More Than Words

 More Than Words

1 John 3:16-24[1]

We all know that loving God means loving people. And we all know that loving people means more than just loving our family and friends. It means loving even those who are difficult to love, even those who may push our comfort level, even those whom we may think of as “enemies.” And we all know that when the Bible teaches us to love like this, it’s not just talking about how you “feel.” It’s talking about how you live, what you do, and how you treat people. And it’s not just talking about “people” as an “idea,” it’s talking about the real, living and breathing people we come in contact with every day. If there’s one thing that’s true about loving other people, really loving all the people we come in contact with, it’s that it doesn’t come easily—for any of us!

I think part of the reason for this is that love is about giving. When you love another person, you give to them. You give them what they need when they need it. If they’re hungry, you feed them. If they’re lonely, you spend time with them. If they need help, you give it to them. You care for them when they cannot care for themselves. But more than any specific thing you may give to someone you love, you give yourself. That’s where it gets tricky, because the question is how much of yourself you can really give away. We all know that our example for loving others is Jesus, who gave his life for us all. And there have been many throughout the ages who have done just that: give up their lives for the sake of those they loved.

As much as I would agree with the fact that Jesus’ teachings about love were intended to prepare those who followed him for the possibility that they may be called on to give up even their lives for others, I would not say that’s what loving others always means for everyone. Sometimes we may be called to give up a great deal, perhaps even everything, perhaps even life itself for the sake of those we love. Sometimes, though, we’re called to love people over the course of a lifetime. We may give up a lot in order to do that, but the point is that we go on living our lives so that we can go on loving them day by day, year after year. I would say that’s probably the kind of life of love that most of us are called to practice.

The practice of loving other people as something that is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian is also a major theme in 1 John. The Elder John says it plainly earlier in the chapter from which our lesson for today is drawn: “This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another” (1 Jn 3:11, NLT). And in our lesson, he says, “We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 Jn 3:16, NLT). Again, we know well that there were many in that day who literally were called to give up their lives, especially to protect their brothers and sisters in the faith. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s in mind here. He goes on: “If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person? Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions” (1 Jn 3:17-18, NLT).”

Here, the kind of love that the Elder John has in mind is about having the means to help someone in need and actually helping them. It’s about sharing what we have with people we know who are in need. For some of us, helping others like this is second nature. For others it may be more difficult. Beyond the basic challenge of whether or not we have a generous nature, the command that we are to love others by giving tangible goods or money to help them is another way in which loving others can be tricky. We have to use our best judgment to discern whether giving someone what they ask for actually helps them or whether it may hurt them. It’s not always easy to know for sure when we’ve crossed that line.

I’ve had some experience with that. Some of you may know that I have a tendency to be generous to a fault. When I was in college, I was the guy who picked up hitchhikers as I was driving the wide-open spaces of Texas. I’ve given more money out of my own pocket than I probably should have to people simply because they asked for it. And I know for sure that some of them were taking advantage of my generosity. I had a man whom I had helped on more than one occasion come back to me and apologize. He had been taking advantage of the fact that I was helping keep him housed to spend what money he had on his drinking habit. Was I helping him? Was I hurting him? That’s where it gets tricky.

I’d like to think that I’ve gotten more discerning about whom I help and how I will help them. I don’t have any problem buying someone a meal or filling their tank with gas. But I prefer to give money to organizations that help those in need rather than handing out cash to someone standing on a street corner. And yet, I must confess it’s hard for me to just “look the other way,” but I simply don’t feel comfortable potentially giving someone the means to continue destroying their own lives. I think the challenge for me is to make sure that I’m actually giving to those organizations and not just using that as an excuse not to share what I have with those who are in need.

The part of this that gets really tricky for all of us is that helping people who are in true need takes us outside our comfort zones. Many of the people who truly have needs we can help are those we ordinarily may not have much to do with, or perhaps they are those whom we intentionally avoid. But we cannot follow the command to love others without recognizing “the intrinsic claim of every person to be considered a person.”[2] That’s not so hard when everyone we meet looks like us, or talks like us. But we live in a great big world with a lot of very different people in it. We cannot simply love those who are like us. We can only truly love our neighbors when we can see “that every human face is the face of a neighbor.”[3] And Jesus calls us to love that neighbor. When we can get past all the superficial differences and see anyone in need as “one of us,” then we can love them in a way that goes beyond words.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/21/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Paul Tillich, Love, Power and Justice, 60.

