Daddy, is that blood?

"Daddy, is that blood?"
"No it just represents Jesus' blood.  It reminds of Jesus' blood"
I smiled as I listened to them talk about the meaning of communion.  Then the pastor began talking again.
"The blood of Christ shed for you" (no wonder kids get confused!)
With that, we all tipped back our swallow of grape juice.  The pastor offered a prayer and thus ended communion.  My notebook was out and on my lap as I scribbled furiously through the offering processing everything.

Why do we drink only a small swallow of grape juice (or wine if that is your tradition)? Jesus didn't shed just a little blood for us.  He didn't just prick his finger or scrape his knee.  He gave all his blood.  Every last drop was given for me, and for you, and for every one who calls on his name.  All of it.  He poured it all out.
When I'm at a communion service I just want to drink gallons of the grape juice, I want to wash in it, I want to relish in it (okay, that would be really sticky, but I'm speaking figuratively!) His blood has washed me clean.  Cleaner than any soap could ever get me.  His blood covers it all.

I think about blood a lot.  Not in a creepy way, but in general.  I've known some people involved in the occult, the darker side of things.  There it's all about the blood too.  The difference is in who's blood it is.  In my very limited knowledge of the occult, the blood required is always the blood of a mortal.  Either the blood of the person practicing or the blood of an animal or the blood of another.  I don't fully understand what the blood does or why it's important (as I said, my knowledge is very limited), I just know it plays an important role.  I also know that it's never enough...there always has to be more blood.
But in Christianity, the blood only had to be shed once.  Once and for all.  That's all.  No more blood was needed.  It just blows my mind and makes me so grateful, so thankful.

My blood will never need shed, the blood of another will never need on my behalf.  It's over.

"Daddy, is this blood?"
no...it's not blood because we don't need actual blood anymore.  That's already been taken care of

Who are you?

Tonight I preached from Luke 9. I'm getting more and more comfortable preaching.  Today it was Pillar church. When I preach at Pillar, we set a podium up and the congregation sits on one half the sanctuary.  Usually that is fine.  Today though, they all sat about 6 rows back.  I wasn't okay with that. So I just picked my stuff up and moved up a few rows, and preached between two pews.  I told the congregation what I was doing and why.  Also, during prayer time no one would talk, so I called the children by name and asked them what they were thankful for.  After they shared, I told the adults that the kids could do it, so what was their problem?  The adults shared after that. :)
I have an audio copy of the CD.  If you want a copy, let me know and I'll make you a copy.  I'm not going to make a video to post here because my internet has been so sketchy lately. (currently I'm sitting on my front stoop to type/post this)
Anyhow, without further ado, here is my manuscript from tonight.  I kinda sorted followed it...not really, especially towards the end. I just let the spirit talk. Also, I've included the benediction I used tonight.

Who are you?

Luke 9:18-21

Once, when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others say that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.”

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Peter answered, “The Christ of G-d.”

Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone.

Who are you?  Not just your name, but you.  Who are you? Sure, you have a name.  Maybe your name even means something, but most of us are given names because our parents liked the name.   But your name is not necessarily who you are.  It is what you are called.  If I started calling you Bob or Jane, you would not cease to be who you are now.  You’d just be called something different.   After all, a rose by any other name is still a rose. So, who are you?

Somewhere we all have an answer to that question.  In fact, most of us probably have multiple answers to that question, depending on who is asking it.  Right now, I am your preacher.  Later on I will be a pair of listening ears for a friend or a roommate.  In a couple days I will be a student.  In a few months I will be a flower girl.  Throughout it all I remain someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s friend, and many more things.  So who are you?

One time I was at a family reunion with part of my mother’s side of the family. I grew up with my dad’s side of the family so I knew all of them, but my mom’s side of the family was a new thing for me.  They’d all been names on pages without faces.  At the reunion I was asked who I was.  The question stumped me.  I knew who I was.  I was Joy, a student at Central College studying German and Psychology.  But that wasn’t what family members were asking me.  My name tag told them my name.   What they were asking was who I was in relationship to them, which branch of the family I fit into.  Finally, I figured out what they were asking and grabbed a family member who knew the family better than I did to make the tie for me.  By the end of the day I knew who I was to these people.  I was so-and-so’s daughter, so-and-so’s granddaughter, so-and-so’s great granddaughter... That day people could have told me that I was anyone in the family I probably would have believed them.  That day it didn’t matter who I said I was, but who people said I was.

Jesus’ disciples are presented with a similar question on that mountain in the region of Caeserea Philippi when Jesus asked them who the crowds thought he was.  Compared to the question that was going to come, that question was easy.  Dutifully the disciples parroted back what they had heard the crowds say.  The word on the street was that Jesus was the John the Baptist or Elijah or a prophet of long ago who had come back to life.   But then Jesus changed the game a little bit.  No longer was he interested in hearing the disciples parrot back what the crowds said.  He turned to them and said “But what about you?  Who do you say I am?”   This was no longer the same question.  No longer could they parrot back what they heard on the street.  Now they had to answer for themselves.  Bold Peter turned to Jesus and confidently answered that Jesus was the Christ of G-d.   The Gospel according to Matthew elaborates on this and records Peter’s answer as being that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the Living G-d.

This answer, a mere 10 English words in Matthew and only 4 English words in Mark and Luke, is such a powerful confession of who Jesus was and is, that it was recorded in three of the four Gospels.   The Messiah, the Son of the Living G-d, the Christ – these were the words that were going to make all the difference for both the disciples and for us today.  The Gospel according to Matthew records Jesus responding to Simon Peter by changing his name to Peter and declaring that he would be the rock upon which Christ would build His church.     Simon Peter was no longer simply Simon Peter the ex-fisherman who had become a disciple of this radical Jewish rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus, but he was Peter, the rock upon with the whole Church was going to be built.   Who Peter declared Jesus to be made a difference and who we declare Jesus to be makes a difference too.

If we declare Jesus to be a wise teacher, we are left with a collection of wise teachings and advice on how to live our lives.  If we declare Jesus to be a prophet of G-d, we can attest more authority to his wise teachings and advice.  If he were a prophet we could even accept his new teachings such as the one about turning the other cheek instead of taking an eye for an eye.  But we wouldn’t have much more than that.  But if we declare him to be the Son of the Living G-d, the Messiah, then everything changes for us.

If we echo Peter’s declaration it no longer matters who we say we are.  It no longer matters who other people say we are.  It only matters who Jesus says we are.  As He did with his disciple Simon Peter he will also do with us.  2 Corinthians 5:17 assures us that if anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation, the old is gone and the new has come. 

