The Promise of Life

 The Promise of Life

John 11:1-45[1]

Last week we talked about the challenge that evil and suffering presents to our faith. One of the hardest things we may be called to do is to trust that God can and will bring good out of the worst things that can happen to us in this life. But there’s another specter that can undermine our faith. It’s the fact that we are all dust and to dust we will all return. Our mortality can haunt us just as much as any of the hardships we may have to suffer. At times, death can seem like a mercy. Especially when someone we love is suffering. But when it comes suddenly, and especially when death takes someone “before their time,” it can be difficult if not impossible to hold onto our faith. And this isn’t just a modern problem. The human family has wrestled with death as long as we’ve been around.

Part of the reason for this is that when we realize that one day every one of us will die, it threatens to erase any meaning we may find in our lives. Again, this isn’t a problem that has come up only recently. The “preacher” of Ecclesiastes said it centuries ago: “Everyone will die someday. Death comes to godly and sinful people alike. It comes to good and bad people alike” (Eccl 9:1, NIrV). And so he concluded that everything in this life is “vanity” or “nonsense” or “useless” or “meaningless,” depending on how you translate it. I’d have to admit that if death really is the end of all hope, then those who despair of finding any meaning in our lives are right. If all there is to life is that “you pay your taxes and then you die,” it doesn’t matter much what you do or how you live.

Our gospel lesson for this week addresses the problem of death and how it affects not only our faith but also our outlook on life. It’s the story about how Jesus raised his friend Lazarus to life after he had died. The heart of the story is found in Jesus’ dialogue with Lazarus’ sister, Martha. When she learned that Jesus was approaching their village, she went out to meet him. And she said what may sound like a complaint, but I think was simply an expression of her grief: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (Jn 11:21). In response, Jesus promised her “Your brother will rise again,” which she thought meant that Lazarus would rise “in the resurrection on the last day” (Jn 11:23-24). But Jesus had something more immediate in mind!

We should recall again that in John’s Gospel, the basic premise of the promise of life is that Jesus is God in human flesh. That means that “just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (Jn 5:26). So it is that Jesus tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live” (Jn 11:25). And he proceeds to demonstrate the truth of that promise by raising Lazarus from death! Just to be clear, this was no ordinary “near death” experience where someone was “clinically dead” for a while but was somehow “brought back.” Lazarus was dead and buried. He’d been in the tomb for four days. I’d say that makes the fact that Jesus brought him back to life even more dramatic a demonstration of the promise that Jesus is “the resurrection and the life.”

There’s another aspect of this story we need to understand in order to grasp the impact of Jesus’ promise. Their view of death was different from ours. Faithful people like Martha didn’t have a hope that those who died would “go to heaven” where they would be comforted in the presence of God. Their understanding of death was summed up in the concept of Sheol, which some English Bibles sometimes translate as “hell.” But the idea of Sheol was really something more like “the grave.” It was a kind of prolonged waiting for something else. And they didn’t even have much of a concept of what the dead might be waiting for in the grave. They were just dead. Some of them, like Martha, believed that “at the last day” those who had died would be raised to life. But in the meanwhile, they were still just dead.

But Jesus clears away that uncertainty about death. He showed that God’s promise to the family of that dead man on that day was life. And that promise not only applied to Lazarus, it applies to all who trust in God’s promise, whether in this life or the next! Because he was and is God who became human, Jesus has the power to give life that can only come from God: new life, eternal life, everlasting life. More than that, because he was lifted up on the cross, lifted up to new life in his resurrection, and lifted up to reign at God’s right hand, nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Not. Even. Death!

One of the challenges to our faith is how we live in the face of our mortality. We don’t resign ourselves to a fatalism that allows death to determine when it’s “your time to go.” And we don’t give in to despair that lets death have the last word and therefore makes whatever we may do in this life meaningless. Rather, our faith in Jesus as the “resurrection and the life” calls us to live in the hope and trust that God’s promise of life has the last word for all of us. Living from this promise of life in Jesus gives the lie to fatalism and breaks the spell of despair. The promise of life in Jesus enables us to live with hope even in the face of death. This choice between despair and hope determines just about every aspect of your life, from whether it matters how you live, to what you plan to do with your life, to how you relate to other people. It all boils down to the choice between despair and hope. It all boils down to whether you believe that the last word is God’s promise of life.

