A Soldier, an Athlete, and a Farmer

The apostle Paul, for more than a month of Sundays, has been serving as our explainer-in-chief of any and all matters related to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Here’s where we’ve been:

First to the Romans and now to us, Paul weaves a stunning daisy chain of faith and belief: We can rejoice in our problems and trials, for they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment.

In the midst of your pain and hurt, you can expect God to do something. For the Lord already has done something: By the blood of Christ, you and I have been justified – made right in the loving, gracious eyes of heaven. And since that is so, that same amazing grace will surely rescue us from the condemnation we deserve for the sin we commit – as much or more as that same grace will rescue and deliver us from our trials and temptations in fresh, new and surprising ways.

Then, first to the Corinthians and now to us, Paul strings a laundry list of qualities that define love – unconditional love: Love that’s always patient and kind, never rude, envious, or boastful. Love that never rejoices in wrongdoing but always in truth. Because such love endures, it becomes our legacy: The compassion, the empathy, the forgiveness – the grace, that we leave behind in the souls and spirits of others.

Next, first to the Galatians and now to us, Paul assures that Jesus is enough. When it comes to your salvation, your belief in Jesus as God’s Messiah is enough. Beyond that, you don’t have to do a blessed thing to earn a place of eternity with the Lord and the saints in light.

You and I are “freed from” as much as we are “freed to” – freed to love God, friend, neighbor, and stranger, and freed to produce fruit – the fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The presence of those qualities is a reliable sign of who lives in Christ and a remarkable signal of where God’s Holy Spirit in Christ dwells deeply.

And this morning, first to his young protégé Timothy and now to us, as the story of God with us continues, Paul lifts up three images of what it means to become a devoted follower of Jesus Christ: a soldier, an athlete and a farmer – three earthy, relatable metaphors for living a spiritual life of discipleship in Christ.

I’m reading to you ancient-but-ever-true words from chapter 2 of Paul’s second letter to Timothy. Let the Holy Spirit ensure that the meditation of our hearts is holy, acceptable, and pleasing to the Lord God Almighty!

You then, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

And what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well. Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier’s aim is to please the enlisting officer. And in the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules. It is the farmer who does the work who ought to have the first share of the crops.

Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in all things. Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David– that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.

The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful– for he cannot deny himself. Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:1-15)

It almost sounds like the beginning of a joke: “A soldier, an athlete, and a farmer walk into a bar….” But it’s no laughing matter. Like an astute physician, Paul writes a prescription for living a wise life.

Far too often, we fall into the trap of reducing life and its many relationships to matters of “right” and “wrong.” We want to be correct, and we’re convinced that we’re right. We puff out chests and stand tall in the courage of our convictions, no matter how cherry-picked our facts or how feeble our lines of reasoning. Whatever the cost, we want others to recognize our correctness, our righteousness, and our strength. And we hold fast to our truth and want others to claim the same reality, however baseless and faithless our claims of truth-telling might be.

But for Paul, earthly living isn’t about being right, or correct, or stout. For Paul, life is about being wise and living smart. The world in which we live feels stubbornly opposed to wisdom, fact, and truth in its never-ending struggle for rights, or its fight for fairness, or its meting out of justice – all the while missing the reality that these worthy aims, fairness and justice, aren’t goals as much as they are byproducts, the holy results of heaven’s wisdom and unconditional love. But because folks often confuse results with purpose, we bog down in fruitless pursuits and meaningless bickering. Consequently, wisdom suffers; truth is fleeting, and justice is denied.

Thus Paul taps a soldier. Why? Because a soldier doesn’t forget a soldier’s purpose. A soldier understands that, if a battle is to be survived and its objectives reached, then she or he must remain laser-focused on the task at hand and disciplined in making choices and following orders. Opposing forces will attempt to lure soldiers away from their purposes and goals, but focus and discipline keep soldiers on task and pointed in the right directions.

Entanglements with other priorities are the greatest obstacles to wise living. Diffused energy always produces less; a divided mind always confuses, and a conflicted heart is ever paralyzed. So also with the focused disciplines of faith and belief, which don’t intend to make life hard (even though they sometimes do), but rather endeavor to counteract the division of the soul and conquer temptations that confuse the mind and distract the heart. Spiritual discipline leads to wisdom.

Paul next taps an athlete, like the soldier disciplined in action and never underestimating the effort it takes to stay on top of one’s game. The athlete knows that victory is a function of practice time and training time, good nutrition, and adequate rest. Everybody cheers the winner and revels in an undefeated season. But few of us appreciate the years of training, sacrifice, and discipline that an athlete devotes to winning the crown.

So, too, with a wise life. It takes the dedication of an athlete to run well the race of earthly life, never settling for “almost,” “close,” or “good enough.” Athletic dedication and strength of character provide the wisdom to cross the finish line of a well-lived life of discipleship!

And finally, Paul taps a farmer, never simply focused on the chores at hand and work of the day but appreciating the importance always training attention of the end result: the harvest. The farmer well understands that the harvest not only puts food on the farmhouse table but also serves the community and world beyond the fence lines. Consistently remembering the reason for the work steels a farmer from despondency and fatigue. So it is with the wise follower of Christ. Never forgetting the reason for one’s spiritual labor toughens the disciple for the hard work of growing and harvesting a bumper crop of wisdom.

In the end, discipleship is all about never forgetting and always remembering:

Never forgetting and always remembering Jesus Christ, enabled by the Holy Spirit to use our senses to fuel our minds and bring into our hearts the presence of who and what we are remembering, a calling to and letting in the very presence of our Lord and Savior.

Memories are who you are. If you altered or erased all memory of your experience, you would not be you. But there is also the act of remembering, which never considers memory simply as a library of precious moments and learning experiences. The act of remembering is making a choice – often unconscious and unintentional – to unearth deep memories and make them conscious thoughts, enthroning memories in our hearts and giving them rule over our bodies, souls, and spirits.

Again by the Spirit, we all possess this power of memory, and the way that we use that power profoundly shapes who we are and how we live, move, and have our being. When you think about some particular thing over and over — good or bad, maybe something you’re anticipating with glee or worried about with anxiety, your life seems to shape itself around that remembering. Even your routine tasks take on different characters because of that thing you remember.

For example, if someone has died or if you fear that someone might die, it’s not only that you can’t stop thinking about that person but also that your continual remembrance of him or her now colors all that you do. Or if some project or new opportunity lies in your future, when you keep remembering it, then your experiences and purposes become single-handedly oriented toward that one thing.

Memory is powerful. It makes us who and what we are, shapes how we experience life, and influences what we do and say.

And the acts of remembering in which we engage further shape it all. That’s why we have to take responsibility for our minds and hearts and become intentional about our remembrances. We often act as though whatever comes into our minds and even becomes an obsession are somehow beyond our control or influence. They are not. We have the ability to bring to remembrance things other than what is suggested by our unconscious or subconscious minds.

Remembering is what shapes the Kingdom of God. And Paul commands remembering Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. That thought — Jesus, risen from the dead — must always be in our remembrance. Because if and when you do remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, then who he is and his victory over death will reorder your life, transform you more and more into his image, and align your priorities with his.

Ancient words, every true!

To the One who remembers us all be all glory, honor and worship: To the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, September 25, 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Andrew Stephen Damick, John Frederick, and Barnabas Powell inform the message.

Freed from, Freed to

Freedom isn’t free. The history of this country proves the point. Thus, we Americans treasure being free from all manner of oppression and injustice.

Perhaps that’s where your heart and mind go – we are “free from” – when choruses of national song and anthem wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave. Perhaps that’s also where your heart and mind will go, as you listen to this morning’s Scripture lesson, as the apostle Paul fires off to the Galatians yet another passionate salvo of Christian faith: “For freedom Christ has set us free.”

But before we get too wrapped up in the Christian patriotism of God-given freedoms and certain, inalienable rights, know that that’s not the brand of “free from” that Paul is celebrating. The “free from” that he’s talking about is liberty from believing that the Cross and the Empty Tomb aren’t enough.

That’s one of the biggest bones of contention in the fractured Church of Galatia. For some, Jesus alone isn’t enough. If you yearn to one day walk through the pearly gates of heaven, Jesus alone isn’t enough. You have to do more: Like following the Old Testament law down to the letter, all-the-while fearing that you’ll never be “good enough” in the eyes of the Lord. Because you’ll never be able to obey fully every jot and tittle of the 613 commandments that compose Old Testament Law, and you’ll never make it past St. Peter when the roll is called up yonder. Consequently, you live in constant dread of eternal damnation.

Into the crisis of faith steps Paul with the Good News that you and I are “free from” all that nonsense. Your faith and belief in Jesus Christ as God’s long-promised Messiah frees you from wasting your precious time trying to curry God’s life-saving favor. Jesus really and truly is enough!

One of the great things about grace is that you don’t have to do a blessed thing to earn it.

You don’t have to be loving. You don’t have to carry joy and exude peace. You don’t have to be patient and kind, good and honest, gentle and reserved. God will love you just the same in spite of your broken self and perennial trespassing. You and I are “freed from” thinking anything to the contrary. Jesus really, and truly, and finally is enough!

But, if Jesus Christ really, truly, and finally is your Lord and Savior, you will want to be loving, joyous, peaceful, patient, kind, good, honest, gentle, and reserved, because those qualities of your character mirror God’s character and reflect how much you love God. You and I are “freed from” as much as we are “freed to” – freed to love God, friend, neighbor, and stranger, and freed to produce fruit – the fruit of the Holy Spirit!