The old going is a beautiful thing. When the old goes, the identities that we have created for ourselves and the names we have taken for ourselves or been given by the world go with them.  I have had the honor of walking alongside several young people who have struggled with eating disorders and self-esteem issues.  They have identities for themselves.  They have named themselves.  They call themselves worthless, fat, useless, ugly, unworthy of love, lonely, afraid, guilty, and the list could go on. That’s the old talking.  When they finally step into the new, their name, their very identity begins to change.  They start to see themselves as worth something, as beautiful, as worthy of love, as strong, and so on.  Every old identity is replaced with a new one.  No one, none of us, can make that replacement on their own.  Many try.  Many try to find their identities in the work, their relationships, their outward appearances, their talents and abilities.  But most often they fail.  When someone recognizes who they are in Christ, that’s when the new identity that will actually stick starts to form.

Living in a fallen world we all struggle with our identities, some more than others.  It would be wonderful if we were all super comfortable in our identities in Christ, but I’ve met very few people who answer the question “Who are you?” with “A child of G-d” or something similar.  More often we answer the questions with our job titles, our names, our vocations, or our roles in our families.  At least, that’s how we answer to the outside world.  To ourselves we are often not as kind may answer quite differently.  It’s when we are talking to ourselves that the more negative names, the ones that hurt the most come up.  

But those are not who and what we are called to be.  We are in Christ and therefore we are new creations.  This is good news.  Better than good news, it is great news.  In Christ we are justified.  We belong to G-d.  We members of Christ’s body, citizens of heaven, we are forgiven.  We have hope and a future and peace.  We are not alone.  We have the promise of eternal life and full life.  We are hidden with Christ in G-d.  We have new identities.

(This is where I inserted something about evangelism and how we have a choice whether or not to share the gift of a new identity with those who don’t know Christ.  Not sure what came over me right then.  It just happened.)

Jesus turned to Peter and asked him who he said he was and he turns to each and every one of us and asks the same question: But what about you?  Who do you say I am?

 Benediction

Before we close this evening I’d like to share the words on a simple praise song with you as our benediction.  It is called “I will change your name”.  Listen to these words as if the Father himself were saying them to you.

I will change your name,

You will not longer be called,

wounded, outcast, lonely or afraid.

I will change your name.

Your new name shall be,

Confidence, Joyfulness, Overcoming One,

Faithfulness, Friend of G-d,

One who seeks my face.

A Far Greater Plan

One evening I set apart my entire evening from after dinner until bedtime.  It was going to be date night with Jesus.  It may sound cheesy, but I was excited.  I packed some blueberries for a snack (what's a date without some food?), got my Camelback all cleaned and filled, and set out towards Lake Michigan to watch the sunset with my Jesus.   It's about 8 miles (13km) from my apartment to the lake, so it was one of my longer trips this summer. I had my blueberries, my water, my Bible and my journal.  It was going to be a good night.
I got to the beach and made my way across the sand to the spot that stick out into the water.  I climbed over the railing and settled myself onto some nice big rocks and looked out over the Lake.
The sun reflected beautifully off the water.

I kept waiting for the color to explode across the sky like I'd seen it do before, but the sun just kept sinking lower

The brilliant colors didn't come and, as petty as it sounds, I started to get angry at G-d. I knew he could make a splendarific sunset.  He'd wow-ed me with them before.  I'd set apart this evening as a special time to be with him and he didn't how up.  I walked away from the beach angrily and got back on my bike and started back to my apartment, still ticked with G-d.

As I rode back, I glimpsed something beautiful out of the corner of my eye.  It was bright red and orange and yellow.

I tried to photograph it, but the picture just couldn't contain its glory. As I watched the moon rise in the night sky, I heard a voice whisper in my ear "I have a far greater plan for you"

My lover did show up.  He not only showed up, but he showed up in a more spectacular way than I could have planned, and he gave me the words that I most needed to hear.  He does indeed have a far greater plan for me. 

