Beyond the Rules

Text: Matthew 5:13-20

Focus: Righteousness

Function: To help people live by the law of love

¹³“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

¹⁴“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

¹⁷“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I guess today is more of a teaching than a preaching of the passage.

For some reason we keep hitting on texts that have been “Journey passages” to me as they have changed my perspective on religion in light of the teachings of Jesus.

This passage discusses who is the least and who is the greatest in the kingdom of God.

I have to tell you that this is another one of those passages that I got wrong for a few years at the beginning of my ministry.

I believed for a while that perhaps the most Christian celebrations we could experience would be recreations of the Ancient Jewish festivals since they were the only ones proscribed in the scriptures.

Now, we, as Brethren, take as our only creed the entire New Testament. And we distinctly leave out the Old Testament since it actually refers to the Old Covenant and we are now living in the New Testament, or the New Covenant that Jesus came to establish.

And I got it wrong from this perspective, I was trying to apply biblical literalism to something that Jesus was speaking about metaphorically.

One of the first things the Holy does is tell Peter that the OT law about clean and unclean foods is no longer valid and therefore, he should interpret that to mean that union with Gentiles, eliminating our evolutionary tendency toward the fear that has lead to racism, was a major part of the reconciliation that Jesus brought when He fulfilled the law, and finished it, on the cross.

On the cross, Jesus destroyed the law and the passage, not one jot or tittle until all is fulfilled was accomplished on the cross of Christ.

And here I was, in my zeal for God, trying to rebuild what Jesus destroyed on the cross.

So, She, the Holy Spirit delivered me from fundamentalism and legalism into the freedom that Jesus wants us to live in.

And it is defined in the last verse of our text.

Jesus said, Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and Sadducees, then you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

That sounds like a full and tall bill to fill. How do we reconcile that statement with the promise from Jesus that His yoke is easy and His burden is light?

Well we have to because the same author of this verse is the same author who quoted Jesus saying that the yoke is easy.

Well, first off. Theologically, as I mentioned, the law was fulfilled on the cross. For us believers who follow Jesus by the way we live our lives, the law no longer applies to us. At least, that is what Brother Paul says in the first letter to Timothy.

And here the Holy Spirit was, faithful to me to give up the pride of trying to be self righteous, so that I could truly follow Christ.

Secondly, is the way we translate righteous. It shows up in verse 20. And sadly, Brian McLaren points out that this is a phenomena in English Translations only, the Greek word Diakonos, the word for justice, is translated almost exclusively as righteous in English translations.

If you look up the verse in Bible Hub, you find a very interesting, and most accurate according to the translations in other languages, where from the Original Arabic, which is what Matthew was written in, the word is translated as justice.

And that is what Jesus meant. Unless your justice exceeds that of the Pharisees and Sadducees… He is telling them that they need to rise above a salvation that merely justifies itself by law or creed and is done by the works involved.

Many times Jesus points out the hypocrisy of the wealthy religious folks who justify taking away the houses of widows and orphans because on the outside they have followed what they interpret to be the letter of the law.

And the difference between translating it Justice as opposed to righteous is that one is a state of being. A righteous person is a person who believes. A just person is one who performs.

The way we use righteous to mean “a believer” has been used to excuse a failure to love our neighbor as ourselves. Believing does not ensure just actions. And Jesus is saying that unless you are truly just in your actions, you cannot be saved.

I remember a Cable New Analyst decrying the Pope’s message when he visited. The Pope preached Matthew 25 and that the righteous are the just people who clothe the poor, feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, as opposed to those who refuse the least of these. The Pope prophetically proclaimed the message and told them that those who denied the least of these were denied the kingdom of God.

And against credibility, using anger as a prop so that people wouldn’t actually hear the message the news caster was proclaiming said something like, “He should not preach justice, he should tell us how to be saved.”

It was incredulous because the Pope was quoting Jesus on how to be saved when Jesus said, I was hungry and your fed me, I was naked and your clothed me, I was sick and in prison and you visited me, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, as much as you have done this for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done it to me.”