Listen, now, for the Word of the Lord to you this day.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:1, 13-26)

If you look up into a tall, slender, palm-like tree and see large bunches of long, yellow fruit hanging from its top, you instantly recognize the pods as bananas.

Or, if you peer into a shorter, leafier tree and spy bright red fruit the size of baseballs dangling from its branches, you immediately know that the apples are ready for picking.

It’s painfully obvious: The fruit declares the identity of its tree. But here’s the big reveal: In the same way, the presence of the fruit of the Spirit is a reliable sign of who lives in Christ and a remarkable signal of where God’s Holy Spirit in Christ dwells deeply.

As a provider puts a patient through a battery of medical tests to diagnose a physical problem, God through Paul provides a biblical template to lay upon our lives and check for spiritual problems.

“[T]he fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” Paul imparts. Their presence reflects spiritual health; their absence suggests malignancy. So, let’s ask some diagnostic questions to take stock of our spiritual wellness.

Love, a deliberate attitude of unconditional goodwill and steadfast devotion to others. Love gives freely, as we last Sunday heard Paul tell the Corinthians, with disregard for whether the other deserves it. And love gives without expecting anything back. Are you motivated to do for others as Christ has done for you, or do you give only with the expectation of receiving something in return?

Joy, unlike happiness, is gladness completely independent of the good or bad things that happen in the course of your day. In fact, joy emanates from a supernatural gladness given by the Spirit that actually seems to show up the most and the best during the hardest of times. Joy is the result of fixing your focus on God’s promise to work together unto good in all things rather than obsessing on miserable circumstances. Do you experience joy regularly, or does joy hinge on your day going smoothly?

Peace, not the absence of turmoil but the presence of calm, even in the midst of chaos. Peace is a sense of wholeness and completeness that feels God present and working in all events of every day. Do crashing waves of turmoil frazzle your life, or do you abide in peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:6-7)?

Patience – lenience, forbearance, perseverance, and steadfastness, the ability to endure ill treatment at the hands of others without lashing out or paying back. Do unexpected setbacks and irritatingly different people easily set you off, or are you able to keep a heavenly perspective in the face of life’s irritations, see God in everyone and find God in everything, and trust that events are unfolding and people are growing in God’s good time?

Kindness. When kindness is at work your life, you are flexible. You look for ways to accommodate and meet the needs of others, sometimes at the expense of your own. Kindness is the overflow of moral goodness and the absence of malice. Do you serve others with kindness, or are you too focused on yourself to let the goodness of God within you overflow to others?

Goodness. It reflects the grace-filled character of God. Goodness in you desires to see goodness in others, which means that goodness is not separateand apart from confronting, correcting, and forgiving. Does your life reflect the grace of God, and do you desire others to experience the grace of God as richly you do?

Faithfulness shines brightly in a person of real integrity, someone who sets an example, a saint truly devoted to others and to Christ. Where in your body lie those sore spots of hypocrisy and indifference, and do you walk with walk as much or more as you talk the talk?

Gentleness – meekness, not weakness. Gentleness is not powerless but instead chooses to defer to others. It forgives, corrects, and lives in tranquility. Do others consider you brash and headstrong, or do you think (and pray) before you speak or act?

Self-control. Raw human desire, Scripture says, is forever at odds with God’s Spirit in Christ and always wants to be in charge. Self-control demands releasing your grip on instinct and impulse and choosing instead to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. It is the power of heaven brought to bear in the living, moving, and breathing of a disciple. Are you continually guided by the ways of the world, or seduced by its lies, or distracted by its shiny baubles? Or, do you let the Holy Spirit point you in directions that please God and serve others?

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done!

God promises that, if you and I are able to admit that for far too long we have been walking our own way, and are willing to let the Holy Spirit convict us of those things not working properly in our lives and broken in our world, and are ready to seek the Lord’s forgiveness, and are prepared to rely solely on his grace, then God will empower us through the Spirit to live above ourselves and beyond our dreams, rich in the abundant life for which we were created.

Freed from, and freed to.

Freed from sin, and free to blossom, grow, and produce fruit.

Ancient words, ever true. Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, September 18, 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Doug Bratt, Stan Mast, Frank Santora, and Scott Williams inform the message.

Love Is

Some of the most elegant prose in all of literature provides our Scripture lesson this morning: 1 Corinthians 13, the apostle Paul’s gripping testimony to the power of love.

The passage places love and all its nuance at the center of life for a faith community of ever-maturing disciples. Love is the absolutely indispensable quality of the believing life. Since God is love, love, like God, reigns supreme.

But before we start unpacking all that, let’s be crystal clear about the kind of love that Paul is lifting up. The original text of the New Testament uses three different Greek words that all translate into English as “love.” But each of those three Greek words has a slightly different meaning, and Paul chooses his words carefully and with intention.

He’s not talking about brotherly love, like the kind of affection you might have for a sibling or close friend. He’s not talking about romantic love, like the kind of physical or emotional attraction that brings two people together. No, he’s talking about unconditional love: Like the kind of love that God holds in the divine heart for each of us, like the kind of love that the Lord pours into our hearts by his Holy Spirit, like the kind of love that the Lord invites us to pour out of our hearts and into the hearts of others.

Without unconditional love – no matter how much stuff you own, no matter how large the house you occupy, no matter how cool your clothes or how flashy your car, without that kind of unconditional love, Paul says, you are lost and as good as dead.

Let that harsh-but-hopeful truth open your heart and mind to the Word of the Lord.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

“Love bears all things.”

“Love always protects.”

“Love passes over all things in silence.”

Straight and to the point, Paul captures the very essence of unconditional love. Not only does love not keep score for better or for worse, but love also looks the other way, so to speak. Think for a moment about your best friendships. You know by experience that the ties that bind the two of you together remain strong if and only if one is willing to give the other a break, give the other the benefit of the doubt, even to allow slights and trespasses to roll off the back like water off the proverbial duck.

Since strong, healthy friendships grounded in brotherly love depend on all that, how much more so does unconditional love depend on extending that same grace to another!

That doesn’t mean, however, that we ignore, pass over, or look the other way when, for example, we see someone being abused physically, emotionally, or sexually. In no way is Paul suggesting that a victim endure pain in silence and that the perpetrator get off scot-free. Quite the opposite!

When it comes to protecting the vulnerable, unconditional love demands that its essential partner, Justice, the righter of wrongs, be brought to bear. Unconditional love protects the victim not the victimizer, thus we “bear all things” that do no harm to anything or anyone of God’s creation. Unconditional love always walks hand in hand with Justice. And into our hands God places authority as the community of faith to call out such exploitation and to hold the exploiter accountable – in love, of course!

Which brings us to the irony of it all.

Unconditional love carries with it a certain ambiguity that flies in the face of common sense: In seeking good for another, you find good in yourself. You’d think that we take care of ourselves first and, if any time or thing remains, then we turn our attention to others. But Paul supposes that one’s good is not achievable apart from the well-being of others in the body of Christ to which all of us belong equally.

That understanding forges love into an ironclad circle, starting with God’s unconditional love for each of us, which renews and remakes bodies, souls and spirits, then continuing to raise us up such that unconditional love becomes our instinctive expression toward others as a way of responding in thankfulness to God’s unconditional love to us.

Love is only fully realized, only fully unconditional, when it is being shared freely from heaven above and upon the earth below. We who are fully and unconditionally loved by God honor and abide in that love most completely and faithfully when we eagerly and gladly share that love with others. To look lovingly after the interests of others inescapably benefits everyone in the community and therefore benefits oneself.

Just be careful not to let your extension of unconditional love provide an excuse for failing to attend to your own needs and exercise good stewardship of self, or create a smoke-screen for hiding your own desperation and deficiency. Paul assumes in all this that we’re all well-versed in honest self-assessment, that you know where you stand, where your strengths and weaknesses lie, and that you will build upon your strengths and shore up your weaknesses through prayer and spiritual discipline.

As great and powerful as unconditional love is, it crashes and burns when it becomes an excuse for avoiding good self-care or clouding honest self-assessment. Absent the stewardship of self-care that Paul assumes exists in everyone, love cannot properly engage the person you really are with another. You cannot enter into the brokenness of another without entering into the brokenness of yourself.

Yet, in the end, despite all its complexities and ambiguities, love endures – in Paul’s eyes, even greater than faith and hope.

That means that the unconditional love we share endures beyond us to become our legacy. Our sharing of unconditional love is the compassion, the empathy, the forgiveness – the grace, that we leave behind in the souls and spirits of others.

Taking seriously that our unconditional loving is our legacy – what we leave behind after we’re gone – demands a Spirit-led reorganization of one’s priorities, an honest reassessment of how we spend (or hoard) our time, talent, and treasure, and a faithful redistribution of those gifts that expresses God’s love for us. And in all that reorganizing, reassessing, and redistributing, the God of Love is glorified, and our legacy of love is maximized.

The artworld has long depicted faith, hope, and love as three women. You see them, for example, in El Greco’s Modena Triptych, in which three women stand together at the crucifixion of Christ. El Greco depicts Love surrounded by children clinging to her legs and resting in her arms. El Greco seemingly understands as Paul does that Love is known by her offspring and the company they keep.

And thus ancient, ever-true words beg hard questions: What kind of children are you raising? What kind of legacy are you nurturing? What kind of person does God want you to become?

Amen.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, September 11 , 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by J. Paul Sampley inform the message.