Knowing When to Quit

Some people are good at quitting, sometimes even too good.  Others, well, we just don't know when to quit.  We can be very determined.  Sometimes that is a good thing, such as when pure determination and hard work got me through college, in four years, 6 credits short of a double major, despite everything that life had thrown my way in those four years.  Other times it's not such a good thing, such as the time when my determination not to get a DNF or DQ on my final swim race (100m breast stroke) even though I'd had a massive asthma attack half way through, meant that I passed out, in the pool, as soon as I had finished the race. It also meant today that I spent about 45 minutes sitting on the locker room floor at the pool, fighting against passing out (for the record, I won).
As I pondered my tendencies to extreme determination (some of my friends have another word for it), it got me thinking about life and faith. The Bible has a fair bit to say about extreme determination or perseverance. Let's take a look.
In 2 Timothy 4:6-8 we read about having fought the good fight and finished the race. From my experience with swim racing, the only way to finish a race is to have extreme determination.  Sometimes the finish line seems miles away, especially if you are about 4 years old and only just able to make it from one end of the pool to the other, swimming freestyle.  When you are that four year old (I wasn't, just assisted in the coaching of some of them. The youngest swimmer I ever coached is now 13 and entering 7th grade.  Most days I choose not to think about that), the only thing that is between you and that DNF or DQ is your extreme determination to finish (and maybe your coaches yelling at you to not dare to touch the wall or they'd step on your fingers, but coaches would never do such a thing).  When you're swimming a distance race and the water as well as the air around it is freezing cold (snow on a meet day is rare, but not unheard of), it takes extreme determination and dedication (and a fair bit of craziness) to even get into the pool, much less finish the race.
In 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 we read that all run the race, but only one gets the prize. I was never one of the "good" swimmers.  The only way I could garner any points for my team was if there were less than 7 swimmers in the event, which is why I ended up swimming distance races (no one likes the distance races, but I never minded them).  The week after the meet everyone would collect their "ribbons", which were really paper cards, a different color for each of the top 7 places.  Some got a lot of cards, others, didn't get any (or if they were really little they got a purple card, just for participating), but we all trained.  3 days a week we were at the pool, rain or shine, cold or hot for practice. Some even more often than that (some summers I pretty much lived at the pool).  But every summer, at the end of the year, at that one meet that really mattered, the one where medals and trophies were handed out, there were only so many to hand out. A very few swimmers took the majority of them home (These were the "good" swimmers), but come next season, all of us were back in the pool, working again, training hard.  We didn't train aimlessly, but trained with a purpose in mind: more speed.  After weeks of not ever taking a ribbon home, after summers of never getting a medal, it takes extreme determination to come back, summer after summer after summer to try again, to train with that same goal in mind: more speed.
In Hebrews 12:1-3 we read about the cloud of witnesses surrounding us, encouraging us to finish the race.  If you've ever been to a Saturday morning rec league outdoor meet, you've got an idea of what it looks like to have a cloud of witnesses encouraging you.  There are people everywhere.  Some of them are parents who really don't understand the fascination we have with plunging ourselves into freezing cold water at 7:30 in the morning and then waiting a couple hours and doing it again.  Others are parents who do get it and wish they could still do it.  Either way, they are there with one purpose: support.  Support for their swimmer(s) and support for their team.  The sit around the pool, often in miserable conditions (it's usually either dangerously hot, ridiculously cold, or raining), for hours (starting at 7:30am, often running into mid afternoon), to offer support.  Some of the support comes in the form of helping with marshaling (getting the right swimmers in the right lanes, swimming the right strokes, at the right time), sometimes it's timing (running those exceedingly complicated stopwatches, watching extremely close for the swimmer in their lane to touch in and writing down times with utmost care, knowing that a disputed time will give everyone grief over a tenth of a second), sometimes it's running (getting cards from swimmers to timers in 25m events, getting cards from timers to scoring, making sure everyone has water, finding relief timers), sometimes it's scoring (interpreting those hand written scores and entering them into the computer (we're all technological now), printing and posting results pages and dealing with parents and coaches who are upset about a DQ given), but mostly, it's just cheering and being there for their swimmer(s). When you're the swimmer, you know what that "cloud of witnesses" feels like.  As you take your position, things are as silent as an outdoor meet ever gets.  The marshals are still calling names, the anxious swimmers in the next heat are still chattering, but you don't hear any of that.  Your auditory nerves are tuned to the voice of the starter "Swimmers! take your marks!  Get set!  GO!"  You never hear that go.  It's drown out by the starters pistol (or now, a lame whistle blast).  You leave the comfort of the pool deck (or starting block if you're at a fancy-schmancy pool), all forgotten except your goal: finish the race in as short as time as possible without DQing. As your head breaks the surface of the pool half way down (if you're a big kid, closer to the starting line if you're little) you hear the roar.  If you're luck you pick out one voice and listen for it every time your head breaks the surface (if you're not having an asthma attack, you do have to breath.  Funny how that works).  Voices roar at you "PULL!  PULL!  KICK!  Stop looking at the others and swim! PULL!  Finish strong!  PULL! GO! GO!  GO!" And then, almost as soon as it started, it's over and the spectators fall silent again as the next heat takes their place.
And as far as throwing off everything that hinders and following the course set out for us, yeah, swimmers know about that too.  We wiggle into the tiniest swimsuits possible (which are much easier to put on than take off), we put our hair under caps to reduce any drag, goggles are the minimal possible to keep chlorine out of our eyes and allow us to see the black line (course marked out for us!), and if you're a good swimmer who stands a chance at breaking a record, all body hair that isn't covered by suit or cap is removed.  We might train in different attire (think opposite), but when push comes to shove, when a few tenths of a second can make a difference, nothing is allowed to hinder.
Now none of these New Testament writers was talking about a swim race or even a foot race, they were talking about faith.  About pushing on for what what is right even when it's hard, even when it seems impossible or foolish.  They were talking about the extreme determination that it takes to be a Christian in this often hostile, and always sinful world, about how to keep following hard after Christ even though we are still sinners.  We have to train hard.  We have to accept encouragement from the cloud of witnesses surrounding us and we have to have extreme determination.  Sometimes it's easy, other times, it's brutal. And, getting a DNF would be much more tragic than getting a DNF at finals in the race where you actually stand a chance to earn your team those points that just might put them in the running for best team overall.
As far as the rest of life goes, I'm not sure the same extreme determination applies as it does to faith.  I think sometimes you do have to quit.  Our bodies are not our own if we belong to Christ.  1 Corinthians 6: 19-20 lays it out for us, as does the first question and answer of the Heidelberg when they say that we are not our own but belong body and soul, in life and in death, unto our faithful savior Jesus Christ, who bought us with a price.  When we abuse our bodies, we are abusing someone else's property, and well, really unpleasant stuff happens.    But quitting also isn't doing service to our Creator and Savior.  Imagine if someone gave you a really fast, really good car and told you to care for it and use it well and you responded by leaving it in the garage?  The giver would be pretty ticked that they gave you the car and then you never used it.  They'd be just as ticked if you abused the car and wrecked it through careless driving and lack of maintenance. I think we have to find that healthy medium between quitting and extreme determination.
And sometimes, that means listening to our bodies when our extreme determination takes over our sensibilities and getting out of the pool before you start to get light-headed, dizzy and have tunnel vision. :)

The Silver Lining: Romans 8:12-25

Here's the manuscript I went into tonight's service with (with two changes- this one is single spaced and everything highlighted in red was highlighted in yellow on my copy).  I'm getting more comfortable preaching so I tend to "go off book" a little more often than I did at first.  I still read a little more than I would like to though.
It never ceases to amaze me how G-d can take my stumbling tongue, my youthful words and use them to touch people.  Praise the Lord for His mighty power!

Romans 8:12-25

As I read and prayed through this text repeatedly in preparation for writing this sermon, I kept being drawn to the parts about suffering: if you live according to the sinful nature you will die, our present suffering, bondage to decay, groaning as in the pains of childbirth.  Perhaps it’s because if I’m not careful, I can be a little bit of a pessimist or perhaps, and equally likely it is because when I read this passage I hear in my head the voice of a dear friend of mine who was fond of quoting verse 18 to me in King James Version in her deepest southern drawl. Without the southern drawl, it would sound like this:

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us.

If you can imagine that in a southern drawl, maybe you can get a slight idea of why it sticks so firmly in my head.   The two of us served on a mission team together many years ago in Africa, and being in Africa, sometimes times were tough: we were missing our own beds stateside, we didn’t have flush toilets, or hot running water (most days there was cold running water though), it was rainy season so our clothes almost never got dry, and there were great big huge dinner plate sized moths.  Not every day was easy, but when things got tough we’d remind ourselves that our present sufferings weren’t worthy to be compared with the glory that was to be revealed in us.

Or perhaps the parts about suffering stick out to me because when I read them there is a little piece of me that goes “wait a minute!?! Suffering?  Really?  I thought the battle was won, Jesus came, died, rose again, forgave us of all our sins and now we have to suffer?  This can’t be right.  Paul must not know what he’s talking about!”  I think if we are really honest with ourselves, we have all had moments where we’ve stopped, even just briefly to say “wait a minute.  That’s not how I thought this trusting the Lord thing was supposed to go.”  Perhaps it was when you lost your job or your house.  Perhaps it was finding out you  or a loved one had significant medical concerns.   Or maybe it was when a relationship didn’t go the way you had hoped or planned that it would.   Or a loved one died long before you thought it was time for them to go. Or perhaps when one of you children wandered away from everything you’d tried to teach them. Everyone knows what it’s like to suffer to one degree or another.  It’s not something we can compare or measure, but it is something we all know.

