Sunday, February 25, 2024

Christ Among Us, Showing Us Faith

Last Sunday, Paul introduced us to the concept of covenant through the lens of repentance: metanoia (a change of mind); shuv (turn around, return). It’s an important theme. Paul calls us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12) and to have the mind of Christ (Philippians 2, 1 Corinthians 2: 16). Thank you, Paul, for reminding us to turn from our self-centeredness to orient our lives around Christ.

Today, the conference materials remind us that this same Christ is among us and shows us the way of faith – an unwavering trust in God (which is, of course, the result of turning around and renewing our minds in Christ). We have two Scripture passages that show us this idea of faith, so we turn to them.

Genesis 17
The story in Genesis 17 is a curious one, with two basic parts. Abraham is now 99 years old, and Sarah his wife is 90. The story makes it clear that they were too old to have any children, but the second basic part of the story is a promise from God that Sarah and Abraham were going to have a baby. I can imagine our children’s response if Lois and I told them that we were trying for another baby – disbelief, shock, concern that we might have lost our minds.

Abraham and Sarah responded as our children might. In the verses we read, Abraham falls on the ground laughing at the idea. ROTFL, we might say. Sarah’s turn comes in Genesis 18, when three men (messengers from God) tell them again that she will have a baby. She scoffs at the idea, and that the men tell her that the child will be named “Isaac” – which means “laughter” or “s/he laughs”. Scorn and absurdity turn into joy and laughter.

The first part of the passage that precedes this prediction of Isaac’s birth is the use of circumcision as a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah. God stated that God would make Abraham’s family into a great nation with their own land. They were wandering nomads with no place to call their own home, and they would become not just a people, but a “multitude of nations” with their own place to call home. This promise has become a vision of our own lives as Christians – wanderers in this world on our way to “the promised land”, the new heavens and new earth, the new creation which we receive in Christ (2 Corinthians 5). In response, God asked Abraham to circumcise all the males in his family as a sign that he and his family had given themselves completely to God.

In verses 18 to 27, Abraham first reinterpreted God’s promise of a son to mean Ishmael. God said, “No. I mean it: Sarah will have a son, Isaac. Ishmael has his place too, but I mean Isaac.” So Abraham took Ishmael and all of his male slaves and circumcised them, and this action became the marker of what it means to belong to God’s People. I am not sure immediately what to do with this, so we turn to Romans to work out our next step.

Romans 4
Paul wrote the book of Romans to explore the place of Jews and Gentiles in God’s reign. The church at Rome was probably started by believers in Jesus who had been at Pentecost, described in Acts 2. This led to a Jewish Christian church, but given their location in Rome, they soon became a church of Jews and Gentiles mixed together.

One commentator suggests that this mixture was changed when the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome in the mid 40s. A church that had combined Jew and Gentile together in one body became a primarily Gentile church. Claudius evidently felt that Jews – especially those who had also become Christians – were stirring up trouble, and sent them out of Rome for a number of years. Then they filtered back into the city and resumed their lives in Rome, and therefore also in the church at Rome. The trouble is that the church was no longer sure how to combine Jew and Gentile in one body. This situation was a local variation of a problem that faced the whole of the New Testament Church, and Paul deals with it in depth in Ephesians 2. This situation also provides a clue for what is going on in the book of Romans.

In chapter one, Paul greets the Romans and proclaims his devotion to the gospel of God’s saving power for all people. He then observes that all people – Jew and Gentile – need God’s saving power. In chapter two, he looks first at the Gentile world and then at the Jewish world, saying again that God’s grace is available to all – Jew and Gentile. Both need God’s grace, and both can receive God’s grace by being “circumcised” inwardly – a commitment of the heart rather than an outward physical act.

Chapters three and four then show how faith in God fulfills this inward circumcision, where the law could not. Paul argues that Jews have had the blessing of the Law and that Gentiles now can join them through faith. In fact, as the verses we read say, Abraham had acted by faith in the first place, so that the path to God’s salvation, to reconciliation with God, was always a matter of trusting in God with the heart, an inward circumcision.

Synthesis
Abraham’s readiness to circumcise the men in his extended family (immediate family and the men who worked for them) was a sign of his faith in God’s covenant. The way that Genesis 15 puts it (another covenant passage), he believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness – quoted in Romans 4. Obeying the command to circumcise his family was a sign of faith. We are also part of God’s people, and we also find ways to make our commitment of faith visible to ourselves and to the world around us.

The Brethren in Christ of my youth had observable visible symbols of our covenant with God and the church. For example, we dressed in a distinctive way. Women wore head coverings that looked like an inverted bowl made of gauze. The stated reason for this covering was Paul’s words that women should cover their heads when they pray, and also as a sign of respect for the angels (1 Corinthians 11). It’s a curious passage, but it almost certainly did not mean that we needed a kind of official church uniform. Somewhere in the 1960s, members of the BIC decided that women could wear a simple hat to church and did not need the more elaborate covering.

There is a lot we could say about 1 Corinthians 11, and we just won’t. I am happy to elaborate on it during the Living our Faith time after the service. It is enough for the moment to observe a positive function that the covering played. It meant that when a woman decided to join the church, she had to decide also if she was willing to be a full part of the community, accepting the authority of the community even in the way she dressed.

Men had our own plain dress that acted like a church uniform. One result was that when a BIC man or women went shopping in town, everyone knew that they belonged to the church. Sometimes when we think that people don’t know who we are, we are tempted to act in ways that we should not. We might lose our temper, or take something that does not belong to us, or in some other way act badly. But when you had the head covering on or were wearing the plain coat, everyone knew you were part of the church. It acted to remind us of who we belonged to.

The negative side of these practices was a kind of legalism that undercut the positive effects, and I’m glad that we gave up our church uniform in the 1950s and 1960s. But I do miss the benefit of wearing my identity as a follower of Jesus on my sleeve, so to speak. Do you think we can have the benefit without the legalism of the past? I think we can.

Living Out Our Faith
Paul suggests that Abraham demonstrated this applied faith. Listen again to Romans 4:

19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 Therefore “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” 23 Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone 24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Abraham believed God’s promise of an heir. Paul tells us that our corresponding belief is belief in God who raised Jesus from the dead. This belief locates us in the season of Lent, in the 40 days of preparation for Holy Week, in which we remember the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the badge that we wear, which marks us as Christians. How do we live this out?

Next Sunday’s sermon picks up this idea, asking what Christians should look like, so I have to tread carefully here. I don’t want to end up saying now what I want to say next week! For today, then, I want to focus on the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

In all of God’s interactions with Abraham and Sarah, God was creating a fuller and greater reality than they could imagine. The promise of many descendants expanded their horizons. In God’s interactions with us, God is also creating a new reality. We live in a world that defines success by power and wealth. People put their trust in their ability to control others and get what they want. God calls us instead to put our trust in Jesus, the one who died and rose from the dead. Our culture puts its trust in self-love; God calls us to put our trust in self-giving love.

