A Taste of Freedom

We cannot conjure God up anymore than we can fix ourselves. We can only learn to rest and consent to the presence and expression of God within us. That kind of faith leads us to vast openness and incredible freedom.

By Lyndon Marcotte

Proper 7 / Ordinary 12 / Pentecost +5
Galatians 3:23-29

23 Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. 24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. 25 Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Paul implies that this faith has a liberating quality to it, that it is a means of liberation and opening to a type of freedom that we had not yet experienced. Unfortunately, many people have not experienced liberation through their experience of the Christian faith, at least not as it’s being popularly presented in the West. If anything, people are leaving the church en mass, precisely because of the constraints and oppression they have perceived coming from within the church

Many non-Christians have rejected Christianity and built up resistance to any expression of it because they view the church as narrow minded, too rigid, out of date, oppressive, or simply out to ruin their fun. Establishment Christians choose to right those people off as non-believers and simply to say that they are going to hell, as a way of dismissing them. That’s one group, but the phenomenon the church has yet to come to grips with is the thousands of people who are believing Christians that grew up in the church, but are leaving in droves for the same reasons. Those Christians are disappointed and disillusioned because despite their most devout efforts they simply cannot live up to the unrealistic expectations that they themselves have helped to establish in the church. Many of those Christians have discovered that alas they are only human, but the church has not  given them permission to be precisely that. If the incarnation of God in Christ teaches us anything, it is the dignity and extraordinary privilege of being human, but rather than uphold Jesus as a model of humanity that leads to freedom, far too often the church has held Jesus up as a model of divinity that should shame us for being who we are. We are missing the message and model of liberation that is fully available in Christ. What angered Paul in Galatia is that those who were followers of Christ were actually causing division, excluding people from the life of faith, and leading others astray with their attempts to be religious instead of being like Christ.

Paul says that prior to this faith we were “held prisoners by the law… locked up.” If you go back a few verses he also describes our state prior to the law as “prisoners of sin.” He’s saying that we exchanged one set of shackles for another. Initially we were held captive by our sin, following every whim and desire, seeking fulfillment and lasting happiness in things and experiences that are not only temporary but empty of lasting joy. However, many people who come to faith simply swap the handcuffs of sensual pleasure for the ball and chain of legalism and morality. Bondage by any other name is still bondage.

Far too often the only thing people can tell you about the church is the list of do’s and don’ts. You should go to church, “get saved,” “get dunked,” put money in the plate, eat the bread, drink the juice, and go along with the program. You also shouldn’t cuss, drink, steal, cheat, or doubt. This basically sums up the totality of the Christian faith for many people. Sadly, it’s just empty rules and ideology. There’s no life in it and certainly no freedom. To be quite honest, religious institutions have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. It’s basic self-preservation. If there are rules you must follow and the church is the place that tells you what they are and whether or not you’re doing it right, that preserves power and control. That worked for a very long time. Sure, there have always been unique places out in the desert, tucked away in caves, secluded in monasteries, and hidden in forests where people were “working out their own salvation,” but by and large, the church controlled the message and the method. From time to time people got out of line and bucked the system. They usually died for it or at the very least were excommunicated and exiled from the community of faith. That worked as long as the church had power over people, but now in this postmodern era the church is no longer the center of authority in our culture. The lion has lost its teeth. Scandals have certainly done their share of damage to the voice of the church in our culture, but nothing has been more damaging to the credibility of the church than irrelevance. People have not only left because they are disillusioned, but worse, they are disinterested.

Remarkably, Paul actually says that the law is useful and has a purpose in helping us to find freedom. One translation says that we are “in custody” under the law. That far from being this abusive jailer that torments us for our weaknesses, there is this parental quality to the rules that served as our guardian until Christ appeared. We can understand that from the perspective of being a child and also raising our own. We need rules and people in authority over us to keep us safe until we come of age and maturity. The bumpers in the bowling alley help us keep the ball moving in the right direction. The training wheels help us find our balance. The braces straighten our teeth, but the older we get the more we resist the restraints we find ourselves in. Paul is saying that the law has kept us safe, has guided us, and led us within earshot of the words of Christ. He says “now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”

The baby grows up. The bird leaves the nest. We aren’t static. We are constantly changing, growing, maturing, and becoming. The law was useful. It got us through the wilderness to the Jordan River. It kept us safe through our rebellious teenage years, but now we have come of age so to speak. When we come to faith in Christ, we’re not above the law but follow a higher standard which is love. So we no longer lie, cheat, or steal because the rules say it’s wrong. We don’t lie, cheat, or steal because it’s not loving, and it goes against the nature of Christ within us. We don’t go to church, read the Bible, or pray because we have to, we do these things because we want to, because we find value in these practices for strengthening the expression of our faith. A shift has occurred… a change, a conversion. That conversion isn’t from the old rules to the new rules that are are just kinder and gentler.

