“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

“Good News for All” (Galatians 2:1-10)

 

The little churches in Galatia were facing a serious issue—and they didn’t know what to do about it. It may seem surprising, but their problem revolved around the fact that they were growing. And the new people (there seemed to be more and more of them all the time!) just weren’t fitting in. It wasn’t just that they dressed a little differently (which they did). Or even that when they sat down to eat they preferred different types of food (which they did). In fact, when it came down to it, they weren’t familiar with any of the time-honoured traditions of the Galatian believers, which many of them regarded as sacred and unchangeable. Worse still, they didn’t see any reason why they should be required to conform to them.

A good many among the old guard were adamant that the newcomers should just be made to toe the line. Some of them were almost getting to the point where they were ready to say, “Play the game by our rules or pick up your marbles and take them somewhere else.” Yet there were others who took a more charitable attitude. They were equally insistent that God was calling their little community to welcome people of every sort and description into full participation their fellowship on the basis of faith and faith alone.

The problem (if we can call it that) was the result of the explosive growth of the Christian faith through much of the eastern Roman Empire. Two maps illustrate what was happening in the mid-first century. The first, from the perspective of around 45 AD, shows a Christian presence along the eastern Mediterranean coast, from Jerusalem in the south to Damascus in the north. Then there are three other little clusters around Antioch (in northwestern Syria), Tarsus (in southeastern Turkey) and Rome.

 

The second, from the perspective of just twenty or so years later, shows large swaths of Christian communities, stretching all up and down the eastern Mediterranean coast and throughout half of Turkey. In addition to that, they had spread to the two islands of Cyprus and Crete, right across the whole of modern-day Greece, and all along the southwest coast of Italy. 

 

It was a remarkable transformation. And we need to ask ourselves, what was it that happened over that short span of less than a generation to cause such explosive growth? Well, it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that from a human perspective the answer can largely be summarized in just one word—or more accurately, one man: Paul.

It began with a meeting he had had with Peter, James and John and the other leading apostles in Jerusalem. Much of that meeting revolved around the same issue that was causing such a kerfuffle among the believers in Galatia. And it was this: Was the church to be limited to Jews and those who conformed to Jewish ritual observances (the chief among them being circumcision)? Or was it God’s intention that its doors be thrown open more widely—indeed to the whole vast swath of humanity, to all who would open their hearts to Christ in faith? We can praise God that their argument had been met with nods of affirmation from around the room.[1]

Yet as I stand here in this pulpit this morning, I wonder if Paul and Peter and the others could ever have imagined it—that their meeting and the decision that arose out of it would set the agenda for the church for the next twenty centuries, right down to our own. So let’s take the next few moments to see how it began to outwork itself in the first. And for that we turn to the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

The gospel is permanent (1-5)

There Paul lays out for us three critical principles. The first is that the core message of the gospel does not change. It is permanent and undeviating. Looking back at that meeting with Peter and the other apostles, Paul could proudly and sincerely claim that the truth of the gospel had been preserved. And as a result of their decision the same message that transformed the lives of James and Peter and Titus and Barnabas (not to mention all those cantankerous believers to whom Paul was addressing this letter!) has touched and changed and continues to transform countless millions, if not billions, of lives right down to our present day.

Yet throughout the course of history there has always been pressure to tinker with it, to adjust it, to make it more exclusive in some cases, or to make it more palatable, supposedly to keep up with the times. And in every instance those changes have served not to strengthen its message but to dilute and weaken it and sometimes even to nullify it altogether.

Not many years later, Paul’s fellow apostle Jude would write to appeal to his readers “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). In Galatia the problem centred in those we might call the Judaizers. In the next generation, there would be the influence of a movement that went broadly under the title of Gnosticism, which sought to blend the Christian message with eastern mystical beliefs. Then there were the Docetists, who argued that Jesus was not fully human but only appeared to be so. In a later century there would be the Arians, who maintained that Jesus was not co-eternal with the Father, but a created being.

We could go on and on with a list of the heresies and false teachings that have afflicted the church and carried sincere Christians away from the faith right down to the present century, when there are those who question whether there even was a historical Jesus at all. And this is only to draw attention to a few of the dozens, if not hundreds, of heresies and deviations from the gospel that have continuously afflicted the church down through the generations.

The tragedy is that there have been sincere Christians who have been led astray by them. In doing so they unwittingly rob themselves of the freedom, the joy, the assurance, the newness of life and the genuine communion with the Father that the true gospel alone can bring.

