Why Are You Weeping?

 

Text: John 20:1-18

Focus: Easter

Function: To help people see resurrection in their own circumstances.

20:¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, ⁹For as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.

¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, ¹²and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

He is risen!

Happy Easter everyone.

This is a day of celebration as we consider what it means that the resurrection has come and death is no longer the fear of human existence.

I want to focus on how the Christ reveals himself to Mary, who then becomes the first witness to the resurrection according to John’s account.

Someone said that if we wanted to be Biblically accurate this morning then we should also have a woman proclaim the good news to us today.

And to focus on Christ’s revelation to Mary, let us look at verse 13. The story, according to John is that Mary is at the tomb and the stone is rolled away and Jesus isn’t there. So, she leaves and runs to tell Peter and John who then run to investigate. They find the tomb empty and begin to believe Jesus rose from the dead. And then, according to John’s account, the men leave Mary behind who is just standing there weeping.

She glances again into the tomb and this time it is not empty, but two angels are there and they ask the salient question of Mary: “Why are you weeping?”

And the answer is obvious to me. She is weeping because she loves Jesus and she misses him terribly.

Indeed, Jesus has come into her life and has changed the story for her.

She was an outcast, probably forced into human trafficking in order to just survive and therefore, she was impure according to Jewish social and religious values.

And again, Jesus changes the narrative of her life. He restores her miraculously and completely accepts this so called outcast into the community of those who follow Jesus’ teachings.

It is important to me to emphasize the significance of Jesus’ relationship to Mary. He changes the social order by bringing into the group of followers, along with he 12 chosen disciples a woman of whom all the religious officials of the day would object to on the religious grounds of their purity culture.

At the time, they believed that accepting such a woman would certainly bring the wrath of God on the nation since they were appearing to tolerate evil.

And Jesus changes the story. It was upsetting to the religious leaders because he is sending a message to them about the value of their purity culture verses the value of a person who needs restoration.

They are interested in the power and control that their religious standards give them. Jesus is interested in a relationship with the woman. And Jesus lives again to have a relationship with us through his Spirit.

Jesus looks at the woman and sees her need.

And now she is reborn, from above, by the power of the Holy Spirit and she is extremely grateful that the one who had once been an outcast is now a valued member of God’s community.

And the religious folks have a hard time with God’s mercy and they resent the Lord for it.

So, the answer to the question, why are you weeping, as I mentioned is obvious.

But these are angels talking to her and they are messengers of God conveying, as God often does, in mysterious language designed to get them to think, a message to her to get her to believe.

So they question her and ask her to look into her heart.

I find that encounters with the divine lead me to the kind of questions that increase and build my faith as I look with God at my own heart.

She again emphasizes that she misses Jesus and will be comforted by seeing him, even if he is dead.

And then the Lord reveals himself to her.

And again, I love how the story unfolds:

Outside of the tomb is now a man standing there who wasn’t there before.

It is Christ but she supposes him to be the gardener. And then he speaks her name and she is familiar with the way he speaks and she realizes that it is indeed Jesus in a different body, but indeed risen from the dead.

And her sorrow is turned into joy and she becomes the first evangelist.

And it seems to me that this is the second time she has experienced resurrection in her own life.

First when Jesus sets her free and now, when Jesus comforts her in her time of sorrow.

What I see in the resurrection is that it happens for all of us. Hope happens for us even in the face of death because God changes the story and restores life.

In the midst of our suffering, at our lowest point sometimes, the Lord shows up to comfort us.

She loved him and he did not abandon her even though they took his life.

For in the power of the resurrection, we see the continuing love of God for us manifest in our own experiences of suffering, a form of death, and resurrection, a new life.

We no longer let the fear of death control us because we rest in Divine love.

So, Happy Easter, everyone!