Salvation is the gift of God that sets us free from a life of obligation to a life of privilege. Faith isn’t a new and improved theology of God and sin. It’s not an idea or a spiritual substance you either have or you don’t. Faith is trust. It is letting go, relinquishing control and the struggle to live up to an impossible standard. It is taking God at His word when He says that what He made is good, including us. It is believing His good word about us that we are made in His likeness. It is realizing that our bodies truly are the temples that God abides in, expresses His being through, and accomplishes His will with. It is resigning that we cannot conjure God up anymore than we can fix ourselves. We can only learn to rest and consent to the presence and expression of God within us. That kind of faith leads us to vast openness and incredible freedom, but that kind of faith is threatening to many people precisely because it cannot be controlled. Jesus said the wind blows where it will. You can’t tell where it’s coming from or where it’s going, and so it is with the Spirit.

Far too often instead of introducing people to this life of freedom in Christ, the church has further divided people into insiders and outsiders, saved or lost, or in Paul’s day Jew or Gentile, slave or free, and male or female. Paul says that our baptism is not an initiation into an exclusive community. It is death. We die with Christ, die to the old self with its bondage to sin and the law, but we are also resurrected with Christ to walk in the newness of life. That it all becomes new. The shackles are broken, and we are set free.

He says  that we have been “clothed with Christ,” all of us who come to the waters of our baptism. It reminds me of the scene from the movie “Oh, Brother Where Art Thou” where all of the faithful are dressed in white marching down to the river together, singing old spirituals in unison. There is a unifying quality to sharing our brokenness and owning our vulnerability, in realizing that we have all sinned, all fallen short, that we are all so ruined and so loved. Paul says that we have not just changed our outward appearance but that through this faith, this trusting, this letting go, we have become “one in Christ” and that we “belong to Christ.” We are no longer slaves to sin or the law but are children of God. We have received the Spirit of adoption and become “heirs to the promise” of God.

This is the truly liberating and unifying effect of the kind of faith that Paul is trying to proclaim. There’s no use and no time for petty disagreements, theological wrangling, and worn out differences. Christ did not live and die for us to be right and prove everyone else   wrong. He did not come to take one yoke from our necks only to tie a millstone in its place. The Church is the body of Christ, the message and the steward of His grace. We are members of that body. We have the incredible capacity and possibility to heal or to hurt, to judge or to forgive, to cause division or promote peace.

Simple Church: A House of Prayer

By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner

Mark 11:12-21

An artist said that to make a sculpture he takes away everything that doesn’t look like the final product in his mind. To get back to a simple church we must take away everything that doesn’t belong, everything that preoccupies our attention and wastes our time and efforts, until we are focused intently on what God has called us to be.

A Simple Church is one that mirrors the holy dance of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, infused with the presence of Christ. There are four values that must be present and at work in a healthy church: Upward, Inward, Outward, and Forward. The church embodies the Upward dynamic as a House of Prayer. The Inward dynamic is experienced in the Family of God. The Outward dynamic is demonstrated as Followers of Christ. The Forward dynamic is realized as the Body of Christ. Today, we want to look at that first reality of the Church as a House of Prayer.

This encounter of Jesus in the temple follows his “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem on what we know as Palm Sunday. Some have said that this is Jesus having a really bad day or the one time that Jesus got really mad. I don’t think either of those are true. Jesus intended to do exactly what he did, and the incident with the fig tree on the way to Jerusalem is directly related to what happened when he got to the temple.

The first thing that jumps off the page as we read about Jesus coming to the fig tree is that “it was not the season for figs,” yet Jesus expected to find figs there anyway? That sticks in my mind and can’t be overlooked. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? Jesus knew what time of year it was. Even more shocking is Jesus’ reaction to the barren tree, cursing it to be barren. What happened to the kind and gentle Jesus? Who is this guy? What’s going on here?

It might help us in reading this passage to know that the fig tree was a symbol for Israel. The prophets that came before Jesus and paved the way for His coming prophesied over and over for the people to repent and return to God in faithfulness, to stop trying to be like all the other nations and people around them and live the unique life as the people of God they were destined to be.