Thankfully this passage doesn’t leave us in a place of suffering.  It tells us that suffering will indeed happen, but along with that there is hope.  Hope of a glory to come and a hope of liberation.  If we go back to the beginning and wade through the first section about our sinful nature, we can see that our obligation is not to live according to the sinful nature.  In fact, if we do live according to our sinful natures, we will die.  Rather, when we become Christians, the power of the Spirit of G-d helps us to put to death the sinful nature and adopts us as sons and daughters of G-d.  

There is something special about being someone’s son or daughter.   If you have a father who was or is present in your life in a positive way, you know what it’s like to be able to cry out “Daddy!” or an equivalent there off.   This text uses the Aramaic term “Abba”, which translates to father or daddy or papa or whatever else one might call their father figure.   If you didn’t have a positive father figure in your life, think about your mother or mother figure and how comforting it was to be able to call out to your Mother right when you needed her the most. 

How many of us have watched a child learning to walk or ride a bike and then seen them fall?  If their parents are there, that’s where they turn to, to their Daddy or Mommy who scoops them up in their arms and comforts them before helping them  try again.  They don’t scold them for not getting it right the first time or the second time or the tenth time or the hundredth time.  They are simply there with their strong arms, ready for when their son or daughter needs them again.

That’s the kind of relationship we have through the Spirit, to G-d, our Father.  We are his dearly loved children.  And even when our earthly parents fail, which they so often do, we know that G-d will never fail.  No matter how many times we fall, no matter what kind of mess we get ourselves into, G-d will always be waiting there, with open, loving arms, ready to comfort us and set us up to try again.

Since we are children of G-d, we are brothers and sisters to Christ, in a spiritual sense, which means we are co-heirs with Christ, and, according to verse 17, if we share in his sufferings we will also share in his glory.  This is the glory that our present sufferings are not worth being compared to.  I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to inherit anything significant, much less incredible glory.  I’m one of six children.  When my parents are called home to glory, whatever is left after all 6 of us have made it through college, and we’ve cared well for our parents, will likely be divided amongst us.  But I’ve heard of people inheriting family fortunes.  It changes their lives.  Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. 

A number of years ago a movie called “Princess Diaries” came out.  In the movie a fairly normal teenage girl, living with her widowed mom who is an artist, receives word that she has inherited the country of Genovia. In the space of 5 minutes she goes from being a normal teenager living a normal life to having to consider whether she wants to accept this massive inheritance or not.  This inheritance, should she choose to accept it, will change her life.  

The inheritance that we, as children of G-d and coheirs with Christ, are set to receive is far greater than a county, even Genovia.  Psalm 50 tells us that our G-d, our Father owns “every animal in the forest, the cattle on a thousand hills, every bird in the mountains and the creatures of the field.”  It’s far greater than anything that we could possibly comprehend.

This inheritance is the glory that our present sufferings are not worth being compared to.  But to get to the glory, we first have to share in Christ’s sufferings.

In the next section of this passage Paul uses a powerful metaphor to explain our suffering and the fullness of glory that we will experience.  He uses the metaphor of the pangs of labor and childbearing.   Let’s read that section again.

“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”

I have never been pregnant, therefor I have never given birth to a baby, so I can’t relate completely to labor pains, but I was present when both of my younger brothers made their entrances into the world, and I did grow up on a farm.  As I got older, I was given the role of “alpaca midwife”, assisting the females in our herd in their yearly task of bringing new life into the world. 

In early June of this year I assisted at a particularly difficult birth.  The baby was large and not in the ideal birthing position.  The labor had been long and very difficult.  As the cria began to make her entrance into the big wide world the mother alpaca began to scream.  She screamed and screamed as we repositioned the baby and assisted her little girl into the world.  As soon as we had the little girl and were beginning all the activities necessary immediately after a birth, the mother began her gentle, calm humming again, as if nothing had pained her enough to warrant screaming just a few moments earlier.  From my limited experience with humans and my experiences with animals, I imagine that this was what Paul was talking about.  After all, Paul was an unmarried man, so I doubt he had much more experience with childbirth than I have had up to this point in my life.

We are waiting in eager expectation for the glory of G-d to be revealed, for our liberation from the bondage of decay that sweeps across our world.  We long for the day when there is no more sickness or decay or death.  No more ware, no more children being abused, no more mothers crying over babies that never saw the light of day, no more people starving.  That is the world we long for.  The weight of the suffering of the world we live in often  weighs heavily on us.  It makes us uncomfortable and we groan and cry out for it to change.  It hurts.  It feels like it will never end.  We groan inwardly and sometimes even outwardly, but there is nothing we can do to change it.  We can’t speed up the process.

 The baby always comes when it’s ready.

If Paul stopped writing there, there would be little hope, little encouragement, but he doesn’t stop there.  He goes on to give us the silver lining in this world of suffering and pain:

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

The silver lining in this passage is the fact that we can hope, that we have hope in the return of Christ.  We have hope in the fact that we are co-heirs with Christ, that there is a glory to come, and inheritance far greater than we can imagine. If we already had it, we would not be able to hope in it.  If we could imagine it accurately, it would not have the same appeal as an unimaginable inheritance of glory.

Did you ever sneak around before Christmas and to figure out what you were going to get ahead of time?  When you thought no one was looking you peaked under mom and dad’s bed or in the closet or wherever you thought they might hide the gifts.  You saw it.  That thing you had been hoping for all year, or at least all of the last two weeks.  The object that your parents told you Santa might bring if you were really good.  You found it.  You knew it was coming and would be there Christmas morning.  But then something happened.  Some of the excitement left Christmas.  You woke up Christmas morning and went to unwrap your gifts, but it wasn’t as exciting as you had hoped it would be.  You already knew what was inside that brightly wrapped package.  You were happy, but there was no anticipation.  No hope that it would be there because you already knew for sure that it was there.

If we could imagine the full glory of our inheritance we wouldn’t have near as much to look forward to.  Some of the excitement would leave.  We’d just be putting in time here, instead of hoping, waiting expectantly for our adoption as sons and daughters and the renewal of our bodies. 

When things get tough, when we feel the weight of our suffering, when we do battle with our sinful natures, we can cling to the silver lining that there is hope and that we can still have hope because we cannot fully grasp the glory that is to come.   We can wait patiently, or at least try to be patient, (when I’m hoping for something really hard, I have a hard time with the patience thing.  You should have seen me as a child on Easter morning.  Patience was not my strong point) as we eagerly hope for the glory that we one day be revealed in us, co-heirs with Christ Jesus.

Amen.