Jesus Himself told us how to be saved, DO THE WORKS OF JUSTICE.

The Greek Word Diakonos, justice, has its roots in the name of the Greek God of Justice, Dike. And the preponderance of literature from those early years translated the word as justice and as I mentioned, nearly every other language in current translations use justice.

The missed translation, I believe, comes from the King James Version, I love the poetry of it, but the version uses the term to mean “professors of Jesus” rather than followers of the Christ who died because He denied the very political systems that divide us today.

And it is a sin to say that all we have to do is merely believe. Jesus expects our righteousness to go beyond the rule that all we have to do is say the right thing and we are considered righteous in spite of our actions.

Our actions prove that we are just people and we embrace as the gospel of Christ the term Justice.

Like the Prophet Amos said, God isn’t so concerned about singing songs to Him as much as us ensuring that Justice flows down like a river, especially Social Justice.

There is a difference between Justice and Social Justice. It was the worldly “Justice” of the State of Rome over Israel that executed the Lord of Glory. And they killed Him for His message of social justice.

Don’t confuse Social Justice with Socialism. There is only a similarity in the way they sound.

Social justice is continuing the mission that Jesus set out on in the power of the Holy Spirit so that the world can be transformed into a place where the least of these can have a chance to survive.

And if our righteousness is to qualify, then it needs to be exemplified by the just acts that we do.

And we do them here at Painter Creek. For those that don’t know, we support the prisoners in a very real way through your support of me in Kairos.

So let us finish with the thought that the Holy Spirit is with us in order to make us thrive. Maybe we can spend the next hour discussing ways to impact our own community with the needs that they have.

Worshipping God

Text: Micah 6:1-8

Focus: Worship

Function: to help people see that acts of kindness are worship

6:^1-2Listen now, listen to God:

“Take your stand in court.
    If you have a complaint, tell the mountains;
    make your case to the hills.
And now, Mountains, hear God’s case;
    listen, Jury Earth—
For I am bringing charges against my people.
    I am building a case against Israel.

^3-5“Dear people, how have I done you wrong?
    Have I burdened you, worn you out? Answer!
I delivered you from a bad life in Egypt;
    I paid a good price to get you out of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you—
    and Aaron and Miriam to boot!
Remember what Balak king of Moab tried to pull,
    and how Balaam son of Beor turned the tables on him.
Remember all those stories about Shittim and Gilgal.
    Keep all God’s salvation stories fresh and present.”

^6-7How can I stand up before God
    and show proper respect to the high God?
Should I bring an armload of offerings
    topped off with yearling calves?
Would God be impressed with thousands of rams,
    with buckets and barrels of olive oil?
Would he be moved if I sacrificed my firstborn child,
    my precious baby, to cancel my sin?

⁸But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do,
    what God is looking for in men and women.
It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
    be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously—
    take God seriously.

I have to confess that this is one of my favorite passages in the entire bible. As a matter of fact, this verse, along with Luke 4:18 are my life verses.

Well, actually it is the last verse from our text and I have it memorized like this: “He has shown you, mortal man, what you must do and what the Lord requires of you, but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.”

Instead of preaching, I would like to tell you a story about how the Holy Spirit used scripture to change the direction of my life.

As I mentioned, I have two life verses and both of these verses happened to get my attention in supernatural ways.

The first verse, what I call “My calling verse” is Luke 4:18. In the story, Jesus is reading the scroll from Isaiah 61:1 and he quotes the passage: ¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed,

Now I told the story how on May 30, 1979, I was in the woods praying and I heard inside my head, very clearly, the words “Luke 4:18.”

I happened to have my bible with me and I need impress upon you that I had no idea what that verse said.

When I read it, I felt chills up and down my spine.

God called me with this verse and God called me to join Jesus in the mission of transforming the principals of this world into something more loving and just through the power of His Holy Spirit living inside of me.

It was pretty exciting.