When Jesus enters Jerusalem he found that it was apparently not the season for prayer either. When He arrived on Palm Sunday, from first glance it appears that everyone is on his side, greeting him with a ticket-tape parade, but these same people would be the ones to crucify him soon thereafter. What they were really cheering for is someone to lead a revolution against the Romans and run them out of town, but Jesus came in peace riding on a colt as a sign of peace.

When Jesus came to the temple the next day, He did not find people prostrated in prayer and worship, welcoming in the stranger and the outcast. He found a big business going on, people being exploited by religious leaders, and people being excluded from worship. When people came worship and offer sacrifices, it was a principle that they should offer the first-fruits of their possessions not the worst they had. It was the duty of the priests to make sure the sacrifices were acceptable, that they were not sick or deformed. Others were very poor or only had produce and crops to offer as sacrifices, which were traded for animal sacrifices, even doves. This system had changed significantly over time and became very corrupt. When people came to offer sacrifices, they were met with the salesmen on the temple steps. People were forced to buy “temple-approved” sacrifices from the “church bookstore.” The prices were inflated and the trading was unfair. It exploited people who came to worship for money and excluded people who were poor and had no means to trade.

It was this corrupt system that Jesus walked into that upset him so badly, that the temple had become a big business and people were being excluded from worship. Likewise, the church has become a big business in many places. It has become an entertainment destination for thousands, and in many cases functions as anything but a House of Prayer.

We’ve all seen the televangelists crusades on TV. They bring the sick and disabled up on stage to pray for them to receive healing, and most of the time they claim to have some miracle take place, but what the cameras don’t show you are the dozens and sometimes hundreds of people lining the walls and back of the arenas lying on hospital beds, slouched over in wheelchairs hoping to receive a miracle. People are unloaded from vans on stretchers like a trauma unit desperately seeking a miracle. What they also don’t show you on TV are the buckets being passed up and down the aisles raking in piles of cash to pay for the tailored suits, luxury cars, mansions, and private jets of the “ministers.”

What grieved the heart of Jesus most was people going through the motions playing church, exploiting people’s desperation for profit. While we may take comfort in knowing that we don’t act like those televangelists, I think anytime the church functions as anything but a house of prayer it grieves the heart of God. This isn’t a civic organization. It’s not a country club. It’s not an entertainment destination. It’s not the place to score points with God and others. It is a house of prayer, first and foremost.

I remind myself often that people don’t come to hear me. They come to hear from God, to worship, to experience the presence of God. We should do our best to get out of the way and let that happen without interjection ourselves and our egos in the way.

The Upward value is the regular experience of God. The church works when people encounter Him; they fail when the church simply goes through religious motions, praying religious prayers. The kind of encounter with God is based on an authentic passion for Him, a desire to be with Him, and desire to share what He is doing with others.

The ultimate purpose of the Church is to know Christ, the Head of the church, becoming like Him. It is a place where the people of God participate with God and one another in His holy dance. Basic Christian community is not simply a method or an option for the Church. It is a way to experience and know who God is.

Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them.” The presence of Christ is already in the midst of the Church. His presence is a gift to us and is what allows the Church to experience relationship with God and one another. Without the empowering presence of Christ in His body, the Church, it is just another non-profit organization and has no life. The presence of Christ is the only unique contribution the Church has to offer the world. It is what separates the Church from every organization doing good deeds all over the world.

The most important thing to look for when you come to church isn’t:

• Did they sing the songs I like?
• Did the preacher keep my attention and make me laugh?
• Did everything flow seamlessly without interruption?
• Was there good attendance? Was the offering good?

The only criteria for whether or not we have gathered in vain is did we experience the presence of God? Did we hear from Him? Did we encounter Christ today? Whether in a verse of a song, a Sunday School lesson, a sermon, or a hug from a friend.

If the presence of God is present in our churches, if we lift Him up and keep our focus, you won’t need gimmicks, bells, and whistles to get people to come there. He will draw people unto Himself.

This is first and foremost a House of Prayer. We bring our burdens here to Christ and to one another. It is a sanctuary, a refuge, a safe place to be yourself, to be honest, to be authentic, to be real about who you are. This is not a place to parade our accomplishments and boost our egos. Leave them at the door. The ground is level at Calvary. We all come to this table just as we are.