More Than I Can Bear

The apostle Peter last Sunday provided the latest installment in the biblical story of God with us.

Peter’s fellow Jewish Christians, like him new to faith in Christ, were upset, because Peter was breaking bread with non-Jews, a social and religious taboo of Peter’s day. But Peter calmly shares with his disgruntled contemporaries an amazing reality he’s discovered on the road of evangelism: namely, that God’s umbrella of grace and salvation shelters far more souls than anyone realizes. In Christ, the doors of God’s Kingdom are open to Jews and non-Jews alike.

Peter has been spending plenty of time carefully listening to the Word of his Lord, and what he hears changes his faith perspective on life and launches him on a very specific mission of spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ to all with ears to listen. But to some folks, like his friends, thinking that way – much less embracing the idea that the Bible teaches us to think a certain way and to see the world and the people in it with the eyes of heaven – is all new territory.

The struggle is real and remains so today: Whether you and I, as the disciples of our day, can and will accept that our “new” reality is of God, that our new reality really does spring from God’s Word, and so really is a new perspective to which no less than the Holy Spirit of God in Christ is leading us.

Our ongoing challenge of understanding and accepting the Lord’s new, often confusing reality continues as our telling of the story of God with us continues in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul in good order lines up a series of events that start with suffering and end with hope.

But Paul’s step-by-step explanation of how God works in the midst of our anguish and woe seems quite of step with the reality of our daily experience. And in a moment, I’ll surely try and unpack what Paul is talking about. But for now, listen with your heart and mind, soul and spirit, to the perspective-changing Word of the Lord at the start of Romans 5. I’m reading to you from the New Living Translation of the Bible.

Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.

Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.

God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.  And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation.

For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God. (Romans 5:1-6, 8-11)

As you probably know, geese fly together in V-formation.

V-formation, Canada geese flying through a dramatic sky at Hereford, England.

That’s because, when they draft behind each other, they can fly farther as a flock and expend less energy as a group.

But did you know that the lead goose rarely ever honks? The leader is too busy flying, working the hardest against the headwinds that the flock faces, and that lead goose can’t afford to waste energy making noise.

All the loud hooting and tooting you hear when a flock of geese flies overhead is coming from everyone in the rear. Each goose provides honks of encouragement for the leader, and their collective blaring is their way of saying to the leader: “Way to go. Don’t give up. We’re still here, right behind you all the way. Keep the faith, stay the course.”

That’s a mighty helpful way to think about the Church.

One of the reasons we’re here – one of the reasons we gather in worship every Sunday – is to encourage and build up one another. The New Testament is ripe with commands to strengthen the souls of the disciples and encourage them along their journey of faith.

But such encouragement sounds rather backhanded: “Way to go. Don’t give up. We’re still here, right behind you all the way. Keep the faith, stay the course. It is through our many sufferings and persecutions that we enter the kingdom of God.”

I’m sorry, what? You say persecution will lead me to the kingdom of God? You guys are offering me that to build me up and cheer me on? Sounds like a pretty whack-a-mole idea to connect the dots between my salvation and my suffering, but OK!!!???

Let’s spend a little time trying to get our heads around Paul’s odd-sounding, off-handed, chain-reaction of inspiration for the members of flock that he lifts up in Romans 5: “We boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

Paul’s certainly felt his share of suffering and persecution on his far-flung missionary travels.

In experiencing mistreatment, hatred, revulsion, physical and mental abuse, the apostle Paul – the Energizer Bunny of evangelism – experiences firsthand a cold, hard truth of Christian faith:

Yes, the Lord calls us his own, claims us in the waters of baptism, begins fashioning us day by day into new creations in his image, and sends us out to love and serve God and neighbor. But all that grace and blessing does NOT cloak us in bubble wrap. For Christians – for you and for me, there’s absolutely no guarantee that life will be a walk in the park. Our problems don’t disappear just because we’re one with Christ.

On the contrary. Since the life that the Lord calls us to lead flies in the face of the life the world would have us live, the hardships of living often get worse, and the challenges usually become greater. Even though you belong to God, even though you’re living for and with Christ, even though you’ve been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, evil and its minions are still going to attack with a vengeance, bringing suffering and persecution that is uninvited, unearned and undeserved.

Elsewhere, Paul claims it is through all trial and tribulation that we enter the Kingdom of God. But let’s be clear. Having to endure suffering and persecution isn’t our admission ticket into the God’s Kingdom. Wrestling with grief and misery isn’t a rite of passage that you have to endure to enter heaven.

No, suffering and persecution, and grief and misery, and everything else on the spectrum of pain and heartache are what make us realize how much we need God – how much we need the God whose love welcomes us into the oasis of God’s Kingdom – no matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done, no matter how viciously evil attacks.

Much as we think we can make it on our own, do things for ourselves, and solve our own problems, the weight of heavy burdens more often than not is simply too much for us to bear alone, and so, in agony, we finally limp through the Kingdom door using our last bit of strength. That, of course, would be the door that we’re too busy or prideful to notice, much less condescend to enter, even though God has always kept it wide open.

That’s the encouragement that Paul’s offering.

Suffering isn’t a Kingdom requirement, but it is an earthly reality. And it is God’s kingdom that offers a respite – shelter and safe haven from the storms and derechos that blow in our earthly living and create damage and destruction beyond human comprehension.

When we are weak, when we can’t do it any longer, when we are fed up, when it becomes too much, when we have nothing left, when we are empty, when we feel alone, when circumstances far exceed our capabilities of dealing with them, it is in those moments of persecution and suffering when the power and strength of Christ will be revealed. It is in those moments when we can count on the power and strength of God’s resurrection to be made known to us again in fresh, new and surprising ways.

In the midst of your pain and hurt, you can expect God to do something. You probably won’t know precisely when God will act, or exactly what God will do, or specifically how God will do what God will do. But you must know, Paul says, that the Kingdom God of resurrection is always working to heal and restore, fix and redeem, anything and everything that evil throws your way.

Encouraged faith waits with hopeful expectation for God to do what God will do, and encouraged faith lifts up and gives over to God the full brunt and total weight of its pain and suffering. Encouraged faith doesn’t necessarily dance around the house in celebration of its suffering, doesn’t just believe that God can do something to end suffering. Encouraged faith knows that God will do something.

For the Lord already has done something: By the blood of Christ, you and I have been justified – made right in loving, gracious eyes of heaven. And since that is so, that same amazing grace will surely rescue us from the condemnation we deserve for the sin we commit – as much or more as that same grace will rescue and deliver us from our trials and temptations.

Ancient words, ever, true. Amen, and amen.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, August 14 , 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” 

Relationship Assessment

Some of the most dramatic chapters in the discipleship story of God with us come in the Acts of the Apostles.

It begins, as we heard a couple weeks ago, with the jaw-dropping account of Jesus returning to heaven, which catches the apostles flat-footed and leaves them gazing up into the sky. Spectacular moments like that continue throughout Acts as its many scenes witness to the formation of the early Church.

I find myself harboring some feelings of envy over this new faith community that’s creating so much awe and wonder. Incredible miracles are performed left and right: The lame are walking freely, the blind are seeing clearly, and at her own funeral, a woman is resurrected completely.

Every time you turn around, a few hundred more people join the thousands who’ve already been converted. The pews are chock full on Sundays, and the new believers spend boat-loads of time together in study and prayer. They enjoy each other’s company at the meal table, and they’re selfless in caring for one another. What church today wouldn’t want to be so blessed!

Granted, the book of Acts isn’t all wine and roses. The believers have some nasty run-ins with the old guard of religious authority. They watch in horror as an angry mob fatally stones one of their first deacons. Many of the faithful flee to safety in the countryside when a guy named Saul spearheads a vicious and relentless persecution against them. But in spite of all the evil flung at them from the outside, within the community – among the rank-and-file faithful, things are looking pretty good, and the future appears ripe with new potential and unimaginable possibility.

Then along comes today’s Scripture lesson, and the apostle Peter finds himself called on the carpet by his fellow believers in Jerusalem.

For some time now, Peter has been away from Jerusalem, the epicenter of the new Jesus movement. The Holy Spirit has kept him busy spreading the Gospel in new lands and sharing the story of Jesus with all kinds of people including – gasp! – the reviled Gentiles. Yup, non-Jews are receiving God’s Word and becoming followers of Jesus Christ, and that’s causing fits among Peter’s comrades in the home office.

The final straw for the powers that be comes when Peter’s missionary efforts result in the conversion of a Roman military officer named Cornelius, and thus Peter gets recalled to headquarters with a demand to explain himself. That’s where we rejoin the story of God with us. Listen with all your senses for the Word of the Lord.

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God.

So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.

“At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” (Acts 11:1-18)

We all like tax breaks when they come to people like us. 

We all like various fringe benefits when they accrue to people like us. 

We all understand the need for a little extra government assistance when it comes to people like us.  

But the moment a break, a benefit, a little welfare-like subsidy goes to someone else, someone not like us — and therefore someone who is not as deserving as we are, because, well, they’re lazy or undeserving, or haven’t paid their dues the way we have, or weren’t born here – at that moment is when it happens: We cry “foul” and dig-in our heels even deeper so we can resist even harder anyone who might want to expand the circle of blessing that we think is only supposed to include people like “us.”

That’s where the Jewish converts in Jerusalem are at – dug in deep and holding on tight to their belief that God in Christ has only come for them and ready to stand up against anyone like Peter, whose experience in the real world allows him to see and understand God’s big picture a little more clearly, differently, and faithfully.