Lent
We are in the season of Lent, the 40 day period that prepares us for the cross. Lent is modelled on Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, also given in the gospels as lasting 40 days. Jesus was tested by Satan in order to prepare him for his ministry, culminating in the cross. When we give up something for Lent – chocolate or Facebook or whatever we choose, we do so to prepare ourselves to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Jesus gave himself for us. Jesus shows us that God’s essential nature is self-giving love. When we take up our own cross and follow Jesus, we follow him in this path of self-giving love. We give ourselves to God on behalf of the world around us.

Some of our own Mennonite people still wear a distinctive dress, almost like a kind of physical circumcision – a visible sign that they have given their lives to God and to God’s people. We don’t have such a physical sign at SMC, but we do seek what Paul calls the circumcision of the heart – a sign of our covenant with God, a sign of our willingness to take up our cross and walk with Jesus.

That inward sign is self-giving love. Lois and I were talking with each other recently about friends of ours who have fostered a number of children over the years. They have opened their homes and their hearts to children in difficult circumstances. When you do that, you will almost inevitably experience the children’s problems yourself, and it won’t feel good. But you let them into your lives as a sign of God’s love and care for them; you give them a chance for God to work in their lives and give them new hope.

We have many examples from our own congregation of people who give themselves to others – providing rides to people, providing comfort and help to people, using their talents and abilities to make the world they live in better. I am encouraging us all to build on these examples and to allow God’s love to change us from within as we place our faith in the crucified and risen Christ.

May God give to us “circumcised hearts”, an inner volition, an inner will that seeks to follow Jesus in all our relationships with the world around us.

Genesis 17:1–17
The Sign of the Covenant
17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you and will make you exceedingly numerous.” Then Abram fell on his face, and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding, and I will be their God.”
God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. 10 This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. 13 Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. 14 Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
15 God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 I will bless her and also give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” 17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”

Romans 4:13–25
God’s Promise Realized through Faith
13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.
16 For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. 18 Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So shall your descendants be.” 19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 Therefore “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” 23 Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone 24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

Questions: What does Faith ask of us? How does living in faith shape our thoughts and actions? The Old Testament Jews had circumcision as a sign of faith; what do we have?

Focus Statement: Abraham and Sarah believed God and oriented their lives to God’s will; we also orient our lives to God’s will every day.

Steinbach Mennonite Church
Lent 2 February 25, 2024


Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Christmas 2023

You have heard the first eight lessons read – one remains: the wonderful passage from John’s gospel. We could go through the lessons. Sketching the whole story of Creation, Fall, and Redemption; but this morning I give only two brief thoughts.
 
One, Christmas and these readings upend the world’s obsession with power and wealth and tells us the story of God – the Ultimate Reality – is on the side of the powerless. An old carol says it:
All poor men and humble,/ All lame men who stumble,/ Come haste ye, nor feel ye afraid.
For Jesus our treasure,/ With love past all measure,/ In lowly poor manger was laid.
 
Though wise men who found him/ Laid rich gifts around him,/ Yet oxen they gave him their hay;
And Jesus in beauty/ Accepted their duty;/ Contented in manger he lay.
 
Then haste we to show him/ The praises we owe him;/ Our service he ne'er can despise:
Whose love still is able/ To show us that stable/ Where softly in manger he lies.
 
I heard last week that my old office mate from when I began teaching has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He is a man of deep wisdom and compassion who has helped so many in their times of darkness. This year, he is stumbling towards the manger, and there he finds God’s love and light.
 
Two, John 1 tells us of the Word made flesh. In Greek: the Logos – the principle of reality – became a human. In Chinese: the Dao – the way that undergirds the world – became a child, a baby boy. John tells us that in the Word, the Logos, the Dao made flesh, we see God’s glory revealed.
 
The early church father Athanasius said it this way: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” This idea of divination pushes the boundaries of my understanding. A startling statement! It makes it clear that God has destined us for a glory we cannot imagine, and that the birth of Jesus is the essential key to this indescribable process.
 
My father died five and a half years ago. The day before he died, my sister was reading to him from this passage in John 1. When she reached the words, “the Word became flesh and dwelled among us”, Dad exclaimed, “Isn’t that wonderful! Isn’t that amazing!” He was looking into eternity at something beyond our comprehension. The miracle of Christmas.

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Advent Two: How Will We Know?

I listen to more news than is good for me. I pay special attention to American politics because I come from an American family. A basic theme in political conversation is the way that candidates try to convince you that their opponent is out to destroy everything you hold dear.

I think of a close friend who is a democrat. She is convinced that a vote for Trump is a step closer to the end of the republic. She may be right; I find Trump’s words and actions deeply troubling. I am reminded of an evangelical leader who said that he could only support a candidate of good character – “someone my daughter could bring home to meet her parents.” I get my friend’s concern.

I think of another friend during the last election who was terrified of the possibility that the democratic candidate would win the race for governor. She was convinced that he would deliberately tank the economy so as to create the conditions in which he could bring in a communist government. I don’t believe she was right, but I get the fear. I can see how economic policies that might sound good can lead to major problems and undesired consequences.

How can we know which candidate we should support? I won’t answer that question exactly, but it leads us to a more important question: How can we know who will save us? How can we know who to turn to in the uncertainties of life? Which means also, what do we do now? We face economic dangers in our world today. We face political dangers, with war in various parts of the globe. We look for a Saviour. How do we know who to trust? What do we do now?

Isaiah 40
The people of Israel heard the words of Isaiah 40 as a promise of peace and restoration when it seems they had lost everything. Listen to the flow of the passage we read:

Comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to them and let them know that they have been punished enough and the penalty is paid.

A voice announces the building of a highway for God to come to his people. All obstacles shall be removed, and God will come!

A voice tells me to announce the frailty of human existence and to remind us of the eternal power of God.

Announce the good news to God’s people: God is here! God comes and rules the earth. His rule will be gentle and nurturing and life-giving.

The promises sound a lot like many politicians. They will end our suffering. They will end the carbon tax and we will be suddenly wealthy. They will increase the carbon tax and we will be environmentally healthy. They will fix the health care system, or they will declare war on poverty, or they will secure our borders, or … the promises are endless.

But we know that really, when one party succeeds another, there will be changes, but they won’t be the promised utopia. We know that life will continue much has it has been. We also know that one of the first items on the agenda will be a paying of political scores. My sister was one of the under secretaries to the surgeon general in her state many years ago. When a new governor was elected, she knew she would lose her job – so she jumped before she was pushed. Such scenarios are common; we expect them.