My life changed after that. I few months later I found myself working in Atlantic City, New Jersey with a man who was my mentor and we were planting a church in the ghetto of Atlantic City.

Some exciting things happened to us there where we saw the hand of God working.

I remember that ministry, it was on a street corner playground filled with broken glass and cigarette butts and God began building a community of hope among a group of people who were desperately poor.

After a few years helping my mentor plant a church, God called me to go to Bible College and get more education to prepare me for my life as a pastor.

The 3^rd year of my 5 year journey there, God led the administration to choose Micah 6:8 as the “year verse.”

Now I have to tell you that this choice for a year verse caused some controversy in this very conservative Bible College where I attended.

I actually heard, and even repeated the saying, when we were talking about missionary work that met the physical needs of the poor (like being a medical missionary) wasn’t as important as sending preachers who could inform the people that without Jesus in their lives, they were lost and on the way to hell.

The saying that I repeated, that I disavow today was “what good is it if we feed them meals until they die and they still go to hell? We need to convert them to Christ to save their souls if we really want to be faithful.”

And that might sound plausible on the surface. It seemed that way to me at the time to me.

But remember how the Holy Spirit works inside of us?

That year verse that answered the question, what does God want from humanity had nothing to do with heaven and hell theology. It had everything to do with the attitude and perspective of my own heart as I lived and walked among people here on planet earth.

So. The verse caused controversy among the student body as those who lived to see the justice of God change the hearts of mankind and society into a place where we can care for each other and those who were more concerned about what they believed to be the fiery nature of hell and God’s judgment.

The passage speaks of loving mercy. It is consistent with the teachings of Jesus. You see Jesus chiding the religious hypocrites who hated the mercy Jesus gave to people.

Loving mercy, is loving the idea of forgiving our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. Forgive the debt. Forgive it. Forgiving the debt is a powerful and hard task.

The verse. That verse, DO JUSTICE seemed to me to become the opposite of my passion to save their souls and leave their physical state alone. Jesus came to transform society into a place whereby everyone gets a fair and equal chance to survive. And I learned an answer to the question what good is it if we prolong their lives and they still end up in hell?

Well, I wouldn’t even ask the question today because God is Love and Jesus said that He did not come into the world to judge the world but that the world would be saved through Him.

But I started answering the question to those who actually asked it with this: Because Jesus commanded it.

Jesus said, I was hungry and you fed me when you fed the poor. And He said you denied me succor when you deny others succor and have the means to help.

So the answer to the question “What good is feeding them if they are still going to hell?” is because Jesus commands us to.

And it was a pivotal year for my faith and the direction of my ministry. I was using this time at college for spiritual formation and direction

So the impact of this verse and its meaning came at a critical time in my own spiritual journey.

During that time, I remember having another one of those days where I was distracted from the world around me and I was deep in prayer. I was asking God what God wanted from me and more importantly, what God wanted from the church and my ministry.

And in that year, because of my focus on this verse, and the work of the Holy Spirit on that campus and in my heart, my passion changed to reflect the true nature of the verse that God spoke into my ears on May 30, 1979 when God called me to serve the poor.

Can I take a moment to tell the story behind that change?

I was deep in prayer while driving my car downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana. And I was sort of trying to understand about the importance of doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with Him as opposed to going out and preaching the word so that souls could be saved. I remember praying simply that day: “What do you want from me? What do you want us to do?

Now maybe you see the irony that was going on in my head. I was asking God what God wanted from me while I was focusing on the verse that starts with: He has shown you, mortal man, what the Lord requires...”

And as I was praying and watching traffic, and again, I was in distress in my prayer and distress is not an exaggeration. I was really upset because it meant that I had been wrong about my conclusions. And nobody wants to admit they are wrong.

So, while I was praying, and this has only happened a few times, May 30, 1979 and this day, I heard in my ears very strongly, not a verse this time, but the words “Look Up!”

And I looked up beyond the traffic and I saw a sign, “Matthew 25 clinic.”

It was an Epiphany to me. And again, I am not exaggerating. It was life changing. And I realized what God meant and why the Holy Spirit was leading me in such an deep time of prayer..

