New

Text: John 13:34, Acts 11:1-8, Revelation 21:5

Focus: Newness

Function: To contemplate the changes in the New Covenant

Intro: Don't worry about the three different passages and three long points and a long sermon. They are three of the four lectionary passages, I left out the OT passage.

One year at Easter, we decided to celebrate by singing three different Easter Hymns right after a short little Bible study on why they were important.

So, there were three different, 5 minute sermonettes in place of one 25 minute sermon and for those who are watching the clock, that was a 10 minute bonus!

But one dear old saint was not to be put off and he told me -kind of in frustration- that I didn't have to preach for the next three two weeks because I gave three sermons that week.

Now I mean it when I say he was a dear saint, it is just that change threatens people, and I find that I too, am a little scared of change.

But God continues to make all things new and that means that God is bringing change.

It wasn't my idea to put these three passages of scripture together.

As we saw in our call to worship, the reading of Revelation 21:1-4 (#860 Hymnal, A Worship Book), New Heaven, New Earth, the Spirit of God is moving today to create this new Kingdom and it is a big job, a project for the millenniums.

There are many theologians, evangelicals, liberals, conservatives and progressives together who agree that we are at the beginning of a second reformation in the Church.

The first Reformation was a sort of a “back to the bible” movement that began the movement of taking the Church away from its Empire and bringing back to what the Bible says. It was and is a Reformation of Orthodoxy, meaning “correct doctrine.”

But there is an huge problem with “correct doctrine” alone.

The Pharisees of Jesus' time were pretty sure that they were guardians of their own brand of correct doctrine, and they were to that extent, but in so doing, they missed who Jesus actually was.

We can get so caught up in the letter of the law that we miss the Spirit of the Christ that inspired the Law.

The letter kills, but the Spirit brings life. 2 Corinthians 3:6.

That First Reformation was Correct -Ortho, Doctrine -Doxy, Orthodoxy.

But the second Reformation is beginning to happen and that is Correct Practice or -big word you can forget immediately- Orthopraxy.

It comes from the question “what good is having the theology and doctrine correct if it doesn't actually change the way we do our lives and love others?” or “What good is knowledge if we do not love?”

What good is correct doctrine if all it is is statements, propositions of truth that get slugged back and forth between the different sides.

If the doctrines reinforce our lack of unity and love, are they correct?

It plays out in the real world.

There are people who believe that correct doctrine outweighs correct love and therefore deny basic goods and services to others under the guidelines of “taking a stand.”

Now nowhere does the bible actually tells us to “take a stand against sin.”

If we are going to take a stand, let us do take a stand “For love.”

What good is the correct doctrine if it justifies us not practicing love and at the basic place of all is this, “treat people like you want to be treated.”

To me, it is as simple as this, if I want a cake for my wedding, then I must, by love, ensure that others can have cakes for their weddings as well.

The correct practice out-weighs the correct doctrine.

Our first text from today, “And Now, a new command... ...Love one another.”

One of my favorite verses because it makes it all so simple.

And this is indeed about God changing the doctrine.

New Command, new filter, new way of understanding right from wrong, does it violate the command of loving others?

Yes or no to that is pretty simple.

At the end of the book of Revelation, when God is indeed wiping away the tears of those who have been oppressed, displaced, murdered, martyred and harmed by the empire, John has this vision of God proclaiming once again the process that God is involved in: God is making all things new, still.

So look at the Acts passage. We have studied it a little bit lately.

Actually we studied Acts 10 during our Bible Study around becoming a welcoming Church.

This passage, chapter 11, Peter is defending his actions to the rest of the Apostles.

Even though a great miracle has happened, Cornelius and his household are baptized, a move of the Holy Spirit has happened to prove that God was behind it even though it broke the old rules of orthodoxy, there were well meaning Christians who disagreed and one of the first conflicts in the Church emerged.

God did this. Peter tells them that God loves these people in spite of who they are, or who the circumcised believers think they are.

I understand the pain of change. Still fresh in the Jewish memory was the punishment they endured for mixing their faith with other religions. But they needed to understand that this is indeed a new covenant. This is a new Testament. This is a new way for God to live in relationship with humanity.

They had to stop and think about it. There was tension over this issue for the next generation. The entire book of Galatians is written about this tension and how difficult it was for them to understand but now, it has nothing at all to do with our faith.

