“I will not let you go” (Genesis 32:22-31)

Have you ever been in a situation where there is something you didn’t want to deal with? Maybe it was a challenging issue at work. Maybe it was a tense relationship with a neighbour or a conflict with a family member. Or if you think back to your school days, perhaps it was a homework assignment. I can remember more than once burning the midnight oil (or to be truthful, the 2 a.m. oil!) to finish off a paper that was due the next morning.

Eventually the situation reaches the point where we realize we can’t postpone taking action any longer. Well, those are exactly the circumstances in which Jacob finds himself in this morning’s Old Testament reading.

Those of you who are familiar with his story will know that all his life Jacob had managed to succeed through trickery, through dishonesty and deceit. He was the master of the scam. And there had been an indication that this was the kind of person Jacob was going to be right from the time of his birth.

As you likely know as well, Jacob was a twin. His brother Esau was the first to be born. But Jacob emerged from his mother Rebekah’s womb with his tiny fist clenched tightly around his brother’s heel. In fact it was for that reason that he was given the name Jacob, which means something like “he clutches” or “he grasps”.

What happened at Jacob’s birth was the beginning of a pattern. And so it is that, as we follow the life of Jacob in the Book of Genesis we find him constantly grasping—first cheating his older brother Esau out of his birthright, later masquerading as his brother to steal their dying father’s final blessing along with his inheritance, and later still tricking his uncle Laban out of half his flocks of sheep. But now (to change the image) Jacob’s chickens had come home to roost.

Wrestling with God

As our passage opens this morning, Jacob is dreading what is about to happen. At their parting years before Esau had vowed to kill his brother. And it was only because their mother Rebekah had got wind of this and shared with him what she had found out that Jacob was able to make a hasty exit.

Now, after years of pent-up estrangement and hostility, what Jacob had been avoiding was on the verge of happening. Jacob was about to come face to face with his brother Esau once again. And Jacob quite rightly feared for his life.

As we meet him in this morning’s Old Testament reading, Jabob has been careful to ensure that his family and his flocks are safely out of harm’s way on the opposite bank of the River Jabbok. And there he sits, silent and alone, under the starlit sky.

Then the most peculiar thing happens. Suddenly Jacob finds himself wrestling with a figure who seemingly has come out of nowhere. Try to picture them, grappling with each other, throwing each other down, rolling back and forth on the grassy meadow under the starlit sky. Then, as the faint glimmer of the rising sun begins to appear over the eastern horizon, Jacob’s mysterious opponent strikes him on the hip socket and throws his hip out of joint.

However, Jacob was a tough customer. And he was not one to give up a fight. He was not going to let a mere dislocated hip stand in his way, and so he continued to wrestle with the stranger. It was at that point, seeing that Jacob was not going to call it quits, that the stranger said to him, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob was not going to let the stranger off so easily and was firm in his response: “I will not let you go before you have given me a blessing.”

So the stranger asks Jacob, “What is your name?” To which Jacob replies, “Jacob”—the grasper. “Your name won’t be Jacob any longer,” says the stranger, “From now on you will be called Israel—the God-Wrestler—for you have wrestled with God and you’ve made it through.” So Jacob called the spot where these strange goings-on happened “Peniel”, which means “the face of God”.

They wouldn’t let go

So what can we learn from this strange story from a strange land nearly four thousand years ago?

One of the things that I come away from this story of Jacob is that he was not willing to let go in his struggle with God. And Jacob was not unique. Later on in the Bible we meet with Job. As Job suffered the loss successively of his wealth, his sons and daughters, and finally his health, he continued to cling to his faith in God. In the midst of his unutterable pain and suffering, he declared to his friends, “Though [the Almighty] slay me, yet I will trust in him.” (Job 13:15)

In the New Testament we meet with the Apostle Paul, who shared with his friends in Corinth the sufferings he had endured over the course of his life:

Five times I have received … the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked… (2 Corinthians 11:24-27)

Yet in spite of all this, Paul would not relinquish his faith in Christ. And Paul was not unique. Recently I’ve been reading Letters and Papers from Prison by a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who joined the resistance against Adolf Hitler’s Nazi régime in Germany during World War 2. He was held in prison for a year and a half and then in a concentration camp for another six months before being finally executed. Yet it is clear that over the course of those years his faith in God only deepened and grew.

Christian history right down to the present day is peppered with the stories of women, men and children who have in spite of every kind of adversity and loss, have clung to their faith in God. Indeed, in most cases that faith was only deepened. Like Jacob in our Bible reading this morning, they would not let go.

The One who will not let us go…

Had the circumstances been different, you would have been witnesses to the baptism of three young people this morning. What a privilege it is to stand around the font and witness as people mark the beginning of a lifelong journey of walking with Jesus.