The Coming Kingdom

 

Text: Mark 11:1-11

Focus: The kingdom of God

Function: to help people see the Kingdom of God instead of the Kingdoms of Mankind

11:¹When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples ²and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. ³If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this: ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” ⁴They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, ⁵some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” ⁶They told them what Jesus had said, and they allowed them to take it. ⁷Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. ⁸Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. ⁹Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

“Hosanna!
    Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
¹⁰     Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

¹¹Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple, and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Good morning and welcome again to our time spent together celebrating Palm Sunday.

I have always found it sort of ironic to celebrate this at the beginning of Holy Week considering all the tragedy that is about to befall the Lord.

We are reading today from the book of Mark, it is the shortest of the gospels. We have fragments of a document that is older than Mark and Luke and many believe that Mark and Luke used this earlier account of the gospel as an outline.

I find it interesting that the different authors were given to and designed to reach different audiences. John for example, was written to influence the Eastern Culture in India, and Christianity had an huge influence on the roots of Buddhism.

Matthew was written for the Jewish people, it was not written in Greek, but in Arabic and we don’t have any source fragments left. Matthew, in this account focuses on Jesus cleansing the temple after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Mark simple states that the temple was indeed his final destination, but that he went there and looked around.

It is sort of surprising because Mark was written to the Roman Culture/audience. It is what I call “The action gospel” because it has the word immediately in there 43 times. The Romans are much like us and they identified with power and strength and Jesus is portrayed as Christ the Victor in the gospel. For the Jews it was the OT law. And John identifies with the philosopher and the mystic.

In 2 Corinthians Brother Paul said that he changed his tactics of preaching to meet the needs of the crowd.

In the gospels, God changes the tactic between them to meet the needs of as many people as possible, It shows me the magnificent nature of God’s great love.

I wonder if that is why Kairos works so well. It is just as diverse as the gospels and the different team members from different backgrounds and theologies are used by God’s creative power to reach the men individually where they are at.

God wants to restore the world God’s own self.

And in this story this morning, I see the power of community. I have always remarked on the tragedy of Holy Week and have wondered if the same crowd that was crying out to Jesus to heal and restore their land to prosperity came back disappointed a week later and turned on him.

I wonder if the mob is that fickle that they could be praising him on day and 5 days later calling for his murder. I tend to believe that it was for the most part, two different crowds. Two different groups of people. One group of people, the ones who cried out for his death had not yet gotten the message.

Friday at Aaron Tigner’s funeral, I spoke of Jesus at two funerals. One at Lazarus’ funeral where he reacted uncontrollably with emotional pain and then his own funeral when he forgave the men from the cross.

I was very nervous to bring up the forgiveness part because I was aware that the family was looking for serious revenge and were hoping to find the killer before the police. I needed to address that so I said this: Jesus prayed to God for the restoration of the men that had just judiciously murdered.

I preached about the day when the lion shall lay down with the lamb and we will not learn the ways of war anymore.

Restoration. That is what God is about through Jesus and the Holy Spirit in this world. That is what God was doing with Jesus back then and that is what God is doing with us today. Christ is still on the earth in us. We are trying to bring the world back to the love of God.

And there is great power in community. We see during Holy Week the power of community for good and for evil. We see the power of community today in political rallies and we see people who were and are generally sane believing whatever lie their side feeds them. And they get passionate about it. I get passionate about it.

But God is calling us to bring the world back to Him. Sometimes we have to call out the evil and the injustice in this world. And for some reason, Mark does not mention the cleaning of the temple; Jesus again calling out exploitation of the poor. Nope, I believe Mark wants to focus on the Charismatic, Spirit filled power of Jesus during the event.

He is showing us the power of Jesus to change the story and give people hope. It is important that we focus on that hope.

I mentioned politics because our passion for God and our patriotism can get conflated or mixed together. I believe the root of Christian nationalism, which I believe to be a cult, comes from that mixing of Patriotic fever and our love for God.

I would not be true to scripture if I said that this was not a political event on Palm Sunday. Jesus on the colt of a Donkey instead of a conquering war horse was definitely a political message. It was a message to fight the fight with love instead of military might.