Isaiah announces a different kind of ruler, one who is not concerned to settle scores, but who will “feed his flock like a shepherd and … gently lead those who are with young.” A gentle, nurturing, and life-giving ruler.

This was all good news to Israel-Judah. They had been carried off into exile, and now their time of exile from the land God had promised them was ending. We know from our vantage point that the restoration was never really complete, and we can assume that some part of that restoration waits for the final consummation in the second coming of Christ. But these were the first steps home, as God came across the desert on this great highway to take them home.

Mark 1
As we turn to the time of Christ, Mark 1 quotes these verses from Isaiah to describe John the Baptist’s ministry. The quotation suggests that, just as Judah was waiting for political freedom in Isaiah’s day, the people were still waiting in Jesus’ day. They had a period of freedom when the Persians allowed them to go back to their land in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, then they were taken over by the successors of Alexander the Great, known as the Seleucids. Jews today are celebrating Hannukah, in which they remember the Maccabees, who brought them freedom from Antiochus Epiphanes.

Then the Romans came, and Judah was now a Roman Province. Again the people looked for release from their oppression, and again the words from Isaiah 40 rang in their ears. John the Baptist preached a familiar message, the message of the prophets: “Repent, God is here! Turn from your sins and embrace God’s ways.”

John pointed to Jesus, who would bring God’s Spirit to the people. As Acts 2 and Pentecost show us, the people would have interpreted the presence of the Spirit of God as a sign that God was restoring the kingdom of David to them, making them politically free. As you know, Jesus spent much of his ministry setting that misunderstanding aside and preparing his disciples for his kingdom of peace and justice.

What Do We Do Now?
So, what do we do now? We’re still waiting, and we hear voices on every side, clamoring for our vote, begging for our money, trying to get us to buy into their claim to be the new Messiah. How do we know who to listen to? What should we do?

I have been reading the books of the Old Testament that describe their occupation of what we call “the Promised Land”. It is difficult reading, because in it, God accommodates to a system of tribal conflict reminiscent of Afghanistan. God appears to participate in the conflict rather than bringing it to an end. The narrative leaves the impression that God approves of fighting against your enemy, fighting to the bitter end.

Isaiah 40 and Mark 1 point us in a different direction. They promise a ruler who is gentle and nurturing, and they suggest that the obstacles to this ruler are dealt with by admitting our weakness and helplessness in the face of violence – in short, by repenting of our pride and desire to rule ourselves. How we reconcile these two contrasting visions is a topic for another time, but we know that Jesus calls us to the peaceable vision. To the peaceable kingdom. Which brings us back to the question, how do we know who to trust?

A consistent theme throughout the prophets is the call to justice and peace based on a primary allegiance to God alone. As voices around us promise salvation in all its different forms, we listen for the voice of justice and peace, and we listen for the place given to Jesus Christ.

The Relationship Factor
This piece of guidance has potential danger. We know that the “anti-Christ” (as John likes to call) will appear as an “angel of light”, as one claiming to have the power of God. I am deeply suspicious when public figures use their platform to speak as though God is speaking; it seems to me like using political or social power to force people against their will.

God speaking to us comes as an invitation, not as a forced agreement in which we have no choice. Both Isaiah and Mark announce the good news that God is here and invite their hearers to join in the parade. The last verse of our passage in Isaiah sounds the note of gentleness and peace, in sharp contrast to the way that secular voices speak in our society.

Justice and Peace
So, I am suspicious when I hear someone use a public platform to try to force people into the kingdom, and at the same time I base salvation precisely on being part of God’s kingdom. What do we do with this tension?

We listen for a gentle, nurturing, and life-giving voice. We listen for the invitation to justice and peace. We listen for God’s presence, not for overwhelming power. God is all-powerful, but God comes to us in a baby. God is the Creator of all, but God comes to us in the creation of life in a first-time mother. It is the presence of justice and peace in the voices we hear that marks the presence of God, not the note of strength seeking to destroy those we think are our enemies.

If you hear someone threatening to destroy your enemies, be suspicious. It may be the voice of one who is against Christ, rather than the voice of Christ. God calls us to repentance – yes! God judges rebellion – yes! In the end, God will destroy all that is evil – yes! But this is the Advent Season, a time of waiting during which God invites us to embrace God’s justice and God’s peace.

Conclusion
As we reach the end of our sermon and the service this morning, I return to the scenarios I began with – political disagreements filled with fear, which in our world often turn to violence. I think of war in Ukraine and in Israel-Palestine at this time.

Focus for a moment on the latter, but what I have to say applies to war in general. If you approach the conflict from the perspective of Israelis, they have everything to fear. Hitler’s effort to eradicate them is still within living memory – six million people killed in what we call “the holocaust”. When a group of people, Hamas, who say that Israel should not exist, attacks them, one understands why they fight back.

But if you approach the conflict from the perspective of the Palestinians, their anger and violence is equally understandable. I have a college friend whose Palestinian Christian family left their homes in 1948 when Israeli soldiers told them to. They were assured they could return when the soldiers were done, but they never did return. They lost their homes and belongings to the new Israeli state. Alongside the daily humiliations Palestinians experience, the memory of lost homes and land humiliates them. One understands why they wish to fight.

There is no end to such conflict. Each fresh attack brings only further reprisals. Even the efforts of those outside to bring an end to the conflict rely on political and economic pressure. Supporters of Palestine seem deaf to the stories of sexual violence used by Hamas in their attack on October 7, and supporters of Israel seem deaf to the pain the residents of Gaza are experiencing as we meet this morning.

Both Isaiah and Mark remind us of the need for us all to repent of our addiction to violence and power. They remind us that God is already here, coming in weakness, absorbing our pain and anger into himself on the cross, refusing to return violence for violence, continuing to love and nurture even when spurned and crucified.

How shall we know who to listen to? What shall we do? The path ahead is dark, and I cannot tell you what you should do. I ask you to listen with me to the voices that speak for justice and for peace, to those who are willing to receive the bitterness and pain of the world into themselves without fighting back, to the Prince of Peace born in a stable, dying on a cross, reigning forever in glory. I am reminded of the words of an old Christmas Carol:
Sing lullaby, Lullaby baby, now reclining, Sing lullaby 
Hush, do not wake the Infant King
Angels are watching, stars are shining Over the place where he is lying. Sing lullaby.

Sing lullaby, Lullaby baby, now a-sleeping, Sing lullaby
Hush, do not wake the Infant King
Soon will come sorrow with the morning, Soon will come bitter grief and weeping. Sing lullaby.

Sing lullaby, Lullaby baby, now a-dozing, Sing lullaby
Hush, do not wake the Infant King. Soon comes the cross, the nails, the piercing
Then in the grave at last reposing. Sing lullaby.