For twenty centuries Christians have been baptizing in obedience to Jesus’ final words to his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you…” (Matthew 28:18-20)

Baptisms are joyful events—and that is as it should be. Yet that joyful atmosphere can easily mask the seriousness of the vows we undertake. Listen to the words with which we address the candidates: “Will you persevere…?” “Will you seek and serve…?” “Will you strive…?” Those are strong words when you take a moment think about them! I don’t think I would be exaggerating to say they pose a superhuman challenge!

Yet we accept the challenge because when Jesus commanded the disciples to baptize, he also left them with a promise: “And remember,” he said to them, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

So it is that as we grasp onto the Lord in baptism, we recognize that we are being grasped by a hand that is infinitely stronger than our own—a hand that, no matter what life may throw at us, will never let us go. And so, with the apostle Paul we are able to proclaim, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

“Why did Jesus have to be baptized?” (Matthew 3:13-17)

My Oxford Dictionary defines the word “eccentric” as “odd or capricious in behaviour or appearance; whimsical”. I suspect there are a number of us who have had either friends or relatives they might describe as eccentric. I had an uncle who at one time ran a Shell gas station. Whether it was to save money or because he liked the colours, I don’t know, but he painted the exterior of his house in the same yellow and red. The neighbours didn’t like it, but it sure made it easy to find.

I don’t know if the statistics would bear me out, but it seems to me that the greatest concentration of eccentric people is to be found in the British Isles. There was, for instance, an officer of the British army in World War 2 known as “mad Jack Churchill”. He lived by the motto, “Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed”—and the sword he was referring to was the Scottish broadsword. In addition to his sword, he occasionally used a longbow. Early in the war he ambushed a German patrolman, shooting him with a barbed arrow. His shot earned him the title of the only British soldier to have felled an enemy with a longbow during the war.

Delving farther back into history, there was William Buckland. He was a clergyman and a brilliant geologist and palaeontologist, who lived in the early nineteenth century. He was known to have occasionally delivered his lectures on horseback and his obsession with the animal kingdom knew no bounds. The result was that his home was literally a zoo. Besides this, he was famous for eating animals of every species and placing them before his dinner guests. Various people who sat at his table recall being served panther, crocodile and mouse. Among the few creatures that did not suit his taste buds were moles and bluebottle flies.

Perhaps he was not as far along the eccentricity spectrum as William Buckland or Jack Churchill, but I do believe there is an argument that the man we meet with in this morning’s Bible reading falls somewhere into that category. He is John the Baptist (or John the Baptizer). Matthew describes John’s clothes as being made from camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waste, and that he lived on a diet of locusts and wild honey. (As an aside, locust eating probably wasn’t all that eccentric. Locusts were commonly eaten by the poorer people of that region and were an efficient source of protein.)

John’s message was uncompromising. He had no fear about exposing the hypocrisy of religious leaders, the corrupt practices of the tax collectors or the bullying tactics of the Roman soldiers—and ultimately his fearless denunciations would lead to his death. At the same time there were those who found John’s challenging message of repentance deeply attractive. And they came in droves to the grassy banks of the Jordan River.

However, John always recognized that his mission was only an anticipation of something far greater. And he knew its fulfilment was around the corner when one day he spotted Jesus in the crowd. “I baptize with water,” he said, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (John 1:26-27; Matthew 3:11-12). Then something that had never entered John’s mind began to happen. Jesus walked forward and stepped down into the water. John was aghast. “I’m the one who needs to be baptized by you,” he protested. “So what are you doing coming to me?”

And that’s the question I want to ask this morning. Why did Jesus feel the need to be baptized? And what did he mean when he said it was “to fulfil all righteousness”? I think the answer is threefold.

Submission

In the baptism of Jesus the gospels give us a unique picture of the Holy Trinity. As the Son emerges from the water, we see the Holy Spirit coming down as a dove and alighting on him, and we hear the voice of the Father pronouncing, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Before I say anything else, let me state that at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity there will always remain a mystery. We can skirt around the edges of it, but we can never fully penetrate it. Theologians have sought to clarify it, yet sometimes their explanations can leave us more confused than when we began. The most helpful approach I have found is through the picture of a dance. Eugene Peterson put it this way:

Imagine a folk dance, a round dance, with three partners in each set. The music starts up and the partners holding hands begin moving in a circle. On a signal from the caller, they release hands, change partners, and weave in and out, swinging first one and then another. The tempo increases, the partners move more swiftly with and between and among one another, swinging and twirling, embracing and releasing, holding on and letting go. But there is no confusion; every movement is cleanly coordinated in precise rhythms … as each person maintains [their] identity. To the onlooker, the movements are so swift it is impossible at times to distinguish one person from another; the steps are so intricate that it is difficult to anticipate the actual configuration as they appear.[1]

So it is, at the baptism of Jesus, that for a brief moment in time the curtain is lifted and we are given a glimpse of the eternal dance of the Trinity—a still shot, if you will. Here we see the Son empowered by the Spirit in humble and willing submission to the Father. And that is Jesus’ posture not only at his baptism but throughout his ministry, and indeed through eternity.