We are taught not to think of Jesus as a political figure, but the events of that week caused the Romans and the Jews to kill him to shut up his message because he was upsetting the political powers and the status quo of their society and our as well. Jesus spoke out because God wants to change the culture to a disposition of caring for the least of these and that can mean a political upheaval. It is a delicate balance.

So I called that number on the Dayton Billboards about Christians and politics. I was afraid they were going to endorse a political party. But they gave a great answer, the text is posted on the billboard where Jesus told Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world.

I realize that I have a duty as a minister and speaker for the Lord to speak out against injustice like Jesus did. Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow him. That means that our message against the powers that exploit others is going to be unpopular as well.

I believe that God is calling us to boldness. But also compassion. Compassionate boldness. Sometimes I find myself lowered to the level of the bickering that our politics have become. Jesus, I believe, rose above that bickering with a message to everyone to rest in Him because God wants to restore the world. His mindset wasn’t the dualism of our side verses their side, but e pluribus unim, out of many one, all side count.

It causes pain to hear rejection for the message of caring for the least of these. I fear God will judge us for the way we are using the refugees at the border as political fodder and not dealing with their suffering since God has blessed us so well here in the USA.

A colleague of mine posted that he while preaching through the sermon on the Mount he was instructed by his pastoral relations board to quit preaching the social Justice message that I believe got Jesus killed. The problem for us preachers who are trying to be faithful to Christ’s teachings and go against the spirit of the culture is that when we preach Jesus we get accused of being political.

When we preach and lift up Jesus. And Jesus’ teachings, which I try to focus on during my sermons it is going to affect our politics. And the culture lets politics determine Jesus teachings. They got it backwards. It shouldn’t be the other way around.

The focus has to be first on Jesus. Remembering that Jesus’ kingdom is not an human government. But it is the kingdom of God reigning in the hearts of those who follow Jesus’ teachings.

Maybe it was the same crowd that turned on Jesus a week later. Maybe the crowd actually was fickle and rejected him because he refused to overthrow their Roman oppressors.

But then here was see a wonderful thing in the kingdom!

If Jesus’ kingdom had stopped at the borders of Israel, it would not have spread to the earth. At the time, it was a coming kingdom. And it is here now.

Just as there are 4 accounts in the gospels reaching different ethnic/cultural groups, God’s plan was not just for one race of people, in one specific time in history, but a transformation of human culture where we learn to love one another as much as we care for ourselves.

Let the Spirit of God fill your hearts with the power of God’s love for us and our fellow humans.

Still Shining

 

Text: John 9:1-7, Ephesians 5:8-14

Focus: Jesus as the Light

Function: to help people see the responsibility to carry on the light

John 9:¹As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” ⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, ⁷saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

Ephesians 5:⁸for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, ⁹for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. ¹⁰Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. ¹¹Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them. ¹²For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly, ¹³but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, ¹⁴for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Sleeper, awake!
    Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Good morning Painter Creek. When we are doing Kairos, we sing a chorus called Shine, Jesus, Shine. It is fast paced and as all our songs do, it reiterates the theme that we too, like Jesus are the light of the world.

Remember the scriptural symbolism surrounding the concept that God is light. In the highly symbolic account of the 7 days of creation, God creates light and separates it from the darkness on the first day and God creates the sun, our source of light, on the 4th day.

So the light that Jesus is talking about here is spiritual. The Bible does not indicate specifically what it is, but we agree that it indeed symbolic. By looking at our Ephesians passage, we see a direct correlation between the light and goodness. I wonder if when God creates light on that first day if it isn’t a metaphor for God creating good. Or more specifically, God separates light from darkness so God makes a distinction between good and evil.

Some theologians speculate that this light is the glory of the Christ who makes creation possible. It sort of gets shot down by the belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co eternal and we see the Word of God, Jesus as an active agent in creation according to John 1.

But the concept that this light emanates from God, or that God creates light from God’s own self shows what our passages of scripture indicate that God is the source of Spiritual light and goodness.

Last week we read 37 verses for out text. This week, we were to have along text as well describing the story of the man who was born blind. But I decided instead to focus on us being the light of the world, the hope for the world.