We’ll Work Till Jesus Comes

By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner

Proper 28A/Ordinary 33A/Pentecost +22
Matthew 25:14-30

The Bible has been misused and taken out of context for a very long time. Jesus Himself often had to correct misunderstandings about Old Testament scriptures. Hopefully, it has been misused mostly out of ignorance and not from ill-intention. I certainly have made mistakes over the years in how I looked a particular passage and now view some things differently than I did when I first started preaching. However, some people intentionally and maliciously twist scripture to fit their own agendas.

This particular passage is one of the more commonly abused passages in the Gospels. It has become quite popular with preachers of the “prosperity Gospel.” You know, the tv preachers who say God wants all Christians to be millionaires, to inherent their “divine destiny,” “name-it-and-claim-it,” etc. Of course the path to achieving that success begins with a donation to their tv ministry and signing up for their audio message of the month club.

They like to use a text like this to prove that God wants us to be wealthy. The implication is that if you’re not, something is wrong with your faith. They want you to read this passage literally and take away from it that God wants us all to do well with our 401k’s and stock options. If that were the case, we don’t need pastors. We need financial planners and hedge fund managers. We don’t need sermons. We need seminars on how to manage your money.

Too many people see God as a divine slot machine. “If I put X in, pull the religious lever correctly, I will get Y out.”  Many people see Christianity as one big transaction. “If I’m a good person, God will love me and take me to heaven when I die.”

Whenever Moses went up the mountain and stayed gone too long, the people took to their own devices and made it up as they went along. After Jesus ascended and left the Church behind, some people decided to follow the Israelites example. While we may not be worshipping golden calves these days, we have taken to worshipping personalities, power, and money, even in the church, especially in the church.

This is another parable in a series of those that Jesus told that talks about the kingdom of heaven. “The kingdom of heaven is like…” Jesus is trying to prepare the Church for his physical absence from them. The Gospels were written decades after Jesus left by a faith community that had begun to question whether would Jesus return, when He would return, and how. Most of them were written even after A.D. 70 when the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. These were bleak times for this community, and they turned to the words of Jesus for comfort and hope.

When they heard the parable again after Jesus had left, they heard it differently. “Like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them… After a long time the master of those servants returned…” They knew who the Master was when they heard this parable retold in Jesus’ absence.

In the parable of the 10 virgins waiting for the bridegroom, we were told to be vigilant in watching and waiting for His return, even though He tarry. Keep on watching, keep on waiting.  Be on watch for the kingdom to appear in every moment.  In this parable we are told what we are to be about while we are waiting, what kind of business we should be engaged in. We are not to dig a hole and hide our treasure. We are not to find a safe little place to hide, hold hands, and sing kum-ba-ya till Jesus comes. We are supposed to be about our Father’s business, just like Jesus.

The real currency of life is not money. The real currency of our lives is time. We must be careful how we spend it. We must wisely spend our lives in our Father’s business, even though Christ tarry in His coming. We should not become lazy. We should not be fearful. We should live to please ourselves, but we should love God and love one another. Use everything we have: our time, our bodies, the strength of our hands, the skill of our minds… use them all for God’s glory.

Annie Dillard said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our life.” It’s what we do in the little insignificant moments that matters, not just on those really big important moments where everyone is watching. What are you doing with the life God gave you? Are you just going to wring your hands in despair? Are you going to spend it on your own pleasures, going from one to another trying to find happiness? Are you going to use your life to glorify the God who gave it to you and to love the people God has placed in your life? That’s the real question.

Jesus is coming. Jesus is always coming and is always here. He comes to us each and everyday in big and small ways. Jesus comes in our acts of kindness and words of love. As we spend our lives on behalf of others, Christ comes to us and to those we love in those moments, and we get a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.

What Goes Up

By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner

Transfiguration Sunday, Year B
Mark 9:2-9

This is known as Transfiguration Sunday in the life of the Church. It’s a day when we reflect on this unique moment in the life of Christ, and it’s implications for us. This is an unusual story in the Gospels that sticks out from all others. Trans-figuration literally means “change,” “figure or form.” Jesus’ appearance changed miraculously. This carpenter’s son, this man from Galilee, this teacher, this Rabbi became something else. All through the Gospels you begin with an introduction of who Jesus is and little by little, piece by piece, parable by parable, miracle by miracle, you get a more complete picture of who He is. There are hints being dropped along the way about who He is and what He is here to do. Some people catch on quicker than others, but eventually we all see the full picture of Jesus on the cross and leaving an empty tomb. This day on this mountaintop God pulls back the curtain of our understanding for a moment and lets theses few disciples get a picture of just who Jesus is.