I’m not talking about living in denial of death and the heartbreak it can cause. The sorrow and grief that attends death are very real. Most of us have some experience with that. What I’m talking about is that we have nothing to fear from death, because Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior overcame death on that hill outside Jerusalem so long ago. We have nothing to fear from death because Jesus reigns as Lord over life and death even now, and will always. We have nothing to fear from death because we know that the one whom we will face is our God who has loved us from before the foundation of the world. Our God is the one who has chosen to be “God-who-is-with-us” and therefore also has chosen us to be with him for all eternity.[2] Our God is the one who from before all time and to time without ending has determined to be true to his character, which is “God-who-is-for-us,” even and especially in death. Our God who claimed us before we were ever born, as we demonstrated by baptizing this boy today, claims us as “his own” even in death, especially in death.[3] It’s this promise of life that Jesus demonstrated on that day in Judea by raising Lazarus from the dead. And it is this promise of life that we can hold fast even and especially when we come face-to-face with our own mortality.

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/26/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.1, 274: God “does not will to be without us, and He does not will that we should be without Him.” Cf. also, “The Study Catechism: Full Version with Biblical References,” Approved by the 210th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, USA (1998), question 27, where the affirmation of “life everlasting” means that “God does not will to be God without us.”

[3] Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.4, 593: “The real reason why we need not and cannot and must not far death any longer is that, at the point where we shall cease to be, God the Lord intervenes for us and awaits us and comes to meet us and summons us to secure and recognize and grasp our opportunity. This means, however, that He, the eternal God, lays claim to us … as his own chosen possession.

Oppportunities

 Opportunities

John 9:1-42[1]

It doesn’t take long for those of us who live in this world to learn that bad things sometimes happen to good people. In fact, sometimes what happens to good people in this world is downright evil. I personally think that makes praying “deliver us from evil” in the Lord’s Prayer all the more relevant for all of us. For me, at least, one of the reasons I look to the Lord’s Prayer is because the evil in this world can cause us to struggle with our faith. In fact, more than one good soul has turned away from faith because of the evil that has come either into their life or the life of someone they care about. And there are many sensitive souls among us who struggle to believe in a loving God simply because there is just so very much violence and injustice in our world.

I would say that one part of this experience that makes it particularly challenging for faith is the pain and fear we may have to carry as a result of the bad things that can happen to us. When those “bad things” truly rise to the level of “evil,” they tend to leave a wound. And wounds like that can run deep and sometimes they never fully heal. Or if they do heal, they remain very sensitive to certain triggers. And that kind of pain naturally leads to fear. But I would say, from my experience with fear, that it always cuts us off from the one source of true healing: our God whose love for us never fails. We cannot know what the future will bring, whether good or bad, but if we’re going to live in faith rather than staying shackled to our fear, we’re going to have to learn to find the good that God brings even out of the hard things in life.

Our Gospel lesson raises this issue for us right from the start. The lesson tells us that as Jesus “walked along, he saw a man blind from birth” (Jn 9:1). The fact that this man was born blind led Jesus’ disciples to ask him what must seem to us a strange question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (Jn 9:2). I think the question must sound strange to our ears because we don’t see a disability like blindness as a punishment from God. But it was common in that day to think of the suffering in this world as a direct result of somebody’s sin. And so they could entertain the possibility that a person could sin even before they were born in order to explain something like this.

That kind of cause and effect approach to sin and suffering had a long history with the Jewish people. It started with the Ten Commandments, which say that God punishes “children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generation” (Dt 5:9)! And, of course, it was the premise for much of the history of Israel in the Hebrew Bible: when the king did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so did the people, and they suffered for it. And it’s the assumption that Job’s so-called “friends” made: if you’re suffering in any way you must have done something wrong. So they stubbornly kept trying to convince Job to admit his sin to find relief from his suffering.

