Sermon – “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 hostility!

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

Sermon – “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

Sermon – “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).

By and large we just 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

Sermon – “Some Things Bear Repeating” (1 John 2:7-14)

Last month Karen and I went on a road trip. It took us a little over 4400 kilometers in all, and along the way we enjoyed some wonderful scenery: the picturesque former mill town of Almonte just outside Ottawa, the quiet lakeside village of Haliburton, the thundering roar of Niagara Falls, the serene Thousand Islands, and the tree-covered slopes of New York’s Adirondacks and Vermont’s Green Mountains.

However, stunning though much of the scenery was along the way, none of that was the main intention of our trip. No, our real purpose was to spend time with relatives and friends from the past fifty or more years. And one of the highlights along the way was to worship with the church I had served more than forty years ago, back in the early 1980s. It was a delight to see faces and reminisce with worshippers we had not been with for decades. Admittedly there were those among us who had put on a little weight and others who had lost a little hair (and some of us both!). And the grey-bearded gentleman who read the Scripture had barely reached his teen years when we had last seen him. And there they were, continuing faithfully today.

Being with these people again was a living reminder that as believers and followers of Jesus Christ we are in it for the long haul. Jesus talked about the life of discipleship in terms of abiding in him, or as one rendering of the New Testament puts it, making ourselves at home with him.[1] And for his own part Jesus has promised that he will be with us to the end of the world. And that is what forms much of the background behind the First Letter of John, from which we have been reading over the past few weeks.

John is writing as a long-term pastor and he is writing looking back on his own even longer-term walk of discipleship with Jesus. We can’t be entirely sure, but the likelihood is that John was just a young teenager when with his brother James he left his fishing net behind in his father’s boat and heeded Jesus’ call to “Come, follow me.” Three years later he would be the only one of Jesus’ male disciples to be found standing by the cross. And the third morning after that he would be the first to peer inside the empty tomb and look with amazement on Jesus’ disused grave cloths lying discarded in a heap.

Now, as we read from the first of his three letters, the scene moves a thousand kilometers north, from Jerusalem to Ephesus, near the coast of what is modern-day Turkey. We learn from Irenaeus, who lived a generation later, that John ministered there until some point in the reign of the emperor Trajan.

Now Trajan ruled from 98 to 117 ad. So it is now approaching seventy years after the events in the gospel and John is nearing the end of a long and fruitful ministry. We don’t know much more about him, except for one little story that somehow managed to survive through the generations and was recounted three centuries or so later by Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin. It runs like this:

The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, ‘Little children, love one another.’ The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, ‘Teacher, why do you always say this?’ He replied with a line worthy of John: ‘Because it is the Lord's commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.’[2]

A word to all

Accurate or not, that little anecdote is certainly consistent with that we read in 1 John chapter 2 this morning. There we find John using his authority both as one who knew Jesus personally and as their long-term pastor to gently lay down the law with his congregation.

It was not as though he was coming up with anything new, says John. Indeed the commandment he was leaving with them was as old as Scripture itself, going right back to Moses. And it is this: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)

Of course John had been present when Jesus cited it as one of the two great commandments (Matthew 22:37-40). But then John had been there again when Jesus upped the ante, when he raised the command to love to a whole new level. It was on the night before he was to give up his life for them on the cross that Jesus said to his followers, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

What Jesus was challenging his disciples to, and what John was reminding his congregation of, was that the love to which Jesus calls us, the love that is to characterize the church, is not just a warm, fuzzy feeling. It is the love of which the apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13: a love that is patient and kind; a love that does not envy or boast, that is not arrogant or rude; a love that does not insist on its own way; a love that is not irritable or resentful—a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

You don’t have to think of it for long to realize that the Bible sets the bar pretty high for us! Yet all too often our love falls so far short of that. Sometimes it can be cool and formal at best. It’s great that we’ve adopted the practice of sharing the peace as a part of our worship, and that there are those who take the time and effort to make sure Sunday by Sunday that there is an opportunity for fellowship over a cup of coffee after the service. These are concrete expressions of the love that binds us together. And I know that that is just the tip of the iceberg, that both formally in our home groups and informally in other ways, again and again the love of Jesus is being demonstrated visibly and tangibly in our midst.

And that love is something we can never allow ourselves to take for granted. On the contrary, we need to treasure it and encourage it and to make every effort to ensure that it flourishes and deepens and grows. For it is fragile and it can all come tumbling down like a house of cards—sometimes over what are seemingly the tiniest of issues. And that is exactly what seems to have been happening in John’s congregation.

