Faith of Steel

  

Text: 1 Thessalonians 1:2-10

Focus: conversion

Function: to talk about being born anew

^2-5Every time we think of you, we thank God for you. Day and night you’re in our prayers as we call to mind your work of faith, your labor of love, and your patience of hope in following our Master, Jesus Christ, before God our Father. It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very much but also has put his hand on you for something special. When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.

^5-6You paid careful attention to the way we lived among you, and determined to live that way yourselves. In imitating us, you imitated the Master. Although great trouble accompanied the Word, you were able to take great joy from the Holy Spirit!—taking the trouble with the joy, the joy with the trouble.

^7-10Do you know that all over the provinces of both Macedonia and Achaia believers look up to you? The word has gotten around. Your lives are echoing the Master’s Word, not only in the provinces but all over the place. The news of your faith in God is out. We don’t even have to say anything anymore—you’re the message! People come up and tell us how you received us with open arms, how you deserted the dead idols of your old life so you could embrace and serve God, the true God. They marvel at how expectantly you await the arrival of his Son, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescued us from certain doom.

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

I hope you don’t get tired of hearing that every Sunday morning. But I choose this passage of scripture because it reiterates the theme of us being the beloved children of God.

God choose you to be their follower and God has placed the power of the Spirit inside of you so that you will not fail in your desire to please and follow the master.

Paul opens the letter with this greeting that commends the strength of their faith reminded them that God is with them.

He mentions how they willingly received the message in spite of the fact that preaching the message brought him and th en them, persecution.

When you read through the book you read that they were subject to mob violence and legal action against them.

They came preaching Jesus and the fact that Jesus shows us the new way of living that God, the living God -not a creation of humanity, wants people to live.

And it was the idea of the living God who created the universe that upset them because the people still worshipped the pantheon of Greek gods .

And that was a problem because all of a sudden the message of Christ became political. It became political because the Roman government had set up a pluralistic sort of Government whereby all the different conquered people could retain worship of their individual idols and gods without fear. However, all they had to do was accept that idea that Caesar, who was still in human form, was also a god. And they were forced to pay homage to Caeser by saying: :Caesar is Lord.”

When they accepted Christ and they realized that Christ actually is the Lord and through Christ everything was created. They rejected the idea that Caesar was a lord because that would be an insult to Christ.

Among themselves and publicly they said Jesus is Lord. And that got them into great trouble.

You heard how Christians were persecuted the first three centuries of the faith because they were considered insurrectionists since they refused to acknowledge the lordship of Caesar.

So, the story is that Paul is here in Thessalonica preaching that only Jesus is Lord and that upsets the locals, especially the silversmiths who made their living producing idols for people to purchase and worship. People don’t like to be told that they are wrong and people are passionate about their faith. And he upset the Roman authorities who worship Caesar as god.

He is attacked from both sides and is falsely beaten and imprisoned but he doesn’t give up preaching and the Holy Spirit is right there beside him convincing people that they way of Jesus is much better than the authoritarian form of government that Rome gave them.

The way of Jesus was completely different from the system of government that the people lived under.

It said that the slave is equal to the king in God’s eyes.

That ideology threatened the very core of society.

Paul, in the name of Jesus was telling people to love their neighbors, to give up greed and selfishness and to live in a form of community that is interdependent on each other. And at the same time give up their idols.

God asked a lot of these people and they followed because the Holy Spirit showed them the truth of Paul’s message.

When he reports to the other apostles his mission trips he reports to the apostles the gospel message and they tell him that his message is good as long as it leads to people caring for the poor.

And Paul talks of his eagerness to preach this kind of message in a culture that believes it is okay to mistreat fellow humans as if they are worth less than others.

He was preaching Jesus who proclaimed that when we live in this kind of brotherhood, we will be the healing agent against the powers that be that are willing to enslave others as if their lives don’t count.

He was bold in his preaching and it did land him in trouble but he didn’t stop preaching Jesus and the message of God’s love for everyone.

They eventually killed him for doing it.

But he mentions in this passage how his boldness is an inspiration to others, to the Thessalonians and all the way down to us.

People hated him because his message pricked their conscience and exposed their greed or ignorance.

Wise people, when confronted with another idea will take the time to consider the idea before rejecting it. They may embrace the idea completely or in part. But they are open minded enough to listen and to hear the Spirit of God leading them into what we call in the Church of the Brethren, another way of living.

Kingdom First

  

Text: Matthew 22:15-22

Focus: spiritual devotion

Function: to contrast zeal for God with patriotism.