We hear it repeatedly from his own lips: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” Jesus told his followers (John 4:34). “I do not seek to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30). “I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me” (John 14:31). And we see his unwavering commitment to that purpose most poignantly demonstrated in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. There we find Jesus falling with his face to the ground as he prays, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

As Jesus stepped down into the Jordan to be submerged under the water, then, it was not as an act of repentance as John supposed, but as a public witness for all to see, to his complete commitment to the Father’s will. As he would later tell his followers, “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).

Solidarity

There is a second purpose that underlies Jesus’ baptism. That is, that it was not only an act of submission to the Father’s will but also an indication of his solidarity with the human race—with you and with me. Jesus was demonstrating in a visible, physical way that he is one with us, one of us.

Some of you may remember when the Queen visited Halifax in 1994. Part of her itinerary was to take her along Barrington Street. At that time Barrington was already well down along its slide from its former glory in the first half of the century. “Seedy” and “run down” would be a kind way to describe the way it looked. So the government spent thousands of dollars on temporary cosmetic improvements to some of the surrounding buildings. The result was that the street took on the appearance more of a movie set than of a real place. For some reason someone among the powers-that-be was of the opinion that the Queen should not be exposed to things as they really were.

Well, not so with the Son of God. When Jesus came to our world, he did not come as a visiting dignitary. The opening verses of John’s gospel emphatically tell us that the eternal Son of God became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14). As preachers such as myself are keen to point out, a literal translation of that verse is that “he pitched his tent among us”. What that means is that Jesus did not just come for an overnight visit—touch down, see a few of the sights and then fly off again. And he did not live in a palace, surrounded by all the luxury that this world is able to provide. No, he came as an ordinary man and over the course of thirty-three or however many years, experienced all that it is to be human.

Being baptized in the muddy waters of the Jordan was for Jesus a concrete way of conveying that this was what he was doing. As he plunged under the water, he was physically identifying with all those who were responding to John’s message—not standing on the bank in silent observation but throwing himself in with our lot, becoming one with us, immersing himself in our condition and all that that entails.

Sacrifice

Jesus’ baptism, then, was an outward and visible sign of his total submission to the Father’s will. And it was a sign of his solidarity with you and me in our human lot. But I believe there was also a third meaning to be found in what he did that day. And it is revealed in a couple of conversations he had with his followers some time later.

The first of them came while Jesus was teaching a large crowd. He had warned them in a parable of how they must be ready for the coming of the Son of Man. At that point Peter came to him privately and asked if the parable was just for them or for everyone. Part of Jesus’ response consisted of these words: “I have a baptism to undergo, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50) I can only imagine that Peter must have been mystified by those words. Nevertheless they stuck with him and lodged in his mind.

On another occasion two of Jesus’ followers came to him asking, “Let us sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.” To which Jesus replied, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38) Again Jesus’ words were met with incomprehension.

Yet, while the disciples failed to grasp the implications of what Jesus was saying at the time, it became clear to them later that what he had been referring to was his death. So it was that, even at this beginning point in his ministry, there loomed before him the shadow of the cross. As Jesus descended into the waters of the River Jordan, he was also looking ahead to the day when he would be plunged into the deeper waters of death—when he would willingly offer himself up for you and for me on the cross.

There he would take upon himself not only our humanity but our sin. There he would bear the full weight of our waywardness and rebellion. And he did it so that you and I might be freed to be the men and women that God created us to be, to be human in the truest, fullest sense. He did it so that you and I might join in the joyful dance of the Trinity and one day hear our Father’s voice pronouncing, “This is my beloved son, this is my beloved daughter…”

Today, as we remember the baptism of Jesus, may it help us to recognize him as the one and only Son of God, completely submissive to the Father’s will. May we know his presence, walking alongside us, sharing our joys and our pains, our hopes and our disappointments. And may we live in gratitude that the road that began with his baptism was the road that led him to Calvary—that he was pierced for our transgressions and that by his wounds we have been healed.

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[1]     Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 44-45

“The Freedom of Obedience” (Romans 6:15-23)

I want you to take a moment to try to form a picture in your mind. We are looking down to the narrow pass that separates the twin slopes of Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal in Palestine. There beneath us is a vast crowd of the Israelite people. They have gathered at the behest of their mighty leader, Joshua, who has led them into victory after victory as they have laid claim to the land which God had promised them through Abraham centuries before. Now the battles are over. One by one the fortress cities of the Canaanite people have been conquered and the Israelites can look forward to peace in their land.