We can be grateful for heroes of the faith like Athanasius. In his day the Arian heresy had captivated so many in the church that he entitled his argument against it, Athanasius Contra Mundum—“Athanasius Against the World”. In a later century there would be Martin Luther and his fellow Reformers, who called for a return to the simple message of the Bible and to the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ, rather than works, as the basis of entering a relationship with God.

For the believers in Galatia it would be Paul, who with his series of pleas and reprimands that we find in this letter would remind them and draw them back to the message that had brought them new life and hope and freedom in Jesus Christ.

The gospel is for all people (6-9)

The difficulty was that the Galatians had fallen under the impression that you had to be Jewish to be a real follower of Jesus—or at least that you had to conform to the laws and traditions of Judaism, if you truly wanted to be accepted into their fellowship. And that would have been a rather painful proposition for the men! Not to mention all the dietary and other restrictions that would have been involved.

However, the decision of the Jerusalem council had been clear. Paul had been given their full blessing to pursue his mission to the Gentiles, while the other apostles continued to evangelize among their Jewish brothers and sisters. A generation had elapsed since Jesus had entrusted his disciples with the commission to go and make disciples of all nations. The apostles in Jerusalem had confirmed it. And now it had taken an individual with the unique gifts and personality of the apostle Paul to put it into action. And he was not going to allow that divine commission to be compromised. He was determined that Jesus’ purpose for his church not be thwarted—to draw in men and women and children of every description, of every ethnicity and nationality, into his new humanity.

The sad thing is that in successive generations we have not always been very good at it. It has long been a well-known observation that 11 o’clock Sunday morning is the “most segregated hour in America.”[2]. And we should be careful not to point our fingers at the nation to the south. In Whitney Pier you can find a little white clapboard building called St Philip’s African Orthodox Church. It was founded just over a century ago in part because black people were regarded as second-class citizens by members of the predominantly white congregations. And I can point to similar examples here in Halifax as well.

On the bright side, I want to say (and I think I have said it before) that one of the factors that drew Karen and me to this church five years ago was when one Sunday someone asked the question how many nationalities were represented on the congregation that morning—and it turned out that there were eleven!

How vitally important it is, if we are serious about being true to the gospel and to Jesus’ purpose for his church, that we strive to maintain and encourage that kind of diversity, not only of nationality and race, but also of old and young, rich and poor, single and married, professionals and tradespeople and unemployed, university graduates and high school dropouts—and the list could go on and on. I can put it no better than words I first came across more than twenty years ago and that have stuck with me ever since:

The church appears as the first fruits of a new humankind, still in process of becoming … seeking to embrace, in express communion with the Creator God, the immense variety of what is human, their variety reconciled. Differences, then, far from being a source of conflict, would be an invitation to exchange and complementariness. Such is the dream of the living God.[3]

And this was Paul’s dream for the church too (not to mention the other apostles and Jesus himself!).

The gospel is practical (10)

But we would be remiss if we didn’t take a hard look at the apostles’ final request—to remember the poor. And we might note that the word translated “poor” here and elsewhere throughout the New Testament does not refer just to a person who is a little hard up or short of cash. It means someone who is utterly penniless, destitute, reduced to begging for a living.

I don’t believe that this instruction to remember the poor was just an afterthought, a kind of last-minute addendum. Quite the opposite: I am convinced that this was at the top of the apostles’ priority list from the outset of their ministry. Why? Because it reflects the very heart of God from the beginning of human history.

You can find it embedded in the Law God gave to Moses as the nation of Israel prepared to enter the Promised Land: “And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:10). We find it numerous times in the book of Proverbs:

Whoever despises their neighbour is a sinner,
     but blessed is the one who is generous to the poor.

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker,
     but whoever is kind to the needy honours God.

Rich and poor have this in common:
     The Lord is the Maker of them all.

Those who give to the poor will lack nothing,
     but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses.
                                                    (Proverbs 14:21,31; 22:2; 28:27)

When we turn to the New Testament, we find that Jesus’ first recorded words at the outset of his public ministry in Luke’s gospel were these:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
     because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
     and recovery of sight for the blind,
     to set the oppressed free,
     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. (Luke 4:18-19)

And do you remember his words to the rich young ruler who asked him what he needed to do if he was to inherit eternal life? “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Matthew 19:21)

But surely Jesus’ most dramatic words about the poor come in the unforgettable parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew’s gospel. There he commends the “sheep”, those who are given the place of honour at his right hand with these words:

“Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was ill and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you ill or in prison and go to visit you?”

The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 16:34-40)

Is there anything more that needs to be said?

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[1]     See Acts 15:1-21.

