direct, clear memory of that fact, but my mother told me about it when I was older and I know it because of her memory. It was second or third grade and we accepted an invitation to celebrate a schoomate’s birthday. Evidently the birthday boy and all the other boys who came were African-American.

I would like to think that my heart is still that innocent second grader’s, oblivious to the race and color of those around me, simply accepting everyone as fellow human beings, as God’s children loved by Him. I’d like to think I don’t need 2×4 vision over the head like Peter’s in Acts 10, where he’s forced by God to confront his prejudices regarding Gentiles and bring them the Gospel. I’d like to think I’m much further along than Peter was.

The fact is that I can distinctly remember for myself losing that second grade innocence about race not more than a couple years later as I walked home from a school summer program with a craft I’d made. Another boy walked along with me, admired my handiwork, then grabbed it and ran off. And that time I did remember the color of his skin, which was different from mine.

Yes, I would like to consider myself innocent of racial feeling, but I know it’s not true. I still can find myself wary around people of other colors. Driving with my daughter a couple years ago through particular neighborhoods near her school in Chicago, I was uneasy for us to be the only white people around. And there are all sorts of other ways that kind of feeling arises in me.

Which is all to say that our text for this week, Acts 11:1-18, which retells for the church in Jerusalem Peter’s experience at the Gentile household of Cornelius, is not just ancient church history. It addresses what is still a challenge for most of us. The challenge is the same one the Holy Spirit gave Peter in verse 12, to be with those who are different from us and “not to make a distinction between them and us.”

The text for this Sunday more or less repeats the story of chapter 10, and more space is given to this incident than any other event in Acts, save Pentecost. That tells us how crucial this matter of overcoming racial distinction is to the Gospel we believe. In fact, the coming of the Holy Spirit to Cornelius’ house is sometimes called the “Gentile Pentecost.”

So my hope for our attention to this text is to honestly appraise how far we each still have to go in becoming the kind of people, the kind of community, God is creating in Christ. As Peter says of himself in verse 17, who are we, with our prejudices, to hinder God in bringing anyone to Himself?

This lesson in no distinctions is simply the outworking of Jesus’ own words found in our Gospel text for Sunday, John 13:35, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

It’s time to go to bed and it’s all I can do to keep from clicking and watching the next episode. Once again I’m hooked on a TV series now available on Netflix. It’s a mystery show that slowly unravels from episode to episode. Like when I read a page-turner novel, I want to rush through to the end and find out how it all turns out.

Of course I could always just skip ahead and watch the last show in the series or read the last page of the book. But as tempting as that is, I know it won’t be nearly as fun or satisfying to learn the ending without wading through the intervening episodes or pages.

Christian life has its own temptation to jump to the end. It can take the form of focusing all our attention on the end of an individual life, that is on heaven, or concentrating on the end of this world’s history, that is the return of Christ.

Yet just as a good book can be spoiled by moving to the end too quickly, spiritual life is damaged when we direct our attention to the end of our story without paying sufficient attention to what comes before. That’s why Christian liturgy has grown up the customs of observing Advent before Christmas and Lent before Easter. The joy of Christ’s birth and of His resurrection are heightened by careful attention to the events which lead up to them.

Last week on Easter we jumped to the end of the story in Revelation 22 and read John’s great vision of the heavenly city and life nourished by the water of life and the tree of life. Yet we did not forget or pass over what led there. We saw how the church has historically connected the Cross to the Tree of Life, seeing the restoration of paradise as the outcome of Christ’s atoning work.

This week we jump back to the beginning of Revelation, the first chapter, verses 4-8. They appear in the lectionary for this week presumably because of their mention of the Resurrection in verse 5, which calls Jesus “the first born of the dead.”

Yet the text is also a good reminder to attend to the whole story of God’s work of redemption and restoration. It begins and ends (verses 4 and by identifying Christ as “the one who is and who was and who is to come.” His story is complete, present, past and future. We won’t fully grasp or appreciate it if we truncate it to any single tense. Christians don’t live just in the past, nor just in the future, nor even just in the present. Our story, God’s story, is all three at once.

The Lord speaking at the beginning of verse 8 identifies Himself as “the Alpha and the Omega.” That phrase is expanded in Revelation 22:13 to “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Jesus is saying that He is everything from A to Z. Every letter of every word is part of His story. We dare not skip over the middle of the story and rush to the end because He is Lord of it all.

Let’s resist all temptations to jump to the end of the story in which we live and have our being in Christ Jesus. He is bringing us there and has assured us of a good ending. Yet He is Lord of all our times and we don’t want to miss any of them.