Moses represents the Law, and Elijah the prophets. This mountaintop meeting is full of theological significance, depicting Christ as the fulfillment of them both. Moses and Elijah also had their mountaintop moments, if you remember. Moses went up the mountain to meet with God where he was hid in the cleft of the rock as the glory of God passed by. Elijah went up on the mountain hoping to have that same kind of experience that Moses had, but he discovered that God was in the sound of gentle silence. Now Jesus too is having his mountaintop moment with God where the glory of God is being revealed in Him and to His disciples.

Peter said it was good for them to here and have this experience. It was so good that he didn’t want anyone to leave. He offered to build three shelters for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah so they could stay there on that mountaintop and enjoy this moment for as long as possible, but we can’t make moments last forever. You can’t freeze time and just avoid the rest of your life. You can’t live on the mountaintop. You’ll starve and freeze to death. You have to come down eventually. Everything comes down eventually, but you can come down different than the way you went up.

On Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent begins, we are given a glimpse of the big picture. You see, in Mark’s Gospel there are three major confessions of the Christ’s identity: the first at his baptism, when the heavenly voice declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved.” It’s a scene of glory. The last is on the cross, when after Jesus’ death, a Roman soldier confesses, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” It’s a scene of suffering. In between these two is this one, a confession that combines his glory and his suffering. Peter wants to build some monuments on the mountain. The only monument will become a cross on a hillside.

But none of us really want to go through Lent to get to Easter. Can’t we just skip the ashes and sackcloth? Can’t we just have spring now? Can’t we just sing Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” and be done with all of the suffering? The disciples felt the same way. Can’t we just overthrow the Romans and be done with it all?

You probably are aware that in the Gospels the disciples don’t always come off looking so good. That’s especially true with Mark’s Gospel. In this account of the life of Jesus, the disciples are repeatedly portrayed as thick, blind. In fact, in this section of Mark, it’s a blind man who proclaims the true identity of Jesus, while his closest followers stumble around in the dark. As a former colleague of mine once noted, in Mark’s Gospel anytime the disciples are afraid, you could just as easily translate it as confused. In other words, the Greek word for “terrified” is “duh.” Peter didn’t know what to say, writes Mark, “for they were terrified.” Same thing in this case.

We’d rather take the shortcut to Easter, but we can’t. In his book Peculiar Speech, Will Willimon says, “When you join the Rotary they give you a handshake and a lapel pin. When you join the church we throw you in water and half drown you.” The Lenten journey ahead of us begins with ashes and leads toward a cross. That’s the truth.

But it’s not the whole truth. You see, if scholars are right, that the transfiguration is a glimpse of things to come, then it is worth noting that Jesus’ words of explanation end in resurrection. He comes down from the mountain and warns them not to say anything about what happened until he is raised from the dead. If the beginning of Lent is ashes, its end is resurrection.

Before you undertake any great journey you plan ahead and make provisions for the trip: how much money you’ll need, how much gas, food, where will you stay, what the itinerary will be, which route you will take, etc. You want to make sure that you have everything you need or access to what you need along the way. If you don’t, you won’t make it to your destination. We need to take a spiritual inventory of our lives from time to time, especially as we go through difficulties and hardships in the valleys.

Richard Rohr says, “Your image of God creates you.” Whatever image you hold of God in your mind and heart, creates it. It’s formative. It shapes who you are, what you believe, what you think, how you react, where you will go, what you will do, how you feel. It sustains you when all other lights have gone out. The reason we most often fall in the dark moments of our lives is because we do not have a proper image of God fixed within us.

A couple years ago I was going into a nursing home in south Louisiana, and an old man was sitting outside on the bench. As I walked across the parking lot, I could see he was holding something to his nose. As I got closer I could see that it was an old photograph, dog-eared and worn. He didn’t just glance at that picture for a second. He looked long, hard, and lovingly into it. As I passed him by he slowly slipped that picture back into his front shirt pocket and gazed out in the distance. It was a picture of his wife, who no doubt had gone on before him. That picture of her sustained him. It accompanied the image of her that he held in his mind and heart.

We need a proper image of God fixed within us. Often, we have an idea of God fashioned in our own image. A God on call for emergencies, a good book we can rub between our hands for good luck, an image of God that looks like us, believes like us, and most importantly agrees with us. Richard Rohr says that prayer is not making our wish list known to God so that we can get what we want. Prayer is about completely emptying us of ourselves before God, so that He can fill us with Himself. Only when that transfiguration has occurred within us will we have the strength and sustenance to go through the storms and valleys with faith and courage.