We moved on and Jews and Gentile Christians would never think of the difference between them in a worship service.

God made everything new and God made everything different and God is still doing that in our culture.

In history, because of the influence of the Church, slavery has become illegal across the world. That doesn't mean it does not happen right here in Grand Rapids, but it is illegal.

God is using the Church as an instrument of Change and now the faithful are working again to bring justice to other groups, like black people, Muslims, Gay, Lesbians, undocumented neighbors because every single person, even our enemies, is also our neighbor.

And it is Orthodox because we are under a new command, Love one another.

And in Matthew 25, Jesus said, if you did this unto the least of these, you did it unto Me.

Jesus said, when you loved others, you loved me.

Jesus said, a New command, Love others.

Jesus said, When you love others, you love me.

In the OT it says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”

Love Jesus by loving others.

That is the new Commandment that God has made for us.

Love God, Love Others, Love Jesus by loving others.

Out of Chaos

Text: Revelation 7:9-17

Focus: Unity

Function: Unity out of Diversity

Intro:

I don't know what I like most about this passage, verse 10: “All nations, all tribes, all races, all languages crying out to God in a loud voice: `Salvation comes from... ...the Lamb.'” Or, verse 17: “¹⁷because the Lamb, who is in the center of the throne, will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Verse 10 is huge in the scheme of the Book of Revelation.

Remember, John writes this as a vision that God gives him about the suffering that Israel went through in 70 AD.

Remember, the people were sure the reason why they were destroyed was because they were not pure enough in their faith. That lack of purity was largely due to interracial marriage.

I don't know if the idea of racial purity because of religious reasons was as important in their national identity as it was to the common identity that we all feel as individuals who tend to figure out reasons to justify why they want segregate themselves.

This is huge. To have a Jewish prophet being overwhelmed as he is relaying an image of all nations worshiping Jesus together demonstrates to me the authentic nature of John's vision.

In a prison bible study that I was conducting about 25 years ago, I had a problem with a few people who came to the Bible study to disrupt and to proselytize toward another faith.

One made the claim that the Bible was written as a propaganda tool for one religion and it, as a history book, always paints them in the light as being the only decent people in the midst of evil doers.

I don't argue those points with people because they are useless. Instead, I want to just focus back, as this passage does, on Jesus.

If the Bible was merely a history of how God's people are better than others, then it would not include so much failure by God's people.

I see it as a story of God's love for humanity and people trying to figure this out.

It appears to me that John had a real live vision because if this were merely a religious story designed to vindicate the Jewish people over the rest of the world, then this image, this image that is so contrary to the current popular religious teaching, Jews and Gentiles, all nations, all races, all languages, eventually every single person coming to Jesus must have come from another source. I believe it was the miracle of the Holy Spirit as God led John to this vision.

It appears that every generation since this book was written believes that it was, and is, or will be about them.

Maybe God left it that mysterious. Or maybe, we believe that advertisers that it is always about us.

But for John to make this statement about the inclusive nature of the gospel was certainly a different story.

Remember, the Jews believed that the mixing of the races led them to the problems that they did and were now facing again.

But this passage isn't about how God's people are better than others as the detractors at my bible study were trying to say.

It's a passage about how big the crowd is that belongs to God and how diverse they are.

How did the world change from its nationalism and racism into a multi-national people?

John sees, in this vision, the desire of God: the desire that humanity lives together in harmony.

And it happens because of Jesus.

I learned a lot from those guys who were proselytizing in my bible study. We learned to love and respect each other.

I was pleased to meet men who hoping that God would include them as well.

And with those men, like this passage, I love to focus on Jesus.

Remember, they are worshiping the Lamb. John -or Jesus- choose this image of Jesus, the Lamb, as a way to remind people throughout ages of the power of sacrificial love for others.

If this was about the kingdoms of men, then it would not have included all those peoples.

The way Jesus died was certainly a message that the ways of human kingdoms merely brings death and destruction.

Jesus shows John this vision of humanity together, unified, as one, celebrating Jesus.

And of course, the obvious application is that if we are going to be the Kingdom of God, if we are going to be the Church then what we do on earth should reflect what is happening in heaven.

Unity is now, Amen?

And then that last verse, God will wipe away their tears.

I love the way the image changes here. We go from the worship of the Lamb to praise for the Shepherd.