¹⁵ Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. ¹⁶So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality. ¹⁷Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” ¹⁸But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? ¹⁹Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. ²⁰Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?” ²¹They answered, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” ²²When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.

Good morning to God’s beloved chilcren. Remember that God describes God’s own self as LOVE and according to Ephesians 2, is going to spend eternity showering us with God’s love.

This passage of scripture has been used to try to enforce all kinds of rules and regulations about our faith and our relationship toward the government.

But when Pilate asked Jesus if he was a king, Jesus said he was the king of God’s spiritual kingdom that rises above mere human politics and considerations.

The Church is the embassy of the Kingdom of God. The Church is the body of Christ and it is universal and when one reads the epistles of the Apostle Paul and his collection for the saints from across the world, one can see how the Church is here to care for each other so that no one lacks.

Our allegiance is to the kngdom of God and our political considerations should be in relationship to the principles of God’s kingdom of love, mercy, and welcome. It is fueled by the fruits of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self contrl. These are traits of the follower of Jesus and there are no laws in any governments against these traits. When the kingdom of God is in its proper balance, focusing on the love of God instead of power, the Kingdom of God rises above human kingdoms.

That frames how we understand this passage.

It comes in a section of Matthew where Jesus is being tested right before he is sacrificed for us. Matthew wrote his gospel for the Jewish people and in this chapter, he shows the Jewish people how Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for our sins by passing all the tests that the leaders throw at him during holy week.

The story is that they are trying to trip him up by making him admit that Rome has more power over Israel than God. They want him to deny the power of God.

And Jesus outsmarts them by pointing out to them that they have already accepted Roman occupation by the fact that they use the Roman coin for their business.

The trap had to do with a form of religions purity whereby the Jewish people distinguished themselves from non Jew by not associating with others. Remember the money changers in the temple that Jesus overthrew? They made a fortune trading Roman coins for Jewish coins because a Roman coin was impure and couldn’t be used for a temple offering. They charged a high price for the “Right kind” of coin.

It was a way of exploiting the poor with religion and Jesus was offended by it.

And Jesus’ answer is not some sort of regulation in scripture about paying taxes, it is a condemnation of people using religion to exploit others financially.

God’s love is freely given and received. We can’t charge for it. That offends God.

And yet, this passage of scripture has become political in the way that it is used as a metaphor for us to support our government.

The scripture says that God gave government and we are to obey unless it violates our conscience or our faith.

However, we have to seperate our passion for Christ and our patriotism. Patriotism is an heartfelt passion. We are raised to love our country and to believe in it or otherwise, we have chaos.

My dad was raised like us with the belief that war is sin because it clearly violates the principle of love, even for our enemies.

But Hitler and the Axis power in WWII were evil. My dad was faced with a moral dilemna. Did he join the fight againt evil or not? He ultimately enlisted in the navy. For him, choosing to fight was the moral choice of the lesser of two evils.

I underst and that my dad’s choice was not born out of patriotism so much as it was a moral choice of conscience in that he thought that he could contribute to the good cause of stopping evil.

Many of our Brethren and Mennonite brothers participated but choose otherwise in WWII. They became conscientious objectors to war. But that didn’t mean that they were not willing to give their lives for the cause of justice. The best story told is how around100 of them were emaciated nearly to the point of death in order to learn how to treat victims of the concentration camps. If memory serves me correctly, I believe 14 of them gave their lives for the experiment.

I’m not preaching about war. I speaking about patriotic passion verses our Christian faith. I mention my dad and my gratefulness for the sacrifices made in WWII because it gave me a great sense of patriotism growing up.

And it leads to the problem: how do we order our love for country and our allegiance to the kingdom of God when they conflict?

C. S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters writes how easy it is to get believers distracted from the command to follow Jesus to love others through their patriotic fervor.

What does it mean for us to love country? And what if our country is not on the side of the moral good and is complicit in war crimes?

I think of the civil war and how both sides were told by the one slinging the propoganda that they were on God’s righteous side. And yet one side believed that black people were sub human and worth exploiting. They forget that jesus was black.

I don’t say that to offend, but to provoke us to consider how we too may lose focus on what was important.

Render unto Caesar does not mean blind faith in a human nation state, we must obey God rather than man, according to the book of Acts.

Let us be discerning when it comes to our patriotism vs. our love for Christ because Christ calls us to a different kind of kingdom, one that is commanded to love, even its enemies.

Lord, help us to discern good from evil by your Spirit. Amen.