Peter’s witness to the Spirit’s conversion of Cornelius and his entire household knocks Peter for a loop and throws his frame of reference out of kilter. In that holy moment, Peter suddenly sees his solidarity – his sameness, his oneness – with people who aren’t like him. The pool of people whom God intends to bless through Christ is a whole lot bigger and wider than Peter first thought. The Holy Spirit is working on the hearts of the Gentiles, too – folks who definitely aren’t like “us.”

Such crazy talk is heresy among the believers in Jerusalem. The Jewish converts in Jerusalem believe that they’re following God’s plan to set up his kingdom and that the kingdom is only open to them and them alone. And so what Peter is doing among the Gentiles is flat-out backwards and wrong-headed, and Peter had better get his head screwed back on straight. You’re wrong, Pete, and we’re right. Get with the program!

Boom! Welcome to the first major blow-up in the Church, the very stuff of division, and schism, and separation. Imagine that – a church in conflict!

Yet, in a wonderful moment of conflict resolution and peacemaking, Peter manages to hold everyone and everything together by sharing with the naysayers the experience he has with God: His dream about the sheet coming down from heaven, which reveals to him that God is moving in a new direction – working in greater, more inclusive ways than anyone up until now had ever thought.

That day at Cornelius’s place, the Holy Spirit comes down upon the Gentiles just as the Spirit comes down upon Peter and the other believers at Pentecost. Hey guys, listen up, Peter exclaims. What happened to them is what happened to us. God’s tent is bigger than we thought! Who knew? Apparently not me, or certainly not any of you!

After listening to Peter, his fellow believers fall silent – literally. The opening of their minds closes their mouths, and the conflict is resolved, because they let God have the last word.

It ain’t easy to have your perspective widened and your worldview changed, particularly when the process of that happening requires that you simultaneously realize how wrong-headed you’ve been. But the Gospel is relentless. It will never stop pushing you and me in the directions that God’s boundless grace maps out. We should expect surprises – uncomfortable and disturbing though they might be.

In fact, it’s possible that if you’ve not felt surprised by the Lord in a really long time, maybe it’s because you’ve not accepted the gift that he’s been offering all along.

God offers us the gift of repentance – the kind of change in one’s perspective and understanding that leads to new life for ourselves and everyone around us. Repentance isn’t a mere heroic first step you make toward Christ or a sense of feeling sorry for your sins. Repentance is the divine gift of being turned toward the truth about yourself and your beliefs – something that’s quite impossible to do on your own. None of us can turn ourselves around, so God does it for us. Through Christ by the power of the Spirit, God sweeps us up off our feet and carries us along by events very much beyond our power to control.

It’s all part and parcel of being led to respond joyfully and willingly to the Lord’s offer of himself to us – the necessary, quite appropriate turn of a life that is the recipient of God’s gracious turning toward us: An expression of God’s grace that includes Jew and Gentile, virtuous pagans like Cornelius and zealous persecutors like Saul – even stubborn, wrong-headed thinkers like you and me. And the remarkable turn of events is all thanks to the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.

That’s downright remarkable!

Because in the experience of most of us, when something really new happens inside the Church or in our lives, few of us rush to chalk it up to a new movement of the Holy Spirit. Fewer still launch into a robust chorus of “praise God from whom all blessings flow,” because, after all, no one really loves jettisoning a whole bunch of stuff we’ve cherished and practiced for years and years.

No, that’s not the drill most of the time.  Most folks regard as highly suspect claims that this or that remarkable happening reflects a new movement of the Holy Spirit. The response more at the ready than a song of praise is the old-and-tired response that “we’ve never done it that way before,” or “I’ve never thought about it in those terms,” or “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

Painfully and slowly are the adverbs that describe making room for a new, and frequently very-different group of people with whom you’re not accustomed to associating. And such holy changes often coincide with some who’ve been around a long time leaving the fellowship rather than making room for newcomers, much less making space in the mind for more heavenly ways of thinking and in the heart for more gracious and merciful ways of regarding the world and all the people in it.

Of course, let’s admit that not every proposed change is of Lord.

But if Acts 11 has anything to teach us, it is that the Holy Spirit is nothing if not frequently surprising. Less hubris and more humility in listening to someone like Peter are good and faithful pursuits. And perhaps most difficult of all is the humble willingness to admit that maybe we had either been wrong in the past or at least that maybe we were missing some key perspectives that we now need to incorporate into our neatly laid out view of the world and how the Spirit of God in Christ is working in our midst.

No, not everything new is a movement of the Spirit. But neither should we think a new thing is impossible seeing as we’ve already got our understanding of what is truly means to be a disciple well in hand and neatly sewn up.

Grace Thomas

Consider the story of Grace Thomas, born in the early 1900s as the second of five children. Her father was a streetcar conductor in Birmingham, Alabama, and so Grace grew up in modest means. Later in life, after getting married and moving to Georgia, Ms. Thomas took a job clerking at the state capitol in Atlanta, where she developed a fondness for law and politics. So, although already a full-time mother and a full-time clerk, she enrolled in night school to study law.

In 1954, Ms. Thomas shocked her family by announcing that she wanted to run for public office.  What’s more, she didn’t want to run for weed commissioner or for a seat on the city council.  No, Grace Thomas ran for governor of the state of Georgia! 

She was among nine gubernatorial candidates that year – nine candidates, one issue: Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that mandated the desegregating of schools. Ms. Thomas was alone among the nine candidates to announce that she thought desegregation was the right and just decision for the court to make. Her campaign slogan was “Say Grace at the Polls”!  Hardly anyone did, though, and Ms. Thomas finished dead last.

Her family was glad she got it out of her system – except she didn’t, and so decided to run for governor again in 1962.  By then, racial tensions in the South were far more taut, tense, and fraught with danger than they’d been eight years earlier. Grace’s progressive platform on race issues earned her a number of death threats.

One day she held a rally in a small Georgia town and chose as her venue the old slave market in the town square. 

As she stood there, Ms. Thomas motioned to the platform where human beings once had been bought and sold like commodities and said, “The old has passed away, the new has come.  A new day has come when all Georgians, white and black, can join hands and work together.” 

At that point, a red-faced man in the crowd interrupted her speech to blurt out, “Are you a communist?!” “Why, no,” Ms. Thomas replied quietly. “Well then, where’d you get all them galdurned ideas?!” She pointed to the steeple of a nearby Baptist church. “I learned them over there, in Sunday school and from the pulpit.”

From early on, Ms. Thomas had spent time carefully listening to the Word of her Lord. And what she heard changed her life and launched her on a very specific mission in life.  But to some, thinking that way – much less embracing the idea that the Bible teaches us to think a certain way – was new territory.

Our struggle, then, in the Church and as its disciples, over and over again, is whether you and I can and will accept that our “new” reality is of God, really does spring from God’s Word, and so really is a new perspective to which no less than the Holy Spirit of God is leading us.

Ancient words, ever true – by the Spirit, changing me and changing you. Certainly strong fodder for some soul-searching in these anxious days of disruption and upheaval.

Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, August 7 , 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee, L.T. Johnson, Tom Long, and Will Willimon inform the message.

Pastoral Meditation: Times and Seasons

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message at the funeral for Jerry W. Ewing on Wednesday, August 3, 2022. The message arises from Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 –

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

 What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.

“Pastor, I’m going to make it. I’m going to be there.”

With his health beginning to fail and his mobility already a challenge, that’s what Jerry told me again and again in the weeks and months leading up to last year’s duet of Ewing family weddings: “I’m going to make it, pastor. I’m going to be there.”

And so, he was – there last summer here in this sanctuary when his grandson Cole and his bride, Morgan, pledged to love, honor, and cherish one another; there last fall in the lush rolling hills of family acreage when his granddaughter Connor and her groom, Bryton, also exchanged rings and joined hands to become husband and wife.

Indeed, those weddings were moments to celebrate, times to relish and delight in the gift of love, seasons to revel and rejoice in the ties that bind.

I don’t know if Jerry was able to hang out at the receptions until the last dogs were hung, but dancing and partying long into the night weren’t among Jerry’s hopes and dreams for either time. He simply wanted to make it, to be there. And he was, in the right place, at the right time. For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.

Our lives arrange into rolling litanies of different seasons, rhythmic times surely appropriate for the moments at hand, days and nights of simply making it, being there, being present in the moment, and delighting in it all, come what may.

Put another way: Do what you can, with what you’ve got, while you’ve got it. Everything comes from God, and those times and seasons come as gifts from God, too. You are enough!

So, indulge a little, laugh when you can, shed tears when you must, be satisfied with what you have, put to fruitful use the gifts and talents that God has given you in the moment. Because time defines us. And thus it was for Jerry.

Times to plant seed in the fertile earth, and times to pluck up the bounty of the harvest.

Times to take some entrepreneurial risks with delicious seafood and vivid feather birds.

Times to laugh, and to joke; times to pack up the kids and go places close to home, and times to embark on grand adventures half a world away.

Times to fish and enjoy God’s Creation; times to play cards (and never having to worry about getting euchred when Jerry was your partner); always times for heaping helpings of Bush’s baked beans.

And above all, by grace, times to love – unconditionally and totally, over 61 years of steadfast marriage, the love of his life, Anna Marie, and the two generations of Ewings that their union delivered.

And now, sadly, comes a time to die, after a life well lived, bringing us to our time of weeping and our season of mourning – perhaps, for some of you, the first time you’ve ever felt such searing pain and groaning agony.