Now if you live in Fort Wayne, the sign “Matthew 25 Clinic” might mean more to you.

There are two big Catholic churches downtown Fort Wayne. There is an Alabaster cathedral that serves the wealthy. And then there is St. Mary’s Parish that operates the Matthew 25 clinic. They served over 1,000 meals a week, operated free dental and medical care for local residents and it was all paid for by the local congregation which was primarily made up of the poor folks in town. They were continuing the work of Jesus.

And I remember saying to God, after that revelation that God must be wrong, forgive me, because they were Roman Catholics and in my faith tradition, Roman Catholicism was a no-no.

I can’t believe I actually argued with the Holy Spirit, but I was deeply entrenched in my beliefs and God had a lot of work to do to free me.

And at that moment the Holy Spirit filled my with our verse for today, Do justice, Love Mercy and walk humbly with God.

This is what God wants from us and this is how we truly worship God.

The Message of the Cross

Text: 1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Focus: Christian Unity

Function: to help us see the meaning of the cross

¹⁰Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you but that you be knit together in the same mind and the same purpose. ¹¹For it has been made clear to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. ¹²What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” ¹³Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? ¹⁴I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. ¹⁶I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. ¹⁷For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel—and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

¹⁸For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God

I don’t want to get judgmental. And I won’t. Everyone has to give an account of themselves before God and here it comes! But!

But one day, 30 years ago or so, during the age of modernity, I was camping on vacation in Southern Indiana and I was looking for a place to worship on Sunday morning.

Near the campground was a real pretty white country church. It had an appealing look and was well kept. But. There was this sign in front of the church. It had five lines and it said”

“Everyone welcome.”

“Independent Baptist”

“Fundamental”

“King James Only”

“Pre-Tribulational”

Now I don’t know if that means a lot to you. I am a practicing theologian, so it meant volumes to me. It was a sign defining what they believed.

And It could be that they had that printed on their sign so that the preacher didn’t have to give apologies to anyone disagreeing with him since what they could expect was clearly marked on the sign.

But I took it differently. I took it to mean that this was a sign of who was in, and who was out.

If you understand the sign, it represented a very narrow section of Christianity. I had experience with that when I came back to Christ after leaving the faith for a while.

I attended a church that taught us that they were the only faithful Church in the whole city of Fort Wayne and they they had a mission to convert all the other churches.

This group was proud of its theology and practices. And we were pretty sure that all the others were to far off and may not make it to heaven.

As I look back on those years, I realize that I was in a cult. The preacher had absolute sway over the congregation and we were merely objects of his petty grievances and the pleasure that he got from manipulating others.

The Holy Spirit is faithful and she lead me out of the group into a less authoritative, less patriarchal group that gave me a better balance.

God can speak to us through scripture. And it was this scripture from today’s text that the Holy Spirit used to open my eyes to the fact that I was in a group of believers who had fallen into the sin of pride. Pride. The scripture says: Knowledge puffs a person up, but love edifies others.

We, seemingly like that little church in Southern Indiana, were puffed up with the pride that we had over our particular brand of Christianity.

The letter to the Corinthian Church was a major rebuke for many things the church was doing wrong. Suffice it to say that they were a randy group with a lot of problems ranging from a man having an affair with his step mother, Christians suing each other instead of forgiving each other, alcoholism and gluttony and their love feast, disorderly worship services and the list goes on.

And the very first thing he rebukes them for is the way that they have divided themselves into different house churches that claim to be more authentic versions of Christianity than the others.

Pride puffed them all up. It is a danger for us.

For example, I love the Church of the Brethren. I left the evangelical church I grew up in for them because of their stance on social justice -and also because I love participating in “Love Feast.” In the West, churches are dying. It used to be that our witness was sexual and doctrinal purity. But many Christians confused politics with the teachings of Jesus and all of a sudden, sexual purity and honesty and integrity didn’t matter in politicians anymore as long as one side beat the other. And I believe that the Church of the Brethren’s historic positions on loving others is a complete contrast to the political rhetoric that is dividing our nation. I am proud to be Brethren and I believe it is our time to grow with our witness primarily being love for others instead of some sort of holiness code that assuaged our consciences because we weren’t practicing love for others.

