“Paul’s Vision for the Church” (Ephesians 3:8-21)

Many years ago (I’m embarrassed to admit how many!) a wise friend passed on to me a little book entitled The Gospel Blimp. Maybe some of you are old enough to have heard of it. Perhaps some have even read it! The story opens with a group of friends from church gathered for a barbecue in the back yard of George and Ethel Griscom. At some point someone notices the Griscoms’ next-door neighbours, who are sitting on their porch drinking beer and playing cards. This leads into a conversation on the Griscoms’ side of the fence about how to reach people with the gospel.

In the midst of the conversation an airplane flies very low overhead—so low, in fact, that everyone on both sides of the fence stops what they are doing to look up and gaze at it—and out of that there sprouts the germ of an idea. That low-flying airplane caught everybody’s attention. How about using a blimp with a message trailing behind it to glide slowly over people’s homes to proclaim the gospel to all the unchurched citizens of the whole town?

Well, the story goes on from there. And lo and behold, the idea becomes a reality. After that it doesn’t take much longer for someone to suggest a further step. How about using the blimp to sprinkle evangelistic pamphlets over entire neighbourhoods? Soon someone else comes up with the further brainwave of installing speaker horns to broadcast sermons and Christian music. Well, as you can imagine (or perhaps you’d prefer not to!) the story goes on from there. And it doesn’t take very much longer for the whole project to collapse in disaster.

But meanwhile, quietly in the midst of all this energy being devoted to the blimp, the Griscoms’ neighbours do become Christians. Not because of the blimp, which only ever served to upset and annoy people. But because somewhere along the way George and Ethel actually began to get to know their neighbours and ended up helping them through a serious health crisis.

All of this reminds me of some advice another friend passed on to me early in my Christian walk: “Be careful not to get so caught up in the work of the Lord that you lose sight of the Lord of the work.”

So it is that Paul is writing to the believers in Ephesus to remind them of their true calling, and to help them focus on God’s intentions for his church. And I hope I’m going to make it easy for you to remember if I summarize what he says under three headings: They needed to be clear in their purpose, conscious of their power, and continuous in praise. 

Clear our Purpose (8-13)

First, then, the believers living in Ephesus were called to be clear in their purpose. Paul sets out that purpose in the opening verse of this morning’s passage. And it is this: to proclaim the boundless, unfathomable, infinite riches of Christ—a riches that beggars all human calculation.

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” he writes elsewhere. It’s as though, in spite of all his scholarly training and oratorical eloquence, Paul is scarcely able to find the words to express himself. “How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33)

John, at the very end of his gospel, after setting down more than twenty chapters of his memories of Jesus, finds himself coming to a similar conclusion: “Jesus did many other things as well,” he writes. “If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25) He just couldn’t ever say enough about Jesus.

So it is that Paul writes that his whole calling—and by extension yours and mine—is to make plain God’s eternal plan, which has now been realized in Jesus Christ. The verb that Paul uses here is photizo. Perhaps you can hear in it our English words photograph, photoelectric, photon, photosensitive, photosynthesis… They all have to do with light.

Of course, behind Paul’s words is the command that Jesus gave to his followers in the Sermon on the Mount: “Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:16). So it is that you and I are called and empowered and commissioned to live lives shining with the light of Jesus—his all-embracing love, his unchanging truth, his pure goodness—in what today seems to be an ever-increasingly dark and threatening world.

And that light will shine only as our words are backed up by our actions, by the quality of our lives. It is our lives that give authenticity to our words. A century and a half after the apostle Paul, believers were going through a period of terrible persecution. Yet the church continued to grow. Why? It was the Christian author Tertullian who recognized the reason when he wrote, “It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, … how they are ready even to die for one another!”[1] Theirs was a love that also overflowed outside the Christian community to the poor, the destitute and the hungry, to widows and orphans. And it was through that love tangibly demonstrated that people also discovered the love of a Saviour. Through their integrity people encountered him who is the truth. And through their willingness to be tortured and even to die for their faith that people found him who came to bring life in all its fullness.

Conscious of our Power (14-19)

It is a calling of truly heroic proportions. But we will never live up to it unless we are conscious of the power that alone can make it a reality. We need always to be aware the light with which Jesus calls us to shine does not originate in us. It is a reflected light. And its source is the ineffable glory, the unquenchable love, the unchanging truth of Jesus himself. Paul writes about being strengthened in our inner being through the Holy Spirit’s power. And in verses 16 through 19 he gives us three images of how that happens. So let’s take a look at each of them briefly.