Sing lullaby, Lullaby, is the babe a-waking? Sing lullaby
Hush, do not stir the Infant King, Dreaming of Easter, gladsome morning
Conquering Death, its bondage breaking. Sing lullaby.

 

Focus
How will we know when God is truly with us? We see many signs of trouble and feel many fears for the future. In our trouble and fear, we wait for God to come and make things right. And we wonder how we will know when he comes.

Thinking Ahead
What are you most afraid of in the future? How will we recognize God when he comes?

Going Deeper
1) Politicians promise us they will fix what’s wrong. What can they actually fix?
2) What other sources of salvation clamour for our attention in today’s world?
3) What can they actually do?
4) How will we know Jesus when he speaks in the clamour of our present age?
5) We are waiting for Jesus. How do we wait? What do we do?


Steinbach Mennonite Church
10 December 2023
Second Advent

Scriptures: Isaiah 40:1–11 and Mark 1:1–8

Monday, November 06, 2023

God Tends the Garden

Summer has lingered longer than usual this year, so that we are nearing the end of October, and only now we expect temperatures below freezing! It is appropriate, then, that our summer series on peace lingers a little longer as well. We spent time on peace with God, peace in the community, and peace with our neighbours throughout the summer Sundays. The conference material has one more section: Peace with creation; and we will take three more Sundays before we leave this building to consider this final aspect of our lives of peace.
 
Peace with Creation
The physical world around us in crisis: We know that. It is not just the social-political scene that threatens to boil over, but the earth itself is groaning with the fruits of human abuse. Bad fruit indeed. How are we to relate to the created world? What is our responsibility regarding creation?
 
Genesis 2: 4-23
Genesis one to three give us a comprehensive picture of how we are to relate to God, to each other, and to the physical world around us. We could have done the whole summer series from these chapters! In chapter three, set in the garden, God walks regularly in the garden, communing with the man and the woman. We were made to be at peace with God, in communion with God, regularly receiving strength to live by our interaction with God.
 
In chapter two, it is made clear that the man and the woman are co-equals in the garden. God identifies the need that the man has for relationship with a “helper as his partner”. The animal world is important in human life, but animals do not constitute a full partner. So, God makes the woman who is the full partner-helper. Chapter one makes the same point by telling us that God made the human creature in God’s own image as male and female: We need each other as fully equal partners who together live as God’s images.
 
These two points – that God made us for relationship with God and God made us for relationship with each other – undergirded the sermons throughout the summer. Now we come to how we relate to the world God made.
 
Listen to the text. Verses 7, 9, and 19 suggest an important reality. God forms the man from the dust of the earth; God causes the plants to grow from the ground; God forms the animals out of the ground. That is to say, humankind, animal kind, and plant kind all come from the earth. God made us all from the same substance. The natural world includes all of life: We are one with the physical world.
 
Note further. The man names the animals: This is a task of bringing order into the world. Just as God orders the world in chapter one, the man orders the garden in chapter two. Although we are one with the natural world, we are also responsible for the natural world. Chapter one uses the language of dominion, by which it indicates that we are stewards of creation, acting on behalf of God. That relationship continues in chapter two.
 
So, we are one with the natural world, and we have a responsibility to bring order to the world around us. These two points come together in the image of God’s work in the story: In chapter two, God makes a garden. God is a gardener, and we – acting as God’s representatives in this world – can use the same role to describe our relationship with nature. We are gardeners in God’s garden, the creation God has given us.
 
What Does this Mean?
At this point, wisdom would suggest that I step down and invite Lois to take the pulpit and answer the question: What does a gardener do? I won’t; I am no gardener, but I have watched her garden. Several thoughts occur to me.
 
God is Creator and gardener. We are created and gardeners. This reality places limits on our actions. We do not create the garden out of nothing; we do not speak a word and the garden springs into being. We work with what is already here, given to us by God.
 
Some people think that the physical problems of our planet are not our responsibility. Some say that the action of the sun is responsible, or some other factor has caused “global warming”. We think that our actions cannot be that important. Genesis one and two both make the point that we are just that important. We are part of creation, and God has given us the task of managing creation. We cannot escape our responsibility.
 
Romans 8 connects us with the troubles of this world in a remarkably direct fashion: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8: 19 to 21) Paul’s primary point in that passage is to observe the glory that waits for God’s suffering people, but his language speaks directly to what I have been saying. The whole of creation is bound up in our rebellion against God, and the whole of creation anticipates its own redemption along with ours. We cannot escape our responsibility for creation. We are God’s gardeners in this world.
 
Sometimes I see Lois staring out of the window. When I ask what she’s doing, I find out she is planning next steps in her garden. Which plant might be better in a new spot; whether to water this evening or wait until tomorrow; which plant needs to be cut back. The planning and the work never end. The work of caring for our planet also never ends. We have been shaping the planet for thousands of years, and in the past two hundred years that shaping process has accelerated. Instead of shaping God’s garden in positive ways, we have engaged in destructive processes that damage creation.
 
Whether we think of the proliferation of plastics that permeate both land and sea, or the damage of pollution in our waterways, or the rise of what we call greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we live with the destructive results of human activity. Some scientists call the age that we live in “the Anthropocene epoch” – that is, the geologic age shaped primarily by the activity of human beings, you and me.
 
But we are gardeners in God’s garden. We are to be pulling out weeds, not sowing them. God wants us to shape positively and increase the beauty around us. Of course, there will be times when piles of dirt litter the garden. I see that often enough at our own house. But the mess is generally a step in pursuit of greater beauty.
 
John 20
The gospel reading from John 20 reinforces what I have been saying – that we are God’s representatives on earth, doing what God would do. At the beginning of the gospel, Jesus is described as the Word who is one with God, sent into the world for humankind. John 3:16 – so well-known – says it clearly, “God loved the world so much that God sent his only begotten Son.” John makes the point repeatedly: Jesus was sent into the world to save the world.
 
At the end of his gospel account, then, John extends this sending through the words of Jesus: “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” That sending of the disciples applies to us as well. We also are sent into the world to do what Jesus did, which includes caring for creation.
 
Twenty some years ago, I heard George Verwer speak at Providence. Verwer founded an organization called “Operation Mobilization.” He had a passion for telling people about Jesus and how Jesus can meet the needs of the world. When he came to Providence, he spoke from the parable of the Good Samaritan and asked, “Who would we find lying beside the road today, of we walk down the roads of our world?”
 