Let me make that simple. I am happy to be Brethren because our theology has always been shown by our practice instead of signs on our lawn delineating who is and isn’t welcome.

But that doesn’t mean we are the only ones who are right. And, if I were to say, “I am proud to be Brethren…” then I start down that slippery slope of dividing Christ into fragments.

And why was that important to Paul?

Because he was sent to preach the cross of Christ.

There is a message there in the cross that we must take time to examine and remind ourselves of on a regular basis, I believe.

Paul said that it seems foolish to the world around us.

The message is that if Jesus Christ, the Creator of the Universe could lower Himself from the throne of heaven to be born in poverty, a virtual slave to the Roman government, could preach against the political systems that kept the rich in power over the poor, and die for that cause is a message that power, wealth, subjugation of others is not the will of God for humanity.

And because of the cross, we don’t need to seek our own revenge. Jesus forgave His tormentors from the cross. And if He forgave them, then they were forgiven even though they probably didn’t notice.

The foolish message of the cross leads us to resist corruption and illegitimate abuse of power even to the point of death.

The message of the cross is a message of faith about living for God’s kingdom instead of our own impulses and desires.

So, don’t take your own revenge. Let God do it. Entrust yourselves to God and God will take your side.

The hope is that God takes our side here on earth and helps us to transform the culture into the loving place that Jesus intended for humanity.

But it may not happen that way. Jesus’ death serves us as an example of how we too can trust in God to redeem us.

Remember. Jesus rose from the dead and has given us that hope.

Jesus’ death showed us how to live for an heavenly reward instead of an earthly reward.

We are called to love others, even our enemies.

That doesn’t mean that we will all agree. We will be differently led by the Holy Spirit to do what God has called us to do.

We let the Spirit lead us. And then we remember that the Spirit of Christ is leading others also.

Practicing Justice

 

Text: Acts 10:34-43

Focus: justice

Function: to help people see the passion of God for justice

³⁴Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, ³⁵but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. ³⁶You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. ³⁷That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: ³⁸how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. ³⁹We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, ⁴⁰but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, ⁴¹not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. ⁴²He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. ⁴³All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Welcome to the meeting house of the first Church. They too, went to the houses of the individuals so and ate and had fellowship together and encouraged each other through the use of the their own gifts of the Holy Spirit.

We can learn a lot about the teachings of Jesus if we look at the practices of the first Church.

I hope it doesn’t upset you to know that the first thing they did with the teachings of Jesus was sell all of their own possessions, put them in a community pot so that there would be enough for everyone and then took on the task of ministering to the poor and the displaced in their own communities.

And that is why the Church grew so fast those first few centuries after the apostles and all the miracles that we see in the NT stopped happening. The miracle that grew the church was the way that people gave up greed and selfishness to make sure that everyone had enough.

I love our Church building and it serves a great purpose. But one of the ways that the early church was able to keep up the ministry to the poor in their communities was because they didn’t invest in elaborate buildings for worship, but did what we are doing today and met in the homes of the individuals.

It built a community. Fellowship together is important because it strengthens the faith of the individuals as they use their gifts to enable others to serve God.

Look at us. Hopefully I have the gift of being able to understand and explain the holy Scriptures to you in the context of our worship together.

You all serve as well in many meaningful ways.

We are meeting here and Delbert and Edna have graciously opened their home to us. They are using their gifts and blessings from God to serve others. God blesses us for our sacrifices for others and we enjoy the fellowship of the Spirit of Christ when we let the Spirit move.

I love the creativity of the bulletin that we get every week. If I were doing it, it would be the same old boring stuff each week. But Carol listens to the leading of the Holy Spirit and puts together a meaningful worship experience that ties in wonderfully with the theme of the Scripture which I send her, hopefully early, each week.