[3] Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society, 41: “For a compassionate [man] nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying. … This compassion pulls people away from the fearful clique into the large world where they can see that every human face is the face of a neighbor.”

We Shall Be Like Him

 We Shall Be Like Him

1 John 3:1-2[1]

I’ve mentioned before that one of the symptoms of the changes that are reshaping our society is that it’s hard to know whom you can trust. While I genuinely and wholeheartedly believe that there is plenty of goodness and beauty in our world if we have the eyes to see it, I also recognize that there is a lot of pain and fear as well. As much as it is true that we all have so much to be grateful for in this life, we also all have our share in the pain and brokenness of our world. Despite all appearances, especially in the beautiful family pictures on social media that make us think that everyone else has the perfect life, the reality is that life takes unexpected and unwelcome turns for us all. And when that happens, most of us find ourselves asking the question of God, “Why did this have to happen to me?”

Part of the problem is that we may look for our sense of safety from people who aren’t really able to provide it. Some of us may have felt betrayed by the person we love most in the world, whether a parent or child, a spouse or a friend. That kind of betrayal can leave us wondering if we can trust anyone or anything, even God! Some of us may have committed our lives to a career, even given our best years to it, only to find that the choices of others or circumstances beyond our control leave us empty-handed. Some of us have had our health go from something we took for granted to something that feels like it’s hanging by a thread. In these and many other ways, our experiences in life can leave us wondering if we can trust anyone or anything. Even God.

We come to faith drawn by the wonderful good news that God loves us and that Jesus lived and died and rose again to show us just how much that’s true. And in our best moments we know the peace and joy that promise holds for us, and we’re deeply grateful. But the way our lives may unfold has a way of taking a jolting turn at what can seem like the very worst possible time. Sometimes our faith is strong enough to carry us through. Sometimes, life’s sudden twists take all the supports out from under us. The shock of that jolt can leave us wondering where God is, or whether God loves us, or whether there even is a God at all. It shakes our faith to the core, and we may wonder if we can ever believe again.

I think our lesson from 1 John for today addresses this issue. The Elder John uses the resurrection of Jesus as a basis for reminding us that, no matter what may happen to us, God is always faithful. In a very real sense, that was also one of the main lessons of Jesus’ resurrection. Despite all appearances that his death somehow invalidated all that he said and did—as the crowds pointed out by shouting, “he saved others, let him save himself!”—the cross was not the end of Jesus’ faith in God and his life of faithful obedience to God. Death was not the final word for Jesus’ life and ministry. The final word was and is resurrection to new life. Part of the reason for that was to vindicate all that Jesus had said and done in his ministry. But part of the reason for the resurrection was to demonstrate definitively that God is always faithful. Always.

And so it is that our Scripture reading reminds us that our lives are all grounded firmly in the love of God, which has made us “children of God.” This is one of the themes of 1 John. God has not only demonstrated his love for us by what Jesus did, he also assures us of his love for us by the constant presence of his Spirit. In the face of any doubts we may harbor about whether or not we are truly beloved children of God, the Scripture emphasizes that we’re not just “called” God’s children, but that’s what we truly are. The basis for this confidence is the story of God’s love for the people of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. We may be used to thinking of it as a story of an angry God punishing a wayward people. But I think we would do better to see it as the story of a loving father who never gives up on his stubbornly defiant children. Through it all, God is always faithful to them. Always!

Our scripture lesson takes it a step further, however. As the author puts it, “we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2, NLT) While there’s a lot going on in that statement, I would say that the point of it is to assure us that just as God demonstrated his faithfulness to Jesus by raising him from the dead, so the promise that we will share the resurrection life of Jesus is the promise that God will be faithful to us as well. Just as death was not God’s last word for Jesus, so it is for us as well. Neither will any of the pain or fear or disappointment or despair or emptiness we may have to deal with in our lives.