He named 1) Children at risk; 2) Abused women; 3) The extreme poor; 4) People with HIV/AIDS; 5) People without clean water; 6) The unborn; and 7) The environment (see Verwer’s blog in an updated version from 2015, “Seven Global Scourges”: http://authenticmission.blogspot.com/2015/05/seven-global-scourges-by-george-verwer.html?m=1) I don’t know that these same seven remain at the top of the list of needs today, but hear what he was saying about creation. Caring for the creation is a basic part of the Christian’s mission in the world today.
 
Sometimes we think that Christian mission meets inviting people to faith. Certainly it does, but it also means acting as God’s representatives in all of the needs of life. And the crisis of creation that we face is a basic point at which Christ’s representatives have the responsibility to act.
 
We are God’s gardeners in God’s garden. I invite you to listen as George Klassen helps us hear more of what we can do. I invite you to join us in the adult Sunday School class and take some time to consider practical steps we can take as we care for God’s good creation.
 
 
Steinbach Mennonite Church
 22 October 2023
 Focus Statement: Peacemakers join God in caring for the earth.
Texts: Genesis 2: 4 to 23; John 20: 19 to 23.

Sunday, October 01, 2023

SMC's Thanksgiving Sunday: Resting in God’s Love

I will be a bit briefer this morning than usual. We have time during our congregational sharing for whoever wishes to say something about giving thanks. This is my moment, during which I give my own perspective on thanksgiving.
 
Psalm 136 
Were you at all uncomfortable as we read the psalm responsively? If you were paying attention, you might have been. I certainly was.
 
Give thanks because God created us. That’s good!
Give thanks because God delivered us from slavery. That’s good!
Give thanks because God killed the Egyptians. Wait a minute! Is that good?
Give thanks because God provided for us in the wilderness. That’s good!
Give thanks because God has given us a home. That’s good!
Give thanks because God killed famous kings. Wait a minute! Is that good? Do we want God to kill “Sihon, king of the Amorites and Og, king of Bashan”? I’m uncomfortable.
 
Our discomfort increases when we remember that yesterday was Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada. We remember those whom we dispossessed as God gave us a home here in Manitoba. I have nothing to say this morning about that issue, except to remind us that truth-telling precedes reconciliation. We must tell the stories of relationships between the indigenous people of Canada and those who came later, and we must tell and hear the truth.
 
I am almost certain that some of the early settlers of Canada assumed that God gave them this land to take from First Nations just as God gave Israel the land taken from the Canaanites. We should be uncomfortable with that fact; and we dare not dodge it and assume it means nothing. It requires another round table setting where we dig into it and try to work out what was and is going on.
 
Give Thanks for What? 
You may notice that I took liberties with the text. The psalm does not say, “Give thanks because God killed Pharaoh.” It lists the historical events, which include the death of Egypt’s firstborn and the deaths of kings who opposed God, but it doesn’t say, thank God for those deaths. Instead, the psalm says, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever.”
 
It is true that the psalmist intentionally lifts up God’s actions in defeating Israel’s enemies as evidence of God’s steadfast love. That still leaves us with a problem. In light of the teachings and example of Jesus, we are to love our enemies, not wish or act for their demise. But my point still stands. The psalmist thanks God for God’s goodness and steadfast love. He may not yet know the teaching, “Love your enemy”, but he does know to thank God for his love and mercy.
 
That’s the key: Thank God for God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s faithfulness. In the New Testament reading, Paul said, “Give thanks in everything.” In Ephesians 5, he says “Give thanks for everything.” I think both passages come to the same thing: Thank God for God’s faithful love in every situation of our lives. Life can be good: Thank God for his faithful love. Life can sometimes be hard and painful: Thank God for his faithful love.
 
This reading makes sense of the repeated refrain: “His steadfast love endures forever.” Just a brief excursion into the word for “steadfast love”. The old KJV said, “He mercy endures forever.” Mercy – love – lovingkindness – steadfast love: The Hebrew word behind them all is Hesed. None of our words gets at the whole, but the basic idea is of an enduring persistent love and mercy flowing from God over all God’s people, indeed, over the whole world.
 
If that is the case, if indeed God loves us all so much, faithfully and persistently, why do we experience so much trouble and heartache in this life? The psalmist does not ask or answer this question, but he does give us an important insight. He references a series of difficult times between the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt and their occupation of the Promised Land.
 
This is not a series of triumphs and joys without any problems. The record of their wilderness wanderings in Exodus through Deuteronomy makes it clear that the people often struggled to make sense of what was happening to them. They grumbled and complained because life in the desert was hard. The psalmist does not give them an easy out and tell them it was really lots of fun. Instead, he says, “Thank God for God’s Hesed throughout every turmoil and trial. Thank God for God’s love and mercy, which was there when people attacked you and when God carried you through. Thank God for God’s steadfast love. God’s love never fails.”
 
Reading the Psalm Today 
We also struggle with life. Sometimes life moves along smoothly, and we are grateful for the blessings of family and home and food and many other good things. But often enough we experience problems. Lois and I carry a concern for our younger son at the moment. He faces a significant challenge this Thanksgiving season: His employer is restructuring their organization such that a month from now he may not have a job. Since he and his wife live in Australia, this danger feels even heavier, due to the distance away they are.
 
What does it mean to say, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good”, when you face the possibility of being unemployed. We have people in this church who have lived that question. In the same way, we can ask what it means to give thanks when grieving the death of a parent or spouse or child. We can wonder how to give thanks when we lose our home to a fire, or when our pastor resigns. Even positive changes are hard, so that we find ourselves feeling the stress of moving from one church building to another even as we thank God for providing the building.
 
I observed earlier that yesterday was Truth and Reconciliation Day. How do we give thanks when we remember the tragedies and abuse of residential schools? How do we give thanks when we remember being forced out of homes in the Soviet Union and migrating across the ocean with only a suitcase and some family members? Life is full of joy and pain, and we need a faith that can embrace the full complexity and ambiguity of life. That’s what the Children of Israel had.
 
Give Thanks Today 
Think of the Psalm as we might write it today:
Give thanks to the Lord for God is good: His mercy and love endure forever.
God was with us when we came to Canada as refugees: His mercy and love endure forever.
God gave us homes in a new place: His mercy and love endure forever.
Our mother died when we were far from home: His mercy and love endure forever.
Our child died and left us behind: His mercy and love endure forever.
God built us a church to worship in: His mercy and love endure forever.
We struggled to find work and God provided: His mercy and love endure forever.
We are separated from family members: His mercy and love endure forever.
God saved us from the terrors of this world: His mercy and love endure forever.
 
We can each write our own version, but you get the point: We give thanks for God’s goodness and mercy and care as we navigate the troubled waters of this life. I remember a speaker at Providence describing us about his own journey following the loss of his son. He told us that his only relief from the darkness of grief came when actively engaged in praise to God. Grief and thanksgiving came to a climax one winter’s day as he cleared the snow from his driveway. A voice inside asked, “Can you thank me for your son’s death?” As he shovelled and cried and wrestled inside himself, he thought of the closeness with God that had come with his grief. Finally, he prayed a response to the voice, “Thank you for my son’s death.” He told us that the darkness lifted, never to return. The pain of loss remained: That never goes away; but the paralyzing darkness was gone.
 