And they are both one and the same at this point.

Or, at least the symbol changes.

The slain lamb becomes the shepherd.

Remember last week's vision, the Lamb was worshiped because the Lamb was slain.

This week, all that is known and now the Lamb is worshiped because He is the Savior.

And, as Savior, He becomes the Shepherd.

And, His qualification is the way He allowed Himself to die at the hands of the Romans who killed Him to maintain their control over their slaves.

Jesus said, “The First shall be last and the last shall be first.”

We get this picture of Heaven and we see that what is valued there is love, sacrifice and community. It is completely different than what is valued here by our culture, not by our faith.

It truly is an upside down kingdom.

And when we look at the teachings of Jesus, we see this love, sacrifice, give to others first,

When I was young, we used to sing a little Chorus in Sunday School. It was: “Jesus and others and you, what a wonderful way to spell joy.”

The emphasis was on the others before you. But in this day and age of personal rights and freedoms in the political arena, somehow, it seems as if Christians are crying more and more about personal rights instead of living for others.

In order to help with expenses during this transition, we have a young man boarding with us in Dayton.

He moved up from Hazard county KY with a friend because jobs were better. I think it is sad that a job that is still poverty level is what he was forced to move for, but he is an hard working man.

He struggles. His friend never spent any time with black people and left immediately because he didn't want to be around those kind of people.

But our young boarder is doing better. His father died of a drug overdose two years ago and his life has been hard ever since.

He is trying, but has a lot to overcome.

He asked me about this scripture Friday, “does Jesus really want us to lay down our lives for our friends?”

The man's world view is very racist, my son is married to a black woman and they are helping this young man through a very difficult time.

This is the kind of kingdom that Jesus came to establish.

It is upside down.

John has a vision of what Jesus is creating here on earth.

It Is Finished

Text: Revelation 5:11-14

Focus: Worship

Function: To celebrate the Atonement

Form: GOK

Intro: Easter Worship always has a profound affect on me. It feels like things for the next few weeks are anti-climatic except, I keep going back to our worship services and I hear two songs in my head, the resurrection song from the Easter Dance and Dan's song: “It is Finished.”

It is Finished!

I wonder how it felt for Jesus to say those words from the Cross.

And every time I think of that image, I get the picture of the brave person who willingly throws himself or herself in front of a bullet to save a stranger.

I get the picture of great sacrifice.

But, there is this sense of satisfaction in the eye of the one who is giving themselves up.

Like the soldier who knows that his sacrifice will save the rest and dies with a sense that his sacrifice was worthwhile.

And so, Jesus cries out those words and then lets His own life go.

Brother Paul brings out a detail in Romans 5 that is important. He says this about Jesus in Romans 5: ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for an un-righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

When He dies, He knows that He has won.

That is what we understand. And it isn't just some sort of mental gymnastics, Jesus defeated the power of death and the power of fear that death has over us by raising from the dead.

So, when I still hear the words from that song ringing in my ears “It is Finished!” I place an exclamation point after it and shout hallelujah, Jesus won!

When we sing that song, it reminds us that Jesus Christ is the Victor.

Our gathering liturgy is taken from our companion text this morning, Psalms 30.

We used to sing a Chorus from it: “God has turned our mourning into dancing and put off our sackcloth.”

Christ brought to us the Victory.

I love the old Hymn, Victory in Jesus.

It reminds me of what we are celebrating this morning as we continue to celebrate the resurrection.

There are at least 7 different ways to look at the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I relate to every one of them.

In one, Christ won the battle by not giving in to violence, fighting back, letting them kill Him and through that showed us that we do not have to resort to violence to serve God.

In another, God has not going to allow anybody in to heaven unless a perfect sacrifice was slain on behalf of the people. That sacrifice was Jesus and through His death, the way is open for anyone to get to heaven.

And all of these ideas are good and right and true in their own merit and with scripture to back them up.

And I love ferreting out all the meaning behind the symbolism and all of it.

But when I look at the text chosen for today, I realize something else, the point is to draw us to Jesus.

In this passage we get a glimpse of heaven. Angels, according to this translation, thousands and millions of them and around the throne.

And (look at the little children in the audience) the Bible says that they can see both God and you at the same time.

And they too are looking for the answer to the evil that befalls the world and their focus is placed on Jesus, the one who overcame evil by His death.