Pickled Asparagus, Radical Evangelism, Human Trafficking and Jesus

This afternoon while I was pickling asparagus (something new for me...I've never pickled asparagus before.  Just cucumbers and beets, but I like asparagus and I like beets, so pickled asparagus sounds promising.) I was thinking about radical evangelism, human trafficking and Jesus.  I know what the last three have in common, but I am still not quite sure how packing asparagus spears into piping hot jars while listening to a Sara Groves/Tenth Avenue North/JJ Heller/Laura Hackett/Laura Story playlist bought me to the other three topics.  If you have any ideas, please feel free to let me know!

Anyone who denies that human trafficking (a fancy word for slavery!) is a problem in North America, needs to wake up a little bit and read some headlines.  Google "Human Trafficking in *insert name of country or state or province here*" and what you find may surprise you. It's happening in your back yard, whether you like it or not. 

According to Canada Fights Back, human trafficking is the second largest organized crime worldwide. It brings in more profit annually than Google, Starbucks and Nike combined.  I could give you more facts, such as the fact that every 30 seconds a child is sold or the fact that 80% of the people enslaved due to human trafficking are women, but I'll stop there.  If you want to know more, google it. 

As I thought about the problem of human trafficking, the overwhelming questions on my heart were: Who is going to reach these people?  Who is going to tell them that there is a G-d who loves them, no matter what man has done to them? (70% of those sold into slavery are sold of the purpose of sexual exploitation)

I thought about who reached the slaves when slavery was legal.  In some ways it was easier then, the slaves were visible then, whereas today, many of them are hidden. As I thought more about it, my very limited knowledge brought to mind that the Gospel was shared with slaves by other slaves.  As slaves were bought and sold they carried their most precious possession with them - the saving truth of the Gospel. When they could, they sang it.  I remembered a story about two young Moravians that I used in a sermon last spring, who willingly sold themselves into slavery so that they could reach other slaves. 

As I called that story back to mind, my mind began to wander to today...could the same concept work today? Could someone sell themselves into slavery in order to reach other enslaved people?  That would be super radical evangelism.

Jesus gave us the model for radical evangelism. He could have just sent a message from heaven to tell us about His saving grace.  But I'm not sure that would have meant anything to us.  In fact, I'm almost certain it wouldn't.  It would be comparable for me telling someone who is going through a bitter divorce how to fix their marriage...I've never been married (nor divorced) and I have no training in marriage counselling (yet). They wouldn't want to listen to me and they shouldn't listen to me!  Instead, Jesus came to us.  He came to be one of us.  To walk the roads we walk, to fight the fights we fight every day.  He earned his right to be heard. He earned it along a beach with fishermen, on the long dusty roads, in the crowded synagogues, at the painful end of a Roman whipping, as the recipient of jeers and spits, on a Roman cross, and ultimately when he rose again from the grave, conquering death.  After he had earned his right to be heard, then he could share the message he came to share (and had been sharing) and have it understood and received.  

All of this thinking led me to the inevitable conclusion: in order to reach those who have been sold into slavery, in order for the Gospel to be heard by them, someone has to become one of them.  Someone has to let themselves be sold into slavery.  

It's a hard thought.  It is not something I am called to, but the question it raised in me was "what if?"  What if that was my calling? What if I had a very clear message from the Lord that my calling was to sell myself into slavery so that I could reach other slaves?  Would I go?  Would I listen?  Or would I pull a Jonah and run as fast as I could in the other direction because it seemed so extreme? What about you?  What f that was G-d's calling on your life?  Would you go?

It's easy to say that you would follow G-d's call on your life, no matter what is.  To stand up or raise your hand at a retreat or after a short term mission trip and say that you are ready to follow G-d's call, no matter what it is, but it's another thing to realize what a potential calling might be, what it would mean, and then still say that you would follow no matter what.

For those of you holding your breath out of curiosity, wanting to know if I would actually sell myself into slavery if that is what G-d called me to: the answer is that I don't know. I would have to do some pretty serious praying about it first.  And then, at some point, if I were 100% sure that this is what I was called to do, then I would pray that I would have the faith to follow through. And that answer goes for anything that G-d might call me to, not just selling myself into slavery.

A2CW: Addicted to Christian Weed

Do you ever start to think about something and then think about something else and eventually end up right back where you started?  That’s a spruce loop.  Some people might call it rabbit trail, but spruce loop is the far better term.   Besides, spruce trees smell better than rabbit poop any day of the week.

Anyhow, we were driving home from some place the other day and I was thinking about a particular time in which I’d gotten lost.  It was a time when I really ought to have known my way, but because of the state my brain was in during that period of my life and because I’d taken some prescription medication that exacerbated the condition, I was in no position to give even the simplest directions (think drunk and high). Anyhow, while I was thinking about that event my brain stumbled upon another event from close to the same time period in my life...

It feels like half a lifetime ago, though in reality it was only about 7 or 8 years ago or so, so about a third of my lifetime ago really.  I hung out with some pretty awesome people that summer.  And by pretty awesome, I mean super awesome.  I don’t know where all of them are now, and that makes me sad, but so goes life. I miss them though and think of them all often.  The ones I have stayed in touch with are mostly married now and some even have children of their own.  There are a few of us left that I know of who are still single.  Often, I wish we could go back to that summer, share what we shared then.

Life was in many ways easier then. We dealt with some pretty crazy stuff that summer, but now, looking back, it seems like such little things compared to all that has happened since then.  That summer, I hadn’t yet learned how to deal with a high school student who was suicidal.  My struggle with an eating disorder and depression hadn’t quite begun yet, though it did follow not overly long afterwards.  I didn’t have a clue what life with seizures was like.  I had no idea what feelings would run through my mind when a doctor would tell me that I was potentially terminal (he was wrong by the way). The struggles we had, although they seemed major then, and some of them were fairly major, all shrink in comparison to everything that has happened since then (and there is a whole bunch I’m not sharing in this public of a forum).  And that’s okay.  That’s not was this is about.  Just a bit of explanation as to why that summer feels like half a lifetime ago.  Think of it has a mini spruce loop.

That summer I was introduced to Christian Weed.  In fact, of the many quotes that graced our quote board (which I almost want to pull out and read, but it’s packed away and I’m tired), one of the few I can remember right now, off the top of my head, is “A2CW” which stood for “Addicted to Christian Weed”.  (The other one I can remember is “Jesus thinks you’re cool” or JTYC), and that is what I began thinking about as I thought about being lost - Christian Weed.

Christian Weed was how we referred to that feeling we got after an all night prayer vigil or a spontaneous session of worship or a time of intense prayer.  It was that feeling of being so filled with the spirit that it overflowed and bubbled out of us, making us laugh uncontrollably or jump and sing with complete abandon, the joy of the Lord that made us completely undignified before our King. That feeling was so addicting, our hunger for the Lord was so strong, that we would do whatever it took to get back to that place and stay in it.  Although there was nothing wrong with that, in fact, there was so much good about it, I wonder though, if maybe perhaps we were a little misguided.