I find Jesus’s answer to the question “who sinned?” important.

The question reminds me of the book of Job in the Old Testament. Job’s three friends were absolutely convinced that Job must has sinned to have such calamity come upon him when the truth is, sometimes bad things happen to good people.

At the core of the question by the disciples is the concern about the fairness of God. Who sinned? Job tells us that it is not necessarily sin that brings calamity and that we shouldn’t attribute our problems to that all the time.

Apparently they did not get the message.

They seem to have the idea that God is a God of revenge instead of restoration.

So, Jesus tells us that sin is not the problem here with this man. God wants to show to the world that God is in the world restoring the world to health and peace.

The lengthy story in John 9 goes on to show how the Jewish leaders questioned the healed man and his parents to see if a miracle happened.

And although a miracle happens, the scripture tells us that they refused to see what was obvious in front of them. I believe it was because they were to proud to admit they were wrong and change their minds and follow the Christ.

We get a warning to ourselves about priorities when we read why they didn’t want to follow Christ from Luke 16:¹³No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

¹⁴The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. ¹⁵So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by humans is an abomination in the sight of God.

The love of money and the fear of the lack of it can lead us away from God.

So Jesus answers the question about is God a God of retribution and who is God paying back with a positive statement about how He is the light of the world. And then he admonishes his disciples to do the same work as him.

When we go to the Ephesians passage, we get an idea of how this symbolism plays out in the world we live in.

I mentioned how light/darkness can possibly be the difference between good and evil. It is almost as if God, on the first day, created a choice for us between light and darkness and between good and evil.

We read this throughout the Old Testament that God has placed before us the choice to follow God and live or to die by disobeying God.

He isn’t, I believe, talking about judgment for failing God but about suffering the consequences if we do not obey.

For example, in Genesis we read that God gave us the earth to manage and to care for because it is God’s creation and therefore it is divine.

And yet, we have not cared for our planet and we are now suffering the effects of global warming. God does not hate us, but God does want us to take God seriously and obey. God wants us to follow the light.

In the Ephesians passage it says talks about how the “fruit of the light” is found in all the is good and right and true.

That leads me back to the idea that the creation of light is the separation of good and evil, light and darkness since walking in the light has a distinct quality about it. It focuses on what is good and right and true.

Truth. It rejects the lie and calls it out by shining its light on what is good and true and right.

I wish I had that ability. I find myself too often cursing the darkness instead of shining the light.

Jesus is the light of the world.

And Jesus is still shining in the world, through us, the Church.

And we are Christ’s body in here on earth. Jesus told us to light our lights and do not keep them hidden. We are called to bless the world with what is right. Sometimes that means like Jesus we have to speak out against injustice. Most often, it is a call to be a blessing.

Shine the light and be a blessing. That is what we can do for Christ.

The Healer of the World

Text: John 4:5-42

Focus: Salvation

Function: How the Spirit enters into us and changes the world.

(Reader 1)⁵So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

⁷A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

(Reader 2)¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ ¹⁸for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

(Reader 3)²⁷Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰They left the city and were on their way to him.

³¹Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³²But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. ³⁶The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

³⁹Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹And many more believed because of his word. ⁴²They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Good morning Painter Creek. This story is packed with grace, mercy and a little bit of the supernatural. It illustrates to us in deeply symbolic language the power of the Holy Spirit to transform the life of those who are walking with Jesus.

There are actually two lessons here. One on the power of the Spirit and the other about overcoming prejudice.

I love the middle of the story when the disciples come upon Jesus and see him talking with not only a woman, but a woman of whom there was significant amount of racial and then as a natural result of racism, religious prejudice between the two cultures.

The disciples take note that Jesus crossed racial boundaries and in the process, brought restoration to an entire village.

I have preached this passage several times emphasizing the nature of the woman and questioning why she was there alone without the other women and wondering if she was an outcast. I have preached in from the perspective that she was the evangelist to the village and God used someone whose character the religious folk would disdain. My point being that Jesus included everyone in the family of God.