There is a part of me that is tempted to think that John addresses his readers as “children” because that was the way they were behaving. There were members who claimed to be living in the light of God’s love, yet within their hearts they were harbouring dark thoughts of bitterness and resentment towards their fellow believers. John does not reveal to us what the controversy was that sparked this state of affairs. Sometimes church squabbles can be triggered by the most insignificant of differences. Perhaps it was over the new colour of paint for the sanctuary. Or whether decaf should be served at coffee hour.

But then again there was a much deeper and more noble reason for John to call his congregation children. (By the way, he does it no fewer than thirteen times in the five chapters of this short letter.) His addressing them as such was not to demean or belittle them in any way. Rather, it was an expression of his deep and abiding affection for them, because spiritually they were his children. They had come to know God’s forgiveness through John’s proclamation of Christ and his blood shed on the cross. They had come into a personal relationship with him as their loving Father through John’s wise counsel. They had been born again, they had been nurtured and trained and helped to mature in their faith through John’s ministry.

A word to seniors

Yet although they had all of this in common, something was dividing them. And the fault line seems to have lain been between the older and the younger members of the congregation. So it is that John has two words of counsel for the “fathers”—for the senior members of the congregation and then another two for their juniors.

Speaking as a senior, I’m willing to admit that I can become set in my ways. It’s easy to slip into the habit of thinking that things were better the way they used to be, to long for the good old days. Yet that is a dangerous trap to fall into. Indeed, if we consider it for any length of time, we will likely come to the realization in most cases that the good old days weren’t really all that good after all, just different. And besides, it can be a dangerous thing to dwell in the past. Because in doing so, we stand a very good chance of missing the opportunities of the present.

One of the valuable lessons that I’m grateful I learned in the early days of my ministry was that there were women and men in the congregation whose perspectives and opinions I could value because they were able to take the long view of things. (Or as John puts it, they “know him who is from the beginning”.) They had lived through the high times and weathered the storms. They had seen fads that came and quickly faded away like the flowers of spring. But they also had the wisdom to recognize when God the Holy Spirit was leading us in new directions, to embark on new adventures—and perhaps to discard some of the things that had become hollow traditions, sometimes even impediments to the gospel.

I used to think of them privately as the wise old owls. And I don’t know what I, or we as a congregation, would have done without them. I continue to be humbled by their long-term commitment and service to Jesus and his church. And again and again I have found myself grateful both for their time-tested wisdom and also for their willingness to give the younger members of the congregation the rope and the freedom to try out new ideas, new approaches, and on some occasions to ward off disaster with some wise words of caution—and all without a hint of judgement or a critical spirit. How much we have to gain when we learn to listen with respect to the senior members of our congregation!

A word to the young

John’s words aren’t for the seniors only, however. He also has something to share with the younger members of the church. And by the way, John is not talking about the youth group here (although they too have important roles to play). The word John uses refers to those somewhere in the twenty-five- to forty-year-old bracket. These are people in the prime of life—people who are newly married, starting families, early in their careers.

It is all too easy for those important and significant commitments (commitments which I want to affirm are God-given) to mushroom and to consume all our time and resources, to the point where we have little energy left for anything else. (I don’t deny that embarking on a career and raising a family are hard work and take a lot of juggling!) Yet, as I have been grateful for the “wise old owls” I am also thankful to God for giving to me and to the churches where I have served those younger people who were willing to devote a significant portion of their time, their energy and their creativity to contribute and to follow through on fresh ideas and new directions given to them by the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes I find myself wondering why Jesus ever thought up the idea of the church. It can be so messy and complicated! Yet I thank God that over the years he has given me the opportunity to see that there is a riches when people from all different backgrounds and experiences, young and old, rich and poor, out of their common love for Jesus and energized by the Holy Spirit are committed to working together in the service of God’s kingdom.

My prayer is that we may be that kind of church. And indeed in many ways we are already that kind of church. We have old and young, students and retirees, young families and grandparents, single, married and widowed, ancestral Nova Scotians and newcomers from nearly a dozen different nations—all the ingredients for a powerful multi-generational, multinational witness here in Halifax. And so the question lies before us: Are we willing to lay aside our own agendas and follow God’s agenda—to use this wonderful variety he has given us, not to serve our own needs but to shine the light of Jesus into an increasingly dark and needy world?

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[1]     The Message, John 15:7

[2]     Commentary on Galatians, 6:10