No longer the powerful young warrior that he once was, nevertheless there is still a commanding power in Joshua’s voice. The nation, he tells them, has come to a crossroads. They are free to settle in the land that God has given them. However, now they must make a choice. Will they worship the Lord and serve him in faithfulness? Or will they turn to the false gods of their ancestors? “If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you,” Joshua calls out to them, “then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…” From the depths of the valley a mighty roar rings forth. “We will serve the Lord,” the people cry, “because he is our God.”

As the noise subsides, Joshua speaks again. “You are not able to serve the Lord,” he protests. “He is a holy God; he is a jealous God.” But again the unanimous cry thunders forth: “No! We will serve the Lord.” Again Joshua waits for silence and speaks. “You are witnesses against yourselves,” he warns them, “that you have chosen to serve the Lord.” A third time the cry echoes down through the valley, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”

In the lives of all of us there are certain defining moments, moments that set the course for much of our future lives. The moment you earned your very first dime; the moment you left home to live in independence from your parents; the moment you said, “I will…” These are some of the defining moments in our lives. And this was such a moment for the nation of Israel.

Another defining moment has occurred at St Paul’s Church this morning. Today in the sacrament of baptism three people, two infants (through their adult sponsors) and one adult, have expressed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and their desire to follow and serve him. In the washing of water they have visibly demonstrated their wish to die to sin, evil and injustice and to share in the life of Christ.

Baptism is a visible sign of what it means to become a Christian. It is a defining moment in life. As the people of Israel did at Shechem, we are saying, “We will worship the Lord our God and him only will we serve.” But what does this mean? Is what we are talking about a mere symbolic act, a matter of words? In response to this kind of thinking, in verse 2 of chapter 6 and in the opening verse of this morning’s passage from Romans, Paul uses an expression which we find from time to time in his letters. Our New International Version Bibles translate it, “By no means!” In Greek it is me genoito, which the King James Bible translates, “God forbid!” Perhaps the best way of rendering it today might be, “No way!” And so to those who would argue that becoming a Christian doesn’t make any difference to the kind of people we are, Paul responds, “No way!” To those who would want us to think that faith in Christ has no impact on our daily lives, he replies, “No way!” Then in the verses that follow he goes on to explain his answer.

Two kinds of slavery

For his explanation he uses the image of slavery. In the Roman world of Paul’s day there were sixty million slaves, and there can be no doubt that among those who first read his letter in Rome there were some who were themselves slaves. William Barclay gives us some idea of how masters could abuse their slaves the first century:

Pliny tells how Vedius Pollio treated a slave. The slave was carrying a tray of crystal goblets into the courtyard; he dropped and broke one; on the instant Pollio ordered him to be thrown into the fishpond in the middle of the court, where the savage lampreys tore him to pieces.[1]

In truth few masters ever displayed such cruelty to their slaves. In some cases slaves were better educated than their masters, had positions of great trust in the household and were treated with respect. But suppose, Paul suggests to us, you were the slave of a master such as Vedius Pollio and his lot, who treated you with cruelty and contempt from sunrise to sunset every day of your life. Then suppose you had the opportunity to come into the service of a master who was fair and kind, who graciously looked after your needs and treated you only with dignity and respect. Would you choose to go back to your former master? Me genoito! God forbid! No way!

This, says Paul, is exactly what the Christian life is all about. We can be slaves to sin. Or we can be set free from sin to be slaves to God. The choice is ours, and each has its consequences.

Slavery to sin

To be a slave to sin is to be trapped in a downward spiral. Paul uses three words to describe what is involved. The first of them is “impurity” in verse 19. For the ancient Jews impurity or uncleanness was a technical term. It had to do with one’s fitness to join in the religious observances of the nation. If you had a certain type of skin disease or had been in contact with a dead body or if you were a woman in her period or had recently given birth, you were considered “unclean”. But in the New Testament Jesus turns that around.

Nothing outside a person can make that person ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that makes him ‘unclean’. … For from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean’ (Mark 7:15,21-23).

What the Bible is saying, then, is that to be a slave of sin means that we become tainted inside, in the realm of our hearts and minds. We do things that we know are wrong because “Everyone else does it, so why shouldn’t I?” We secretly gloat over our fellow workers’ failures because somehow we think it makes us look better. We embroider the truth a little bit when we talk about others, just to give the story a little more spice. This is the kind of thing the Bible means when it speaks about impurity. It is the direct consequence of being in slavery to sin—to all the negative forces in our lives—and the list could go on and on. But Paul has more to say.

Impurity is not the only consequence of our enslavement to sin. Paul goes on to speak about “ever-increasing wickedness”. In Greek the expression means something like “lawlessness which leads only to further lawlessness”. The actual word Paul uses is anomia, which some of us might recognize in the French word anomie. Anomie is a word we hear today to describe the spiritual decadence which is undermining our society inch by inch. We become inured to the outrageously violent words of rap music which pollute our young people’s minds and ears with thoughts about breaking women’s backbones and forcing fellatio on them till they puke, or perhaps even defend it as artistic expression. We criticize governments that move to limit child pornography on the Internet in the name of free speech. We worship athletes and pop stars who leap into bed with literally hundreds of sex partners.