When God uses us, we become part of something and the Lord promised that as we are being used by God, the Holy Spirit will flow out of our bellies as rivers of living water to refresh the world around us.

That community setting of the early church fostered that dynamic.

That poem and those crosses given to us by Jody at Christmas was again, the Holy Spirit working inside of her to be a blessing to all of us.

The early Church had preachers, but they were more like us here at Painter Creek whereby they were not so dependent on the preacher, but were able to rely on the Holy Spirit to use them and that built the community that was able to withstand the political persecution that lead to thousands of them being martyred for their allegiance to a different way of living.

I am not asking you to be martyrs. Apparently that is an eternal blessing given by God as a reward for faithfulness. It is God’s choice, not ours.

And that is a long introduction to today’s theme.

The lectionary, which I follow, is a plan of scripture that takes us through every passage of the bible in a 9 year cycle. The idea being that the preacher keeps focused on the Scripture rather than their own personal opinions and problems. I could preach what I learn in my devotions every morning, or I can follow this plan and give a more balanced approach to the Christian Scriptures.

The lectionary uses this time period after Epiphany to include several passages about how the Gentiles were included into the Christian faith. It helps us see the new covenant that God made with all of humanity instead of just one race of people.

And this story is about how a gentile becomes part of the Church. A gentile is anyone who isn’t Jewish. Christianity grew out of the Jewish religion and you know that Jesus was Jewish.

Cornelius was a righteous man. And he was a gentile. He didn’t extort the local population with his authority as a Roman Commander. He saw the suffering of the Jewish people and instead of hardening his heart toward them and turning away, pretending that he didn’t see them, or that they weren’t “his problem,” he gave away his fortune to help poor people in their distress.

As I was preparing this lesson, the Holy Spirit drew me to verse 35 where is says: anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him.

I realized that Peter was talking about a pagan gentile who followed the leading the Holy Spirit as she pricked his conscience and led him to doing mercy on behalf of the poor.

Because Cornelius was actually doing acts of social justice, God sought him out and brought him into the fellowship of the believers who were also following Jesus in the way they lived.

The story is pretty fantastic. Jews were forbidden to go into Gentile houses by their laws. Peter is praying and has a vision, three times, whereby God tells him that God is able to redeem anything or anyone.

The Holy Spirit tells him to go to this house of an unclean man and in the house, he starts preaching the message that we have for this text.

I remember giving my heart to Jesus. It was a real experience for me even though I was only 4 years old. I am not denying it.

But Cornelius never responds to an alter call because none is given. In the middle of Peter’s sermon, we read it later in the text, the Holy Spirit falls on the room and they all begin to shout with ecstatic utterances.

Peter concludes the story with God’s openness to everyone even if they are not Jewish.

But Cornelius, another Gentile like we saw two weeks ago when we saw the coming of the wise men, is already a believer.

Let us practice justice. Doing the right thing, always. Loving everyone else as much as we care for ourselves is a high standard. That is why the early church gave up greed and shared everything and then took on the mission of Jesus to change the world.

Let us not merely spiritualize these words and say that Jesus was only concerned about saving souls from hell. Jesus’ Spirit inside of us leads us to the kind of sacrificial love that the first church shared.

We are called to live sacrificially for others because God also loves them

May the Spirit of Christ enable us to be faithful.

The Light Still Shines

 

Text: Matthew 2:1-12

Focus: Epiphany

Function: to remind us to keep our light shining

2:¹In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, magi from the east came to Jerusalem, ²asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the east and have come to pay him homage.” ³When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him, ⁴and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet:

⁶‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah,
for from you shall come a ruler
    who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ”

⁷Then Herod secretly called for the magi and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. ⁸Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” ⁹When they had heard the king, they set out, and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen in the east, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹²And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope that you all enjoyed your Christmas celebrations. It is too bad that we couldn’t get together and celebrate together, but our safety took precedence over the holiday traveling.