Water, Wind, & Fire

By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner

Pentecost A
John 7:37-39, Acts 2:1-21

In the text we read that Jesus promised the Spirit would come after Him. The outpouring of the Spirit happened on what is known as the Day of Pentecost, some 50 days after the resurrection, which we observe this Sunday. Sadly, this day often goes unnoticed in many churches. To be sure there is plenty of bad theology out there regarding the Holy Spirit and the whole subject can be confusing, but the knee jerk reaction not to talk about it is just as bad if not worse. We need to understand what the Bible actually says about it. As simply as I can put it, the Spirit is the living Christ at work in our lives. There are three symbols of the Spirit in these texts that reveal the work of the living Christ in us.

First we read that the Spirit is like water.

We should not overlook that Jesus stood up and said these words on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Given the terrible drought that we are experiencing across the South, we might consider holding a Feast of Tabernacles ourselves.

You see, it was tradition during this feast that they would put up booths or tents as a reminder of their journey through the wilderness during the exodus and how God was faithful to deliver them from Egypt. As part of that observance they would gather palm branches and make a leaf canopy over the altar. Every day of the feast the priest would gather water from the pool of Siloam and carry it to the altar in procession with trumpets blowing then pour the water in a bowl next to the altar and pour wine in an another bowl on the other side. Thanksgiving prayers were offered for the water God gave Moses when he struck the rock and for the rain that has sustained them since. They also prayed for rain for the next year and a fruitful harvest. This was the biggest feast of the Jewish year and this was the culmination of that feast on the last day when people are praying for rain that Jesus stands up and says, “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink, whoever believes in Me.”

In dry desert communities water is life. Likewise, the Spirit gives life and sustains us through the desert places in our lives. For those worshippers at the feast they knew all too well the struggles of survival, finding water, drawing it several times a day to keep your family and livestock alive, like the Samaritan woman at the well. They reacted much like she did at first when she He heard the offer of this “living water.” A lot of Christians think grace must be too good to be true, because they keep trying to do something to earn God’s love and forgiveness. It seems like the cross just wasn’t enough. They need to feel as though they’ve earned it. Jesus is offering living water to quench our spiritual thrists, yet so many feel compelled to attach strings to this offer that Jesus never did.

Specifically, it is “living water” that gives life. There are places like the ocean or the Dead Sea that cannot sustain us because they are full of “dead water.” Meaning, fresh water flows into them, but it does not flow out.

“Dead water” is synonymous with “dead churches” and “dead Christians.” That sounds like an oxymoron, an impossibility. How can churches and Christians be dead? They are dead because they do not have the living water of the Spirit flowing in and out of their lives. We cannot soak up the grace of God continually and not share it with others. At the wedding at Cana and on the hillside feeding the multitudes the wine, the bread, and the fish did not run out as long as it was being given away. Jesus said that “streams of living water flow from within Him.” It is an inexhaustible supply of grace. If we want to experience the life-giving Spirit of the Christ, we have to give our lives away to the thirsty among us, sharing God’s love and grace with others. If we don’t, our well will run dry, our waters will stagnate, and we will wither.

In Acts 2 we find that the Spirit is like wind.

When the day had come for the promise of the Spirit to be realized, the disciples and other followers of Jesus were in Jerusalem gathered together in one place when, “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting,” Acts 2:2.

It’s really hard to try to explain the Holy Spirit to someone. How does all this work? What does it mean? Those can be hard questions to answer sometime, but the Spirit is like the wind. We don’t see the wind, but we see what the wind blows. We can tell where it’s coming from and feel where it’s going. When Jesus was trying to explain spiritual things to Nicodemus, a highly educated man, He said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit,” John 3:8.

Still, you have to wonder why it’s not easier at times. There are times when you just wish God would write on the wall what you should do, because you just don’t know anymore. David Lose wrote:

The Holy Spirit does not come to solve our problems but to create them. Think about it: absent the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples could go back to their previous careers as fishermen. I can almost hearing James and John explaining, “Sure, it was a wild and crazy three-year-ride, and that Jesus sure was a heck of a guy, but maybe we needed to get that out of our system before we could settle down and take on Dad’s business.” Once the Spirit comes, however, that return to normalcy is no longer an option.

The Spirit is also the rushing wind that comes into our lives and shakes them up, moves us out of our comfort zones, and calls us to the great adventure of walking by faith and not by sight. It’s worth noting that the wind “filled the whole house.” That means that there is no place where it is not. That’s exactly like God. God isn’t impossible to find. God is impossible to avoid. God is everywhere. There is no place that God is not. So no matter wherever we are, God is with us. There is no place or no situation we may find ourselves in where God is not with us and able to see us through it.

