DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS

MON: Ps 32; 2 Cor 5:11-21
TUES: Jos 5:9-12; 2 Cor 5:11-21
WED: Lk 15:1-7; 2 Cor 5:11-21
THURS: Ps 126; John 12:1-8
FRI: Is 43:16-21; John 12:1-8
SAT: Php 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

MISSIONARY MOMENT

Please take a moment each day to pray for the Church of the Nazarene in the following world districts:

Brazil Curitiba

Canada Central - http://www.nazcentral.ca/

THE PULPIT: reconciliation - 2 Cor 5:11-21

The story is told of a young Jewish boy – the youngest of his father’s sons. They were a happy family, but something arose. There grew a conflict between the boy and his father. As is so often the case, the conflict began to fester. It festered until it could fester no more and then it popped. “Father, give me what is mine and I will be gone. I won’t stay here…I won’t put up with this…I just can’t stand it. I wish you would just die, so I could get something out of our relationship. But give me my inheritance now and we will never have to deal with this anymore.”

The father gave the son his share and the son left home as he promised. It was fun for a while. He traveled the world, he spent many nights partying until late into the night. He bought the finest things money could buy. Finally he was enjoying life. No overbearing father…no silly rules…no clouds on the horizon, just clear blue skies. And he loved every minute. But the clear blue skies grew cloudy. Money began to dwindle. He couldn’t afford the late night parties anymore. He couldn’t afford the good life anymore. Slowly he began selling what he had to support the habits he developed. Soon he was left with nothing. No money, no stuff, no friends, no food or roof over his head.

He began looking for work. He spent many days inquiring about employment. He spoke to many people looking for anything that might help him get the things he needs. The best he found was a job on a farm. Now farming is noble work, but the boy found himself doing the grunt work…feeding the pigs. Good Jews have nothing to do with pigs. They are unclean. They are forbidden, but he had to do what he had to do. It paid him next to nothing, and every day he grew hungrier and hungrier. Finally one day he found himself daydreaming of eating the slop he was feeding to the pigs. He just couldn’t sink any lower.

We all understand conflict. We all know first hand what this kind of separation can do. We all know…and so did Paul. This morning’s text is 2 Corinthians 5:11-21. Hear the word of the Lord.

Paul’s experience with the church at Corinth certainly made him painfully aware of the damage these rifts can cause. The relationship between Paul and the Corinthians had been a very good one. He lived with them for 18 months. He gave the church a good start and a solid foundation. They were his pride and joy. He sent Timothy to oversee a collection for the ministry of the church in Jerusalem, but Timothy returns with bad news.

The Corinthians were being influenced by itinerant preachers. These preachers seem to have been somewhat questionable in their teaching. What’s worse though, they began planting seeds of division between Paul and the Corinthians. They questioned his authority. They questioned his credentials. They questioned whether he was the real deal – and the people began to buy into it.

Paul, not wanting to let this thing fester, decided to make an emergency visit to Corinth. We don’t really know what exactly happened on this visit, but Paul described it as a “painful” visit (2:1, 7:2). It would seem that part of the visit included some pretty harsh slandering of Paul (2:5-6, 7:12). Rather than staying, Paul left – hurt, angry, disgraced, and enraged. What had been festering was brought to a head. Paul wrote 2 Corinthians in the context of this broken relationship. He wrote to his beloved trying to make sense of what has happened. For Paul, what happened only made sense in the light of the cross.

These rifts – these broken relationships – are not unique to persons. Before there was ever a broken relationship between persons, there was a broken relationship between persons and God. We all remember the story of Adam and Eve. They were created in the image of God. They were put in a beautiful garden where they enjoyed and cared for all creation. They lived in a place where God walked among them. It seems like such a regular, unspectacular occurrence. Our minds lead us to images of early morning walks through dew-covered grasses, sharing the new day with God. We think of afternoon respites from the hot sun, with God under a shade tree. We think of evening strolls and saying our good nights to God who walks with us and shares life with us in the garden.

The only rule for living in the garden was to avoid eating the fruit of one particular tree. But Adam and Eve were tempted and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree. Then they heard God coming and they tried to hide. Like little kids with mouths full of cookies when they hear Mom walking down the hall, they duck for cover. They found a place to hide. The rift had begun –

But they could not hide from God. No one can. God began questioning them. They began pointing fingers. The man at the woman – the woman at the snake. No one took responsibility for one’s own actions. Each tried to look for excuses, each wanted to blame someone else. The more they tried to cover it up – the more they tried to explain it away – the deeper and wider the rift grew.