And this scene, like Revelation 4, are pictures of what is going on, maybe even right now, in heaven.

Someone one called this passage a rapture drill because it suggests part of what is going on in heaven.

And in the context of the passage, in heaven, they are looking for someone worthy enough to open the seals. It is Jesus.

They are still focusing on the event, “it is finished.”

In this passage, they are worshiping the one who was killed, Jesus. And His willingness to die is the reason why they are worshiping Him.

They are not happy about death, they are happy that they death overcame the evil in the world.

The book of Revelation is difficult.

It is about suffering.

It was written between 81-86 AD.

In Matthew 24, Jesus predicts the events that will happen when the magnificent temple in Jerusalem is destroyed. Jesus says “This generation will not pass away before this happens.” And it happened in 70 AD.

More than anything, it is a prophecy and a comfort to the people of Israel during the brutal siege and slaughter of the Jewish People during the Roman pogrom that Jesus prophesied would happen. You remember the warning Jesus gave: “¹⁹Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! ²⁰Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath. ²¹For at that time there will be great suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. ²²And if those days had not been cut short, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.”

It is difficult for us to imagine how brutal the destruction of Jerusalem was in 70 AD.

Although they re-used crosses, it is reported that they had difficulty finding enough trees to make crosses to kill the population.

That is hard for me to actually get my mind around. And I don't want us to focus on the evil that is still in the world.

And the people of God have to be asking themselves” why, if they belong to God, is all this bad stuff happening?

I get that question a lot.

Pastor, if I believe, then why?

I don't know.

There is indeed evil in this world.

The biggest question that everyone has is this, if there is evil, does God care?

Why do good people die young? Why war? Why poverty? Why sickness? Why does God let evil continue?

I read a provocative story by Rudolf Vrba. It details his experience in Auschwitz during the war.

The book describes atrocity after atrocity committed against him and others to the point where he decides two things: “there is no God” and “I cannot forgive.”

In partially describing these two events, I have delved far enough into human depravity to help us feel it. I think every one should be aware of the history of evil so that we can do our part to prevent it happening again.

What happened 2,000 years ago happened again 70 years ago and that is just to one people.

Atrocity after atrocity have been committed since the beginning of time and people have always wondered this: “where is God in my suffering when someone else is responsible?” Even, at times when the only person we can find to blame is God.

In my morning devotions I am reading through the book of Job right now.

Jobs' friends had God all figured out.

If you do well and never do wrong, you will be rich and well. If you are poor and are suffering, then it must be because you are not good enough and go not have God's favor. There must be some sort of hidden sin.

Job's friends want the world to be easy and fairness to be easily accessible to everyone. It should be.

But it isn't and what happens when it isn't?

In heaven we see this picture. Jesus, the one who was treated the most unfairly, the perfect sacrifice for our sins as the one who gave His life.

No other mention of anything else.

I should point out that the resurrection is assumed at this part of the passage.

The evil that seems to have won has not won no matter how it looks.

I believe that this leads me to relief that there is still reason to keep going.

Trust God to be the fair judge and remember, Jesus overcame death.

(Look to heaven) “Thank You, Jesus!”

A Powerful Peace

Text: John 20:19-31

Focus: Peace through forgiveness

Function: To help people be less judgmental

Form: GOK

Intro: In Matthew 20, there is a parable about land owner who hired people to work at different intervals along the day. He told the first group that he would give them a day's wage.

At the end of the day, those who were hired and worked only one hour received a day's wage while those who bore the heat and brunt of the day's work received the same wage.

They complained against the generosity of the master, but they all got at least that for which they agreed to work.

I buried a dear old saint once, her name was Margaret. Her mother was from “the trailer court” and like her daughter, she spent many regrettable years away from the community of the Church.

Both women gave in to pressure from their unbelieving husbands and regretted it.

At her funeral, the story of God's grace just kept coming back up, again and again, how both women had found their way back into the fold.

Upstairs in worship during the funeral, tears of joy flowed. But downstairs, gossip was happening and one person was offended that the women got to get away with sinning for years and they got the same reward as her.

Why, I wonder, do people resent grace?

Now, the lady who said those awful things was indeed a dear old saint and a wonderful Christian woman. But she, like me, was far from perfect and I thought about how we so readily tolerate gossip, a sin that perpetrates harm, and therefore, evil.