Red eyes swell with bitter tears, and tight throats lump with grieving emotion; the raw, jagged edges of broken hearts sharply and viciously stabbing deeply into the very fibers of your being, the depth of your grief reflecting the depth of your love, admiration, and respect for Jerry.

No, earthly life without Jerry in its times and seasons certainly won’t be the same. But though it doesn’t seem even remotely possible in this moment, joy and laughter will one day return to once again be part of our diverse and varied moments on earth.

We humans are in time and defined by its limits. From the midst of earthly time, we have a sense for eternal time, more than just a hunch or inkling that something else is out there. We dwell in the hope of that assurance, however dim, because God has dropped faith into our hearts through the work of the Holy Spirit and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And through faith in Jesus, who entered our time and space to become one of us, we have – or should have – a mighty sense of the everlasting. We still cannot understand “what God has done from beginning to end,” but we can handle moments of grief and suffer a little more courageously, because of our oneness with the One who is the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end – of all things.

From this time and season of letting go, the Lord urges us forward in faith, enjoying who and what we’ve got while we’ve got it, and always giving constant thanks to the God who forever gives us every good thing and who promises to make every new.

With eternity set into our hearts by faith, the Spirit moves us forward in life and opens our ears to that eternal melody of life everlasting sounding from God’s far-off country: Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange it someday for a crown. And he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own.

Our souls and spirits are refreshed as we sing along as best we can to snippets of God’s life-affirming music, which declare that yes, there is a time for everything, and there also is an eternity for everyone – not always easy to see or obvious to sense, but we nevertheless render to God our thanks that we sense even the slightest glimpse of the heavenly banquet that lies ahead.

For the empty tomb of Easter morning declares that death does not, cannot, and will not have the last word or final say. And the light of comfort shines brightly in the assurance that we are not saying farewell forever but rather goodbye for now. For we will, one day, be together again with Jerry and all the saints, forever and ever.

In the meantime, artist and writer Bonnie Mohr frames our times and seasons of earthly living as a journey. Please see something of Jerry abiding in her words:

Life is not a race — but indeed a journey. Be honest. Work hard. Be choosy.

Say “thank you,” “I love you,” and “great job” to someone each day.

Go to church, take time for prayer. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh.

Let your handshake mean more than pen and paper.

Love your life and what you’ve been given, it is not accidental — search for your purpose and do it as best you can.

Dreaming does matter. It allows you to become that which you aspire to be.

Laugh often. Appreciate the little things in life and enjoy them.

Some of the best things really are free.

Do not worry, less wrinkles are more becoming. Forgive, it frees the soul.

Take time for yourself — plan for longevity.

Recognize the special people you’ve been blessed to know.

Live for today, enjoy the moment.

By faith, Jerry made it. And so will we – in this world and the next.

Glory be to Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen!

Look Around, Not Up

For the past few weeks, the story of God with us from the New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John has been fueling our discipleship.

Time after time, over and over again, we’ve heard Jesus extend the invitation to drop everything and follow him.

Drop your old ways of self-centered thinking, and follow my thoughts of self-sacrifice and humility.

Drop your old ways of broken and fearful living in darkness, and follow my path of abundant and fruitful living in light.

Drop your old ways of simply moving and being, and instead fix your gaze upon the Cross and the Empty Tomb.

Let your old self be crucified, and let your new self be raised. Let the stone that blocks your vision be rolled away, and start seeing the world and everyone in it with Kingdom eyes.

Live such that the least of the least experience the unconditional love of God pouring out of you and into them.

This morning, the ancient account moves forward as we turn the page to the Acts of the Apostles, the second of a two-volume set authored by Luke – his careful research and writing time apparently paid for by a wealthy patron named Theophilus.

Luke’s Gospel is the first volume, and it reveals who Jesus is, what he’s all about, and why God sent him to us. Volume two, the Acts of the Apostles, starts telling the story of the game-changing influence that Jesus renders in the lives of his followers, as the Good News of Christ begins to spread and the community of Christian faith begins to take shape.

And it should be no surprise that the Holy Spirit assumes the leading role in the widespread scattering of the Gospel, the re-orientation of countless hearts and minds, and the head-turning growth of the Church.

Listen now, with the help of that same Spirit, for the Word of the Lord in the opening scenes of the book of Acts, where the disciples find themselves stuck in one place, which not only reflects their confusion in the moment but also readies them for the Gospel work that lies ahead.

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.

After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers. (Acts 1:1-14)

Why do you stand here looking into the sky?

The compelling question of angels is the hub around which our Scripture lesson seems to revolve.

Jesus has ascended and disappeared into a cloud. But his disciples remain grounded and can’t seem to walk away from the Lord’s launch pad. His followers are frozen in place, staring up into the sky, perhaps straining their eyes to catch just one more final glimpse of their long-promised Savior.

Are they stunned? Probably. Puzzled? Perhaps. Anxious? Possibly. Surely gobsmacked and slack-jawed, as mouths hang open and all eyes are on the skies. Given what they’ve just witnessed, you can hardly blame them for just being still and drinking in all the amazement of the moment and the wonder of what’s next.

But the angels ask: Why do you stand here looking into the sky?

To the ascension of Jesus they’ve got deluxe front-row seats, but at least some of these sky-gawking disciples surely watched from a distance as Jesus suffered and died on the Cross. They also count themselves among those to whom Jesus appeared after rising from the dead on the first Easter. But no sooner do his disciples get used to having him around again, and he’s gone again.

This stunning moment of star-gazing is a kind of metaphor for the natural inclination of both ancient and modern disciples of Jesus. 

And again they ask: Why do you stand here looking into the sky?

Like the first disciples, we sometimes look up into the sky, because we’re caught up in a fool’s errand of speculation about just exactly when Jesus will return. Some Christians spend scads of energy and wads of time aimlessly wondering if increased trouble in the Middle East, or wars in Ukraine and elsewhere, or disasters like earthquakes, or viruses like corona, point to the imminent return of Jesus.

Like the first disciples, we also might stand there looking up into the sky and asking what God is going to do for us, looking upward and asking just how long will it take before the Lord comes down and fixes our families, or our finances, or our nation, or our world? Just how much longer do you have to wait before the Lord blesses you with a spouse or a friend? Or even just someone who listens to you, understands who you really and truly are, and honors your inherent dignity and worth?

Like the first disciples, we stand here, there, and seemingly everywhere looking up into the sky and waiting for some perfectly crystal-clear message from God about what to do in a particular situation.

And yet again from the angels: Why do you stand here looking into the sky?

The first followers of Jesus hope that he will finally establish God’s kingdom of justice and peace, perhaps embodied in a restored Israel. And since Jesus has yet to restore such a kingdom, the befuddled gang of sky-watchers wonder when he’ll finally get around to doing just that.

From our lesson, we know how Jesus answers his wondering disciples. Never mind the times and dates, he essentially says. There’s no way you can answer that question. Establishing a timetable for a kingdom of justice and peace lies in God’s hands alone.

But that doesn’t mean you disciples should just stand there staring up into the sky and waiting for God’s Kingdom to come in its fullness. No, I challenge you to testify to what you know and to what you have experienced through, with, and in me: the One whose Spirit sends you forth to be my witnesses to the farthest ends of the earth. And your testimony is simple: The Messiah has come, and the Kingdom of God has drawn near. I AM who I AM.

So, why do you stand here looking into the sky?

Jesus orders his disciples to stop looking into the sky and start being his witnesses only after he promises them heavenly power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them. In many ways, this promise might be even more central to becoming disciples than Jesus’s call to witness in ever-widening, concentric circles.

After all, not all Christians range far in their witness. But God does give all Christians the power to witness through the Holy Spirit. That powerful gift shapes the lives of all of God’s people, whether you and I go to the “ends of the earth,” or just next door, or up the block.

So, while God calls Jesus’s followers to stop looking into the sky and start being his witnesses, that’s not something they or we can muster on our own.

Being God’s witnesses isn’t first of all about memorizing Bible passages, and reading the right books, and attending to the right conferences and retreats – however helpful and faithful any of those things can be.  

Being God’s witnesses is, first of all, about being baptized with the Holy Spirit. Being God’s witnesses is about receiving the power of the Holy Spirit. Being God’s witnesses is about loving others with the same passion of grace, mercy, and peace that God lavishes for all to enjoy.

Knowing if and when Jesus sends someone to be his witness comes only by the Holy Spirit. Those who love and trust Jesus Christ as the One who saves us from sin can know and feel that God gives us the Holy Spirit. Since faith is only and always a gift, faith’s presence signals the reality that the Holy Spirit has already come on those who have it.

God has given God’s people everything we need to stop standing and looking into the sky.  God has equipped God’s children with everything we need to be Christ’s witnesses, not only around the world, but also in our own neighborhoods, schools and workplaces.

So one more time: Why do you stand here looking into the sky?

Sometimes, however, even Christians who have both the powerful gift of the Holy Spirit and stories to tell assume they can’t be Christ’s witnesses.  But witnessing is simply about telling others what has happened to you – in this case, how God in Christ is working in your life.

In Christ, God has broken into sinful lives and made a whole new world for those who by faith receive God’s amazing grace. God’s children witness, then, by simply telling, by what they do and say, about what has happened to them in Jesus Christ.

The Church is the church when she’s adding many new members or meeting the needs of existing members. Those are good and important happenings. But the Church is perhaps at its best – most like the church God calls us to be – when we stop staring up into the sky and start being God’s witnesses.