The outcome of such lawlessness can only be anarchy and the general collapse of our society as we know it—and finally the ultimate decay, which is death itself. The progression is easy to follow. Bondage to the forces of sin taints and distorts or inner being. This impurity of heart and mind inevitably leads on a social level to lawlessness and decadence. And that in turn delivers us to that state of being (or non-being) which we call death, where life has been sapped of all of its God-given beauty and meaning. It is a tragic picture.

Freedom in Christ

Right beside it, however, Paul gives us another picture, an altogether different one. The picture this time is not slavery to sin, but slavery to God and to Christ (which, ironically, the Bible tells us, is true freedom). The contrast between the two forms of slavery is total. As with slavery to sin which leads to impurity, lawlessness and death, slavery to Christ also brings with it three consequences.

The first of these, says Paul, is righteousness. We come across this word and its cognates at least fifty-five times in the letter to the Romans, so it is important to understand what Paul means. Essentially, when the Bible speaks of righteousness, what it is talking about is right relationships, living in harmony with God and with our fellow human beings. To be Christ’s willing slave means placing myself in obedience to him. And his first two commands are these: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength; and you shall love your neighbour as yourself. This is what righteousness means in practical terms. So it is that we ask in the service of baptism:

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbour as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

To which the candidates reply, “I will…” In doing so, they commit themselves to living a life of righteousness.

Paul tells us at the end of verse 19 that righteousness leads to holiness. Here I would prefer to use the old word “sanctification”, for what Paul is describing is not a final state, but an ongoing process. “Sanctification” may be even less understood than “holiness”. But what we are talking about is a path, along which as we travel it, we become increasingly infused with the character of God.

From time to time we may see a sunset whose grandeur reflects the glory of God. We may look at the delicate petals of a flower and be reminded of the magnificence and intricacy of God’s creation. How wonderful it would be if people could look at you and me and in us see something of the beauty of God’s nature! When we are enlisted in the service of Christ, that most certainly is the goal that he has set for us. We are embarking on a journey, whose destination is to become more and more like him. “Dear friends,” wrote St John, “now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

To some this path of righteousness and holiness seems dreary and restrictive—and all too often because we Christians have done our best to make it appear so! In reality to give ourselves in Christ in this way is to discover life, life as it was meant to be, life, as Jesus promises, in all its fullness.

To bring ourselves back to where we began: Like the people of Israel at Shechem you and I stand at a defining moment. The words of Joshua ring in our ears, “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.” Will we be slaves to our own selfish desires, or will we be slaves to Christ, “whose service is perfect freedom”?

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[1]           William Barclay, The Letters of Timothy, Titus and Philemon, 270

“Left Behind” (Acts 1:1-11)

I wonder how many of you may have gone to see the film The Martian when it was playing in theatres last fall. It stars Matt Damon as Mark Watney, a botanist who is a member of a team of astronauts exploring Mars. Early in the story an emergency arises and the crew suddenly has to abandon the planet, with the result that Watney gets left behind. Without giving anything away, much of the remainder of the film is spent with him learning to survive in a hostile environment, while mission control and the rest of the team desperately search for ways to rescue him.

As we think about Jesus’ ascension this morning, I am wondering if that film might not have some parallels with how the disciples must have felt as Jesus departed from them for what they knew was the last time. Forty days had elapsed since the angels had stood at Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb with the message, “He is not here; he has risen!” Over that time Jesus had met with them in numerous places and on numerous occasions—outside the empty tomb, in the upper room, along the road to Emmaus, and on the shores of Lake Galilee. And Paul tells us of a further occasion not recorded in the gospels, when Jesus appeared to a crowd of more than five hundred people. They must have been exciting times. For myself, I know that I never tire of reading those last chapters of the gospels that recount Jesus’ meetings with his followers after the resurrection.

Now, however, they would not be seeing Jesus again. What must have been passing through their minds? What would happen next? How were they going to manage on their own, without Jesus? I can only imagine the eerie silence that must have descended on them, as they stood looking at one another with Jesus no longer in their midst.

Power

Unlike Mark Watney the astronaut, however, who was left entirely alone in a vast and lifeless terrain, Jesus was not leaving his followers to themselves. For sure, they would no longer enjoy his physical presence. Yet they would not be alone. Twice in this morning’s verses Jesus speaks with them about the Holy Spirit: “John baptized with water, but … you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.”