We were addicted to Christian weed. We were searching for one spiritual high after another, always trying to experience that again.  But, like with any drug, no high is ever as high as the first one.  Perhaps it would have been better if we were truly addicted to Jesus, not just to Christian weed.  I’m not saying we weren’t addicted to Jesus, for there is no doubt in my mind that we were all crazy about Jesus.  Our addiction to Jesus is what led us to Christian weed in the first place (Does that make Jesus a gateway drug?), but somehow I think our focus, or at least mine, got shifted away from Jesus and more to towards Christian weed and the feelings that went with worshiping Jesus.  The problem with that is, feelings aren’t always reliable.  When depression took over (and nearly took) my life shortly thereafter, I couldn’t get that high.  No matter how hard I sought it, I couldn’t get the Jesus high.  I couldn’t get high about anything.  I could seek that high all I wanted, but I could never get there.  Instead of seeking Jesus and longing for him, I longed for Christian weed. 

Now, even though my fight with depression has been mostly won (every now and then it rears its ugly head), that habit is sometimes still there.  Sometimes I still find myself longing for a hit of Christian weed.  I search long and hard after it, instead of searching long and hard after Jesus, the only one who can really give me that high.

I don’t blame anyone for that habit.  In fact, I think I have learned a lot from it.  I also cannot say that everyone from that summer had the same experience.  Even though we were all in the same place, we didn’t necessarily have the same experience.  My experience is valid only for me.

Which brings me full circle to where I started.  Sometimes, my brain loses focus and I get lost.  I start searching for what I want instead of what I know I need.  It’s simple, something I’ve known for a long time, but I still can’t always remember it.  The time I was remembering about getting lost (the story at the very beginning of this post) was when I was trying to give someone directions from my high school to home.  I should have known that.  I had known it for a long time, but because my brain was on a binge, I couldn’t do it.  

When my brain and spirit long after a hit of Christian weed I forget that all I really need to do is turn to Jesus and long after him instead.  In the end, He’ll be better than any hit and He will keep me from getting lost. And even when I do get lost, He'll still be there to guide me back to the right path, to get me home even when  I can no longer help myself.

Perhaps it's time to say goodbye to Christian weed and figure out some sort of catchy slogan that communicates an addiction to Jesus instead of to feelings.

And perhaps it is also time to conclude this particular spruce loop.

Soundtrack of my day

Right from the moment I woke up today, this song has been running through my head.  Not a modern remix of it, but the good old fashioned words sung with an organ.  I've marked some of the words that have stuck out to me the most (ie, have run through my head the most times)

Christ the Solid Rock
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus' name.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

His oath, His covenant, and blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When every earthly prop gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in Him be found,
Clothed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne!
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

The Nature of a Servant

I preached this sermon on Palm Sunday.   I waited awhile before posting my manuscript here because I knew there was audio for this sermon recorded and I wanted be able to post a link to the audio along with my manuscript, in case people were inclined to want to listen to me preach. The audio is in two parts.  I made it into video because I didn't know how to just post the audio.  So the videos are really boring.  But here they are:  Part 1, Part 2.
And here is the manuscript:

There is a story that I have heard told many times around the dinner table or gathered with friends and family around the fireplace.   It’s a story about an old man who lived alone.  He didn’t always live alone.  Once he had had a wife and a few children, but that was a long time ago.  His wife had died and his children had all moved away, starting families of their own.  One night he sat alone gazing out the window lost in thought.   He watched as the wind blew big gusts of snow around the farmyard.  It was bitterly cold out and a blizzard was coming in.   He glanced at the fire burning in the hearth and was grateful for the warmth of his house.  As he looked out the window again he saw them.   A flock of Canadian Geese were struggling against the wind.  They had landed in the space between his house and his barn and looked like they were trying to find shelter from the impending blizzard.  His heart went out to them and resolved to open his barn and allow them to take shelter there from the storm.  He put on his heavy winter coat, his boots, his gloves and his hat.  He braced himself as he opened his door and walked towards the barn.  He battled his way to the big barn door and pulled it open.  He motioned for the geese to go inside.  Instead of seeking shelter they ran away.  Again and again he tried to convince them to go inside where they would be safe and warm and again and again they ran away from him in fear.   In that moment he wished nothing more than to be like them, to be a goose, so he could reach them.

I imagine that in some way G-d felt a little bit like that man when he looked down on of the human race, except multiplied an infinite number of times.  He had created the entire world and everyone in it.  He had knit every human together and ordained all their days for them, but then something happened and they became separated from Him.  Ever since that day in the Garden, that day when the first man and the first woman fell, the humans that G-d had created, the crown of his creation, had been separated from him.   His heart continually went out to the human race.  Throughout the Old Testament we read about G-d trying to draw the Israelites closer to Him.   While the people of Israel were in the desert, G-d gave them the tabernacle, as a way for him to dwell among them.  As time went on, He sent the prophets to draw Israel closer to himself, to direct them in the way they should go.   The prophets though were just messengers of G-d.  Even they pointed towards the coming of one greater, one who would restore Israel to a right relationship with G-d.  In Isaiah 49 we read  of one who was to come to restore Israel and to be a light to the gentile.  This was the promise the people of Israel looked forward to.  Until Christ came humankind remained separate from G-d.    It was only after Christ came that we had the opportunity to be united with G-d. 

What was it about this coming, of G-d as a baby, which allowed us to be united with G-d?  What was different about G-d coming to humankind as a baby?

Our text this evening indicates that Christ came to us as a servant.  A humble, obedient, servant.   How does this servant nature allow us to be united with G-d and what does it mean for us to have the attitude of a servant?

If G-d had chosen to come to Earth in his full glory he would have been about as effective at drawing us to himself as the old man was at convincing the geese to seek shelter in the barn.   In His full glory, G-d would have terrified us.   He would have more than terrified us.  We would not have been able to stand in the light of His glory. When the glory of the Lord was shown to Moses, the Lord hid Moses in the cleft of a rock so that Moses could only see the back of the Lord.  For no one can see the face of G-d and live.   The only way that G-d could reach us, the only way that he could draw us to himself, was to become like us.  That is what he did when he sent his son to come and live among us.

Not only did Jesus have to come as a man in order that we would not be terrified of his glory, he also had to come as a man so that he could pay the debt that we owed.  Our sins, our broken relationship with G-d, demanded repayment.   Throughout the Old Testament we read about the types of sacrifices required for sins and the intricate rituals surrounding them.  A common thread characterized all of them though:  They were temporary and needed to be repeated, over, and over, and over again.   They had to be repeated because they were not sufficient to fully pay for our sins.  They were like bandaids where we, as G-d’s people, really needed reconstructive surgery.   For a time they were okay, but in the long run, they just weren’t enough.   We read in Ezekiel and the Psalms that each of us bears the weight of our own sins and that no animal or mere human could ever pay the debt that we owed.  To borrow the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, we need a “mediator who is truly human, and truly righteous, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is also true G-d.”