Lastly, the Spirit is like fire.

Just like God provided a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness, the Spirit is the fire that lights our way.

It can be hard to understand what God is doing in our lives a lot of times, even on the good days. I’ve often told people that the hardest choices we have to make in life are not the choices between good and bad. Those are easy. We may not always want to do the right thing, but if we know this is good and the other is bad, we know what we should do even if we don’t want to do it. The really hard choices in life are between good and better. Those are the choices we have to pray hard about. We ask God to show us what He wants for our lives, because often we don’t know which way is best. In those moments we “lean not on our own understanding.” We trust God, seek His direction. What we are doing is asking for the Spirit to show us what to do, to help us find peace in the middle of a difficult time in our lives.

The Spirit is also like the “consuming fire” that burned on the mountain with Moses. It consumes everything in us that pollutes our character and dilutes our message. It convicts us, grips our hearts and turns them to God and to the least, the lost, and the lonely among us. Were it not for the conviction of the Spirit we might withdraw into ourselves and spend our lives only on our pleasures, but the Spirit of God compels us, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” It moves us out of selfishness and into selflessness. On the Day of Pentecost the tongues of fire consumed the pride and prejudice that threatened the first church and brought unity and peace between everyone gathered there.

Lastly, just as a fire burned over the tabernacle in the wilderness to remind the Israelites of God’s presence with them, the Spirit burns within us assuring us that God is with us. Church membership is no guarantee of a person’s character. There are just as many rascals inside the church as there are outside it. The one and only evidence that someone is following the living Christ is the Spirit that shines through their life.

The greatest evidence of the arrival of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost was unity among all the different Christians that were gathered there. When we are all following the Spirit, seeking God’s will and our neighbor’s interests above our own, there will be peace and unity in the fellowship. That’s the Church the world needs to see. One that is alive, healthy, and full of grace.

May the Spirit of the living Christ fill us with living water overflowing with His grace. May the Spirit of the resurrected Christ blow a fresh wind into our lives wakening us to His call. May the Spirit of the coming Christ light a fire within our hearts that may burn brightly with His love. Amen.

 

Last Requests

By Lyndon Marcotte, Contemplative Corner

Easter 7A, June 5, 2011
John 17:1-11

This is a prayer of last requests. While not a death bed prayer, it might as well be. Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane knowing that He will soon be arrested and be put be death.

“He’s in the middle of an eleventh hour crash course on “everything you need to know before everything goes berserk between Good Friday and Easter.” It’s crunch time, and in this moment Jesus offers up a prayer for his followers, mindful of what they will have to endure (and with an eye toward all of us who will come long after them).” Danielle Shroyer

It’s a very hard text to dissect into pieces and force into a sermon. We should hear it and feel the heart of the one who prayed these words. It’s deeply personal. You can hear the anguish in the prayer of Jesus knowing everything that awaits Him. You can hear of His deep love for His Father, for His disciples, and for those who were yet to come to know Him.

Last words carry a special weight to them that lingers in the air when we hear them. This prayer reveals the heart of Jesus and the burdens that weighed on Him most in His final hours. There are three themes that run all the way through the prayer that we must pay attention to. May we listen carefully for God’s good word to us.

God May Be Glorified

First and foremost, Jesus prays that God will be glorified in His life and through what will soon took place. Even as He prays for God to glorify Him, He asks only so that He may in turn glorify His Father. God the Father and God the Son are mirror reflections of each other.

Specifically, Jesus prays that God may glorify Him the way He was before the world began. As much as He is divine, Jesus is every bit human. This was going to be almost too much to bear. Because of His love for His Father and His love for us He endured the cross that He would have to bear. He prayed that God would be glorified even in His death.

Jesus’ signs and miracles reveal God’s glory by displaying divine power, the crucifixion reveals God’s glory by conveying divine love. The crucifixion completes Jesus’ work of glorifying God on earth, for by laying down his life he gives himself so completely that the world may know of Jesus’ love for God and God’s love for the world.

Everything that God gives to us, our talents, our time, and our treasures should be used to bring glory to God. Even Jesus looked at His power, His time on Earth, and His disciples as gifts from God, (vs.6-10). He was faithful with all that God had given Him up until the end. He prays for all of us that we may also be faithful and that God would protect us (vs.11,15) so that others would come to know Christ through our message (vs.20).