[2]     An interesting discussion of this observation may be found at https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/63141/who-originally-said-the-most-segregated-hour

[3]    Tillard, Jean-Marie R., “Spirit, Reconciliation, Church”, The Ecumenical Review, Vol. 42, nos. 3,4 (Jul-Oct, 1990): 237-249

“He will speak peace” (Psalm 85)

 

I wonder how many of you, when you’re reading a book, take time to examine the copyright page or read through the backflap or the author’s bio. I have to admit that as often as not I am one of those people. When I’m reading a book I can often find it helpful to know a little bit about who wrote it and his or her life and ideas. But I admit that I have never really carried that principle into my reading of the psalms. Perhaps you’ve scarcely noticed that a great many of the psalms are preceded by little introductory notes. Generally they are fewer than a dozen words. And they are usually printed in a different font from the psalm itself. So we just skip over them as though they didn’t really matter.

By and large that is totally understandable. Because nearly half of the psalms, and many of the most familiar and beloved, feature the name of King David: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” (Psalm 103) “O Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8) “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14) “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” (Psalm 19). And if there were a psalm hit list, the one that would come at the top: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23)

In addition to naming the author or composer, many of the psalms are also preceded by what are called superscriptions: “For the memorial offering” (Psalm 38), “A Song for the Sabbath” (Psalm 92), or “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God” (Psalm 90). Some offer us a little bit of their context or an event underlying their composition: “A song at the dedication of the Temple”(Psalm 30), “A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the Lord” (Psalm 102), or “A Psalm of David, when he fled from his son Absalom” (Psalm 3). Still others suggest a tune or other musical instruction: “For the flutes” (Psalm 5), “With stringed instruments” (Psalm 4), and one of my favourites, “According to the Dove on Far-off Terebinths” (Psalm 56).

For the most part we tend to ignore those little introductions. It’s almost as if they didn’t exist. But in doing so we run the risk of missing out on some potentially valuable insights. And this morning’s psalm is a case in point. It begins: “To the choirmaster. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah”. And it is one of a dozen psalms that are preceded by this attribution.

A song of peace

So I find myself asking, who were the sons of Korah? For an answer to that question we need to turn to the book of Numbers. There we find a man named Korah assembling a gang of 250 powerful men to challenge the leadership and authority Moses. “You’ve gone too far!” he shouted at him. “Why do you act like you’re running the whole show? What right do you have to act as though you’re greater than anyone else?”

Korah’s attempt to overthrow God’s appointed leader very quickly proved disastrous, as the next day the judgement of God fell upon him and his co-conspirators. Suddenly the ground underneath their tents began to shake violently, until it split apart into a chasm and they all plunged to their doom, never to be seen or heard from again.[1]

Indeed for the next two hundred fifty years or so the Bible makes no mention of the family of Korah. But then suddenly they turn up during the reign of King David—not as contemptuous rebels this time, but as faithful leaders of the instrumental and choral music of the tabernacle. They were also the composers of eleven of the most beautiful psalms in the Bible.

A number of them you will recognize in some of the popular hymns and songs we sing in the church today, three thousand years later: “As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.” (Psalm 42) “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme… my tongue is like the pen of a ready writer.” (Psalm 45) “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46) “Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with songs of joy!” (Psalm 47) “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God!” (Psalm 48)

Far from any evidence of arrogance or rebellion, their songs express a deep devotion to God and a humble longing for his presence. And that is exactly what we find in this morning’s psalm.

No one is entirely sure when Psalm 85 was composed or what the events were that lay behind it. Could it have been the response to a series of disastrous crop failures? Could it have followed the invasion and subsequent withdrawal by an enemy army? It might very well have been either or both of these things—or something else altogether—that caused the sons of Korah to compose this psalm, as Judah’s history by and large was a continuous series of ups and downs.

Whatever the case, it looks as though the crisis has passed and a fragile hope is beginning to stir in the hearts of God’s people once more. “But will it last?” some are asking themselves. “Is it realistic to imagine that things have really turned around?” In the midst of their faint optimism they still have lingering doubts, and we hear an echoing plea to the Lord:

Restore us again, O God… Put away your indignation…
Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you prolong your anger to all generations?
Will you not revive us again…?

It is clear that these people are still feeling a lingering pain. The crisis may have passed, but their wounds have not yet healed. And so in the midst of their sorrow and confusion, through their hesitation and doubts, the psalm encourages the people to stop and to listen: “Let me hear what the Lord God will speak…” And what is it that the Lord God will speak? The answer comes in the very next words: “He will speak peace to his people.”