But Jesus explodes that assumption about sin and suffering. He refused to accept the premise of the disciples’ question, that someone must have sinned to cause this man to be born blind. Instead, he answered them bluntly, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned” (Jn 9:3). I think Jesus was carrying forward a point that had already been made in the book of Job. Job maintained his innocence, even though God reminded him that when he asked the question “why?” he was asking more than he could begin to understand. But God upheld Job’s integrity. In fact, at the end of the story, God’s anger was kindled against the friends for insisting that God was punishing Job for something he’d done wrong. God rebukes them, saying, “you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). Even Job’s questions were more true to God than their assumptions about sin and suffering.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus not only denied the assumption that suffering must have been caused by sin. More than that, he pointed his disciples in a completely different direction. He insisted that this man was born blind “so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (Jn 9:3). Now, I would have to say that this point of view could also be abused. But I think what Jesus was trying to do was to turn people away from obsessively looking for someone to blame when things go wrong in life. Instead, I think Jesus wanted them and us to look for the good that God can bring even out of the worst things that can happen to us. Of course, in this particular situation, I think Jesus said what he did in part because he knew he was going to restore this man’s sight.

One of my favorite parts of the Study Catechism that we use with the Confirmation Class and in worship is the affirmation that God brings “good out of evil, so that nothing evil is permitted to occur that God does not bend finally to the good.”[2] It’s a wonderful promise that helps us look for the good that God can bring out of suffering. But it can also present a challenge for our faith. After all, not every blind person has their sight restored. And more often than not it can be very difficult, if not impossible, when something bad happens to us or someone we love to even consider that God could bring good out of it.

But I would say that this is one of those places where our faith becomes more than just words we recite together on Sunday morning. To be able to look at this life, this life with all the suffering and hardships it can bring, and put our faith in the God whose love for us never fails is perhaps the greatest challenge we will face. Partly, that’s because we may never see the good that God brings out of the bad things that may happen to us. The catechism does say that God bends the evil that occur “finally” to the good. To leave open the possibility, the hope, that God will bring good out of even the worst things that have happened to us in this life is to take a step beyond a life of pain and fear into a life of trust. To do so is to recognize that our lives are in God’s hands, and that we may never know what opportunities, what good things, God can create from the hardships we suffer in this world.

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/19/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] “The Study Catechism: Full Version with Biblical References,” Approved by the 210th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, USA (1998), question 22.

The Gift of God

 The Gift of God

John 4:5-42[1]

There are some aspects of our faith that seem to be clear enough. God loves us; he always has, and he always will. There are other aspects of our faith that we may never understand until we are face to face with Jesus. How can God be one God who is three? How could Jesus be fully God and fully human? How can this world created by our loving God be so filled with pain and wrong? These are questions that the believers have wrestled with for centuries, and I’m not sure we’re going to understand any possible answer we might receive because God’s ways are infinitely higher than ours! In a time when people want simple answers, that can be a problem.

One of the aspects of our faith that I’ve wrestled with for over 40 years is “eternal life.” Part of it is straightforward enough: it’s the promise that God chooses to be God-who-is-with-us, and that means God chooses us to be with him for all eternity. But “eternal life” in John’s Gospel has another aspect to it. This “gift of God” is something that Jesus came to bring here and now. It’s the message from the start of John’s Gospel: “in him was life and the life was the light of all people” (Jn 1:4). It’s the claim that Jesus himself makes: “just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (Jn 5:26). And it’s the promise of John’s Gospel: Jesus would be “lifted up” so that everyone who believes may “have life” in him (Jn 3:14-15). Not in eternity, but right here and right now. I’ve wrestled with what that means all my life. And I’m still not entirely sure!

Let’s back up and take a closer look at our Gospel lesson for today. One point of the story is that Jesus, by his very presence, offers the Samaritan woman, along with the people of her village, eternal life. Again, not in some far-distant future, but then and there. In fact, the rather unexpected encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman (unexpected particularly for his own disciples) did not happen by chance. Rather it was something Jesus “had” to do (Jn 4:4): it was a part of his mission, part of him doing what God had sent him to do. As I mentioned last week, the reason why Jesus could offer “eternal life” to her and the people of her village was because Jesus, as the “Word” of God become flesh, makes God’s presence available to everyone in such a way that they may receive eternal life through their faith in him. As we look closely at this encounter, we find that “eternal life” was something he was offering them right then and there.