Our mediator needed to be truly human and truly righteous because a sinner could never pay for the sins of themselves or another. One who has been dirtied by sin cannot stand in the place of another who has been dirtied by sin.   He also needed to be true G-d so that he could bear the full weight of all our sins.  Being in the very nature G-d, Jesus was also able to become the high priest that could live forever and continually intercede for us.  Jesus became like a man, even though he was in nature G-d, he chose to become a human so that he could be our mediator.  We read in Hebrews 2 that he became like us in every way so that he could help us.  Because he was tempted when he suffered, he can help us when we are tempted.

This dual nature of G-d shown in Christ, truly G-d and truly human at the same time,  this coming down from heaven to be a human baby, this emptying himself of the glory of G-d so that he could bring us back to G-d, this is what the nature of a servant really is.  Think with me for a moment about a baby.  A baby enters this world as a tiny, usually incredibly cute, human being. They are completely unable to do anything on their own except cry and soil their diapers.   That is how Jesus entered our world, as a little helpless baby.  He laid aside all his glory, all the riches of heaven, which are far greater than we can possibly imagine, to become a helpless baby.  I cannot imagine anything more humbling than being completely helpless, than having to rely constantly on other people to meet your every need.

But Jesus didn’t stop there. He didn’t stop at just being a helpless baby.  He went on to live a life marked by humility at every turn. Throughout his ministry he walked among the least of society.  He touched lepers and other people considered untouchable.  He had conversations with foreign women.  He ate with tax collectors.  And then perhaps the most well-known servant story of all: During the feast of the Passover Jesus knelt to wash the feet of his disciples. The washing of feet is a super dirty job; especially considering that Jesus and his disciples wore sandals and walked everywhere. It was a job reserved for the lowest of servants.  But Jesus took it upon himself.  Even though this story is often told as an example of the servant nature of Jesus, our text tonight points to another, even greater example of the servant nature of Jesus.

Look back with me at verse 8.  Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.  Crucifixion in the time of Jesus was a punishment reserved so the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth, the slaves.  There was no crueler, more humiliating form of execution.   Every step of the crucifixion process was designed to bring more humiliation and pain upon the one to be executed.  After Jesus was condemned to die by crucifixion, he was flogged.  His hands were likely tied to a post as a Roman soldier whipped him again and again with a whip embedded with bits of metal.  The whip would have torn through his flesh, his muscle and much of the underlying tissue. We also know that the Roman soldiers dressed Jesus in purple robes and put a crown made of thorns on his head and hailed him as “the king of the Jews”.  The humiliation of this must have been extraordinary.  Then, they paraded him through a crowded street where his enemies could jeer at him and taunt him more.  Then, when they reached Golgotha, the soldiers would have stripped him of all his clothing, in order to add to his humiliation, before nailing him to the cross.

When our text says that Christ humbled himself to death on a cross, it was not speaking figuratively. Death on a cross was the most humble of deaths and it was the death that Jesus submitted to on our behalf.

So what does this mean for us?  What does verse 5 of our text really mean for our daily lives when it says that our attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus?   We cannot stand in the gap in the same way as Christ did because we are not truly G-d as He was. We are limited by our humanness.   I also don’t believe that we are all called to die humiliating deaths by crucifixion. For one thing, crucifixion is not routinely practiced in North America to the best of my knowledge.  For another, if all Christians were called to death by crucifixion, we’d have a lot of dead Christians. I think the key for us is humble obedience to whatever the Lord calls us to.  We have all been given different spiritual gifts and we are called to certain tasks in accordance with our gifting. Some are called to be teachers, others are called to work with their hands, others to care for the sick, others to share the gospel in foreign lands, others to work the land, others to run large businesses.  We each have a calling and that is where we are called to be obedient. It won’t look the same for everyone.  My calling won’t look the same as yours and yours won’t look the same as that of the person sitting in the pew next to you, but it is in that calling that we are called to be obedient.

Being obedient to our callings won’t always be easy.  Being crucified wasn’t easy for Jesus.  When he prayed in the garden we read that he sweat drops of blood and pled with G-d to take this cup from him. A story is told about two young Moravians, members of a religious order, who heard of an island in the West Indies that was home to a slave plantation of two to three thousand slaves.  The owner of the slave plantation is said to have said that no preacher or clergyman would ever stay on island.  These two young Moravians heard about it and following G-d’s call on their lives, sold themselves into slavery in order to reach the slaves on the island.  That was not an easy calling for these two young men to follow.  It was not a short term mission trip, but a life sentence.  Their families and friends questioned them in following their call. They thought it was crazy.  But even Peter questioned Jesus’ call to go to Jerusalem to die.

Being obedient to G-d’s call on our lives won’t always be easy.  Sometimes people will think we have lost our sense of reason, but when we allow ourselves to be humbled in obedience, that is when we will be exalted.  When James and John, the sons of Zebedee, asked Jesus to let them sit on his right and left when he came into glory, he rebuked them and said that whoever wanted to be great, must first become like a servant, the one who wanted to be first must become the last.  Our text this evening tells us that it was after Jesus had humbled himself and became obedient to death on a cross that G-d exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of G-d the Father.

As we enter into this final week before Easter, when we remember the great sacrifice that Christ made for us when he humbled himself to death on a cross and rejoice in the exaltation of his resurrection, may we be attentive to the calling that G-d has on each of our lives, to the ways that he is calling us to have the nature of a servant.

Let us pray.

A Free Us from the Tyranny of the Devil...

This is the manuscript for the last sermon I preached in preaching lab this semester.  The text was Mark 5:1-17.

Jesus stepped out of the boat onto the foreign shore of the region of the Gerasenes.  Nothing in our text indicates that the disciples followed him out of the boat.  I imagine they remained in the boat, looking at each other and echoing the question they had asked just a few verses earlier:  “Who is this man?  Even the wind and waves obey him”

So Jesus gets out of the boat and this “madman” runs at him.  In our sanitized, politically correct world, we would say that he was a “man with mental instability” or a “man with mental illness” or if we were psychologically savvy we might say he was a “man with schizophrenia”.   In any case, this was a man who was oppressed by many things.  Whether we believe that they were actual demons or we read it as mental illness, there is no doubt that he was oppressed. The text gives us signs of his oppression:  he lived in the tombs.  No person in complete freedom would choose to live in such a desolate place.  Our text also tells us that he had often been hand and foot and would wander around the tombs night and day, crying out and cutting himself with stones.  It takes a big kind of hurt to drive someone to resort to cutting themselves.  Any counselor or youth pastor who has worked with young people who cut themselves will confirm this.  You have to be hurting really bad before you start cutting on yourself.  And once you’ve started, the cutting itself begins to oppress you and you can’t stop even if you want to.