It seems to me that there were at least two truths that Jesus was seeking to get across to the disciples about the Holy Spirit as he spoke with them. First, he told them that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Now I know that that phrase, “baptized with the Holy Spirit”, has brought a great deal of controversy into the church over the past century or so. It has led to congregations and entire denominations splitting apart. To my mind that doesn’t mean that we should just avoid the topic in order to avoid controversy. Quite the opposite: These are the words of Jesus. They are the words of life. We need to study them, to understand them, to appropriate them for ourselves. So let me ask, what did Jesus mean when he spoke about being baptized with the Holy Spirit?

In our western, Reformed tradition, when we hear the word “baptism”, we are more likely than not to think of a little baby being brought to the front of the church and being sprinkled with water. We call it baptism by affusion, as opposed to baptism by immersion, as practised in some other traditions. Now I am not arguing against this practice. In fact I believe it based on good biblical, historical and pastoral warrant. However, I don’t believe we should have it in mind when we read Jesus’ words about being baptized with the Holy Spirit. The truth is that the verb baptizo in the New Testament, from which our word “baptize” is derived, really means to plunge, to sink, to drench, to overwhelm. It is derived from the verb bapto, which means to dip something into dye. We find it in the book of Revelation, used in the depiction of Jesus as the great rider of the white horse, whose robe, we are told is dipped in blood (Revelation 19:13). So what does it mean, then, to be baptized with the Holy Spirit?

Quite simply, I believe it means to be drenched with the Holy Spirit, to allow his presence to seep into every area of our lives. Unlike the sacrament of baptism, I do not believe that this is an instantaneous event but a lifelong process, as we learn to yield ourselves more and more fully to Jesus and to the power of the Holy Spirit to transform and renew us—and that brings us to Jesus’ second words about the Holy Spirit: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.”

I probably don’t have to tell you that the word for “power” in the New Testament is dunamis, from which we derive our English words “dynamic”, “dynamo” and “dynamite”. I may be way off the mark in saying this, but I prefer to think of the Holy Spirit’s power as more frequently like a dynamo than dynamite. Yes, there are undoubtedly those occasional bursts of power, when God reveals himself to us in new and sometimes life-altering ways. (And thank God for those experiences!) Yet by and large, I think it is true to say that the Holy Spirit works as a steady and ongoing presence, increasingly making Jesus known to us and enabling us to follow more faithfully in his steps as we yield ourselves more fully to him.

Purpose

As he left them, Jesus told his followers not only about the power of the Holy Spirit, but also about his purpose. I have said that Jesus has bestowed the Holy Spirit on us so that we might know his daily presence with us and in us—and that in itself is a wonderful gift. But there is more to it than that. The Holy Spirit is God’s gift to us not just so that we can have warm, personal feelings inside—our own private nirvanas. The Holy Spirit has come in order that we may carry forward Christ’s mission in the world. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,” said Jesus. But then he went on (and here comes the scary part!), “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

I wonder if there is anything that strikes more fear into the heart of Christians than the “e” word: evangelism? Our minds conjure up pictures of handing out religious tracts on street corners, or having to stand up and give our “testimony” in front of a crowd, or finding something religious to inject into every conversation. I remember a friend of mine telling how she cringed in her office one day. The weekend was coming up and someone exclaimed, “TGIF!” “Oh,” replied a cheerful soul who took every opportunity to make sure people knew she was a Christian, “you ought to be thanking God for every day of the week!”

Well, you and I both know there is more to being a witness to Jesus than that—and if anything it is considerably deeper and scarier. It has to do with the word “witness” in the New Testament, which is martus. That is the term from which we derive our English word “martyr”. It is no coincidence that in the earliest generations of the church that word shifted its meaning from one who bears witness to Christ to one who gives his or her life for Christ. Within a remarkably short time men and women would find themselves answering for their faith with their lives. Of the twelve apostles, all but one would die a martyr’s death. Peter, tradition tells us, was crucified upside down. Paul, because he was a Roman citizen, was spared the humiliation of crucifixion and mercifully beheaded. And the list goes on and on, right down to our present day, to the horrifying pictures that met us last year of the twenty-one men kneeling on the beach in Libya awaiting execution, refusing to abandon their faith and crying aloud, “Ya Rabbi Yasou”, “O Lord Jesus!”[1]

It is unlikely that that kind of fate awaits any of us, but the point I want to get across is that being a witness to Jesus, a martus, is more than just a matter of words. It encompasses our whole lives. It is not just speaking for Jesus, it is living for Jesus—and if our lives don’t match up with our words, then those words are worse than worthless. Would to God that the power of Jesus’ presence in our lives was such that people might start to ask questions because of them! I can’t think of a more powerful witness to Christ.