God’s last word for us is life. And God’s final act of faithfulness will be to bring us face-to-face with Jesus so that we see him “as he really is.” What’s more, the promise is that when we stand before the risen Lord Jesus, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is” (1 John 3:2, NLT)! I find it interesting that the Elder John says we don’t know exactly what that will look like. But the idea is that Jesus’ resurrection gives us at least a clue. In fact, another main theme of Easter is that very real nature of Jesus’ resurrection gives us something of an indication about what to expect about our future with God. As the Scripture says, we will be like Jesus. The promise of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that we too will be resurrected to a new life, and when that happens, we will all be changed so that we are “like him.” And the point of it all is that God is always faithful. And he will continue to show us his faithfulness all the way to our eternal life in his loving presence.

Sometimes the way our lives unfold can make us question whether we can trust even God. The path gets dark and difficult, and we may wonder whether it will always be that way. But the promise of the resurrection is that God’s last word is never death, but life.[2] I like the way Henri Nouwen frames it: “Through the resurrection, God has said to Jesus, ‘You are indeed my beloved Son, and my love is everlasting,’ and to us God has said, ‘You are indeed my beloved children, and my love is everlasting.’”[3] That first Easter is a promise that we can trust God to be faithful to love us all the way through everything in this life until we are standing face-to-face with Jesus, when we shall be like him.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/14/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman NE.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.2:29: “God Himself in His freedom has decided that [man] shall stand, that he shall be saved and not lost, that he shall live and not die.”

[3] Henri J. M. Nouwen, God’s Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring, 100-101. He adds that “The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God … will [ever] get lost … . The resurrection doesn’t answer any of our curious questions about life after death, … . But it does reveal to us that, indeed love is stronger than death.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer is known for saying something similar: the promise of final resurrection is the promise that “nothing is lost, that everything is taken up in Christ” and restored “as God originally intended for it to be.” Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 170

Why Should I Believe It?

Why Should I Believe It?

1 John 1:1-4[1]

We live in a time when skepticism is a virtue. The continual explosion of information technology and the almost exponential rise of new platforms to share information has, I think, played a role in this. Instead of making information easier to process, it’s much harder, if only because of the sheer volume of information that is available to anyone using a smartphone on any given day. You just can’t process it all. You can’t even scroll through it all! So instead of taking the time to ask whether the information we’re using is from a reliable source, or whether it results from sound research, or whether it even makes any sense, we just “browse” our so-called “news feeds” on various media for what holds our interest, or what reinforces our opinions, without taking the time to even think about the question, “Why should I believe this?”

This is actually not a “modern” problem. It’s a logical fallacy that’s been around for a long time. It’s called “Confirmation bias.” What that means is that people only pay attention to information that confirms what they already believe, and they dismiss as false whatever challenges it, simply because it challenges it. We’re not open to information that contradicts what we already believe. That’s not the only logical fallacy going around. There are a lot of them. Calling something “fake news” just because we don’t like it is a kind of logical fallacy that skirts the issue by simply attacking the source. In fact, it’s considered to be one of the weakest logical arguments. Ironically, some of those who complain the loudest about “fake news” are the ones who are out there pushing information that can be demonstrated as false based on actual facts.

But then part of the problem is that we don’t even agree on what constitutes facts. And that leads us deeper into this whole question by raising the issue of how we know what we know. There are some things we know based on intuition, like whether or not someone loves you. You just know “in your heart” that’s true. There are other things we know based on some kind of demonstration. Most of our scientific knowledge falls into that category. If someone can come up with an experiment that generates the same results every time, it’s considered to be fact. But then there is a lot of “knowledge” that falls somewhere in between, relying on a combination of objective facts and a subjective, more personal point of view. A lot of what we “know” falls into that category.

I think one of the reasons why faith can be so difficult is because it falls into that “in between” category of what we know. There are certain criteria that most faith traditions in the world rely on, but it’s a matter of how you balance them. One basis for faith is an accepted canon of Scriptures, or a collection of authoritative writings, like the Bible. That can be helpful, because an authoritative text is a fairly fixed source. But any text is always subject to interpretation. And there is plenty of evidence for the wide variety of interpretations of the Bible. Another basis for faith is the authority of a certain tradition of teaching. This takes faith and puts it into a practical framework that can help us translate what we believe into a way of living. But a tradition is a living thing, always developing in dialogue with changing times. Except, of course, when it doesn’t. We know people who belong to faith traditions that have not changed, perhaps for centuries. A final basis for faith is the authority of personal experience. It’s hard to dispute someone’s personal experience. But then personal experience can be (and has been) used to justify just about anything.