God could not let them stay in the garden and so God sent them away. An angel was placed at the entrance of the garden to keep them out. No longer would life be a walk in the garden, but it would be one of hard work, of blood, sweat and tears. The rift was uncrossable. Life went from walking with God in the cool of the night, to one lived unable to even gaze upon the face of God without the fear of dying. We once were so close, but sin has made us so very far apart.

God loved us too much to let life go on this way, so he sent Christ. Paul really begins preaching: “We believe that Christ died for all,” and the church all responded…AMEN!

“We also believe that we all have died to our old life,” and the church all responded…AMEN!

“He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves,” … AMEN!

“Instead they will live for Christ” …AMEN!

“Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person…the old life is gone; a new life has begun” …AMEN!

“And all this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ” …AMEN!

“For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them” …AMEN!

No doubt the church was eating this stuff up. This is good stuff. This is the stuff of the gospel. God made people. People sinned. Sin created a barrier between God and God’s people. God tore down that wall by Christ. That is called reconciliation. Reconciliation is when people who do not have relationship with one another are brought back into relationship with one another.

In the Gospel story this morning, the boy realized that even his father’s slaves were taken care of better than he was. He decided to swallow his pride. He decided to return home. Maybe his father would hire him and he would at least have some food to eat. But the father did much more than that. The father had been waiting. He had done nothing but wait and watch since the day the son left. When he saw the son coming up the road he ran out to meet his boy. He wrapped his arms tightly around his son. He threw a huge party because his son had returned. They were reconciled.

In the same way, God reconciled the world to himself through Christ. “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” This is the message Paul preached to the Corinthians, and they loved it. They were with Paul all the way. But then Paul sprung the trap door on them. “God has given us this task of reconciliation” …the amen’s aren’t so enthusiastic. “God gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation” …the amen’s are almost non-existent. Paul does not stop with Christ’s reconciling work, he goes on to explain our reconciling work. God desire’s that we are reconciled to him. God also desire’s that we are reconciled to one another. It’s a low blow. It is like punching the Corinthians in the gut!

Paul was deeply pained that there was a deep rift between the church and himself. God was deeply pained that there was a deep rift between God’s Church and Godself. Both rifts are only healed in Christ. God has provided a means for all our rifts to be reconciled, and sets us to the work of being reconcilers.

This work of reconciliation must take place in three places. First, we must be reconciled to God. We’ve already retold the story. We stand with Adam and Eve as sinners separated from God. Especially during Lent, we acknowledge this. We look deeply at our own lives. We look deep into our own hearts. We remember who we are. We recognize our own sinfulness, we recognize the rift that sin causes. We remember who Christ is. We recognize the reconciling work of Christ in our life. We refocus our life on Christ and on his reconciling work. In Christ we are new. The old us is gone. He has recreated us anew in his image. We have been made right with God!

Second, Paul understood if we are to be reconcilers in the world, it is not enough that we are reconciled with God. We must also be reconciled with one another. Jesus seems to teach that this is at least as important as the first. “If you are coming to worship and you remember that there is something between you and someone else, leave your worship. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come back and worship” (Matt 5:23-24, my paraphrase). How can we be agents of reconciliation if we are not reconciled ourselves? How can we be an ambassador of Christ if we refuse to embody that which he came to achieve? “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say, ‘Love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:43-45). Be active in seeking to reconcile your relationships…for in that way you will be proclaiming Christ’s message of reconciliation.

Last, just as Christ was sent to the world to reconcile it with the Father, so too have we been sent into the world to reconcile it to the Father. Christ is the reconciliation we preach. Paul goes so far as to call us Christ’s ambassadors. An ambassador is one who is given the authority and power of another. For instance, the President cannot be in every country dealing with business. That poses quite a problem, so he appoints ambassadors. The ambassadors speak for the President with the full power and authority of the President. We are Christ’s ambassador. Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father and will come again. But he has left his Spirit who works through his Church. We are to speak Christ’s words and we are to do Christ’s work in the world. And it is all to be done as Christ would do it. Loving and forgiving.