This is not a prescription for everyone, but it illustrates the power of gratitude and the enduring nature of God’s love. A song from South Africa runs like this: “Even though we travel through evil and trouble in this world, we are on our way to Heaven.” God’s goodness and faithfulness is the bedrock of our lives. That is why we give thanks, now and always.
 
Amen.
 
 
Steinbach Mennonite Church
1 October 2023
Texts: Psalm 136 and 1 Thessalonians 5: 12 to 24
 
Focus: God’s faithful love is the one constant in a troubled and difficult world.
Looking Ahead Question: It’s “Thanksgiving”, and life is really hard. What can we give thanks for?

Sunday, August 13, 2023

Isaac and his Neighbours

I want to start this morning with a story about a Swedish missionary couple in the Eastern Congo, in a village named N’dolera.
Synopsis: Swedish missionaries move to Congo with young son in 1921. Mother gives birth to daughter in 1923, but dies following childbirth. Father is broken and bitter, gives up the baby girl to American missionary couple and returns to Sweden. Baby girl (Aina, renamed Aggie Berg) grows up in South Dakota. Her parents left no converts, except for a young boy who brought them chickens. That young boy grew up and eventually brought the village of Ndolera to faith in Christ. Forty years later, Aggie learns of this church and visits her now-alcoholic birth father in Sweden. She shares the story of the boy with the broken and bitter old man, and he discovers that God was with them all along.
          The story feels like hagiography, but it is taken from the daughter’s own story: Aggie Hurst, A Girl Without a Country. You can read from the story taken from the website: https://acsirevivals.wordpress.com/articles/a-sad-defeated-story-david-and-svea-flood/. I have not seen the book, which is out of print, but use the story here for the point made at the end of the sermon.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: the patriarchs or founding fathers of the Jewish people. There are a number of stories in Genesis about Abraham and a number about Jacob; Isaac has basically chapters 24 and 26. We think of Isaac mostly as the child offered as a sacrifice in Genesis 22. Abraham agreed to sacrifice his son, his only son Isaac, whom he loved; and God then showed approval for Abraham’s faithfulness by providing a substitute. A strange and difficult story. One wonders what Isaac thought of the whole thing!
 
Chapter 24 is the story of Isaac and Rebekah – very romantic, with Rebekah described as “very fair to look upon.” It is also a story of an arranged marriage in which Rebekah and Isaac had little say about the whole matter. Chapter 26 contains four stories about Isaac. We heard three of them in the reading, but we will look at all four.
 
Genesis 26
 The first story was not in our Readers’ Theatre presentation. It’s a strange scene in which Isaac and Rebekah find themselves near what today is called Gaza. There was a famine, and Isaac moved his family into a region under the authority of Abimelech, a Philistine ruler. Isaac is worried that the men around them will be attracted to Rebekah – remember, she was “very fair to look upon” – so he decided to pass her off as his sister. Abimelech eventually found out that she was really his wife and rebuked Isaac for his lie, and then he told his people to make sure they did not “touch this man or his wife”.
 
A strange story, all the stranger because it parallels Abraham’s actions on two other occasions. In Genesis 12, Abraham went to Egypt looking for food and pulled the same trick with Sarah (Genesis 12), and in Genesis 20, he went to the same area as Isaac in our passage and again passed Sarah off as his sister. I won’t take any time to sort out the various interpretations of this story, but we’ll come back to it and consider what makes the most sense to me.
 
In the second story, Isaac prospers in the land of Gerar, so that his neighbours become jealous of his success. Abimelech now appears afraid of Isaac and asks him to leave his territory. Isaac agrees and leaves.
 
He settles nearby in the third story and starts digging wells, looking for water. The first two wells in which he found water led to more problems. The people who lived there said, “That’s our water! Leave it alone!” So Isaac did. He moved further away and dug a third well. This time there was no quarrel. His neighbours left him alone and he named the well “Room Enough” in honour of the occasion.
 
This story concludes with Isaac seeing God in a vision at a place called Beer-Sheba. God reaffirmed the covenant he had made with Isaac’s father, Abraham, and he stayed there for a while and dug another well. (All these wells remind us that water is life!)
 
Finally, Abimelech reappears on the scene. He has his military commander and his chief advisor with him, so Isaac is naturally concerned that Abimelech may be announcing trouble. Instead, the two men make a covenant to live at peace with each other. As our story might say, “They all lived happily ever after.”
 
Patriarchal Narratives
What do we do with these stories? Well, we don’t say that they show us what we should do in life, that’s for sure. I’m not about to suggest that anyone should pretend that their wives are really their sister. I can’t imagine a scenario in which that would be good advice!
 
In the same way, I can’t just say, “Look how peaceable Isaac was! He avoided a fight and look how God blessed him!” I don’t know if he was really a peacemaker. He may just have tended to avoid conflict. So, what do we do with these stories? If they’re not in the text to tell us what to do, what are they there for?
 
One thing they do is remind us how different the world of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was from our day. Consider his statement, “She’s my sister.” In our culture, we know what that would mean. But different cultures reckon kindship in different ways. For example, I grew up in Zimbabwe. In Ndebele culture, my father is David, and Arthur, and Joel – and for that matter, my father’s first cousins on his father’s side could also say they are my father. We call this “the extended family.” It’s a lot more complicated than we’re used to.
 
Further, in our culture, the acceptable marriage partner never includes our biological sister. Again in Zimbabwe, I once asked my students if a man could marry his mother’s brother’s daughter. They all agreed strongly that they could not. Except for two students in the back who said, “In our clan, your mother’s brother’s daughter is the preferred marriage partner.” Okay. I don’t understand it, but I heard what they said.
 
So let these stories remind you that the world of the patriarchs was different from ours, then remember that God came to these people – however strange they seem to us, and God made his covenant with them. In the same way, God comes to us today – to everyone, whether we like the way they live or not, and God is ready to make them part of his family also.
 
But that is a side issue. More significantly, Isaac’s actions make sense if you remember something important about the patriarchs. They were immigrants, and in this chapter, Isaac was moving because of a famine (and probably a drought). That would make him both an immigrant and a refugee in our world. Refugees make choices that we may not approve of. They do whatever it takes to keep out of trouble and feed their family. If they are afraid their women might be taken, they might lie about them. If they are afraid that they might be attacked, they move to the next place. They don’t act like the people who have power in the land, because they know that their status is uncertain. They keep their eyes open, checking for any threats to their existence.
 