I’m sharing this image of a wonderful sculpture by local artist Dan Chen. His work is my sermon without words, showing how the Cross of our Savior is transformed for us into the Tree of Life, lost in the garden in Genesis and then restored at the conclusion of Revelation upon the new earth.

We come at Easter this Sunday to the end of our 90-day journey through some of the greatest chapters of the Bible, concluding now with Revelation 22. I was struck with what a wonderful Easter text this is, to look at the hope and promise secured for us in the Resurrection of our Lord. I thought of Dan’s sculpture and knew I had to focus on the Tree.

The promise that Jesus is coming soon is repeated over and over in Revelation 22. As we celebrate Easter, it’s a fine reminder that new life in Christ has a glorious dimension yet to be completed. As the Communion litany goes, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”

May we all be blessed by the grace poured out on the tree of the Cross to be raised with our Lord to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life.

In the last century, one of the facets of the Soviet era was the West’s awareness of Soviet doctoring of photographs to fit better with “official” history. Several examples can be found, including these images of the removal of a water commissar who fell out of favor and of a cosmonaut who died in a training accident.

This desire to remake the truth according to one’s own wishes or ideology is nothing new. The good news about Jesus Christ constantly faced such reconstruction at the hands of those who were mistaken or malicious or both. As we see in our text from II Timothy 3 this Sunday, leaders of the church were constantly encouraged to uphold the truth and oppose any distortions.

We also see the great example of our Savior Himself standing firm on the truth in the Palm Sunday lesson from Luke 19. As the crowd of disciples hails Jesus as the King “who comes in the name of the Lord,” some Pharisees want to edit the picture, silence that acclamation. Jesus refuses in verse 40, with the simple declaration that the truth about Him cannot be edited out or silenced, “if these were silent, the stones would shout.”

There are, of course, many places in the world still where the truth of the Gospel is edited, silenced or distorted. We as Christians need to be ready to stand up against opposition whenever and wherever that happens, even as it occasionally does in the United States. II Timothy 3:16 points to our reliance on Scripture as the cornerstone of our allegiance and commitment to standing for the truth.

However, it would also be well to remember that opposition to our Lord’s truth happens within our own selves. There are parts of the Gospel message which challenge the way we live and treat others, and the temptation to downplay, hide or distort those truths is very real even for us who name ourselves as followers of Christ. The danger of following into the trap of those described in II Timothy 3:5 is always present, “having a form of godliness but denying its power.”

So let’s be diligent for the truth in every aspect of our lives, especially insofar as we are speaking and living out the faith we profess. Let’s not edit out the parts that make us uncomfortable or feel difficult. Because, as Jesus said to the Pharisees, the truth will be told, whether we tell it or not.

There was some great spaghetti and pie after worship Sunday as we joined in a fund-raising meal for our Mexico mission team. In just a few weeks we’ll all sit down together again for our annual Easter brunch. And this coming Sunday, our Inquirer’s (membership) class will have lunch together as we talk about the history of the Covenant church.

We frequently joke about how food is involved in so many of our church gatherings. Our regular after-worship fellowship times often have some quite wonderful snacks along with coffee, tea and water and people hang around to eat and chat for quite awhile.

Given the way Garrison Keillor’s jokes about Lutherans and their hot dishes seem universally recognized, I think we are not that different from many Christian communities. And we are not so different from the very first church community.

We come to Acts 2 as our “great” chapter of Scripture this Sunday and I’ve elected to focus on the last few verses, Acts 2:42-47, since the first part of the chapter is read and celebrated on Pentecost. In previous planning I had thought to zero in on the attention to the apostles’ teaching in verse 42, but this morning, as I read the text again, I noticed how prominently the act of eating figures here.

It’s generally agreed that while “the breaking of bread” in verse 42 suggests the sacrament of Communion, the distinction between the sacrament and what we would think of as ordinary table fellowship (like our spaghetti supper and Easter brunch) was blurry for the early church. You can see that from Paul’s concerns in I Corinthians 11.

We see clear reference to that same phenomenon of joining around the table in verse 46 along with an indication of the gladness and generosity that surrounded they community. Which indicates that the sharing of goods in verses 44 and 45 almost certainly included sharing food with those who were in need.

This all to me suggests an understanding that every meal shared together in the church has a holiness and sacramental aspect. Luke shows Jesus often at table. Last week’s text, Luke 15, showed the parable of redemption concluding with a banquet, as does the Bible itself.

So our food at church is not just an unnecessary add-on to more spiritual matters. Eating together and sharing food, especially with those who are in need, is at the heart of the Gospel story and the mission of the church.

Christians often long for their fellowships to be more like Acts 2. Maybe the first step is to eat together a bit more.