Paul first writes in verse 17 about Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith. Many years ago (about as many years ago as when I was given The Gospel Blimp!) someone else introduced me to a little booklet entitled My Heart – Christ’s Home. It’s based on that verse which I am sure is familiar to most of us in Revelation 3, where Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me.” In it the author takes us through the various rooms of a house—the living room, where we relax; the dining room, where we eat; the study, where we read; the bedroom, and so on…

The whole point was that when you open your life to Jesus, it isn’t a matter of merely allowing him to stand in the entryway like some door-to-door salesperson. Rather, you are giving him free rein to move and to exercise his lordship throughout every room, every nook and cranny in the house: your thoughts and appetites, what you take into your mind through the books and media you read, the music you listen to, what you watch on TV and the internet and social media, your friendships, your sex life, your finances, your leisure time, and the list goes on…

Secondly, Paul calls us to be grounded in love. The image moves from a home to a forest. We are blessed with an almost endless forest behind our house. It stretches pretty well all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. But it is all on semi-swampy, rocky ground, which means that many of the trees can’t put down deep roots. So every time there’s a major windstorm (and we’ve had our share of them in recent years) there are trees that are blown over and end up falling to the ground and dying.

So how do we become properly rooted, so that the winds of temptation and misfortune and adversity don’t cause us to fall? I want to suggest three ways. We need to be grounded in holy Scripture—to spend time daily reading the Bible, seeking to grasp its meaning and then applying it to our lives. We need to be rooted in prayer—to bask in God’s great and unfathomable love in Christ and to lay our lives, our concerns and our deepest needs before him. And we need to be rooted in community, which means more than just spending an hour or so in church on a Sunday, but really engaging with God’s people, being nourished in an environment of mutual love and care.

So it is that, with Christ dwelling in our hearts and with our lives rooted and grounded in his love, we will find ourselves being filled to the brim with the fullness of God—and by his grace that fullness will overflow into and enrich the lives of others as well. That doesn’t mean that life will be easy or that we will always go around with a smile pasted on our face. Far from it! Christians are not immune to sorrow and tragedy. But it does mean that we are never alone in them. For we are graced with the constant presence of the one who has promised to be with us always, to the very end of time (Matthew 28:20).

Continuous in our Praise (20-21)

And so we are to be clear in our purpose and conscious of our power. Which brings us to our third point: and that is that we are to be continuous in our praise.

At this point my mind is drawn back years ago once again, when I was serving in a church in Montreal and we were graced with a visit from the Archbishop of Uganda. His name was Erica Sabiti. He had grown up in the church but it was only when he was in his thirties that he came into contact with the spiritual revival that was sweeping across East Africa at the time, and his life was forever transformed. In a word, he fell in love with Jesus.

I well remember the woman who was hosting him at one time remarking to me under her breath, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! All he ever talks about is Jesus. If I hear him even mention that name once more, I think I’m going to scream!” This was nearly forty years after his conversion, yet this man still found himself totally captivated by, utterly in love with Jesus.

It was clear that this man’s praise was no shallow, surface phenomenon. It sprang from a deep and unshakeable faith in God. Sabiti’s ministry as archbishop occurred during the tyrannous dictatorship of Idi Amin. And when Amin ordered the expulsion of all Jews from Uganda, Erica Sabiti opposed him publicly and stood up for them. He soon received a summons to appear before Amin, with every likelihood that, as with others who had taken a stand against him, the dictator would personally shoot him.

There was a tense two-hour wait before Amin appeared and sat down across from him. After what seemed an interminable period of silence, Amin burst out, “You Sabiti, do you know I can kill you? Why do you talk about the children of Israel?” Twice more Amin repeated the threat, after which the archbishop reached down into his bag and pulled out his Bible. Then, with a calmness in his voice he said, “Your Excellency, this Bible is full of the history of the Jews, so is your Koran. People have died because of the truth, which is in this Bible. The children of Israel are special because they are a chosen race and we shall talk about it.” Amin did not say a thing, but shook his head and walked out of the room.[2]

This was the man who could never stop praising Jesus. God grant that our worship in this place might powerfully engage our minds, stir our hearts and strengthen our wills. By his grace may it be a mighty upswelling of praise that arises out of a profound and unshakeable experience of God’s saving grace in Jesus—an experience week by week that accompanies and upholds us through all of life’s circumstances and irresistibly leads us ever deeper into him.