Because all these criteria for faith have their strengths and weaknesses, it’s important to find a balance that makes sense. I would say that a healthy approach to faith is going to combine all three: a sound use of Scripture, combined with a time-tested tradition of interpreting and putting into practice the truths of faith, combined with personal experience of the value of faith in our own lives. To some extent, my sermon today is a brief summation of what I taught for years in my biblical interpretation class at Seminary. You might wonder whether a sermon is the time and the place for going into that. But I also think that our Scripture lesson from 1 John for today raises the issue of why we believe.

During the season of Easter, we celebrate the message that that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and rose from the dead. But there are many these days who would ask the question why they should believe it. It speaks of things that most of us have never actually seen for ourselves. We weren’t there to see him die on the cross. We weren’t there when he appeared after his death and resurrection to his disciples. And even though our Scripture lessons throughout the Easter season give us their testimony of what they saw and experienced, many question whether we should accept it.

That’s also not a new problem. It was a challenge for the first generation of believers, as our Scripture lesson from 1 John shows us. The message of the Gospel included the claim that those who were with Jesus were eyewitnesses to his full humanity, to his very real suffering, and to his bodily resurrection. Our Scripture lesson puts it this way: “We declare to you … what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1). Jesus was the “word” they had heard with their own ears and seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands. There’s a kind of dual reference going on here: it’s a claim that they heard Jesus teaching during the time of his ministry and they saw the amazing things he did. At the same time, however, it’s also a claim that their encounters with the risen Christ as eyewitnesses of his resurrection were very real.[2]

For some of us that’s enough to support our faith. The testimony of the original eyewitnesses in Scripture is enough to satisfy the question why I should believe Jesus is alive now. Of course, there have been all kinds of efforts to explain away what the disciples claimed about Jesus’ resurrection. But it’s one thing to say that they only thought they saw and heard him; it’s hard to explain away the claim that they actually touched the risen Christ.[3] Again, however, a balanced approach to faith must move beyond the testimony of the eyewitnesses in the Bible. And so it’s important for us to remember that we have our own very real encounters with the risen Christ in our lives. It may be hard for us to put them into words, but they are very real nevertheless. We may not be able to see him with our eyes, or hear him with our ears, or touch him with our hands, but that doesn’t make our encounters any less real. Perhaps more importantly, we can answer the question of why we should believe the story of Jesus because we are not standing alone before the witness of Scripture. There have been generations of believers who have embraced the Easter faith before us and who passed it on to us. That living tradition has not only taught us faith but also modeled it for us. In a sense we have “seen with our own eyes” the effect of faith in their lives.

From my perspective, the answer to the question “Why should I believe” that Jesus rose from the dead and lives among us now is going to be as individual as each person. For some of us, it’s enough that the “Bible tells me so.” “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” That’s enough. For others, “he lives within my heart” may be what convinces us. “You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart.” For still others, the fact that we continue the “ancient church’s story” of “the faith of our fathers” and mothers. Or perhaps even more importantly that “we walk with each other” and “we walk hand in hand” is the key to faith. For some of us, in an age in which many people get along just fine without giving second thought to God or faith or the risen Christ, we need all of it: the witness of the Bible, the experience of our own personal encounters with Christ, and the support of those who have gone before us and those who walk the path with us. We need all of that to maintain Easter faith.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/7/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman NE.

[2] Cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, 174-75, where he says the primary effect of this text has been to secure the authority of eyewitness testimony for the Johannine writings. He insists that this still holds true even if the author of this letter was not John the Apostle but an unidentified leader of the Johannine community because the statement still reflects the reality of the manifestation of the word, but through the means of preserving the eyewitness testimony of the Beloved disciple to the life and ministry of Jesus (cf. similarly Jn. 20:29–31; 21:24–25).

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, Arise! God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth, 47-48: “The women and the disciples didn’t ‘see in their hearts’ or ‘with their spiritual eyes’. They didn’t have intuitions, while they were ‘caught up out of this world’, nor did they receive enlightenment in trances. The accounts tell us that it was with their normal five senses that they perceived the risen Christ.”