Consider the stories in Genesis 26. Isaac and his family move, looking for food. They live in tents, moving from one place to another, always on the alert for threats. When the people in their new home start asking questions about their family, they conceal their true relationships until the local people figure it out for themselves.
 
These are the actions of a family leader who does not trust anyone outside of his immediate family. I think he makes a bad choice here, but it’s an understandable choice. It reminds me of the refugee family we know, living in Cape Town. The husband made a bad choice and moved to Germany, hoping to find asylum for his family. Instead, he is stuck in Germany. He made a bad choice, but refugees live with pressures we don’t know. I can understand that he heard of a possible open door and took it.
 
The stories about Isaac digging wells also fit the pattern. He and his men dig a well and find water. The local people say, “That’s ours!” So Isaac moves away and tries again. Same thing happens. So he moves and tries again. This time no one chases him from the good well he dug. Why didn’t he stand up for himself and for his family? Well, migrants often have little power. If you decide to fight for yourself, you can get in worse trouble quickly. At one level, Isaac just acted prudently.
 
So, these stories fit a pattern that marks them as migrants without a lot of power. The Children of Israel always remembered their origin as a migrant powerless people. At the feast of the first fruits, recorded in Deuteronomy 26, the priest recited the following words: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.” They became populous, but they started out as wandering nomads, living in tents, moving from place to place like the people we sometimes call gypsies.
 
What do We do with This?
So, what do we do with these stories? They do have lessons for us, even if we realise that we don’t simply do what Isaac did. I suggest two simple observations that may help us as we move forward in our lives together.
 
The first is that Isaac faced difficult choices, and he may have felt that he had no choice. But, in fact, he always had a choice of what to do. Sometimes he chose wrongly – I think his choice to present Rebekah as his sister was wrong. Sometimes he chose wisely – I think he did well to avoid fighting over the wells he had dug. But each time he found that he did have a way forward.
 
We also sometimes feel like we have no choice. We are facing some hard decisions over the next few months – looking for a pastor; looking for a building; figuring out who we are and who God wants us to be. At times in the past month, I have felt as though we were trapped, with no way out of the situations we were facing. But, in fact, we had choices and we have found a way to move forward. We’ll get some of our choices right, and we’ll get some wrong; but remember that we have possibilities ahead. In fact, we have a lot more ability to choose than Isaac the migrant refugee did! We’re not stuck, and God will make a way for us.
 
The second lesson is that God is the only one who can actually give us success. We make our choices, and we do our best, but only God can bring success. Isaac kept on refusing to fight. He kept on digging new wells, and God honoured his efforts by giving him water for his immediate needs and a covenant with Abimelech for his long-term needs.
 
As we make our choices, we trust in God for their success. Trusting God in the process means that whether we grow or decrease, we are in God’s hands. We pray the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us what we need for today, physically and spiritually.” Then we make our choices, knowing that we are in God’s hands.
 
A Concluding Thought
 I know that we sometimes feel trapped, as though there is no way to move forward. That feeling can lead us to make more bad choices, like Isaac saying that Rebekah was his sister and not his wife. My word to you this morning is that God can make a way where we see no way. That is why I began with the story of David and Svea Flood. David Flood saw no hope, but God used even their pathetic failure to plant a church in Ndolera.
 
While I was writing this sermon, we received news of Julie’s application for refugee status in Canada. The Canadian High Commission in South Africa has denied her application. We are grieving, and I acknowledge that I feel trapped and don’t see how we can help her. So we turn to God, and we ask God for a way forward.
 
We will make our choices as we stand with Julie and her family. Our choices may work, and they may not. Far more important, we commit Julie and ourselves into God’s care. Only God can make a way for us in this world and in the next. We do not despair. We do not give up. We continue to live as people of peace, digging new wells, looking for the next step God wants us to take. And we trust God to build our house. We trust God to give us what we need for today and for tomorrow.
 
Think again of David and Svea Flood. Their experience illustrates our human inability to overcome the situations we face, and it reminds us of God’s great ability to bring life through our efforts, however weak we feel.
 
People in the world around us turn to violence and force to get their way. We trust God instead. As the Psalmist puts it, “Some trust in men; some trust in horses; but we trust in the Lord.”
 
 
13 August 2023
Steinbach Mennonite Church
Genesis 26: 12-33

 

Sunday, July 02, 2023

Belief: The Heart of Peace

We continue our summer series on peace with the familiar story of Nicodemus and Jesus. Last Sunday, Michelle reminded us of the importance of prayer as a path to peace with God. The Lord’s Prayer provides us with a model for all of us to use as we seek a clear relationship with God.

Today, we have the example of Nicodemus, who sought out Jesus with his questions. Jesus pointed him towards the necessity of a spiritual birth as the start of a spiritual life that will last forever with God. You and I have been born physically, and we live our natural lives here on earth until we die. Jesus tells us – as he told Nicodemus – that we must also be born spiritually if we want to live spiritually with God.

John summarizes all of this with what are perhaps the best loved verses in all of Scripture: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten son, and whoever believes in him [Jesus] will not die (spiritually) but can live forever (spiritually). God did not send his son into the world to condemn us, but that everyone might be saved through him.”
Excursus: A brief rabbit trail about that phrase “only begotten Son”. In chapter 1, John tells us that the creative Word of God came into the world, but the people he had prepared for his coming rejected him. Then he writes, “But to as many as did receive him he gave the right to become children [sons and daughters] of God, even to those who believe in his name.” Many translations leave out “begotten”, because it is an unfamiliar word (in Greek: monogenetes). But John 3:16 paired with John 1:12 shows us both how we are like Jesus and how Jesus is unique. We are like Jesus because we also are adopted into God’s family as God’s children, with Jesus as our elder brother. But Jesus is unique in that he alone is monogenetes. “Begotten” means that the child shares the DNA of the parents. Jesus shares the DNA of God – uncreated, eternal, pure Spirit (as well as fully human), all-knowing and all-powerful, and so on. Whatever we can say about God, we say about Jesus, because Jesus – the eternal uncreated Word – is God made flesh.

Believe in Jesus
I have two simple thoughts on this verse this morning. Here’s the first one. “Believe in Jesus”: What does it mean to believe in Jesus?

Suppose I asked you if you believe in Santa Claus. Most of us would respond by saying no. We mean that we do not believe that Santa Claus exists, although we know the stories about him. We may even use those stories in our own family’s celebration of Christmas. When our sons were young, I wrote several letters from Father Christmas about that year’s work of life at the North Pole. (I borrowed the idea from J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote a letter a year for many years, enlisting the mail carrier to bring it to the house with his own hand made stamps from the North Pole on them!)