Paul’s God-given vision for the Christians in Ephesus was that they might be clear in their purpose, conscious of their power and continuous in praise. I’d like to conclude with Paul’s challenge to them, as Eugene Peterson powerfully worded it in The Message:

And I ask [God] to strengthen you by his Spirit … that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!

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[1] Tertullian, Apology, ch 39

[2] https://ugandansatheart.blogspot.com/2015/04/uah-emarchbishop-sabitis-near-fatal.html

“She lay at his feet” (Ruth 3:1-11)

 

When you think of a romance story what comes to your mind? For the more literary types among us it might be Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or Charlotte Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. For others of us perhaps it could be something more like one of the many dozens of novels of Danielle Steele. Or if you want to go all the way, there is Canada’s contribution to the genre, the epic Harlequin novels, whose output surpasses well over 100,000,000 copies every year under more than a thousand titles.

Yet, when it comes down to it, I don’t believe there is anything that can surpass the little story that we began to look at four Sundays ago—the Book of Ruth. The great German poet and playwright Goethe praised it as “the loveliest complete work on a small scale”. Rudolf Alexander Schröder, a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, declared, “No poet in the world has written a more beautiful short story.”

In the original Hebrew it comprises barely two thousand words—not that much longer than a good-sized high school essay. Yet even across an expanse of well over three thousand years after the events it portrays, it continues to speak to our hearts and to hold a beauty and an attractiveness that are impossible to surpass.

Now I’m not sure that Pastor Marvin intentionally timed it this way, but this evening at sundown will mark the beginning of the three-day Jewish festival of Shavuot. Shavuot is Hebrew for “weeks” and it gets its name because it comes seven weeks (that is, a week of weeks) after Passover. It coincides with the celebration accompanying the annual wheat and barley harvest—and it goes all the way back to the days of Moses. In the book of Exodus we read:

You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest… The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. (Exodus 34:22; 23:19)

So it is that the events we are reading about this morning from the Book of Ruth occurred at exactly this time of the year. And in Jewish homes and synagogues around the world this very evening people will be gathering to read the Book of Ruth. But that’s enough of an introduction to this morning’s passage. Let’s turn to chapter 3 of Ruth and see what the Holy Spirit has there to teach us…

Lying at Boaz’s feet

It has been a long day in Boaz’ fields. The temperatures in that part of the world at this time of year can easily climb into the low thirties on the Celsius scale. So picture Boaz and his farmhands at the end of the day—their faces red from the heat and running with beads of sweat, their backs and muscles aching. And now, having enjoyed a hearty meal, their stomachs would have been full—and I can imagine they may all have been feeling a little heady from the wine. So it could hardly have taken them long to fall into a deep and well-deserved sleep.

All of this would no doubt have been in Naomi’s mind when she pulled aside her daughter-in-law Ruth. Naomi had a plan. She had mapped it out carefully and worked out every detail. “Wash and anoint yourself with perfume. Get all dressed up in your finest clothes and go down to the threshing floor. But don’t let him know you’re there until the party is well under way and he’s had plenty to eat and drink. When the man lies down and falls asleep, keep an eye out for where he is resting. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down…”[1]

Now at this point you may be asking yourself, what was that all about? What was going through Naomi’s mind when she gave Ruth those instructions? And what was the point of bending down to uncover Boaz’s feet?

If we look through the Old Testament, we will find that this is not the only place where something not all that different from this takes place. Many years later, for example, in the days of the kings there was a Shunammite woman whose son the prophet Elisha had miraculously brought back from death. When she entered her son’s room and set her eyes on him—no longer dead but very much alive—she bowed down to the ground and fell at Elisha’s feet. (2 Kings 4:32-37)

Then when we turn to the Psalms, we read how

The Lord, the Most High, is to be feared,
  a great king over all the earth.
He subdued peoples under us,
    and nations under our feet. (Psalm 47:2-3)

To place ourselves at the feet of another person is an act of respect and submission. It is to acknowledge the power, the authority, of that individual. Feet are dirty, particularly if you’re wearing sandals and working the soil. So for Ruth to lie at Boaz’s feet was a powerful symbolic act that she was humbling herself in his presence, placing herself under his authority, giving herself over to him.