Reconciliation is not an easy thing. It only happens by Christ. And the lengths to which Christ went is the measure of the cost of reconciliation. Our reconciliation was only by his persecution, his suffering, his death. He became the sin of man that we may become the righteousness of God. If people are to know this love of the Father, it is going to start by knowing the love of Christ in the love of His Church. To the glory of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

MISSIONARY MOMENT

Please take a moment to pray for the following disticts of the Church of the Nazarene:

Bolivia La Paz

Canada Atlantic (http://www.atnazarene.org)

DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS

MON: Ps 27; Lk 13:31-35
TUES: Gn 15:1-18; Lk 13:31-35
WED: Pp 3:17-4:1; Lk 13:31-35
THUR: Ps 32; 2 Cor 5:16-21
FRI: Jos 5:9-12; 2 Cor 5:16-21
SAT: Lk 15:1-7; 2 Cor 5:16-21

THE PULPIT: one fox, one hen, a mess of chicks - Luke 13:31-35

This morning’s gospel lesson is from Luke 13:31-35. Hear the word of the Lord.

I am so amazed at the image Jesus draws in this story. Apparently, I am not the only one. One preacher, after visiting the Holy Land wrote these words: “On the western slope of the Mount of Olives, just across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem, sits a small chapel called Dominus Flevit. The name comes from Luke’s Gospel, which contains not one but two accounts of Jesus’ grief over the loss of Jerusalem. According to tradition, it was here that Jesus wept over the city that had refused his ministrations.

“Inside the chapel, the altar is centered before a high arched window that looks out over the city. Iron grillwork divides the view into sections, so that on a sunny day the effect is that of a stained-glass window. The difference is that this subject is alive. It is not some artist’s rendering of the holy city but the city itself, with the Dome of the Rock in the bottom left corner and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the middle. Two-thirds of the view is the cloudless sky above the city which the grillwork turns into a quilt of blue squares. Perhaps this is where the heavenly Jerusalem hovers over the earthly one, until the time comes for the two to meet?

“Down below, on the front of the altar, is a picture of what never happened in that city. It is a mosaic medallion of a white hen with a golden halo around her head. Her red comb resembles a crown, and her wings are spread wide to shelter the pale yellow chicks that crowd around her feet. There are seven of them, with black dots for eyes and orange dots for beaks. They look happy to be there. The hen looks ready to spit fire if anyone comes near her babies.

“But like I said, it never happened, and the picture does not pretend that it did. The medallion is rimmed with red words in Latin. Translated into English they read, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" The last phrase is set outside the circle, in a pool of red underneath the chicks’ feet: you were not willing” (Barbara Brown Taylor. “As A Hen Gathers Her Brood.” The Christian Century, February 25, 1986, page 201).

The image is really set up in the first half of the passage where we meet all the key characters: Jesus (the hen), Herod (the fox), and Jerusalem (the city and the people of God). The Pharisees are just peripheral players. They kind of get the story going, but then fade away into the background. They come to Jesus with a warning: “You’d better get out of here! Herod is looking to finish what he started when he had John beheaded…you’re next!” Jesus responds by calling Herod a fox...a sneaky, conniving, dirty, plotting fox. He says to tell the fox to be patient. For now he is about his work, but soon – very soon – he will be finished. Then he introduces the third character: Jerusalem. It is both the destination where he will be killed, and the people for whom he weeps.

The problem is, in the words of an old saying, there is a fox loose in the hen house. The Pharisees say that Jesus is in danger because of the threat Herod represents. But Jesus turns the table and suggests that while Herod might be a threat to him, the cunning fox is more of a threat to them – his beloved people. We all know foxes love to stir up trouble, and they truly love little, tender, vulnerable chicks.

Jesus knew quite well the power and attractiveness of temptation. His was still fairly fresh in his mind. And here lies Jerusalem, the city – the people – that God chose as his own, constantly being assaulted by the fox. Though Herod had no real “authority” over Jerusalem since it was outside his “kingdom,” he, and the kingdom of the world he represents, certainly exuded clear influence in Jerusalem’s life. If it weren’t for the influences of the world, then why would Jerusalem have such a reputation for stoning and killing those God sent to speak his truth? Why would Jerusalem have had such a hard time being faithful to the God who was always faithful to them? It is very hard to live as chicks when the world of foxes is constantly circling.

That much has never changed. Paul wrote to the early church of the difficulties that arise in being in the world but not of it. We still today feel so often like chicks in a world of foxes. Jerusalem now stands in the story in our place – in the place of the Church which God ordained in Christ to be His holy people. It stands in the place of a church that struggles to live the Holiness of Christ. The Church stands today, like the Jerusalem of old, as a people with a reputation. Our reputation is not good.