O.K., I’m cheating. In our “Around the Word in Ninety Days” emphasis during the first 90 days of the year, we are following Terry Glaspey’s plan for reading some of the greatest chapters of Scripture, one each day. I covenanted to preach on whichever chapter fell on each of the Sundays. But this Sunday, March 3, I’m cheating.

In the ninety-day plan, the chapter for Sunday was Luke 24. But how could I possibly preach the resurrection of Jesus four weeks early, before Easter? No way. So I’m backing up one day to pick up the great chapter that is Luke 15. For those who care about such things, Luke 15:11-32 is actually the Lectionary Gospel reading for the next Sunday, March 10.

But leave all that aside, and we stand before a towering peak in the teaching of Jesus. What He taught here continues to both comfort and infuriate those who genuinely pay attention. The little parables of the lost coin and the lost sheep are lovely and make sweet Sunday School lessons. Yet the last portion of the chapter, which we typically call the “Parable of the Prodigal Son,” contains all the human pathos and drama of an episode of “Downtown Abbey.” As an instrument to teach us about God, this parable has echoed down through the ages with the message of an incredible love and grace.

Many people rightly complain about the traditional name of the parable. Early church father Irenaeus called it the “Parable of the Two Sons.” Others have suggested focusing on the father and calling it something like the “Parable of the Loving Father.” What these suggested changes in title get at is that there is more here than just the repentance and home-coming of a prodigal. Jesus meant to talk about the forgiveness of God and its implications for human relationships, particularly among believers.

One popular method for interpreting parables that actually works well for Luke 15 is to try and place oneself in the story. This parable cries out the question, “Am I the younger or the older son?” I think it might be well to consider that one could be either, depending on circumstances and the moment in life. Even for believers there are seasons when we find ourselves very much in need of “coming to ourselves” and returning home to our loving Father. And whenever we are comfortable in our relationship with God, we are always in danger of refusing to join the celebration for the return of those who have behaved badly.

For parents especially there may even be some merit in contemplating whether the parable does not ask us to be like the father in the story, patiently waiting for our children even when it seems hopeless. And there may be other circumstances in which we ought to be extending a similar patient love toward a friend or family member.

This is a glorious text. I can’t possibly do it justice. May the Lord give me a few words, and may those who listen hear His own grace and love coming through.

My wife listens to public radio and generally enjoys much of the programming, whether it’s thoughtful commentary on public life, discussions of the arts, news reporting from perspectives other than our own, Garrison Keillor or “Car Talk.” However, a couple weeks or more out of the year, listening to public radio becomes an ordeal. Her favorite shows are frequently interrupted by urgent pleas for donations to support the radio station and public radio in general. Sometimes during those times Beth simply collects a few CDs and plays music from those instead of trying to listen to the radio.

I imagine many people’s impression of Christian church life is that it is something like those fund raising weeks on public radio or television. Supposedly we are constantly urging people to give, punctuating all that we do, whether it’s worship or service, with those pleas.

I doubt that the impression that churches are constantly begging for money is true in 99% of our congregations, but even if it’s not the real scenario, we must acknowledge that giving is at the heart of our faith. That’s why Matthew 6, the central chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, may be understood as Jesus’ extended commentary on giving and what should be our attitude toward it.

The first part of Matthew 6 is what Jesus has to say about the the three traditional pillars of Jewish piety: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. The same acts constitute three out of the five pillars of Islam. What strikes me is that Jesus begins with alms, giving to the poor. Typically, religious acts directed toward God are placed ahead of those directed toward others. Elsewhere Jesus named first love toward God and then love toward one’s neighbor as the greatest commandments. In the Muslim list, recitation of Islam’s basic faith commitment (there is only one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet) and prayer both come before the giving of alms.

Yet here Jesus places giving first and I believe the whole chapter can be seen as support for and commentary on this basic Christian practice. The closing verses of Matthew 6, about not being anxious for the necessities of life, are beautiful and comforting, but they come into sharper focus when one considers them from the previous assumption that Christians will regularly be giving away at least some part of what they have.

Likewise the command in verses 19-21 to store up treasures in heaven and the command to not make a god or master out of money in verse 24 fit very well with an overall perspective aimed at generous giving being a large part of Christian life.

And all three spiritual practices are discussed here in Matthew 6 in a way that encourages doing them in pursuit of a reward that comes from God rather than for a tangible reward that appears in this world from others.

I’ve got to think it all through a bit more, but I’m liking the single theme of giving as a way to unpack this whole chapter. Even in the Lord’s prayer, we find ourselves expected to engage in the giving of forgiveness. Verses 22 and 23 are harder to squeeze into this framework, so I’ve got to ponder them some more.

What do you think?