Yet, no matter how powerful the Holy Spirit and our messages are, God’s children might easily neglect another crucial ingredient of being Christ’s witnesses: Prayer. Our lesson ends with a report of everyone joining together in constant prayer.

Active people might have expected Jesus’s disciples to do something more “useful” after Jesus ascends to heaven. But after the disciples obey Jesus by returning to Jerusalem, their first response to Jesus’s ascension is to pray. The disciples somehow understand that God expects more from God’s people than just busyness and hard work. You and I understand that the Church must also be busy praying, perhaps especially praying, for all who are Christ’s witnesses.

This strongly suggests that those who would stop staring into heaven and start being witnesses always begin, continue, and end with prayer. That those who want to stop standing and start witnessing begin by figuratively getting on their knees in prayer.

And so I ask: Why do you stand here looking into the sky – or letting whatever it is distract you from the work that the Lord calls you to do?

Jesus promises to come back, indeed, somehow in much the same way that he left in the first place. But in the meantime, God has given you work to do. You have seen Jesus fly away. You will see Jesus come back. 

But between that going and coming, there must be another. The Spirit must come, and you must go – into the world, for Christ, as his witnesses, to a ministry of reconciliation that keeps its feet planted on the ground and its eyes fixed on the Kingdom.

Ancient words, ever true. Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, July 17 , 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Doug Bratt, Luke Timothy Johnson, John Stott, and Will Willimon inform the message.

Vines and Vineyards

Committing one’s self to faithful discipleship in Christ is not for the faint of heart.

In the story of God with us, in the process of our spiritual resurrection, in the fueling of our discipleship, the Cross of Jesus takes center stage, and our willingness to let our everyday lives be shaped by that Cross is what makes all the difference in the world – literally and figuratively.

Over the past few Sundays, we’ve heard Jesus throw down challenges to his followers to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. The Lord’s commanding invitation means that the Cross of Christ wields power to re-make and re-fashion us into new creations, dead to beliefs and behaviors that once defined who we were, alive in the fullness of peace and grace that now govern a life fashioned in the image of Jesus.

The sparking catalyst for such dazzling resurrection is honest repentance – turning your life in a more Christ-like direction. And with that change of course comes a change of perspective that reveals the Kingdom of God in your midst, and suddenly, without even trying, you start seeing the world differently – with Kingdom eyes that allow you to see God’s Creation in a wholly different, more compassionate and loving light.

The Kingdom of God is here, yes, but we know full well that there’s a lot that remains broken, incomplete, and wounded – either in our own lives or in the lives of those around us.

Yet, we’re able to get ourselves out of bed in the morning and get through each difficult day, because we hold onto God’s Kingdom vision that allows us to see the world differently, with the eyes of heaven. And we cling to Christ, the peace that God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit gives to us – peace not in the sense of the absence of hardship or conflict, but peace in the sense that God will see us through hardship and conflict.

“I AM the good shepherd,” Jesus declares, and “I AM the gate.”

Jesus not only locks up behind us to keep us safe, but as we learned last Sunday, Jesus himself also unlocks and swings open, allowing us to enter into a life dripping with more fullness than we might ever imagine. Jesus intends that fullness to flow from a new commandment: Love one another as I love you.

And now, in this morning’s lesson, Jesus helps his followers understand what that kind of love looks like and how that kind of love behaves.

Listen with all your senses for the living, breathing word of the Lord in John chapter 15, which begins with the revealing of another amazing reality about the Lord: I AM the vine, and you are the branches.

Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.

“He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (John 15:1-15)

The people who live deep in the damp jungles of northeast India don’t build bridges. They grow them!

Their impressive bridges are living things, created and maintained with the root-like branches of the ficus tree. Ficus branches cling to large boulders along the edges of rivers and streams, and they’ll actually grow out horizontally over valleys and ravines. Folks long-ago figured out how to weave together these strong branches to form natural bridges – some of which are more than 100 feet long.

These vine bridges are pretty sweet deals.

Because the branches remain connected to the main vine, the bridges they form actually get stronger over time as existing branches grow and sprout new branches. It takes 10 or 15 years for these natural structures to become safe, fully functioning bridges, and it takes some effort. Residents must coax and train the branches to grow together in just the right ways, and they lop off branches that don’t cooperate. There’s no tolerance for limbs with minds of their own.

In essence, the branches that do cooperate come together to form a kind of community – a sturdy, reliable community that is stronger together than any of its individual members can be on its own. In a way, each branch gives up its individuality to join forces with others and serve a greater good. As the branches come together, one branch becomes indistinguishable from another, making it hard to tell where one stops and another begins.

Yet each branch serves an important purpose, spreading out the workload among many and accomplishing something impossible to do by itself. And these branches – individually and collectively – only do what they do because they remain attached to the main vine.

It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out where I’m headed with this.

When Jesus says he is the vine and we are the branches attached to him, it is that vital connection between him and us that makes truly amazing things happen. When Jesus is our vine and we are his branches, that is when you and I start producing fruit.

Only in Christ are we truly fruitful.

Only in Christ are we able to produce something that is sweet, nourishing, helpful and beneficial.

Only in Christ are we bearers of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

That means our life-giving connection to Jesus the Vine isn’t just sweet, nourishing, helpful and beneficial for you and me as individuals. Our connection to Jesus the Vine is really more about you and me growing together as a community that is intimately interrelated.

When we abide, dwell and continue in Christ, Jesus the Vine weaves together intimate connections between your life and mine, between our lives and the lives of those around us. Jesus knits us together so tightly that we abide, dwell and continue in each other as much as we abide, dwell and continue in Christ. What God wills in Christ is that we grow so closely tied with one another and with Jesus that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

On one hand, that’s a heart-warming assurance: To know, sense and actually feel that we are connected to things human and divine that are greater than ourselves. We don’t spend our days walking alone on the road of faith.

But on the other hand, the picture of vines and branches that Jesus paints challenges our cultural beliefs in rugged individualism and self-sufficiency.

Social interrelationship and mutual accountability are at the heart of the living ecosystem that Jesus the Vine desires, creates, and sustains.In making you and me part of this ever-growing web of vine and branches that is both human and divine, what Jesus demands is that you and I remain steadfast in our living, breathing relationship with him and with one another.

That steadfastness – that faithfulness – is measured by the fruit that we produce together as a community. To bear fruit – or more to the Lord’s point, to act in love – is without question the No. 1 thing that Jesus calls us to do together. God in Christ seeks to build, maintain and nourish community, and it is the Lord’s love for that community that becomes the visible expression of his new commandment: Loving one another as he loves us. To live as branches off the main vine of Jesus is to live in organic union with Christ and to let his love for us form and fashion the love we share with others.

Perhaps the hardest part of all this is recognizing and accepting that when you attached to Jesus the vine – when you are one of the branches that forms the larger structure of community, there are no such things as individual accomplishments, private choices, or personal rights.

When you are a branch growing forth from Jesus the Vine – when you are among the many branches of Jesus the Vine, job one for you, me, and everybody is to reveal and share the love of God in Christ Jesus with the help our of trainer and branch-teaser, the Holy Spirit.

As if that’s not enough to wrestle with, Jesus says there’s no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends and neighbors – not always to die literally as an expression of your love for others, although that IS what Jesus did in love for us,but to lay down one’s life certainly to die figuratively – to die to one’s own desires and dreams, preferences and partialities – to set aside the pursuit of things you want to have or things you want to do, so that someone else will see, feel and taste the love of God pouring out of you and into them.

That already-powerful image of faith put into action becomes even more potent when you consider the meticulous, careful labor of a vineyard worker.

I’ve never known nor worked with a vinedresser or vineyard owner.  But at various times, I’ve seen the blood, sweat, and tears that go into tending vines and growing grapes: Vinedressers gently using strips of cloth to tie up and train tender shoots and affectionately handling heavy clusters of juicy grapes waiting for their peak of ripeness and their turn in the winepress.

In the movie “Sideways,” the main character, Miles, waxes poetic on how hard it is to grow the pinot noir grape, how that particular variety needs constant, painstaking care; exactly precise weather conditions; and delicate handling to protect its thin skin.

When thoughts turn to farming – and all things green and growing, mental pictures glimpse big, green John Deere tractors tearing up fields or giant combines sucking up plump beans or golden corn.

But the sights more associated with vines and branches – and the production of good fruit – are more tender, more intimate, more communal.  That seems to fit Jesus’s own image of heaven’s vineyard quite well.

I AM the vine, you are the branches.

Love each other as I have loved you.

There is no love greater than love that simply gives of itself so that others might simply live.

Jesus sketches a kind of wonderful sequence: The Father loves the Son; the Son loves you and me, and we love each other. When we love one another by deeds of humble service and meaningful sacrifice, we draw a straight and direct line from that love all the way back to the great God of the universe. A holy pipeline of mutual love connects us right to the Holy Trinity of Heaven – sustained in our growing and nurtured where we are not.

When you realize, and recognize, and relish, that the love of Father, Son, and Spirit is what ever-flows into you and me every minute of every day, your estimation of discipleship and Christian living should be mightily magnified by love bursting through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ.

For that is the new commandment of the Lord, woven into the Word of the Lord and held forever in ancient words that are ever true. Thanks be to God!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, July 10, 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee and Gail R. O’Dea inform the message.

Passing through Jesus

Unlike the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke in which Jesus teaches through parables, John’s Gospel doesn’t include any parables.