Whether this man was oppressed by literal demons or by a psychological condition there is no doubt that a whole legion of things was oppressing him, and what’s more, the Roman government with their legions of soldiers were oppressing the entire land.

We too live in a world that is oppressed.   Many countries are oppressed by tyrannical governments.  Many people are oppressed by generational poverty.  No matter how hard they try they cannot find a way out of the systems that have effectively kept them oppressed for so many years.  Last week there was a display in the atrium about human trafficking.  The fact that human trafficking is still happening, and even increasing,  in the United States is evidence that people in our society are being oppressed.  Oppression doesn’t just happen on global or national scale.  It also happens on an individual scale.   If we stop and think, we all know people who living under oppression.  We have friends, family members, congregants who are living under the oppressive thumb of controlling addictions.  We know people who are oppressed by mental illness, people who are oppressed by the pain of memories of years of abuse, people who are oppressed by chronic illness.  No matter what age group you work with, chances are high that someone is struggling under some form of oppression.  Perhaps you yourself are feeling very oppressed.  People who are being oppressed can’t see the way out for themselves.  Talk to a teenager who has a big enough hurt that they have taken to cutting themselves or one who has an eating disorder or a person who is addicted to drugs.  They will tell you that even though they want to stop, they can’t.  And, no one can stop them.   The oppression is real and it feels like it will never end.  The list of things that can, and do, oppress us is legion.

So this extremely oppressed man is running at Jesus, yelling at him, saying “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High G-d?  Swear to G-d that you won’t torture me!”   The man, or the demons within the man, knew who Jesus was and were terrified of him. They didn’t want to be tortured by him.  People had evidently tried to help the man before.  They had chained him up, evidently to keep him from hurting himself more.  For him, it must have been like torture.  Maybe he was afraid that Jesus was going to try and help him that way too.  But Jesus didn’t come blazing onto the scene with an agenda that he was ready to impose on the man.  Instead he engaged the man, and or the demons, depending on your view, in conversation.  He asked him his name.  He listened to the response, and when the legion asked to be allowed to go into the pigs, He said that they could.  

Jesus freed the man from his oppression and the pigs went running down the bank into the lake. The man was free from his oppression and responded in gratitude.  The swine herders on the other hand, were angry and asked Jesus to leave.  Were the swine herders not grateful that the man had been set free from his oppression? Where they really so cold hearted that they wanted to see him suffer?    I don’t think so.  I think they may have even been among the people who tried to “help” this man.   If they routinely herded their pigs in this area, they couldn’t have wanted a madman running around.  Maybe they were the ones that chained him, hoping to help him or even cure him. But they were ticked, completely and utterly ticked.  Their entire livelihood, all two thousand of them, had just committed suicide by running off the cliff into the lake.  I’ve known more than a few pig farmers.  Each pig was valuable.  If anything happened to one of them, much less the entire herd, it was devastating.  The entire livelihood of these swine herders was invested in these pigs and they were gone.  They were so upset by their loss that they failed to see the incredible gift of freedom that had been given to the man. 

I’m sure they wanted this man to be healed.  If they were praying people, I imagine that they even prayed that he was healed.  No one wants to see another person live under than kind of oppression.

When we have someone in our life who is living under oppression, we want them to be freed from it.  We try to help them anyway that we know how.  We pray for them.  We ask G-d to remove the weight of oppression from them.   I still remember the October night when my dorm room phone rang at about 10:30. It was a friend of mine, Kugel.  A mutual friend of ours, Big David, was sick.  She wanted to know if I’d come see him.  I grabbed my medical bag and headed across campus.  I spent the next couple hours assessing and dealing with what I could.  At that point things didn’t look life threatening or worthy of a midnight trip to the emergency room. The next morning Kugel took him student health and from there he went to the hospital.  From the local hospital he went on to the hospital in Des Moines.  I prayed for him.  The entire community on campus prayed for him.  We asked G-d again and again to relieve his oppression.  We wanted our Big David back.  As soon as the doctors got one problem under control another one popped up.  We watched a blood clot in Big David’s brain spontaneously dissolve.  We watched his kidneys fail and then improve.   We rode a crazy roller coaster of emotions, all the while hoping for a miracle. 

We learned more than we ever wanted to know about the medical system and the human body.  Did you know there was a level of care above and beyond Intensive Care?  Neither did I. It’s called Critical Care and there are more nurses than patients on that unit.   I spent many long hours on that unit, sitting with his fiancé and praying.  I spent hours in the prayer room on campus praying with friends.  We begged G-d to remove this legion of oppression from our friend.  And He did.

I wish I could say that this story ends with Big David getting better and coming back to campus and marrying his fiancé and the two of them living happily ever after.  But I can’t.  We buried Big David just before Christmas that year, about two weeks after his 20^th birthday.  His fiancé stood in a funeral line receiving condolences instead of in a wedding reception line receiving congratulations.  We listened to his eulogy instead of his psychology research presentation.

Did G-d fail to answer our prayers for deliverance from this legion of oppression?  Did He not hear us?  Did we not pray enough?  Should we have fasted more?   I don’t think any of that is true.  I believe that G-d did answer our prayers.  It just wasn’t in the way that we expected him to.  We expected him to heal Big David.  We expected Big David to have many more happy years.  G-d had a plan to relieve Big David from the legion of oppression that he was suffering under.  Big David was set free from his failing body, from his diseased brain to spend an eternity rejoicing with Jesus.   We expected one thing from Jesus, but He gave us another.

The Jews expected one thing from Jesus as well.  They expected him to liberate them from the oppression of the legions of Roman soldiers that were oppressing them.  But Jesus had a far greater plan. He planned to liberate all of us from all oppression for all time.  That’s what we remember on Easter.  We remember the gift of Jesus’ blood covering all our transgressions and setting us free from the tyranny of the devil.  And we are grateful for it.  The prayers of the Jews for a Messiah were answered, just not in the way that they expected.

The swine herders wanted the mad man healed, but didn’t expect it to come at the cost of their livelihood.  We wanted Big David to be healed, but didn’t expect it to come at the cost of his life.  What oppression have you been asking G-d to free you or someone you love from? Have you gotten angry at G-d for not answering?  What if he was answering in a way you didn’t expect?  Jesus is still in the business of freeing people from oppression, just like he freed the madman of the Gerasenes.  But like the swine herders, we need to be prepared for him to do it in unexpected ways.