Promise

Jesus has given us his Holy Spirit. Jesus sends us out as his witnesses. As he departed from his followers, Jesus also left them with a promise. This time, however, the words are not those of Jesus himself, but of the “two men dressed in white”, as Luke simply describes them, whom the disciples suddenly saw standing beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they asked, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Jesus was gone—but he was not gone forever. And time does not permit me even to begin to delve into the details of his return. What is more, I don’t believe that the Bible itself reveals many of those details. I am convinced that God has purposefully left them shrouded in mystery, and yet given us just enough information that we should have a hope that is solid and sure. With the disciples we need to heed the angels’ warning and not simply stand around looking into the sky, so to speak, and waste our time in speculation. More than enough of that has been done already. Countless books have been written about Jesus’ return, ranging from the scholarly to the ridiculous. A Google search on “Return of Christ” will lead you to 86,500,000 results.

To go back to The Martian for just a moment and to astronaut Mark Watney, it seems to me that Jesus’ coming again differs from the attempts of the space crew to rescue their stranded colleague. From my own reading of Scripture, Jesus’ return will not be to rescue us from the world, but to wholly transform the world and ourselves in it—to usher in the new creation in all its glorious fullness. The Scriptures bid us look forward to the day when the trumpet will sound and Christ will put all his enemies under his feet, when death will be swallowed up in victory and our lowly bodies will be transformed into the likeness of Christ’s glorious body, when God’s dwelling-place will be among his people, and he will dwell with them, when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away. That is the day that not only we, but all creation yearns to see.[2] It is a glorious hope and part of the reason it is not fully revealed to us is because it surpasses anything that our limited minds can even begin to imagine.

That hope, that sure and solid promise, is intended to lead us not to speculation but to action. The risen, ascended, glorified Jesus is calling you and me to be harbingers and heralds of the new creation even as the old is crumbling around us. But he doesn’t ask us to do it alone. We have his promise, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

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[1]        Ramez Atallah, Bible Society of Egypt Newsletter, 17 Feb 2015. http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=017b6b7c5bf6d7468fcc6aedc&id=ea8fa5435c&e=b383928924

[2]        See 1 Corinthians 15:52,25,54; Philippians 3:21; Revelation 21:3-4 ; Romans 8:22-23

“Born in a Battlefield” (Ephesians 6:10-20)

I am grateful for the opportunity to come and take part in the baptism of our youngest grandchild, Avery, and to Paul Friesen for his invitation to preach once again at St Paul’s after our eleven-year sojourn in the United States. They were a wonderful, spiritually stimulating time for us in many ways, but it is also good to be back in Halifax, which became home for us during my eighteen years as rector here.

Had we been using the old Book of Common Prayer, we would be hearing these words following Avery’s baptism:

We receive this child into the congregation of Christ’s flock, and do sign him with the sign of the cross, in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end.[1]

It is a source of sadness for me that we haven’t retained these words, or something like them, in our contemporary forms of worship. I wonder if they weren’t dropped because our liturgical revisers sensed an incongruity between a defenseless baby cuddled in its parent’s arms and the blood and gore of a battlefield. If so, I don’t entirely blame them. Yet, when you think about it, that is almost exactly what the apostle Paul does in this morning’s reading from the last chapter of his letter to the Ephesians.

In the latter verses of chapter 5 and the first half of chapter 6, Paul has addressed his words to Christian households, to the relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves. The whole emphasis throughout those verses is on Christ-like submission and service. The nineteenth-century German Lutheran pastor Karl Spitte put the picture of the Christian family into idyllic form in his hymn that includes the words,

O happy home, whose little ones are given
Early to thee, in humble faith and prayer,
To thee, their Friend, who from the heights of heaven
Guides them, and guards with more than mother’s care![2]

Yet suddenly, from that blissful scene Paul drops us into the middle of a battlefield, with the image, not of a peaceful family home but of a soldier fully armed for mortal combat.

The Action

Why the sudden shift? Handley Moule, one of the great scholar-bishops of Durham, wisely observed a century ago that it is a common experience that “the evil powers often win their worst advantages against us Christians on the quiet and common ground of life”.

Where we are least upon our guard they are most upon their watch… Just at home, alas, it is only too easy for the Christian to be inconsiderate in deed and word, to be quick or sullen in temper, to indulge self in small but dangerous ways, while yet a tolerable face of consistency is maintained in more public and exterior matters.[3]

Do you recognize yourself in the good bishop’s words? I can certainly see all too much of myself in them. Even such a one as the apostle Paul confessed to the struggle between good and evil that raged within the confines of his own soul:

I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. (Romans 7:21-23)

The great Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn made much the same observation when he wrote,

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.[4]

As difficult as it may be to accept, little Avery has been born into a battlefield. At this stage in his life he certainly is not aware of it. But we ask his parents and sponsors to affirm on his behalf:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
I renounce them.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
I renounce them.

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
I renounce them.