We, as a body politic in Christianity have certainly forgiven and excused the sin of gossip for years and again, gossip harms people.

And we hold other sins, what I am going to call “non-evil” and for the sake of this discussion, “sins” because we are dealing with commands based on principles from God's commitment to justice, love and mercy, but we hold these other things, things that are not evil in nature, like what happens in bedrooms, private business that has nothing to do with faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus and its corresponding change, by the Holy Spirit to become people who all of a sudden confess their brokenness and start living for the good of others.

Wow.

The passage says, “forgive sins and they will be forgiven.”

There really are no qualifiers on this as to which sins are to be forgiven and which ones are not except John mentions only one, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

I wish I could go back in time, be two places at once, and go into that basement and say “Forgive her, you have been forgiven. Don't you see?”

Sinning is committing acts of evil that break community with God and others.

This person left the church.

It hurts when people leave.

It wasn't a secret that she left the church to keep peace at home.

She was indeed broken and when she returned, she was more broken. We were pleased to be the place to help her find restoration and forgiveness.

The first promise of our passage is peace.

I imagine the fear that they are hiding for their lives an suddenly a ghost appears in their midst.

Scary stuff.

But maybe Jesus' offer of peace is more than that.

This is a powerful peace that transforms the way they will live from then on.

This is His big appearance to the 12.

This is the moment they are now hoping for since Mary, Peter and John have seen Him.

He gives them peace and (point toward floor dramatically) the very first thing he tells them is to forgive others without condition.

And, He gives them the actual power to do it.

Do it. Forgive. You have the power.

Sadly, the Church may have made a distinction about sin that just doesn't seem right to me.

It may have picked and chosen the sins that it will accept and forgive and the ones that it will not accept and forgive in order to maintain its own sense of being.

But simply maintaining our sense of being can begin to separate us from what Christ is doing in the world today.

As the Hymn says, “The Darkness will turn to the dawning...”

One of the first OT commands the Lord revoked was the separation between Jews and Gentiles, non-Jews.

And that began the process of breaking down barriers to everyone.

Sin is committing acts of evil that harm others.

Brokenness may be referred to by some as sin, but it is different. It is things like the exaggeration to the point of lying that a person may say about themselves in order to make a good impression.

It may be the unfulfilled psychological need that drives a person to deviant behavior, or prevent them from forming some healthy relationships.

Broken people are forgiven people who have found Jesus the Savior.

And He says one thing here, Forgive others.

The Church is for broken people. I am not going to judge what is brokenness for you, I am responsible for me.

It seems easier to forgive broken people who make mistakes born out of their brokenness. I understood the woman felt she needed to leave church to keep her husband happy.

I celebrate the kind of mercy that forgives her and I think that is what God means when God says “Love Mercy.”

I have wondered at times if the Church has elevated some of these “non-evil” sins in order to misdirect themselves from their own lack of obedience when it comes to extending mercy toward people with whom we do not agree.

I heard the N word in my home a few times. But we were told we were great Christians because we did not drink any alcohol, play with cards or ever go to movies.

And we were Christians. I met Jesus in that home. I was raised to love and trust Jesus in that home even though there was sin in that home and it was sin that at the time, the church was okay with.

That church, like this one and every other one, was made up of people who are broken and not yet perfect. They, indeed, We, are people who believe in Jesus as the Savior.

But sometimes, broken people make up rules to justify themselves and in the process, all of a sudden forget Jesus. And God loves us and brings us back.

Like, as I mentioned, justifying racism with tea-totaling.

That kind of judgment is exactly what Jesus was talking about when He condemned the lawgivers for making up human rules about sin that went way out of bounds about God's concerns.

Broken people sometimes make mistakes and need forgiveness.

So, there is one choice, stand forgiving.

But what about evil?

Well, ...even though racism is one of the biggest evils we have yet to over come in our society, we are gradually making progress. I have to forgive the one who used the N word, I need to, he is my father.

And God looks at everyone as family.

BOKO Harem has turned kidnapped Chibok girls into suicide bombers. They are our girls, can we not forgive them? Are they willing? Do they suffer from Stockholm syndrome where a cognitive dissonance compels them to empathize with, and then join their captors?

We have been given a powerful peace from Christ by our own forgiveness.

I conclude the message with this thought, we have been forgiven, forgive others.