Jesus initiated this encounter by an unexpected request: he asked the Samaritan woman for a drink of water. That just wasn’t done in that day. So we can understand when she reacts with surprise: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jn 4:9). Jesus’ response is one that I think we are beginning to see was characteristically puzzling, at least in John’s Gospel. He said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (Jn 4:10). Just as he did with Nicodemus, Jesus used a phrase that could be understood in two ways. And just like Nicodemus, this woman misunderstood Jesus. She thought he had access to some hidden source of “flowing water,” which is one way to understand “living water.” But what he meant was that this “water” was life-giving. Jesus said it this way, “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14). Jesus had come there to bring “eternal life” as the “gift of God” to her and the people of her village. Not in some far-distant future, but right then and there.

I don’t think she understood Jesus any better than we might if we had been there that day. But one thing this Samaritan woman did: she kept engaging Jesus with questions until her faith awakened. What we should bear in mind is that she was not likely to be picked by anyone to be the example of what it meant to believe in Jesus. And yet she kept responding to him in a way that he was able to lead her to faith. At first, it began to dawn on her that she was dealing with more than a Jewish man asking a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. Her journey to faith didn’t happen immediately. It was a gradual process. That’s the point of the dialogue between her and Jesus: Jesus was drawing her step by step to faith in himself so that she could receive the “gift of God.”

Toward the end of their discussion, she says that when the Messiah comes “he will proclaim all things to us” (Jn 4:25). Perhaps she was saying more than she knew. I certainly don’t thing she expected Jesus to respond, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you” (Jn 4:26). This reminds us that the key affirmation of John’s Gospel is that Jesus is the one who was “with God” and “was God” in the beginning and who became a human being (Jn 1:1, 14). In John’s Gospel, Jesus makes God’s presence available to everyone in such a way that they may receive eternal life through their faith in him. Again, not in some far-distant future, but right here and right now. That’s what Jesus meant when he said that the “hour is now here” (Jn 4:23): the gift of God is available now because Jesus is the “Word” of God made flesh.

This is something that that I’ve struggled to understand all my life. Part of the reason for that is that many who preach this message make it out as if Jesus is promising us everything we can hope to find when we come face to face with Jesus right here and right now. That just doesn’t line up with my life experience. After all these years I’m still left trying to answer what it means to have “eternal life” right here and right now. Let’s start with the part that seems straightforward. Having “eternal life” as the “gift of God” here and now means we can know that everything that had to be done to secure our destiny in God’s loving presence forever has been done.

But in John’s Gospel it means more than that. Because Jesus embodied the life of God in himself, he is able to give that life to us. Not “when we all get to heaven,” but right here and right now. That means that can have a different “quality of life” here and now. And in my experience, what that boils down to is that we can know that God has loved us from before the foundation of the world. It means that God showed that love for us by coming among us to heal our brokenness in the person of Jesus Christ. And it means that we have nothing to fear from whatever may come our way because nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. While we may not fully understand all that “eternal life” means for us here and now, I think we can follow the Samaritan woman’s example. We can continue to ask our questions in the assurance that Jesus will keep leading us to faith, and will keep giving us the “gift of God.”

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[1] © Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/12/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Changed By Grace

Changed by Grace

John 3:1-17[1]

Most of us have a healthy dose of skepticism these days. If something sounds too good to be true, we tend to think it is. And we have good reason to think that, with all the various scams going around. Of course, skepticism is nothing new. People used to say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. That’s because the people who offered you a free meal usually wanted you to buy something from them. While self-reliance can be a part of a healthy outlook on life, you can take it too far. Especially when it comes to faith. One of the problems Jesus encountered in John’s gospel was the skepticism of people who thought that what he was offering was just too good to be true.

I think that’s because they tried to fit Jesus into the box of their preconceived understanding about God. But there’s not much about Jesus or God in John’s Gospel that fits into any kind of man-made box! The basic affirmation of John’s Gospel is that in Jesus, the one who was “with God” and “was God” in the beginning became a human being (Jn 1:1, 14). And by doing so, Jesus has made God known in such a way that those who trust in him and the gift of “eternal life” may have that new life now. And most of them looked at him like he was crazy. Or they walked away shaking their heads at what sounded too good to be true. Or they kept asking him what they were supposed to do, and he kept offering them eternal life as a gift that only God could give them.