When we say we don’t believe in Santa Claus (even while we use the idea of this strange man with a white beard), we mean that we don’t believe he really exists. What do we mean when we say we do believe in Jesus?

First, we mean that we believe that the stories about him in the New Testament are true, but the way John uses the words here goes deeper than simple belief that Jesus exists.

Consider a different example. Charles Blondin was a tightrope walker who lived in the 1800s. In 1859, he crossed the Niagara Gorge on a tightrope, a feat that he repeated many times after that. One thousand one hundred feet across the river and 160 feet above the water. Blondin demonstrated a remarkable belief in his own abilities, pushing a wheelbarrow across the rope, stopping part way to cook an egg and eat it, and even carrying a man (his manager) across on his back.

It's that last one that really gets me. Harry Colcord was the man who agreed to go on Blondin’s back. You could say that Colcord believed in Blondin. He trusted Blondin with his life. What happens if Blondin has to sneeze? I know that I would not have trusted Blondin with my life like that! You hear that phrase: “trust him with his life.” That’s what it means to believe in Jesus. It’s not enough to believe that Jesus lived. It’s not even enough to believe that Jesus is the Word made flesh, the incarnate Son of God. The verse goes deeper: “Whoever believes in him shall have everlasting life”: “Whoever trusts him with their life shall have everlasting life.” “Believe in Jesus” means to trust him with your life, just as deeply as Colcord trusted Blondin with his life crossing the Niagara Gorge.

Our theme for the summer is peace with God, with the people around us, and with the whole of creation. Last Sunday we heard of the path to peace: a life of prayer modelled on the Lord’s Prayer. Believing in Jesus walks on that path to find the heart of peace with God. As we trust Jesus with our lives, we fall in love with Jesus and experience God’s love poured over us. That love brings us peace with God.

An Integrated Life
This brings us to my second point: This peace operates at every level. Believing in Jesus leads to peace with God; and believing in Jesus leads to peace with our brothers and sisters in faith; and believing in Jesus leads to peace with the world around us, including the whole of creation.

When we find ourselves with a ruptured relationship, John brings us back to this verse: God loved the world so much that God gave us Jesus to believe in and receive life and peace. This point is easy to see and remarkably difficult for us to see and do in practise. Let me spell it out a bit and try to move beyond a simplistic answer to life’s problems.

Suppose you are married, and you have a conflict with your spouse. A common occurrence, which many of us have experienced. The integration of peace at every level of our lives means that the conflict ripples through every part of our lives, so that our relationship with God also suffers.

Similarly, if our relationship with God is weak, our relationships with others also suffer. If we participate in the abuse of the environment, that abuse causes conflict with others and with God. Conflict at any one level of our lives affects every other area as well, like plucking a spider web and watching the whole web vibrate. Like someone who kicks the dog at home because their boss (metaphorically) kicked them at work,

We have to be careful with this understanding of an integrated life. Sometimes people think that if I just pray hard enough – nurturing peace with God – then the conflict with my spouse will just go away. It doesn’t work like that. Remembering the various levels of conflict in our lives means that we work on reconciliation with our spouse, and we pray more, deepening our relationship with Jesus. We seek the renewed health of the environment, and we pray more, seeking God’s face. We pursue peace at every level of our relationships together.

This pursuit flows from our commitment to trust Jesus with our very lives. We believe in Jesus means that we commit ourselves to him and his ways every day and every moment of our lives. As we do so, we bring God into the centre of the conflicts and disruptions of our lives, seeking God’s peace at every level of our lives.

Contrast to the World around Us
This pursuit of peace stands in sharp contrast to the world around us. Conventional wisdom tells us that when we find ourselves in a conflict, we should end the conflict as soon as possible and cut ties with the person with whom we are in conflict. People don’t change, we are told, and the only recourse to conflict is to get out.

There is real wisdom in conventional wisdom. If you are in an abusive relationship with your spouse, I do not counsel you to stay there, seeking peace: Sometimes you do indeed need to leave and not return. But our society has taken this truth much further.

The underlying belief for many in our society is that people don’t change; in fact, we would say, people cannot change. We hear voices that sway any conflict makes it clear that the person you are in conflict with is unsafe. Reconciliation is impossible. We hear them say they are bad people, and you must avoid them forever. This is the spirit behind what we sometimes call “cancel culture”, and it works to perpetuate conflicts rather than to bring peace.

In contrast to this stance, John reminds us that God gave Jesus for us. Jesus lived for us, and Jesus died for us. He took our rebellion against God into himself and rose from death to reconcile us with God. His victory over death is also victory over the power of evil in our world. Therefore, we can change. Therefore, we can reconcile – both with God and with other people. Therefore, we can live at peace with God and experience peace with others and with the whole of creation.

Conclusion
I remember a dramatic example of this pursuit of peace, with God’s love for us and our love for God at its heart. Fifteen or 20 years ago, Reaksa Himm spoke at Providence. He graduated from the seminary the year before I came, and he visited us again ten years later in 2006. He told us his story, which you can read in his book, The Tears of My Soul.

Reaksa was a survivor of the killing fields in Cambodia. He was shot by the Khmer, along with the rest of the people in his village. Somehow, he survived in the open grave where they were dumped and escaped into the jungle. In 1989, he left Cambodia as a refugee and came to Canada. He expected never to return, but God had other plans for him.

In his journey as a refugee, he left Buddhism and became a Christian. His conversion brought him peace with God, but his heart was tormented by the memories of his bitter experiences at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, including the death of his family. In 1998, he was invited to return to Cambodia as a Bible teacher to help train leaders in the young church growing there. He resisted, with the hurt and pain of the past strong in his life, but God would not let him rest. Finally, in 1999, he agreed and returned to Cambodia. In the years that followed, he started a school in his home village among the people who had helped to kill his family. Here is his description of returning to his home village:
Then on 6th June 2003, I went back to the village where my family was killed. I discovered that four of the six men involved had been killed and one had moved to a different village. I met the remaining one. He was fearful of meeting me but I spoke to him of God’s love and forgiveness. By God’s grace I was able to forgive him and set him free in my heart.
        I thank God for sparing my life so that I can bring the message of salvation and forgiveness to my broken people. I also thank God for the healing of my hurt and pain that I had endured for more than 25 years. Now, I can see the glory and experience the joy of serving him in my hometown. (Sokreaksa Himm, 156)

Reaksa’s story illustrates the way that God’s love brings peace to every area of our lives – even if it takes our whole life to do so. Peace with God leads to peace with others and peace with the whole of creation. For God loved us so much that he gave his only begotten son, and when we believe in Jesus we receive everlasting life, the life of God’s Spirit that lasts forever.

Steinbach Mennonite Church
2 July 2023
Text -- John 3: 1 to 21