Now remember that before she lay down Ruth had carefully uncovered Boaz’s feet. And just as it can become quite hot during the day, the temperature under the starlit sky can go down by fifteen or more degrees—with the result that Boaz was likely to have felt his feet becoming a little chilly in the early morning pre-dawn hours and woken up. And when he looked up, there to his surprise was that same young woman whom he had spotted gleaning in his fields. “Who are you?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. “I am Ruth, your servant…,” came the reply.

Falling at Jesus’ feet

Now I’m going to leave the story of Ruth there. And let’s fast forward ahead nearly twelve centuries, to the time of Jesus. We are by the Sea of Galilee and Jesus is being followed by a large crowd. Suddenly out of nowhere one of the prominent leaders of the local synagogue rushes up to him and falls at his feet. It is an act of desperation. His little girl is at the point of death and he has nowhere else to turn (Luke 8:41).

On another occasion Jesus is in Gentile territory in an attempt to take a break and get away from things. Yet even there his fame follows him and a Greek woman, whose daughter is demon possessed, finds out about him and falls at his feet, begging him to free her from her affliction. (Mark 7:24-26)

Now we move south to Bethany, just fourteen kilometers from the fields where Boaz in a former time had raised his crops and where Ruth had lain at his feet. This time we are not in a farmer’s field, but in the home of a well-to-do Pharisee, where he has invited Jesus to dinner. There they were, reclining around the low table and enjoying the food, when out of nowhere there appears a woman who was known (perhaps embarrassingly to some of those who were present) to have something of a less-than-honourable reputation.

Silently weeping, she comes up from behind, kneels down and begins to wipe Jesus’ feet with her tears, to kiss them, and to rub perfume on them with her hair. I can only imagine that the people around the room tried to look aside with silent gasps, as nobody could think of words to say. When someone finally did speak, it was with harsh criticism. But Jesus recognized that what she had done was a profound act of devotion. (Luke 7:36-38)

Again in Bethany we are at the home of the two sisters Mary and Martha. While Martha is busying herself over pots and pans in the kitchen, Mary is at Jesus’ feet drinking in all that he has to say. Finally Martha gets fed up to the point that she complains. But Jesus replies, “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42)

Now I cite all of these incidents because they are not isolated. In each case the people involved were recognizing Jesus’ divine power and authority. And they anticipate the day when we will do the same, when with them and with all creation you and I will bend our knees before the throne of the Lamb. And together we will cry aloud,

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honour and glory and power,
for ever and ever! (Revelation 5:13)

Jesus washes the disciples’ feet

It is a glorious picture. And if we were to end here, we would certainly be leaving on a high note. Yet if we are to gain a fully biblical perspective, if we want to truly find the mind of Christ in all of this, there is one more incident that we dare not overlook. This time we are in the upper room where Jesus is about to share in his last meal with his followers.

As the scene opens, the gospel gives us a glimpse into what was going on in Jesus’ mind. John writes, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper…” And then, what did he do? John tells us, “He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it round his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (John 13:3-4)

At this point we might think to ourselves, shouldn’t it have been the disciples who bent down before Jesus’ feet? But no, it was Jesus who knelt before them and washed their feet. Now Peter recognized the craziness of this and objected loudly. “No, you shall never wash my feet!” But Jesus had his way and Peter and the other disciples learned a lesson that would remain with them for the rest of their lives.

So what are we to learn from all of this?

My thoughts go back many years ago to when I was pastor of a church in Montreal. Each year our local seminary would send a student to spend time in the church and to gain some practical experience of pastoral ministry.

Now there was a retired bishop who lived in the seminary at the time. He was a deeply godly man who would be up every morning well before sunrise to take time with the Lord in Bible reading, worship and prayer. And he had the look and sound of a bishop too, with his white hair and sonorous, resonant voice. One day he invited my student to join with him in a ministry he had, visiting patients in the local chest hospital. They came to one man whose illness was so serious he had to be on breathing assistance and was unable to do anything for himself. The bishop, who always wore his clerical collar and bishop’s purple shirt with his large pectoral cross draped over it, asked if there was anything he could do for him. My student expected that the man might ask for prayer or perhaps a Bible reading. But he was caught by surprise when the man answered, “Yes, would you give me a shave?”