However, before COVID, I picked up a female passenger driving Uber, and she sat in the front seat. Which was very unusual at the time for a woman to sit up front. But she was making a point that if the men can sit up front, then she could to. She was a professional story teller and she was working on this story of the woman at the well. She was explaining how we project a guilty, or sinful, image of the woman since her current circumstances did not include marriage. But the text does not say why she was married 5 times. Was she divorced or widowed? Most likely, she was widowed. And she helped me to see that Jesus wasn’t addressing her as a vile person, but as a hurting person who desperately needed grace and mercy.

It is a way to consider everyone in their individual circumstances and never judge them. We do so in obedience to the sermon on the mount where Jesus commanded us not to judge others but to only look at ourselves.

Every soul is a child of God and has value.

And again, the lesson is not only being taught to the woman at the well, but to the disciples as well.

Jesus deliberately uses this alien woman to instruct his own disciples to give up their prejudice and see the value of everyone.

That, I believe is also a process of the Holy Spirit. I remember the first time I saw a black child. I was shocked. And, because of the difference, I was somewhat afraid. I had the typical curious white response of wanting to touch that soft, curly hair, which I now have come to learn is offensive because it invades personal space in a way that makes a group of people feel like they are “the other.”

The disciples are shocked that Jesus is sitting with “the other” and they learn a lesson about racism from Jesus. They learn to give up their tribalism and fear of the other and accept them as God’s children, regardless of race or religion.

Let us get back to the supernatural part of the story: Jesus’ miracle here is the fact that he knows her circumstance and then leads her to understand that a messenger from God is here to help her.

And here is where it gets highly symbolic. He offers her living water and of course, she thinks he is talking about physical water.

She has already deducted that this a supernatural encounter and she is not afraid and I believe she is tense with expectation.

And then, she goes and tells the village that she has found the Messiah and they also believe because of her testimony. And then, both she, the village, Jesus and the disciples enjoy the beloved community for a few days together before Jesus moves on.

But the symbolic language, you will drink water that will keep you from ever being thirsty again is a reference to the living water that Jesus said would flow out of our bellies.

In this story, the life giving water of the Holy Spirit flowed out of Jesus into the woman and then through her, redemption came to the entire village. It is a wonderful story of God’s grace and power.

And it has two lessons combined into one. Jesus dismisses all the ancient prejudices without a word to the disciples and the disciples just accept it.

I praise God that they were able to get the message. And then Jesus, in the fact that he opened up the kingdom to their enemies demonstrates to them the passion that God has for the redemption of the world entire.

Later on, in Matthew 28: Jesus commands those who follow him to spread across the planet teaching these principles of love and mercy so that the culture would change. Then they baptized them into this new way of living.

I see a link between this move of God and the overcoming of racial boundaries. When we dedicate ourselves to love our neighbor as ourselves. I believe that God moves in our acts of love by the power of the Spirit inside of us.

Let us be that light and love as well because this story illustrates that Jesus is indeed the Savior of the world entire.

Angry About What?

 

Text: John 2:13-22

Focus: Anger

Function: To help people see understand when to get angry

¹³The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” ¹⁷His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” ¹⁸The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” ¹⁹Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” ²⁰The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” ²¹But he was speaking of the temple of his body. ²²After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Good morning! This morning’s message is probably for me more than anybody in this room. Today we are going to focus on anger and hopefully help us to see when to get angry and what to do about it.I plan to keep the message positive.

I have always been uncomfortable around anger and have been uncomfortable using my anger as if somehow by using it I was sinning.

I know it is important for me to paint a picture of Jesus who loves everyone, accepts everyone and wishes the best for everyone.

I believe that God does indeed wish the best for everyone of us, because God defines God’s own self as love.

And I see Jesus then, the incarnate God, as Love incarnated. So, this image of Jesus cleansing the temple seems to be contradictory.

A little history. John the author of this gospel gives us 7 miracles and 7 parables of Jesus to ponder. He says that there were a lot more, but he focuses on these and his book is aligned with principles instead of a chronological account.