Our Gospel lesson is one that most people have at least heard about. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life,” may be the one Bible verse they know. But we tend to read it as if Jesus were offering a choice, not a gift. You can believe and receive eternal life. Or you can choose not to believe and “perish.” But Jesus wasn’t talking about a choice. He was talking the gift of new life from God.

When Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, he very likely had a question on his mind that a lot of people shared. It’s the question that others asked Jesus: “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Lk 10:25; 18:18). Nicodemus never actually asked that question, but Jesus’ response to him shows that he knew that was what was on his mind. And Jesus’ answer put the question of “inheriting eternal life” completely outside of what anyone could do: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (Jn 3:3). When you read that against the backdrop of Jesus’ teachings in John’s Gospel, the point is that eternal life is something only God can give. No one can ever do anything to “inherit” or earn it!

Of course, that translation of Jesus’ answer, that you must be “born from above,” is not the one that most people know. Most people know it in the version that they’ve read in their Bibles from the days of the King James Version to the New Living Translation: “you must be born again” (Jn 3:7). Again, the problem is that’s not what Jesus was talking about. He was talking about a process that is both powerful beyond our understanding and also mysterious as to how it happens. It’s described in John’s Gospel as being “born of God” (Jn 1:13) and being “born of the Spirit” (Jn 3: 8). It’s something that only God can do, and we can only receive it as a gift.

The reason for the confusion about all this is that the phrase in the original Greek version can be translated both ways: “born again,” or  “born from above.” Very likely that was intentional. In John’s Gospel Jesus uses phrases with double meanings that people misunderstand. In our lesson Nicodemus thinks Jesus is talking about some process by which adults must somehow climb back into their mothers’ womb and be “born again.” When Jesus tried to explain it in terms of being “born of God” and “born of the Spirit,” Nicodemus was completely stumped. And he was a “teacher of Israel,” which meant he had a significant understanding of the Bible. But this was something he had missed in his study of the Hebrew Bible: that God had promised to give new life to his people, and through them to the whole world. The way he would do that was by changing their hearts (Ez 36:26-28).[2] Again, that’s something only God can do!

In our day those who talk about being “born again” throw that phrase around as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is pray a prayer and you’re “born again.” Unfortunately, I would say that notion bears little resemblance to the powerful and mysterious process that Jesus was talking about.[3] That’s because it doesn’t result in much change. What it results in is a lot of people claiming to be “Christians” whose lives look pretty much exactly like everybody else. When you pay attention to what Jesus was saying about being “born from above,” it’s pretty clear that he’s referring to something altogether different. He’s talking about a change that God brings about in our lives so that we can know “eternal life.” There’s nothing “simple” or “easy” about that! 

When we read this passage from the perspective that it’s about a change that God is making in our lives, a change that only God can make, we see John 3:16 in a wholly different way. It’s much bigger than a “get out of jail free” card or a ticket to heaven for certain individuals. It’s about the amazing thing God is doing in all our lives. It’s a declaration that underlies everything in John’s Gospel: that the power of what God is doing through Jesus, his incarnation, his death on the cross, his resurrection to new life, and his ascension to reign at the right hand of God, is something that is meant to change the whole world! And everyone in it!

We’re a lot like the people Jesus encountered in John’s Gospel. The good news of God’s gift of eternal life is so far beyond our ability to grasp that we don’t know how to respond in any other way than to ask, “what am I supposed to do with this?” I would say the first thing we should do is to realize that it’s out of our hands. This is something that only God can do for us. It has to come “from above.” What we can do is what Jesus called us to do: believe. And by that I think he was calling us first and foremost to trust God to accomplish all that he has set out to do in this world and in our lives. Beyond that, Jesus was calling us to entrust ourselves into his hands as our Savior and Lord, not just once but every day, throughout our lives. We do so in the confidence that through him all our lives are being changed by God’s grace.

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/5/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] On Nicodemus’ misunderstanding, cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII, 138-41, where he points out that there was ample background for the idea of the outpouring of the Spirit in preparation for entering God’s kingdom.

[3] Cf., similarly, Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John,” New Interpreters Bible IX:554-55.  She says (p. 555), “By codifying the expression ‘born again’ and turning it into a slogan, interpreters risk losing the powerful offer of new life contained in Jesus’ words.”