Without a moment’s hesitation the good bishop went off and found a razor, some shaving soap and a basin, filled it with warm water and gave the man his shave. It was a lesson in humble service that my student would never forget (and obviously neither have I!).

“You call me Teacher and Lord,” said Jesus, “and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant^[ is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” (John 13:13-17)

As Ruth lay at the feet of Boaz, so our Lord Jesus—the one before whom every knee will one day bow—this same Jesus calls you and me to walk that same path of humility and servanthood, “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” (Matthew 20:28) Are you ready for the adventure?

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[1]     Taken from The Message version by Eugene Peterson

“Your King is Coming” (Matthew 21:1-11)

The ancient world out of which our Scriptures arose was a succession of mighty empires that swept across the Middle East. There had been the Egyptian Empire (1560-1069 bc), followed by the Assyrian Empire (1300-612 bc), after which came the Persian Empire (550-330 bc). But by far the greatest of them all was the Macedonian Empire (338-136 bc). This vast domain covered a swath of land occupying over five million square kilometers. It stretched from modern-day Greece eastwards through what are now Bulgaria and Romania, Turkey and Armenia, Iraq and Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, southwards through Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel, and across northern Africa through Egypt and Libya to the fringes of the Sahara Desert. It would not be exceeded in area even by the mighty Roman empire at its peak five centuries later. And all of this was the doing of one man: Alexander the Great, unquestionably one of the mightiest conquerors in all of history.

Now come to the city of Jerusalem in the year 331 bc. A message has arrived that Alexander himself would be paying a visit. To understand what this meant, you need to know that Jerusalem had refused to ally with Alexander as his armies battled against the Persian empire. So when they were brought the news that Alexander himself was coming to their city, its leading citizens began to spin into a frenzy, fearing the worst. They were certainly in no position to defend themselves, so they went to extravagant lengths to try to wow him and head off disaster.

Four centuries later the story was still being told. Here is what Jewish historian Josephus would write of that visit:

Jaddus the high priest, when he heard [the news of Alexander’s planned visit], was in an agony, and under terror, as not knowing how he should meet the Macedonians, since the king was displeased at his foregoing disobedience. He therefore ordained that the people should make supplications, and should join with him in offering sacrifice to God, whom he besought to protect that nation, and to deliver them from the perils that were coming upon them. Whereupon God warned him in a dream … that he should take courage, and adorn the city, and open the gates; that the rest should appear in white garments, but that he and the priests should meet the king in the habits proper to their order…

Josephus continues:

Alexander was not far from the city [when Jaddus the high priest] went out in procession, with the priests and the multitude of the citizens… When Alexander saw the multitude at a distance, in white garments, while the priests stood clothed with fine linen, and the high priest in purple and scarlet clothing, with his mitre on his head … he approached by himself … and saluted the high priest. The Jews also did all together, with one voice, salute Alexander, and encompass him about…

Just try to picture the scene in all its grandeur: Standing at the gate, the high priest and his entourage robed in their finest ceremonial attire. Behind them stretches a numberless crowd all clothed in white. Even for a great conqueror such as Alexander it must have been an impressive sight.

Applauded

Now let’s move ahead three and a half centuries. Jerusalem is bustling with pilgrims from every corner of the known world, all preparing for the feast of Passover. It is likely that its population of less than 100,000 swelled to twice that amount on those occasions, so you can just imagine the chaos: narrow streets swarming with pilgrims, and having to elbow and jostle your way even to make the least progress to get anywhere.

At this point Jesus and the disciples are just outside the city proper, standing on the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives rises about three hundred feet above Jerusalem itself (about twice the height of Citadel Hill) so you can imagine the panoramic view they had of the city across the Kidron Valley. It was from there that Jesus gave instructions to two of his followers to bring him a donkey with her colt. And so, as the next scene unfolds, you can picture Jesus riding slowly down the hill towards the city gate.