Beyond All Hope

 Beyond All Hope

John 20:1-18[1]

In the face of all our recent discussion about suffering, it may seem like faith in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on that first Easter morning might have little relevance for our lives right here and right now. In comparison with the darkness we may have had to endure in this life, something that happened so long ago and so far away might simply not seem to make a real difference for us. Beyond that, when you look at the massive suffering and violence that seem to dominate the world in which we live, it’s all too easy to conclude that money and power have the last word in our world. These harsh realities can make faith seem at best quaint and at worst a delusion. The fact of the matter is that we live in a world where it’s not easy to truly embrace the faith that Jesus’ death and resurrection brings new life to us all.

I’m not so sure the original witnesses to the resurrection had an easier time with faith. Our Gospel lesson for today presents several different responses to the resurrection on that first Easter Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene seems to react initially with fear when she sees that the stone has been moved from the tomb. So she runs back and tells the Apostles. In response, Peter and John run to the tomb. John the beloved disciple is the first one to reach it, but he hesitates to enter, perhaps out of the Jewish concern for becoming “unclean” by contacting a dead body. Later, when he does enter, the Scripture says that he “saw and believed.” When Peter gets there, he sees the empty tomb, and examines the wrappings that had been used to prepare Jesus’ body for burial, but it seems he doesn’t understand what to make of all this. The Gospel reminds us that “they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (John 20:9).

Three people, witnessing the same event, with three different responses: fear, confusion, and faith. I think the first two responses pretty well explain themselves. When confronted with the empty tomb, I think it would have been only natural for those who had witnessed Jesus’ terrible death only days earlier to react with fear or confusion. It’s John’s faith that seems hard to explain. What was it about what he saw that enabled him to believe? After all, he saw the same thing Mary and Peter did. It could be that John did remember and understand that Jesus had said he would have to suffer and die, but afterward he would rise from the dead. Or maybe John was just one of those people for whom faith comes easily. Maybe the difference was in the way he was able to see what they had all witnessed.

When Mary returns, she is still overwhelmed with grief and fear. By some accounting it may have been only about 36 hours since Jesus had died. She meets Jesus, but she doesn’t recognize him. She mistakes him for a gardener and actually asks him if he’s taken the body somewhere. It’s only when Jesus calls her by name that she recognizes him and believes. It takes his voice, his initiative to reveal himself to her, for her to get past her grief and fear so that she could see in such a way that she could recognize that Jesus was alive and standing right in front of her. Once she was able to get past her own feelings and see clearly that Jesus truly was alive, she returns to the Apostles again and tells them she’s seen Jesus.

When I think of this story, I wonder how the Apostles reacted when Mary first told them she had seen Jesus. Did some of them think she was crazy, or simply hallucinating out of her extreme grief? Were some of them confused? Again, the Scripture states, they didn’t yet understand that Jesus would rise from the dead. I think it’s a pretty good bet that some of them doubted—seriously doubted—that what she was telling them could be true. As some of the disciples unknowingly told Jesus later that evening, “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). The implication is that now that he is dead, that hope is gone. In the same place they reported that some of the Apostles had gone to the tomb to “see for themselves,” but they didn’t see Jesus (Luke 24:24). It would seem that there was a wide variety of responses to Mary’s story, but it doesn’t sound like faith was the primary one at first.

The plain truth is that faith is difficult for some of us. There are all kinds of reasons for that. Some of us simply cannot get past bad experiences we’ve had in church. Some of us may have a more questioning bent of mind, and we’re more prone to doubt than to believe. Others may simply find faith to be mostly irrelevant to the reality of life. When our experience in life has been mostly tragedy, suffering, hardship, rejection, and pain, faith can seem like just so many pretty words. They may mean something to others, but they don’t have any real significance for life as we have experienced it.

More than that, the whole way of thinking with which many people approach life in this world these days can make it difficult to believe that something that was so out of the ordinary, the idea that a man who was tortured to death and was buried in a tomb somehow came back to life, could truly make any difference for us at all. We’re taught to believe that what we can see and touch is what is real. While faith has been around for millennia, from the perspective that only what we can observe is real, it’s easy to think of faith as “wishful thinking” or perhaps just plain superstition.[2] Almost like the equivalent of believing in vampires and ghosts. While vampires and ghosts may make for some interesting entertainment, almost nobody seriously believes in them. Why should it be any different with Jesus?