The Adversary

I don’t know if it was intentional, but those words in many ways reflect the words that we heard from Ephesians this morning. There Paul warns us about the devil’s schemes, about the rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world and about the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

It is important to notice that Paul doesn’t write about evil only in vague, general terms. He speaks quite specifically about the devil. In our post-Enlightenment world we may find the Bible’s references to the devil strange, antiquated, even slightly embarrassing. We may be tempted to set them aside as part of a pre-scientific worldview. If that is the case, then we need to beware.

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils,” wrote C.S. Lewis in the introduction to his spiritual classic, The Screwtape Letters. “One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors…”[5]

C.E.B. Cranfield, one of the leading New Testament scholars of the twentieth century, has written,

Here we are up against something that presents many difficulties to the modern mind, which is apt to dismiss the whole subject as outgrown superstition. It is important to approach it with as open a mind as possible. To suggest that there may be more truth here in the New Testament picture than has sometimes been allowed is not to wish to turn the clock back on scientific progress or to open the floodgates of obscurantism. The question whether the confident spread of the demons’ non-existence has not been their greatest triumph gets tragic urgency from such twentieth-century features as Nazism, McCarthyism, and Apartheid. And lest we should be prejudiced by the memory of such horrors as the burning of witches, it must be said that they were due, not to taking the New Testament too seriously, but to failing to take it seriously enough.[6]

Even a casual reading of the New Testament should leave us in no doubt that to follow Christ will inevitably lead us into conflict with the spiritual forces of darkness. Satan’s desire is to bring us down, to tangle us in a web of lies—and at times those lies can be very powerful and enticing. Yet all the while we must never lose sight of the assurance that “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

The Armour

So how does this work itself out in practical terms? How are we to engage in the fight? Paul uses the image of a soldier—one familiar to everyone in the Roman Empire—to show how it all happens. And it may seem odd, but he begins with the belt. For the belt was possibly the most important component of all. With it the ancient warrior bound together his loose-fitting clothes and so was able to manoeuvre with nimbleness and mobility. When we buckle on the belt of truth, we are encircling ourselves with certain truths about God and about ourselves, truths that we read in Scripture and that we affirm week by week in the creeds. At the same time we are committing ourselves to be men and women of truth, people whose “yes” truly is “yes” and whose “no” is truly “no”, people who really are who we say we are.

The next piece of armour is the breastplate. The breastplate covers and protects nearly all the vital organs, especially the heart. And for the biblical writers the heart stood as the seat of the will. “In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord,” wrote the apostle Peter (1 Peter 3:15a). Though it is the breastplate of righteousness, it is not our righteousness, but Christ’s, that protects us, conferred upon us by the shedding of his blood on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:20,21).

Third come the sandals. Just it was important for a soldier to have proper protection for his feet so that he could cross any terrain no matter how rough without causing himself pain or injury, so too we are to have “our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace”. And so we are gospel people, good news people, leaving the imprint of God’s shalom wherever we go.

Then we are to arm ourselves with the shield—and the shield in question was a large piece of armour that covered nearly the whole body. That shield, says Paul, is faith. The word for faith in the New Testament is pistis, which can equally mean “faithfulness”. Thus I prefer to think of myself being armed not with my own faith, which is weak and faltering at the best of times, but with the faithfulness of God, which extends to the heavens and endures to all generations.

Fourthly there is the helmet of salvation. Clearly the helmet protects the brain—and how important it is to have minds that are formed and informed by the truths of God. Paul writes elsewhere of being transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may be able to test and approve what God’s will is. He writes of taking every thought captive to Christ (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 10:5). How vital it is that we should be able to think Christianly, to develop our minds in such a way that we can respond effectively to the many intellectual challenges that the world places before us!

Finally, we are presented with the sword of the Spirit, which, Paul tells us, is the word of God. Commentators have long observed that up to this point all the armour has been defensive. The sword is the only offensive piece of weaponry. It was with the word of God that Jesus fought off the attacks of the accuser in the wilderness: “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only…’ ” “It is written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” I well remember an adviser in my university days pointing out that a sword has two edges, but in most cases only one is blunt, and that is the edge facing away from us. We can be very adept at applying the Scriptures to other people, but if we have any right to do so, it will only be after we have learned to apply them to ourselves. And if the powers of darkness are to be defeated in our lives, that is the way it will happen.

All of what I have been trying to say in these few minutes is most profoundly and beautifully expressed in a hymn which we know as “St Patrick’s Breastplate”. And I’d like to use those words to pray for you and for me and for little Avery as he is enrolled as Christ’s faithful soldier and servant in the sacrament of baptism.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.[7]

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[1]     The Book of Common Prayer, 1959, page 528

[2]     Hymn 340 in the Book of Common Praise (1938)

[3]     Ephesian Studies, page 322

[4]     Both quotes are from The Gulag Archipelago.

[5]     The Screwtape Letters, page 9

[6]     The Gospel According to St Mark, 75

[7]     Hymn 812 in the Book of Common Praise (1938)