Instead, Jesus reveals himself through his much-beloved “I AM” sayings: “I AM the bread of life.” “I AM the light of the world.” “I AM the resurrection and the life.” “I AM the way, the truth, and the life.” “I AM the true vine.”

In this morning’s lesson, Jesus serves up two more: “I AM the gate,” and “I AM the good shepherd.”

Just like the others, these I AM’s of Jesus are instant messages that structure the grammar of our own identity: I AM a disciple of Jesus! I AM among his followers.

By the power of God’s Holy Spirit, let your discipleship be nourished by the Word, and let its light lead you to a deeper understanding of God’s holy truth.

“Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus said, “anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.

“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

Again the Jews were divided because of these words. Many of them were saying, “He has a demon and is out of his mind. Why listen to him?” (John 10:1-20)

When she was a girl, my Grandma Fielder raised sheep, and when I was a little boy, she used to tell me stories about lambs following her around everywhere she went.

Lona loved her little flock but always pointed out that sheep are kind of stupid. They do dumb things. They are prone to wandering off, getting lost, and finding themselves in a pickle – like the sour experience getting stuck headfirst in a dark fissure of the good earth.

As my grandmother always said, sheep are stupid!

But the one thing they do really well is recognizing their keeper’s voice, and the voice of their shepherd is the only voice to which they respond. Pay close attention to what happens when a modern-day shepherd in the Feroe Islands calls out to his flock.

A few things catch my attention.

For starters, the very-first syllable of the shepherd’s voice stirs his fog-shrouded sheep. Far off in the distance, the bleating begins the very moment the sheep hear the familiar and trusted sound of his distinctive speech piercing the cloudy, misty curtain of separation between them and him.

For the sheep, it’s all about the shepherd, who persists in telegraphing his hollers of invitation and welcome.

For you and me, it’s all about Jesus, who like the shepherd is persistent in calling out to us through Scripture, and through the voices of others, and through the circumstances of our lives.

Those deep reverberations of the Lord’s voice are supposed to stir us, too.

The sound of the Lord’s voice is supposed to stir us and spur us to repentance – as we’ve been learning in the Scripture lessons of these recent Sundays: Turning your life in a new direction, escaping the hazy smog of sin and brokenness that envelops us, and coming to see the world and all of God’s Creation with the eyes of heaven.

The sheep are stirred by the very-first sound of the shepherd’s voice, and they come a-runnin’. When they hear the shepherd’s voice, the sheep don’t just amble over to him. No, they kick it into high gear and make a beeline for him, the sound of his voice serving as a homing beacon that guides them over rocky terrain and through the misty gray.

It’s that kind of fast reaction that Jesus hopes you and I will offer when we hear the divine voice that is chock-full of irresistible grace.

The sheep are stirred by the very-first sound of the shepherd’s voice, and they come a-runnin’. And when they arrive at his feet, the shepherd wastes no time in feeding them. Even the stragglers – the late-comers – are welcome to feast on the food that the shepherd pours out.

And so it is with Jesus. The first and the last – the least and the lost – are welcome to feast on the nourishment that Jesus provides – the very bread of heaven, baked with generous portions of forgiveness, mercy, and love that the Lord slices up and serves out for everyone’s spiritual feeding.

The sheep are stirred by the very-first sound of the shepherd’s voice, and they come a-runnin’. When they arrive at his feet, the shepherd feeds them. And what happens next is truly amazing – the once-scattered sheep are brought together by the shepherd’s voice into a kind of wooly community – a diverse body that includes white sheep, spotted sheep, and even black sheep! All are welcomed into the close-knit flock that the shepherd gathers with just the sound of his voice.

In Christ, there are no walls that divide, no differences that separate, no “us” vs. “them.”

In Christ, there is rich nourishment and deep relationship for all.

In Christ, there are many members of his body who surprise and astonish with a diversity of riches that increases the value and blessing of the entire community.

In Christ, there is a place of safety and belonging, a place of healing and nourishment, a place of oneness and togetherness, a place of power through humility, a place of forgiveness over vengeance, a place of welcome for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the outcast of every stripe.

“I AM the good shepherd,” Jesus says.

And, Jesus says, “I AM the gate” through which we need to enter.

Wait! What? No one can actually pass through a gate any more than you can walk through a door in your house. You pass through the doorway – the empty space that opens up once the gate or door is opened or moved aside. Unless you’re a ghost, you can’t literally pass through a gate or a door.

Yet the inability to pass through a gate or door is precisely what makes the image useful. Because a gate or door is solid and can be locked, it is the gate or door that prevents the good from escaping and the bad from trespassing. Jesus is the gate who preserves what is good and protects from what is bad. 

But how do you pass through the gate of Jesus?

First is something I read a while back. A traveler in the Middle East ran across an Arab shepherd eager to show off his flock and the secure enclosure where his sheep nightly slept.

“When they go in there,” the shepherd said proudly, “they are perfectly safe.”

But then the traveler noticed something strange: The pen had no gate. “Yes, that’s right,” the shepherd said. “I am the gate.”

“What do you mean?” the confused traveler asked.

“After my sheep are in the pen, I lay my body across the opening. No sheep will step over me, and no wolf can get in without getting past me first. I AM the gate.”

The gate is the one who lays himself down to keep what is good on the inside and to keep what is bad on the outside. And whether the good is kept safe from the bad, the point is that it will be the gate – perhaps the very body of our Lord – that makes a world of difference.

Thieves and robbers harm and destroy. They take life and livelihood. But as the gate, Jesus protects life in the watches of the night by protecting from evil and promoting life during the day by giving the sheep access to green pastures. It is all about life and life abundant – life to the fullest in Christ Jesus, who IS the gate.

Still, it’s tough to wrap your head around that “passing through” part – whether we’re talking about an actual gate or the body of a shepherd. Ordinarily, the gate needs to be moved aside, or the body needs to be stepped over, around or on in order for anyone or anything to pass into whatever the gate encloses.

In a sense, isn’t that what Jesus does by coming to this earth and pitching his tent among us?

Jesus empties himself, gives way, opens himself up by giving up the perks of his divinity and glory to come to us as a humble servant. Jesus lets himself be stepped on, shoved aside, and nailed to a cross until finally he dies. yet by God’s power and grace he was raised.

And the resurrected Jesus could do things he couldn’t do before – like being able to pass right through locked doors to appear in the midst of his disciples just as they are sitting down to eat some bread and fish.

However odd the idea, let me suggest that the same Jesus who said he was a gate through which we need to pass is pointing in some way to what we need to become in him through our baptism.

In baptism, we die, we drown. We are crucified with Christ. And, we are raised with Christ. And like our risen Lord, we aren’t the same after our baptismal dying and rising.

Having died with Jesus, we now bear the ability to pass right through him into the newness and fullness of the life that he promises. Jesus is a two-way gate: He not only locks up behind us to keep us safe, but he also unlocks and swings open so that we can enter into a life dripping with more fullness than we can know.

It matters not whether we are going into the pen or out into the pasture, it is Jesus himself – and his crucified-but-now-resurrected body – that we pass through. We are purified by our baptismal journey through death and back to life again. We are changed, altered, re-oriented, re-energized.

This rhythm of baptism’s passing in and out of Jesus the gate is re-enforced at the Lord’s Table, where we see the body and blood of Jesus laid down for us, the body and blood through whom we pass into newness of life, the body and blood that passes through us in the ritual act of eating and drinking!

We have a living gate, a gate not of wood or steel but of flesh and blood – a living gate that is “swung aside” not because some wood swings on hinges but because Jesus’s body was killed on the wood of the cross. Having been crucified and then raised, Jesus’s new body has the wondrous ability to pass through doors and, by baptism and the Lord’s Supper, to be passed through by each of us as the gateway to new life.

Ancient words, ever true – like the Cross itself, changing me and changing you.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, June 26, 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee and Gail R. O’Dea inform the message.

Least, Last, Lost

The biblical story of God with us, as of last Sunday, has brought us to a place of invitation.

Our recent Scripture lessons have brimmed and teemed with simple, straightforward, yet gracious offers from Jesus to “follow me.” Accepting the Lord’s invitation to discipleship with humility and gratitude holds the potential to change each of our lives and every part of our world – if, and only if, you and I are willing to let our everyday living be shaped by the Cross of Christ.

By one of the great mysteries of our faith, we are one with Christ in his death on the Cross – just as we are in lockstep him as he rises from a stone-cold tomb. Thus, the Cross re-makes and re-fashions us into new creations, dead to beliefs and behaviors of who we were, alive in the fullness of peace and grace that just is the Christ of who we are – if, and only if, the Cross and the empty grave of Easter morning provide the blueprints and gameplans that shape the words and actions of our daily being.

The catalyst that sparks such dazzling resurrection is honest repentance – turning your life in a completely new, radically changed, more holy direction that allows you to see the world and its inhabitants in a wholly different light. “Kingdom Vision,” I and others call it: Eyes that recognize the time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near.

Turn that way. Toward the Kingdom. Everybody. While there is still time, Jesus fresh on the heels of his baptism pleaded last Sunday in the Gospel of Mark.

Turn away from worldly ways of madness, ignorance, cruelty, idolatry, shallowness, and blindness. Turn toward the Kingdom ways of tolerance, compassion, sanity, reconciliation, empathy, forgiveness, restoration, hope, and justice – all those heavenly impulses and desires that dwell within you, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit who dwells richly and abides strongly in the hearts of you, me, and all God’s people in Christ.

Pray for the Kingdom. Watch for its signs. Live as one of its signs – as though it is here already, because there are moments when it almost is.