I think what makes the difference is encountering Jesus, alive and present with us here and now. That’s what made the difference for most of the disciples on the first Easter. You and I aren’t going to be seeing him like we can see one another right now, the way the first disciples met Jesus. I’m talking about an experience where we know in our hearts that we have been sustained by a love that is beyond what our senses can perceive.[3] When we have an encounter like that, it changes the way we see things, whether we’re prone to believe or more prone to doubt. It enables us to believe that God is not limited to the way things normally work in our world. An encounter with the living Christ in our lives can enable us to see that that God already working to make all things new in hidden ways (and in some not so hidden ways) here and now among us. It enables us to embrace the good news of Jesus’ resurrection as a promise that points toward a future filled with hope and joy and life. Death is not the ultimate reality for us; life in and through the risen Jesus is the final word. Meeting the risen Christ for ourselves makes it possible for us to see our lives from a perspective of faith that goes beyond all the hopes that our normal everyday experiences may offer us.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm.  A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/31/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 182: “when we experience tragic suffering in our own lives and see so much tragic suffering in the world, we wonder whether all talk about a loving and just God is not in fact ... wishful thinking.”

[3] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 91, where he lays out the options: believing that the world of faith is what is “really real,” believing that faith is “unreal” in comparison with the observable forces at work in the world, and a third way, in which faith is directed toward the reality that is beyond what our senses perceive as real. He also says that (ibid., 125) in the face of the “specter of a heartless world of cosmic forces,” “Faith is faith that there is something that lifts us above the blind force of things, .... That there is something ... or someone ... who stands by us when we are up against the worst, who stands by others, the least among us.”

The Depth of God's Love

 The Depth of God’s Love

Philippians 2:5-11[1]

Sometimes our faith can seem to contradict the reality of our lives. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the reality of our lives seems to contradict our faith. Last week we talked about Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension to the Father as the crucial event by which God is working in the world to make everything new, already here and now. Just as the light dispels the darkness, Jesus spoke of his being “lifted up” as depriving the so-called “the ruler of this world” from any and all power. But in reality, that’s something we all have to choose to believe, and choose to see in this world. And I choose to believe that’s the truth about God and the truth about us and our world. But as I mentioned last week, there’s all too much evidence that the darkness in this world is just as deep and just as powerful as ever.

 However strong our faith may be, there is a dark side to life that I think most of us would rather avoid. But whether we’re willing to look at them or not, there are dark places all over the world. There are dark places in our country, in our State, in our county—and in our town! For some, the darkness consists of a loneliness that may feel like it’s choking the life out of you. For others, it may be a sense of grief that you just cannot process. For still others, it may be a job that’s suffocating, or addictions that slowly erode the soul. For all too many, the darkness consists of mistaking what may feel good right now for “happiness.” However much we may believe that God is truly in the process of making all things new right now, there remains a dark side to life.

It’s no wonder that most of us would rather avoid facing the darkness in our world or in our own lives. But the hard truth of the matter is that the only way to overcome darkness is to have the courage to face it squarely. And that usually means taking a journey into that darkness that can be painful and frightening. The only way out of the darkness that we feel trapped in is to go through it. As we allow ourselves to wrestle with the pain and fear and doubt within, the very process itself heals us. And as we become healed, we grow strong enough to recognize the darkness without giving in to it. We grow strong enough to enjoy the freedom to live in the light. We grow confident that our faith is not misplaced, but rather that we have good reasons to believe that God is working in and through us for good right now.

I believe that’s a part of what our New Testament lesson from Philippians for today is about. It’s about Jesus’ journey into the very heart of the darkness that oppresses the human family in order to set us all free from its power. That journey led him not only to give up his rightful place with God to become a human being, just as vulnerable as the rest of us. His journey took him farther than that: he not only “emptied himself” to become human, he also subjected himself to the humiliation of a cruel execution and actually tasted death for us all. He went into the very abyss of all the darkness and suffering we can experience in this world and took it upon himself.

If we had not heard this story all our lives, I think at least some of us would venture to ask why Jesus would do such a thing. When you look at our world and the darkness in it today, you do see a few brave souls who are willing to enter some aspect of it, at least for a time. But the idea of someone actually taking on all the darkness of this world strains our ability to understand how anyone could possibly do such a thing. In the death of Jesus on a Roman cross there is something more going on than simple human compassion in action. In Jesus we see the depth of God’s love in all its life-changing power at work. I think that’s the key to understanding how Jesus could take on all the darkness in this world. And we learn from this that God’s love is a love that will not rest until it reaches out to every dark place we can possibly go to bring all of us back home to the light.