Jesus glorified God on earth by finishing the work God gave him to do (v.4) and by revealing God’s power. We can glorify God by finishing the work He has given us to do, to use our lives as instruments of His grace, to share His love with others. As we love others the way Christ loved us, we make the invisible God visible in the flesh through our lives.

We May Have Eternal Life

“Christ does not pray that they might be rich and great in the world, but that they might be kept from sin, strengthened for their duty, and brought safe to heaven.” Matthew Henry

It’s interesting to realize all the things that Jesus didn’t pray for in this moment. No, He didn’t pray for us to all be rich, powerful, and have everything we want, but He did pray for us to have the one thing we needed above all else… He prayed that we would know God, specifically to know God the way He knows God.

Jesus prayed that we may have eternal life, (v.3). He prayed that God would bring us to be with Him where He is going, (v.24). He wanted us to have that assurance of reunion with God and His Son, but He also said something else about what eternal life really is, (v.3).

He said that eternal life is “knowing you, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent,” (vs.3). “According to John’s gospel, eternal life comes from a relationship with the eternal God,” Craig Koester. Eternal life is now. This is part of eternity right now. The kind of life that God wants for us doesn’t start when we die. It begins now as we follow Christ and come to know the eternal God. Jesus didn’t pray for God to take us out of this world but that He would protect us and use us for His glory in this world, (v.15).

We can experience the full measure of God’s love and His grace here and now in this life. We don’t wait till we die to know God.

We May Be One

The blessing Jesus prays for is: That we may be one as Jesus and God are one. That’s a very important distinction in the kind of unity that Jesus wants for us. He doesn’t just want us to get along and not kill each other. He actually wants us to love one another selflessly the way He loves His Father and the Father loves Him.

We don’t have to get to Martin Luther, or even to the East/West schism of 1054, to know that Christian unity hasn’t lived up to Jesus’ prayer for us. Peter bailed on Jesus and his friends just a chapter later. Paul and Barnabas parted ways halfway through the Book of Acts. And us? If you checked the blogosphere right now, you’d find thousands of examples of Christians arguing over the fine print of our faith. We aren’t one as Jesus and the Father are one. We spend most of our time competing with one another, finding scapegoat enemies on whom to blame the world’s problems, and yelling.  We’re running a repetitive grinder of anxiety in our collective stomachs.

If Jesus is praying on our behalf for us to attain a higher, more lofty sense of togetherness, we sure haven’t listened. So what does that say about us?

What does that say about Jesus’ prayer? For all those who were taught that their heartfelt prayers would be heard and answered, it is quite problematic to see the Son of God’s unanswered prayer staring us in the face.  What does it mean when even Jesus’ prayer isn’t answered?

– Danielle Shroyer

We believe that there is nothing that God cannot do, but why hasn’t Jesus’ prayer been answered? We know that God doesn’t force us to do anything. He leads us, prompts us, convicts us, challenges us, but if we don’t listen, if we don’t follow Him, a part of God’s good plan for us remains unfulfilled. I believe that “God gets what God wants.” He will accomplish His purposes, but the frightening thing is that we may miss out on what He is doing. We may miss the blessing that could have been ours when we fight and argue rather than love and serve. Worse yet than missing out is that we may be a stumbling block for others. Rather than being a conduit for God’s love to be shown to a hurting world, we may actually drive people away from God and His Son by the way we claim to represent Him.

Jesus isn’t just asking God for something. He’s asking us for something. He’s praying to us, pleading with us also… “be one with each other, as We are one.” Unity and love in the body of Christ is far more important than being right. It seems for the last century the major thrust of Christendom is about who’s right and has the answers. We’ve lost something when we fail to love one another and love others who may be difficult to love. Can we really call ourselves Christians just because we believe certain things and go to special places, if we don’t truly love people. As the old hymn reminds us, “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

I read somewhere that “people may not always remember what you say, but they will always remember how it made them feel.” I pray that we make people feel loved, wanted, believed in, and hoped for. May we bring out the best in one another rather than the worst in each other.

As we come to the close of Jesus’ prayer, we must turn our focus to our own prayers. How shall we pray? “What if we spent less time praying about being right and more time praying about being one?” Danielle Shroyer. What if we spent more time praying for the grace to love those who may be difficult to love? What if we spent more time praying for opportunities to show God’s love to others, whether or not we have the chance to explain it.

May God be glorified in us. May we experience life eternal and the love of an eternal God. May we be one as the Father and the Son are one. May Christ’s prayer be answered in our own. Amen.