Perhaps some people had already seen him coming from across the valley and begun to tell others. Soon what started out as a quiet entry into the city became a royal procession, as onlookers began to spread their cloaks along the dusty road, while others took branches they had cut from the trees and laid them on the ground. All the while people were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

It is amazing, even without social media like Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, how widely and rapidly news could travel in the ancient world. Maybe there were some who had heard of Jesus’ miracles along their way to the Passover festival. Perhaps others had even witnessed them themselves—the healing of ten lepers, the restoring of sight to a blind man, the astonishing change of heart to Zacchaeus the tax collector… Perhaps still others had heard his arresting parables about the lost sheep, or the prodigal son, or the rich man and the beggar Lazarus, or the Pharisee and the tax collector… And, while this would have aroused the animosity of some, there would have been more than a few who had found themselves being irresistibly attracted to this remarkable man.

Added to that was the fact that there was a widespread expectation of a coming Messiah. Peter and the other disciples had long arrived at the firm conclusion that this was indeed who Jesus was. And by this time there were others who were beginning to ask themselves the question if this Jesus might not himself be the long promised Saviour-King (John 7:40-41).

So it is that we are confronted with the narrow streets of Jerusalem crowded with people cheering with Hosannas and waving their branches of palm. Excitement filled the air. The sense of anticipation was palpable. As we look back upon the scene, I wonder if this ought not to be our model, not just for Palm Sunday, but for every Sunday as we gather to celebrate the King of kings. It is a tragedy when worship becomes a routine for us—or even worse for some, a chore.

In my Anglican tradition, early in the service the worship leader would greet the congregation with the exhortation, “Praise ye the Lord!”. To which the congregation would reply, “The Lord’s name be praised!” Being Anglo-Saxons, that response was often rather muted, dare I say half-hearted? But let’s all stand up and imagine for a moment that we are on one of the streets of Jerusalem and Jesus is passing by…

Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!

Abandoned

But we move on now to another location, once again a short distance outside the walls of Jerusalem—but this time not the picturesque Mount of Olives, rather what was known as the Place of the Skull, Golgotha, the execution ground. It is five days later. Gone is the excitement of Palm Sunday. The cheers of “Hosanna!” are not even a faint echo anymore. Only days later they had given way to angry calls of “Crucify him!” Now even those shouts have faded into the eerie quietness of Calvary. Gone are the crowds, their places taken by a small cohort of Roman guards, a few of the religious officials and the occasional passerby. Not far away a few women and a teenage boy stand in grief-stricken silence.

For the Romans crucifixion was a favourite means of punishment, combining both sadistic, drawn-out torture and execution, and standing as a public warning to any who dared to join in opposition against the imperial régime. A hundred years before Jesus’ crucifixion, after a lengthy slaves’ revolt, six thousand crosses had lined the Appian Way.

In the end, though, it would not be the waving palms and the shouts of “Hosanna!” that would endure. No, it would be the cross of Calvary and the parched cry that continues to echo down the centuries: “Father, forgive them…”

A generation later a former persecutor of Jesus’ followers would write, “[Some] demand signs and [others] seek wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called … Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:22-24) And again, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14)

“There is … no Christianity without the cross,” wrote Bible teacher and author John Stott. “If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.”[1]

Every time we look at the cross, [he wrote elsewhere] Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.[2]

And I would want to add, it is there, at the cross, that we also discover that you and I, flawed and wayward sinners though we be, are of infinite worth to our Father God.

Acclaimed

Which brings us to a third scene—and it is another palm procession, not on the dusty streets inside the gates of Jerusalem, but on the streets of gold in the holy city of God. It comes to us in the Book of Revelation:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing round the throne and round the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.”

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

“Therefore they are before the throne of God,
     and serve him day and night in his temple;
     and he who sits on the throne
              will shelter them with his presence.
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
     the sun shall not strike them,
     nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
     and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

 (Revelation 7:15-17)

It is a remarkable scene, that stretches beyond the limits even of the wildest imagination. It sends chills down my spine every time I read it. It reveals to us that the celebration of that first Palm Sunday and our celebration today are but a preview, a rehearsal if you will, of the surpassing joy that awaits us, when we put our trust in Christ and in what he has won for us by his death on the cross.

Today, on this Palm Sunday, we look ahead not only to the events of Good Friday and Easter. We look beyond them to when you and I will gather with countless myriads of God’s people from every continent and century to rejoice before the throne of our crucified, risen, ascended and glorified Saviour. But that can happen only as we can speak with the Apostle Paul of the Saviour “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Those words are reflected so beautifully in the song,

It was for me he cried, for me he died,
For me he shed his blood upon a tree.
It was for me he came, for me his shame;
For me, oh praise his name, it was for me.[3]

And so let me ask: Have you stood at the foot of the cross? Have you looked up at the one hanging there and recognized that it was for you he suffered and bled and died—that it was your sins, your guilt, your death he took upon himself there?