Of course, that answer is also a part of the faith we’ve been taught all our lives. But it seems to me that if we think about it, this too raises questions that may not be easy to answer. If we’re honest with ourselves, we have to at least wonder why this particular expression of God’s love was the one chosen to set us free from the darkness. Many have tried to understand this in human terms and imagine that Jesus volunteered to take God’s wrath toward us all on himself. The idea is that his death was the punishment that we deserved. It’s embedded into our faith not only through Scripture, but also through the hymns we sing. But I don’t find that perspective to be very compelling. That only reinforces the idea that we have to cower in fear before an angry God who may strike us down at any moment. And I don’t think that’s what was going on when Jesus embraced his death on the cross.

Jesus embraced the suffering of the cross because that’s who God is: a God who loves us enough to suffer for us so that we can be whole. The God of the Bible is not an angry God, but rather one who constantly suffers on behalf of his chosen people. That’s the lesson of much of the Hebrew Bible. And beginning with some of the prophets, and especially in Jesus, we see that love extended to the whole human family. That’s how the God of the Bible chooses to love us all, time and again. And the God of the Bible is a God who never quits loving us this way. Part of the mystery of our faith is that it was God who was suffering on our behalf on that cross. St. Paul said it this way, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). Somehow, some way, it’s God who takes on the suffering we endure when we wander into the dark places of this life. That’s the depth of God’s love for us all!

Now some of you may be feeling like I’m only taking you further down the “rabbit hole.” The love of God poured out for us in Jesus on the cross is indeed, as one of our confessions puts it, a mystery beyond our understanding.[2] So if you’re wondering how God could suffer for us on the cross, the only answer is a short one, though it is far from being a simple. The answer is that in Jesus we see the mystery of God’s love. It’s a mystery how God could suffer for us on that cross. In Jesus, we see the God who is the redeemer of the despised, the savior of the hopeless, the one who chooses the unwanted. It bears repeating: the death of Jesus on a cross shows us that God’s love reaches into the very depth of any darkness into which we can go and will not rest until we are all back home with him.

The good news of the Gospel is that there is no depth of suffering that Jesus did not reach in his death on the cross. Truly does our affirmation of faith state that “An abyss of suffering” has been “swallowed up by the suffering of divine love.”[3]  That means Jesus’ death on the cross has set us free from all the darkness we could ever experience —the loneliness, grief, agony, alienation, cruelty, abandonment, estrangement, despair, shame, rejection, and self-destruction. Jesus has taken all of that on himself. God has taken all of it into his love. For me, that means that no one can sink so deep as to be beyond hope, beyond the reach of God’s love. However far we may fall, the love of God has already been into the depth of the abyss in Jesus Christ and is waiting there to bring us back home.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/24/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] The Book of Confessions 2016, Confession of 1967 9.15, p. 289.

[3] “The Study Catechism,” question 45 (approved by the 210th General Assembly of the PCUSA, 1998).

Now is the Time

Now is the Time

John 12:20-32[1]

Our faith makes some pretty big promises. Of course, the biggest promise is that if we trust in Jesus, we’ll go to heaven when we die and spend all eternity in the presence of his love. For some of us, that may have been what drew us to faith in the first place. But the problem with that promise is that we really have no way to test it in this life. We won’t “know” whether it’s true until we die. In the meantime, we do have reasons for confidence in that promise. The most important one is that Jesus defeated death on the cross and God raised him to new life on that first Easter Sunday. But then, that did happen a long time ago. So I can understand why some people may have doubts about it. We also have the experience of Jesus living “within our hearts” as the hymn puts it. But again, that’s not something easily demonstrated to someone with questions.

There are other promises that do relate to this life, however. One of them is a promise that we often use in our Assurance of Pardon: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor 5:17). I think the point is made a bit clearer in the New Living Translation: “anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” We might be tempted to think that this is just one particularly dramatic promise. But that’s not the case at all. It’s one of the themes of the Christian faith: those who trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and who entrust their lives to him become whole new people. We heard it last week in our lesson from Ephesians: “because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ” (Eph 2:4-5, NIV). It’s the promise I like to use when we observe Ash Wednesday: just as God raised Jesus from the dead, so we too may live a new life (Rom 6:4).