I say that because this happens at the beginning of the book and we also have an account of Jesus cleansing the temple of the merchants who are exploiting the people’s faith for profit at the beginning of Holy Week.

It could have happened twice or John’s mystical usage of 7 actions and the importance of them had John place the cleansing at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. The timing of it isn’t important, what is important is why he did it.

It is also important to note that Jesus did not commit violence against people. His actions were directed at the merchandise and the displays, according to the text. Of course, he had a whip which is an offensive weapon, so I don’t know what that means, but I am sure it got everyone’s attention.

And the object of Jesus’ ire is also made clear from the text. They were profiteering off of religion. The NT principle is found in Matthew 10:8 “Freely you have received, freely give.”

And in the context, Jesus was speaking about spiritual things and spiritual faith.

I think that means we are to be upset about the mansions the Televangelists possess.

So, Jesus got angry and since he was divine, didn’t sin by getting angry. Instead, he used his anger to make a change.

Anger is an emotion. It is neither good or bad. It is most often accompanied by a biochemical response in our lymphatic systems that pumps some adrenaline into our systems and then we are motivated to make a change.

It isn’t evil, it is part of how God made us.

But the Bible does talk about it. Maybe a verse that is familiar to you, the one that we got the adage not to go to bed angry with our spouse but to resolve our differences comes from Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry and sin not. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.”

There is a command in there to actually allow ourselves the power anger has to change a bad situation. But there is also the caveat to not let the sun set on it.

In other words, as one writer I read last week put it this way, to allow yourselves: “the luxury of anger.”

I pondered that since I am sort of afraid of anger, probably because I had an example in my life that didn’t do very well with anger.

I pondered how it can be a luxury. I am not sure I would use the word luxury, but I would use the word “gift” to speak to how it empowers us to make the necessary changes in our lives. These changes, I believe, are all part of the process of restoration and salvation and abundant life that the Holy Spirit is working on for each of us.

In our text today, desperate people were being taken advantage of and that was unjust. Jesus got angry at injustice.

When I read the Scriptures, especially the writings of the prophets who were Holy Spirit inspired, I see God’s passion for justice.

James 1:27 tells us that pure religion, undefiled before God is to take care of people in distress and to rise above worldly influences. I take that to mean to keep our eyes focused on Jesus’ priorities for humanity instead of our own. Our reward is in heaven.

Another verse about anger that has informed me also comes from the book of James. James 1:19-20: ¹⁹You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, ²⁰for human anger does not produce God’s justice

One of the ways of the ways to manage anger is to wait to speak until after we have heard the other person and understand their viewpoint and then restrain our anger.

I take that to mean that we are to manage our anger into a positive result. It motivates of to make necessary changes. And by doing so, we are following the mission that Christ has given to us.

But the salient part of that passage from James is verse 20, “For human anger does not bring about God’s justice.”

Human anger can mistakenly lead to revenge. And if we give full vent to our wrath, we are working with human power instead of Holy Spirit power. The Spirit of God gently nudges us and others toward God’s plan for the world.

We see a lot of anger on the news and on television dramas. In our drama series, it isn’t until the protagonist gets angry that he or she solves the problem. They have finally said to themselves: “Enough is enough” so they make a change.

It is like anger is the go to drug of our emotional choices.

But then our images of anger fed to us by these other than Godly influences almost always brings us to revenge.

And the scriptures teach us that vengeance belongs to God.

There is a balance here. Anger leads us to make a change, but our faith keeps us from taking revenge. We trust that God will judge fairly in the end. Be keep on serving God in this life because we believe that God will indeed empower us to make change.

The title of the sermon is “Angry about What?” and the answer, I believe, is be angry about injustice, like Jesus was.

Jesus got angry when injustice happened. I believe part of what it means for us to be different from people who do not follow the way of Jesus’ teachings, and to take up our cross to follow Jesus is for us to also speak out and work against injustice.

The Church needs to influence the conscience of a culture.