Let’s take a moment to pray in silence, and use the opportunity to offer ourselves to Jesus, our glorious King, who is worthy of all praise, and who gave himself once and for all for you and for me and for our salvation on the cross…

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[1]     The Cross of Christ, 68

[2]     The Message of Galatians, 179

[3]     Dave Bolling, “It was for me”

“Growing into Spiritual Maturity” (Galatians 3:23-29)

 One of the great things about being a follower of Jesus is that you quickly discover that you are a member of a vast international family that encircles the entire world. I am not a huge traveller, but it has been my privilege to worship with other believers in such faraway places as Australia, Britain, France, Haiti, India and Libya. While some of the customs in each of those places may have differed somewhat and while we may have stumbled at points during the service, what was far more evident was the deep bond that we shared through our common faith in Jesus Christ.

I remember too the day we welcomed the first of several dozen refugees from Burma into the congregation where I served in Minnesota. Our primary means of communication initially was through an interpreter. And so much of what they were experiencing was utterly strange to them (not least the weather!). Yet there was no question that when they were with us they were at home among their spiritual family.

I suspect too that there are some in the congregation here this morning who, when they first came to Canada, found a number of our customs—things that seem perfectly normal to us—strange and mystifying.

In many ways, entering the world of the New Testament and meeting with the believers there is much the same. Some translation is required—and I am not speaking just from Greek to English. I’m also thinking of the many customs that were observed in the Jewish and Roman worlds of the first century that require sometimes considerable explanation if we are to gain a proper understanding of the message of the Bible.

For example, when Jesus told his parable about the woman and her lost coin, we may not be aware that her loss would amount to more than a hundred dollars in our world of today. Or when Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink (which may seem like a perfectly normal thing for us to do on a hot day), he was breaking with nearly a thousand years of open hostility.

Well, welcome to the churches in Galatia in the middle of the first century—in the midst of a culture about as far removed as any in our world today. If we are to gain a proper understanding of the message the apostle Paul was seeking to get across to them, we will need to go behind his words to delve into the cultural background that underlies them. So let’s turn to Galatians 3:23-29 and see what we can learn from these verses and how we can apply it to our lives today.

The Pedagogue

When you read the opening verse of this morning’s passage, it appears that Paul has a very negative view of the Old Testament. “We were held captive under the law,” he says, “imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.” It sounds as though the people of Old Testament times had been languishing in some kind of dark dungeon for fifteen hundred years.

And there are lots of people today who share that point of view about the Old Testament. On more than one occasion I have heard someone say to me, “I don’t like reading the Old Testament. It’s all about sin and punishment. I much prefer to read Jesus’ words about love and peace in the New Testament.” I don’t like to remind them that Jesus spoke about hell and judgement in some of the most vivid and frightening terms in the Bible. Just think of the parable of the rich man who ended up in anguish in hell and pleaded for Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue (Luke 16:19-31) or Jesus’ warnings to be careful not to be thrown into hell “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:44).

But I want to say that it was never Paul’s intention to be critical of the Old Testament. In fact, in the course of his thirteen letters Paul references the Torah forty-five times. He quotes from the prophets fifty-three times. And he draws from the psalms twenty-three times. Indeed, his reverence for the Old Testament scriptures comes out in the next verse of this morning’s passage. There he speaks of them as “our guardian until Christ came”.

Now the word our Bibles translates as “guardian” is has a very specific meaning. Elsewhere it is translated “guide” (1 Corinthians 4:15) and it refers to a servant whose duty was to conduct a boy to and from school, to teach him manners, and when necessary to inflict punishment. However, the guardian was not the child’s teacher. His role was simply to bring his charge to the teacher.

These guardians (the technical term was “pedagogues”) were often known for their harshness and strict discipline. Yet the fact is that many developed life-long relationships with their charges. Whatever the case, however, their duties came to an end when the boy reached the age of maturity.[1]

Paul recognized this fact. And he recruited it as a perfect image for the role of the Old Testament. Like the guardian who did not teach his charge, so the Old Testament cannot bring us to salvation. But through its stories and instruction about righteousness and sin, it brings us to the point where we can recognize our need for salvation and, more specifically, our need for a Saviour.