Today we celebrate Epiphany, it marks the day that the Magi came from the Eastern Culture to worship Jesus.

We sing: “Led by the light of the star serenely shining, here come the wise men from the Orient land.”

They were led by the light of God and the light of God is still shining calling the world to the simple life of faith and trust that Jesus, Joseph and Mary experienced.

I would like for us to see the light still and understand that we too can shine the light of hope and peace and justice in a land full of hatred, fighting and division.

For some reason this year, as I have been pondering the Christmas story, the star has been on the forefront of my imagination.

I wonder about the sign of the star and how the text says that the sign, or the star, moved to a place and then stopped where Jesus lay.

That is a phenomena that has no other historical reference. One would think that if a star suddenly stopped, historians would have recorded the event.

I am not saying that I am doubting it. I just don’t understand the dynamics. Of course, it is difficult, or impossible to understand the dynamics of a miracle if indeed a supernatural event occurred.

I tend to believe the story and I think of what it means for the world entire. The sign was for the world entire, not just one race of people.

People are tribal. Just go to a football game and see the excitement when “our side” wins over the other side.

Psychologist believe that we evolved a feeling, a dopamine rush, when we are united together in community. And as I said, football games bring it out in us.

War brings it out more. We want to win and we defend our side with our lives and we evolved a sense where we feel good, or right, when that emotion has kicked in.

Psychologists believe we evolved this fear emotion toward people different from us to protect us since we were safer in groups instead of alone. That community feeling kept us safer.

Even the bible picks up on the theme when it tells us that two are better than one because they keep each other warm, and help each other when one stumbles and then it says that three are even better. Community is what it is talking about and our need for it is a strong driving force in our lives.

I believe that this church is a safe and healthy community where we can thrive together.

And my hope and prayer is that you all thrive in the coming year.

What does that got to do with Epiphany? You may wonder.

The Fertile Crescent, where all of this took place in the early stages of humanity was very tribal and warlike and hateful and aggressive.

They set boundaries and would not let others inside. They had their own Deities, practices and customs which were oftentimes abhorrent to others.

Prejudice is not a new phenomena of humanity.

Again, in one sense we evolved it in order to protect us from people who are different and therefore could be a threat.

Out of that warlike culture can three scholars who uncovered a prophecy in their own scriptures that lead them to Jesus.

And the Jews, like the rest of us, think/thought that nothing from any other religion could be valued.

Now remember, I have spent most of the message so far talking about how easy it is for us to live in fear, be tribal, to proclaim our own borders as inviolate, and to care ONLY about our own people and our own safety.

Jesus has called us to be the light of the world sharing His love and mercy everywhere.

And this Epiphany event shows us just how far God has gone to call the entire world to rest in God’s salvation and mercy.

Tribes and nations were just as territorial as they are today. National religion and pride caused as much warfare and harm then as it does now.

And in the middle of all of that, God reaches through the completely different religion of the Magi and shows them the savior of the world.

I don’t know how ancient the prophecy about Jesus in another culture’s religion was, but it was there and it pointed to Jesus.

Because God broke down the barriers between the races, religions, tribe, nations, peoples or whatever way we define ourselves through a witness in a different religion all together, we can no longer call them pagans.

God loved their enemies. It’s like in the book of Jonah. The prophet did not want to preach to the Ninevites because they were the enemy of Israel and a real threat to their existence.

He knew if they repented, they would be forgiven and then God would not take them away as a threat.

Jonah expressed this tribal dynamic of fear of people different than us. The literature was not about a guy getting swallowed by a whale, but was a story about God’s mercy toward people that we might consider enemies.

The Magi were natural enemies to the Jews, and yet, God called them to Jesus.

God is still calling the world to the Christ, the idea that we do not have to take revenge for ourselves, but we can rest in the love and mercy of God.

How is God calling the world to the Christ? Through us, the church.

Heaven is reported to be a wonderful place and because of that, we are willing to live sacrificially, in faith, here on earth for that heavenly reward.

God left the Church here to continue to shine the light through love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Let your light still shine this year.