The nature of peace

It is the psalmist’s unflinching conviction that peace, true peace, is God’s desire for each and every one of his people. That is the abiding message that we hear again and again through the Scriptures. It was the message of the angels announcing Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace…!” (Luke 2:14) It was among Jesus’ words of assurance to his disciples on the fateful night before his crucifixion: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) It was Jesus’ first word to his disciples following his resurrection: “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19) And it was while he was languishing in prison that the apostle Paul could write about the peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7).

One of the challenges for Christians in our day and age is that when the Bible speaks about peace, it is pointing to something distinctly different from what is popularly regarded as peace in our contemporary society. Today when many people think about peace, what comes into their minds? In my observation, as often as not their ideas are suffused with vague notions drawn from Eastern religions or pantheistic philosophies. Here is one definition I pulled off the internet:

Peace … is a profound sense of well-being and contentment that arises from an intimate connection with the divine or spiritual essence within and around us.

It all sounds very lovely, but definitions like that miss the mark by a wide margin.

I remember years ago attending a seminar focusing on how Christians can benefit from Eastern meditation techniques. My recollection may be a little vague, but I seem to recall that much of our day was spent trying to maintain a relaxed posture with our eyes closed and echoing the monosyllabic “Om, om…” again and again. I can’t say that I ended up feeling any more peaceful at the close of the session. (Perhaps a little more wound up would be closer to the truth!)

Now it’s not my intention to put down other religions. But what I do want to say emphatically is that that is not what the Bible means by peace. Shalom is, in essence, how things are meant to be. It is a slice of heaven. Peace—true peace—is not something we can ever drum up within ourselves, no matter how hard we may try. No, if we take what the Bible teaches seriously, peace is God’s gift. And that is the conviction that underlies Psalm 85.

Let’s take a look at it again. What does the psalmist say in verse 8? Not, “Let’s all take a few deep breaths and try to focus our minds on peace.” No, it’s “Let me hear what the Lord God will speak, for he will speak peace to his people…”

So what does the Bible mean when it uses the word peace? When it comes down to it, there is no single English term that can fully translate the Hebrew shalom. It means much more than the mere absence of conflict. Shalom carries within it the notion of fulfilment—of entering into a state of wholeness and unity, of restored relationships. Ideas of completeness and harmony are closer to its real meaning. In nearly two-thirds of its occurrences, shalom describes the state of fulfilment which is the result of God’s presence.[2]

It is generally agreed that the fullest and most eloquent expression of what shalom means was given to us by Moses’ brother Aaron in the book of Numbers: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

So we don’t look inside ourselves for peace. Because we’ll never find it there. No, with the sons of Korah we look instead to the Giver of peace. And we affirm with the apostle Paul, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” (Romans 5:1) God is the one who will speak peace to his people.

The gift of peace

But the sons of Korah are not finished. They have more to sing about peace. And we find it coming up in verses 10 and 11:

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Faithfulness springs up from the ground,
and righteousness looks down from the sky.
Yes, the Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.

Do you see the picture they are painting for us here? It may have been a challenge for the people to imagine, as they looked around and saw nothing but ruin and destruction. But what we have is the promise of the near approach of spring. The nation had lived through calamitous times, but now they could look forward to something better. Don’t let discouragement bring you down, the psalmists are singing to the people. It may seem like winter now, but spring will surely come.

I wonder if the sons of Korah could have imagined that their psalm would find its true fulfilment not in the temporary relief of a season of peace, but in a person—in the one whom the prophet Isaiah would hail as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6)?

In this Advent time we remember the long centuries through which God’s people faithfully awaited his coming. And we ourselves look forward to our celebration of the fulfilment of their hope in the birth of a tiny child in Bethlehem. And to hearing once again the hymn of the angelic chorus:

Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased! (Luke 2:14)

With the apostle Paul and with our fellow believers down through the ages and around the world we can joyfully proclaim, “He is our peace…” (Ephesians 2:14). Yet we must not allow the serene innocence of the manger scene in Bethlehem blind us to the fact that the peace that Jesus came to bring came at a cost—and it would be nothing less than his life’s blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1:20). It was there at the cross that, in the words of our psalm this morning, God’s perfect righteousness and God’s perfect peace finally and forever would kiss each other. The hope of Advent finds its fulfilment in the sacrifice of the cross.

It wasn’t the sons of Korah, but another Israelite, the prophet Isaiah, who wrote the beautiful words:

You will keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you… (Isaiah 26:3)

We have just over two weeks till we celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace. Amid the glitz and glitter, amid all the sales hype and the incessant message to “Spend, spend, spend!” may we intentionally keep our hearts and minds focused on our gracious God. And may you allow him to speak peace to your heart and to kiss you with his peace.

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[1]     See Numbers 16

[2]     See “shalom” in the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 931