I rather like the way Eugene Petersen put verses 23 to 25 in The Message:

Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors … who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for. But now you have arrived at your destination…

The Toga

That was Paul’s first picture: the pedagogue responsible for bringing a child to his tutor. Paul’s second picture was another that was familiar to everyone living in the Roman Empire of the first century. And it was this:

In ancient Roman culture when a boy reached an age of somewhere around sixteen, he was considered to have entered maturity. Until that time he would always have been dressed in a child’s toga. Then, in a solemn family ceremony, he would discard the toga of his childhood and it would be replaced with the pure white toga of adulthood. From that day on, wherever he went, whatever he did, everyone would recognize him as a man.

Now we can’t be altogether sure about all the details involved in baptism in New Testament times—whether it was by immersion or sprinkling, whether it was in standing water or running water as some insisted, whether or not candidates removed their outer garments, and a host of other details.

However, we do know that very early on in the tradition of the church—and very much like the tradition of the toga—the newly baptized, on coming up out of the water, would be clothed in a white robe. That white robe was a visible reminder that Jesus had taken away the stain of their sins. More powerfully still, it was a dramatic anticipation of the day when they would join with that great crowd that we meet with in the book of Revelation—“the multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10)

Whatever the case, just as the young man of Roman times put on his adult toga, so you and I through faith have put on Christ. Elsewhere Paul writes about our calling to attain to maturity, “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13-15)

So it is that part of our calling in Christ is a challenge to spiritual maturity. When I was a very young Christian, a popular book that was doing the rounds had the title In Understanding Be Men. The title was based on the old King James Version of 1 Corinthians 14:20, which in our more contemporary translation of the Bible runs like this: “Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.”

What are the marks of a mature faith? I think the best list was given to us by Paul himself. He calls them the fruit of the Spirit, and we will come to them in a few weeks in our study of Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And if I could add a tenth, it would be humility: never to make the mistake of thinking we have arrived, that there is no more room for personal growth in our lives, but to keep on maturing in our faith—seeking to love Jesus and others more and more day by day.

The Church

So far Paul has focused on faith from an individual perspective. It is as though we have been looking at the individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle spread out across the table. Now in the last two verses Paul fits all those pieces together. And what emerges?

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. 

It is a glorious picture. Suddenly all the things that once seemed to make a difference and had the potential of dividing us pale into insignificance: nationality, status, gender… And no doubt Paul (and you and I) could continue the list: age, political persuasion, education, tattoos, musical preferences and a whole host of other things that differentiate us and could easily cause us to drift apart or even drive wedges between us. But our unity in Christ is far more valuable, infinitely more precious than any of those things.

I wonder how many of you are familiar with the law of entropy in physics. The law of entropy states that when left alone in its natural state, everything tends to greater and greater disorder. I had a friend who used to talk about the law of spiritual entropy. That is, when left to itself, everything in the church tends to greater and greater disorder—and sometimes even to outright chaos!

The challenge for you and for me is, that if we are to avoid that spiritual entropy, if we are to be the community that Paul is describing for us in these verses in Galatians, it takes commitment and it takes hard work. We can’t be satisfied just to be pew warmers.

Unfortunately, the way our church building is structured (and most church buildings for that matter) it looks as though the great majority of us are an audience, with a few performers on the stage. Well, in my Anglican tradition, the area of the church where you are sitting right now is called the nave. It sounds a lot like navy, doesn’t it? That’s because the two words are related. “Nave” means “ship”. And in olden days, long before engines or even sails were invented, ships were powered by oars. And that’s where you come in! You are the oarsmen. You are the ones who are meant to be powering the ship.

Now I know that there are already an awful lot of people putting in an awful lot of sweat to keep this ship moving ahead. (In fact sometimes I worry that some of them are going to burn themselves out!) But let’s each ask ourselves, “How can I use the gifts that God has given me to help make this church the Christ-honouring community that God is calling us to be—where people looking in from the outside say, ‘See how they love one another!’ and yearn to come in?” This was the kind of church that Paul was yearning for in Galatia. And this is the kind of church that the world is yearning for today.

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[1]     See https://scispace.com/pdf/the-figure-of-the-paidagogos-in-art-and-literature-eubcjb89ko.pdf