The Good Fruit

  

Text: Matthew 21:33-46

Focus: the fruit

Function: to help people discern good vs evil

³³ “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. ³⁴When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. ³⁵But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. ³⁶Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. ³⁷Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ³⁸But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ ³⁹So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. ⁴⁰Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” ⁴¹They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

⁴²Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
    and it is amazing in our eyes’?

⁴³“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. ⁴⁴The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

⁴⁵When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. ⁴⁶They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

Good morning to the beloved children of God.

This passage is about those who reject Jesus. And it is an interesting passage because it isn’t about what people are saying about the Christ, it is about what the people are doing with what He is teaching them. It points to the fact that believing in him means that we have changed our lives to prosper by living in the community that Jesus established and we call the Church. We produce the fruit of love.

On a Kairos weekend, we focus on who we are as a Church. And in yesterday’s wrap-up session from the previous week, the leader gave a talk on the importance of the church and I would like to share the essence of that talk as a way to understand this scripture. I choose it because it is timely for our church and our future.

Brothers/sisters in Christ.  We have come together today to talk about just what that phrase means.  "Brothers/Sisters in Christ."  Christ, of course, is in all Christians.  If you've opened your heart to him and invited him in, he's there.

It is us being “in Christ” which we sometimes find difficult to understand and accept.  The phrase, "in Christ," refers to the fact that Jesus calls us to be the Church, His body.

The Church, scriptures tell us, is the body of Christ.  In Paul's letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verse 18, we read:  "He (Christ) is the head of his body, the Church, he is the source of the body's life." 

It is a concept which Paul uses repeatedly. In First John 1:7, the author of this letter says, "But if we walk in the light ... just as he is in the light ... then we have fellowship with one another."   

It is also important for us to understand this phrase, "have fellowship with one another." The Greek word from which the phrase is translated is "koinonia.”  It has been said that God "wills" community.  "He intervenes in human history to heal the brokenness and disruption we have created." Let me repeat that: God intervenes in human history to heal...

Or said another way: "To say Christ means to say community , coexistence, a new life, peace." 

In Christianity there is no "Jesus and me" closed community.  True Christianity, like Jesus, always includes others, and never excludes. That is why I print Inclusive sermons on our sermon page, I want people to know that everyone who is seeking is welcome.

Jesus himself is repeatedly portrayed in community.  Even when he withdrew to pray he was in the habit of taking his own small community with him ... Peter, James and John.  Our relationship with Jesus always takes place in community; it is a triangular relationship ... God, self, and at least one other person.  Even when we are alone and talking to God, the other people with whom we share the world are a part of our relationship with him, for our relationship with him is necessarily tied to our relationship with each other. We don't gather in community because it is more fun ... sometimes it is not. We don't gather in community because it is safer ... sometimes it is not. My desire is to create a safe place where everyone can seek out what Christ is doing in their lives. But we are human and we are not perfect and we are not in a perfect community, but one inspired by God to be loving and forgiving. Forgiveness is the key.

The Apostle Paul who wrote this suffered the consequences of conflict in his ministry and he pressed on without giving up. Instead, he called us to walk in forgiveness   We gather in community because it is the starting place for the redemptive activity of God.  It is in community that healing occurs, that we find our wholeness

We gather to find community and as it happens on the Kairos weekend, it focuses on forgiveness.

God’s Spirit calls us to forgiveness. Here is a story about how important forgiveness is. One of the residents in the room was having a private conversation with our table leader. It was distracting.

Meanwhile, the rest of us at the table had a sort of lull in the conversation. And all of a sudden, our of nowhere I had this thought pop into my head. It didn’t seem related so I kept it to myself. But it persisted, so I blurted it out and by then the private conversation that was distracting our table ended and I said my piece.

I said, “Imagine how hard it was for Adam and Eve to forgive Cain for murdering Abel.”

I wasn’t aware of the private conversation but it was about about how it felt impossible to for this resident to forgive his brother for befriending the man who shot him 6 times over a woman. He was pouring out his heart in distress because he didn’t think he could forgive.

It was a God moment because forgiving family was the point and it convinced him that forgiving his brother will set him free.

Forgiveness sets us free. It helps to release the pain of the hurt. All we have to do is ask God not to hold them accountable for the harm they have done to us.

It is a step of faith because it believes that God will ultimately judge with the same mercy we ourselves need.

When we walk in forgiveness, we walk in the faith that God wants to heal and restore this world.

Or, as our text declares, we are the ones who produce the fruit of love for the Savior.