You’d think that everybody would be absolutely giddy with excitement over such incredibly Good News.

And many people are thrilled and delighted.

But the good folk of Jesus’s hometown cannot be counted among that joyful chorus.

In this morning’s Scripture lesson, Jesus at the synagogue of Nazareth proclaims to his family, former neighbors, ages-ago high-school buddies, and one-time co-workers that he – the humble son of Joseph the carpenter – is – of all people! – the fulfilment of God’s plans to save the world from its sinful and broken self. And the eager crowd likely expects that Jesus, the hometown-boy-made-good, will start God’s work of rescue and redemption with the people who’ve watched him grow up and known him the longest. After all, charity starts at home, right?

As it turns out, not so much. The glad tidings quickly turn sour when Jesus announces that God sends him to earth to seek and save, first and foremost, not the ones who think they have an “in” with Jesus but rather the last, the least, and the lost. And the crowd goes wild, not in celebration but in anger.

Yet, thanks be to God, the dramatic moment ends with a scene of hopeful assurance that nothing, absolutely nothing – not even a vicious, riled-up mob of murderous scorn and hatred – will stand in the way of God’s purposes in Christ Jesus.

With Kingdom Vision, listen for the Word of the Lord midchapter in Luke 4.

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. (Luke 4:14-30)

If you had to choose the words that best capture and explain who you are and why you’re here, what would those words be?

Think, for a moment, about the particular words that most clearly define and communicate the true essence of yourself, your life, your commitments, and your faith.

Can you picture yourself standing before the community and declaring, as Jesus did, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Imagine standing up in the middle of the Wellness Center, or the S&D Café, or the high school cafeteria, or the weekly auction at Sweeney’s, or the kids’ Saturday morning soccer game, and proclaiming that the day is surely coming when every person in Waukon will be cured of his or her illness!

The day is surely coming when every unemployed person in Allamakee County will find meaningful, fulfilling, family-sustaining work.

The day is surely coming when all the addicts in Iowa will be freed from their addictions, and all the meth labs in this country will be shut down.

The day is surely coming when every broken relationship will be repaired, restored and reconnected.

The day is surely coming when every broken-down hovel will get an “extreme makeover” such that every such remodeled home in every renovated neighborhood will shine and gleam like some swanky, multi-million-dollar retirement home perched high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River.

Those are pretty bold proclamations – the kind of wild talk that surely creates a buzz on Main Street, and the predictable storm of public ridicule and gossip is probably why you don’t hear too many of us making such wild-eyed proclamations these days.

But I’m going to climb out on a limb here and say that each and every one of us ought to be able to stand up and speak with full confidence and all assurance the exact same words of Isaiah that Jesus does:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

By no means are you proclaiming how great you are, but rather you are proclaiming how great God is! – along with a proclamation that every blessed one of us is blessedly one with Jesus! Your baptism proclaims that you are one with Christ not just in his death and resurrection but also in his work and ministry. The same Holy Spirit who came upon Jesus in the anointing of his baptism is the same Holy Spirit who comes upon you and me in our baptisms.

By that same Spirit in Christ, God begins the work of repairing and fixing everything in the world that is broken and shattered. And in Christ, by the power of the Spirit, that work of reconciliation has been handed over to us, along with all those diverse gifts and talents given to the various parts of the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit to serve God’s purposes.

Sure, there are plenty of reasons to doubt what Jesus proclaims, plenty of reasons to keep each of us from proclaiming that message to our friends and neighbors. Fear of ridicule is an ever-present danger to the Gospel’s spread. And there’s still plenty of bad news – plenty of poverty and captivity; plenty of blindness and illness; plenty of oppression, and segregation, and separation; plenty of anger, fear, and distrust, and oftentimes precious little that makes it feel like we really are the recipients of even a smidgen of the Lord’s favor.

We still see and suffer from a sin-sick litany of evil’s cruel handiwork:

Way too much love of money, way too much scandal and corruption, way too much hunger for power.

Way too much brutal war, way too much vicious persecution, way too much slaughter and genocide.

Way too much bloody murder, and senseless violence, and extreme terrorism both foreign and domestic.

However you want to measure it, way too much brokenness to easily believe that the Kingdom has come in Christ Jesus.

Way too many people are feeling way too much pain from illness, and sickness, and cancer, and death, and divorce, and separation, and addition to easily believe that the world is, even now, being ruled by the One who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

But in announcing the arrival of God’s Kingdom and new rule of the Lord, Jesus doesn’t say that all the pain and heartache of the world will end in a flash.

What Jesus says is that the poor, the lame, the blind, the imprisoned and the sick are all seen and known by God. Really and truly: The lowest of the low in body, mind and spirit – the ones so marginalized, pushed off to the side, and overlooked by much of the world as to barely register a blip on our human radars – those are the folks who are seen, known, and loved by God the Father Almighty.

And, as co-creators with the Lord, you and I need to be noticing those folks, too, and to be bringing them the Lord’s message of healing and hope, and to be receiving from them that same message of restoration, reconciliation, resurrection: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, too, and I have come bearing the good news that God’s healing and freeing favor is upon you. Really! Right here, right now!”

The agony of living in the already-here-but-not-yet-completely-finished world of God’s Kingdom is that the Kingdom is just that – a work in progress. One of the most-startling of all divine revelations is that, with the coming of Jesus Christ, God launches a quiet, evolutionary Kingdom where things are slowly changing, rather than a loud, over-the-top Kingdom where everything gets fixed in the blink of an eye.

But we nevertheless get to be a part of that Kingdom and part of the Lord’s renewal of all things, even as the forces of sin and evil in the world around us seem to be doing everything they can to knock the stuffing out of our hopes for that Kingdom and kicking the tar out of our assurance that the kingdom is really here.

Whenever we celebrate communion, as we did a few Sundays ago on the Feast of Pentecost, I hold up a whole loaf of bread as a reminder of the whole, perfect presence of the Lord among his people.

But then that loaf is shattered, broken, and torn, and the crumbs fall onto the table. It is a reminder that our perfect wholeness, that peace that we yearn and long for, is not behind us but up ahead and yet to come. Wholeness is coming, and the broken loaf reminds us that it is coming through what Jesus has already done. His brokenness is what one day will put our lives back together – whole and complete, relationships and all.

A preaching colleague tells the story of a time when he was asked to preach at what was billed as a special “family worship service.” The idea was to hold the service not in the sanctuary but in the fellowship hall, where families would gather around tables, and in the center would be the ingredients for making a loaf of bread.

The plan was to have the families make bread together and then, while the sweet aroma of baking bread filled the hall, the pastor would preach. When the bread was finished, it would be brought out and used for a celebration of communion. 

It was a great idea, at least on paper anyway. But its execution didn’t go so well.

Within minutes, the fellowship hall was a hazy cloud of flour dust. Soggy balls of dough clung to the walls as children hurled bits of the sticky mixture at each other. Husbands and wives began sniping at one another, and already-tense nerves began to fray and eventually snap.

Then the ovens didn’t work right, and it took forever to bake the bread. Children whimpered; babies screamed, and nasty glances were cast upon noisy families who were on the verge of coming apart at the seams.

But finally, and mercifully, came the end of the service. The script called for the visiting preacher to pronounce the blessing. Too tired and irritable to ad-lib anything, the preacher just said the usual blessing straight out, holding limp, flour-caked hands to the air and saying, “The peace of God be with you.”

And immediately, from the back of the trashed fellowship hall, a young child’s voice piped up: “It already is!”

For many of us, it is what it is: We come to worship each week from the dusty, sticky, frayed-nerve mess that just is our life in a fallen Creation.

The Kingdom of God is here, yes, but we know full well that there’s a lot that remains broken, incomplete, and wounded – either in our own lives or in the lives of those around us.

Yet, we’re able to get ourselves out of bed in the morning and get through each difficult day, because we hold onto God’s Kingdom vision that, as I suggested to you last Sunday, allows us to see the world differently, with the eyes of heaven. And we cling to Christ, the peace that God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit gives to us – peace not in the sense of the absence of hardship or conflict, but peace in the sense that God will see us through hardship and conflict.

Really! Right here, right now! Peace that comes from assurance that God is making all things new, even if that divine newness isn’t happening fast enough for our tastes. Peace that comes from confidence and belief in Jesus, because the Lord God anointed Jesus and sent him to us to announce the time of the Lord’s favor – the peace of God that already is.

If you’re still struggling to choose the words that best capture and explain who you are and why you’re here, let me suggest these: “I am a child of God, and because of that, the peace of God that already is is upon me. The Spirit of the Lord who always was is upon me. And God by the Spirit anoints me to bring good news to you, my friends and my neighbors.

And the Good News is this: God will see you through whatever is it that’s got you down: Captivity, blindness, oppression – whatever it is, the Lord will see you through. Evil isn’t going to win, because the time of the Lord’s favor is here. God sends me to you to tell you that heaven sees you, knows you, and loves you, and to remind you that the Lord’s peace upon you will see you through your captivity and oppression.

For those who follow Jesus Christ, that ought to be the essence of yourself, your life, your commitments, and your faith – simply and graciously because “it already is.” The peace of God already is, and it already is upon you.

And in the ongoing story of God with us, the invitation from Jesus still stands: “Follow me,” in grace and peace. Follow me to the people and places hungry and thirsty for that same Kingdom nourishment.

Ancient words, ever true. Thanks be to God. Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, June 19, 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by R. Alan Culpepper, Scott Hoezee, and L.T. Johnson inform the message.