This week in the news, one church filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection stemming from a long list of sexual abuse lawsuits. Last week in the news one church laid down an ultimatum to some of its constituent churches threatening excommunication. The George Barna survey we mentioned a couple weeks ago confirmed that public opinion of the Church is not very high. Perhaps we have been influenced too much by the fox and his ways.

Jerusalem was known for killing its prophets. Being a prophet is inherently risky business, but I wonder how many others the Church stones…or drives away…or kills. When I was involved with an outreach program at one church, the unbearable frustration was that the kids we were working with felt more alone and rejected at church than anywhere else. The people were polite, but our kids were never welcomed. Our kids were never invited to truly be a part of the church. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How many of my people, that I have sent to you, have you driven away?” Perhaps it is over his Church that Jesus this morning weeps.

I was involved with planting a church in an area of town most people wanted nothing to do with, and for people that most people wanted nothing to do with. The common sentiment from the church people we were recruiting to plant with us was “we don’t want our kids growing up around those kids … Those kids are always in trouble … They will be a bad influence on our kids … we just can’t help.” “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How many of my people that I have sent to you have you driven away?” Perhaps it is over his Church that Jesus this morning weeps.

No wonder the church has a bad reputation! Jerusalem killed the prophets whom God sent, and today’s church is often known for sending away any that don’t fit in. That is nothing but the influence of the fox! The fox says people should fit a certain mold. The fox says people have to look a certain way. The fox says people have to act a certain way. The fox makes us so uncomfortable that we feel safer driving anyone who is not one of us away. Perhaps the church has become so influenced and infiltrated by the world and the ways of the world that it has almost become indistinguishable from the world. And Jesus weeps.

Lent is a season of taking a long, hard deep look into the mirror. Do we fall into this trap? Do new people who come to us leave because they don’t feel comfortable here? Do new people come, look around and think we are just a bunch of cliquish snobs? Do we secretly think “we don’t want that kind of people here”? And Jesus weeps.

While Lent is a season of taking a long, hard, deep look into the mirror, it is also a season of peering deeply into the eyes of a loving God. We have to remember and recognize our shortcomings, and faults. We have to repent of our sin. But we also have to refocus our lives on the cross. When we return to the text, we find Jesus weeping, not because things are hopeless. Jesus is not weeping because all is lost. Jesus weeps because he desires to protect Jerusalem from the foxes that lurk. He desires to gather all his chicks beneath his wing. He desires to protect, but Jerusalem won’t let him. Jesus weeps.

Jesus weeps but he is not stopped. As we follow the journey of Lent we find that it ends in Jerusalem. Though he is rejected – though his protection is refused, he goes anyway like a loving hen. Of all the animals he could have gone as, the hen seems the most unlikely. What ever happened to the Lion of Judah? He could have come roaring into Jerusalem, ate the foxes and all the people would be free. He didn’t. Jesus came as a lamb to be slaughtered. Jesus came as a hen…as a loving mother standing precariously between an attacker and her children.

Though his children had been disobedient…though his bride had been unfaithful…though he was rejected by them, still he came. And in a final twist of irony, Jesus hung, wings extended and breast exposed on the cross dying to protect those who didn’t want it. Where sin abounded, grace abounded all more.

So Jesus hung for his people – Jerusalem – then. So Jesus hung for his people – the church – now. The good news for us is that though Jesus weeps, he still desires to protect his chicks from the fox. Though the Church has a bad reputation in the world, the gospel message is that we are still Christ’s Church. Though the Church often stones and drives away those whom God sends to it, the good news is that we are still Christ’s Church. Though we stumble and fall and make messes, we are still Christ’s church that he loves, and that he longs to protect. We are still Christ’s church that he desires to gather together under his wing. The question, this morning, is whether we will be like Jerusalem and deny His protection, or if we will accept it.

To accept his protection is to fall in line behind him. To accept his protection is to trust in the power of his blood. To accept his protection is to choose to be more like a hen and less like a fox…more like the kingdom of God and less like the kingdom of the world. To accept his protection is to be more like him. As we become more like him, we need his protection more. For to be like him is to be vulnerable. It is to be OK with being different. It is to be humble and meek. It is to be patient and gentle and generous. The world is a fox, always lurking, always scheming. We are to be a hen, opening our wings and exposing our necks for those who God sends us to, though they might reject us. Christ knew what was coming and went willingly anyway. We are called to do the same. We see what may lie ahead if we take this call to Christ-likeness and perfect love seriously, and are called to willingly following. We know the danger and the uncomfortability, but our call is to trust solely in Christ’s mighty and widespread arms of protection. Our call is to accept our cross for God glory: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.