Of course, the problem is that there’s a lot about our lives that doesn’t look or feel very “new.” We might very well agree with the objection quoted in 2 Peter: “From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created” (2 Pet 3:4, NLT). Or even before that, we might agree that “there is nothing new under the sun,” as the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes put it (Eccl 1:9). I’m afraid that’s one of the changes that’s taken place in the last generation or two. People have lost the optimism that used to define our culture. At least for some of us. These days skepticism is much more widespread. I’m not talking about conspiracy theories. I’m talking about the fact that my children’s generation, and the generation after that, look at the world and they see the rich getting richer at their expense. They see people abusing power for their own benefit, regardless of whom they hurt. They see a world that doesn’t look like there’s much reason to believe in the promise that God is “making all things new” (Rev 21:5).

This point of view relates to our Gospel lesson for today. Jesus makes a pretty big promise in this passage. He says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:31-32). It’s a pivotal point in John’s Gospel. The Jewish leaders have just made the decision that Jesus must die to keep them from losing their position and power. Up to this point, Jesus says his “hour has not yet come.” But now, the way events have unfolded convinces him that he has indeed come to his “hour.” But then just what that “hour” means takes a little more attention to John’s Gospel as a whole.

The theme of Jesus’ “hour” in John’s Gospel signifies that Jesus has a sense that his life and ministry are heading toward a conclusion. We saw something like that a few weeks ago in Mark’s Gospel when he told the disciples there that he “must” be handed over, rejected, killed and then raised from the dead. In John’s Gospel, the idea is similar, but a little different. We see a glimpse of that in our lesson when Jesus speaks of being “lifted up.” Of course, we would understand that to mean being “lifted up” on the cross to die. But the whole idea here is that the “hour” toward which Jesus is heading is the entire set of events that would lead to him “glorifying” God, and through which God would “glorify” him: his death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension to return to his place in God’s presence. That gives the idea of being “lifted up” a whole different meaning.

There is a sense in which John’s Gospel presents Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension to the Father as the crucial event by which God would change everything. Jesus says it this way in our lesson: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:32). The fact that Jesus will draw all people to himself also means depriving the so-called “the ruler of this world” from any and all power whatsoever. Just as the “light of life” that Jesus has brought means that the darkness has been dispelled once and for all, so also Jesus’ “lifting up” on the cross, in the resurrection, and at the ascension deprives the powers of evil of any further ability to control our lives.

Well, that’s a really big promise, isn’t it? And the truth of the matter is when we look at the way life goes in our world, we can see all too much evidence that the powers of evil are thriving as much as ever. How many people in this world are affected right now by war, hunger, poverty, addiction, or abuse? How many more are subject to injustice, violence, and oppression? When you look at the fact that those who align themselves with evil in this world seem to be gaining power, not losing it, it can make you wonder whether we can trust Jesus’ promise at all.

But I think it comes down to how we choose to look at things. We can choose to focus on the negative things in this world. We can choose to focus on the negative things in our lives. And when we do, it should come as no surprise that we see a lot of evidence that life in this world is getting worse, not better. Or we can choose to look at things differently. We can choose to look for glimpses of “the beginning of the fulfillment” of God’s promise to make everything new again.[2] We see it every time someone stands up in the midst of all that’s wrong with this world and demonstrates their hope by choosing to make a positive difference for others. We see it every time someone turns away from all that would keep them trapped in darkness and chooses to believe that God loves them and to live their lives in the light of that love.

We all constantly stand before that choice. Whether to focus on all that’s wrong and surrender our lives to the control of those who would harm us and others. Or to focus on the good things that show God is indeed already working among us to make all things new. Jesus’ “hour” came for him to “lifted up” in his death, resurrection, and ascension to reign at God’s right hand. Since that time, the time has come for us everyone in every generation. And so, for us now is the time to decide what we believe is truly real: the hatred, violence, corruption, and oppression in this world, or the new life that God has begun in all of us through Jesus. We can choose which one we believe, and now is the time to make that choice. Now is the time for deciding whether we will give up our lives for the sake of others. Now is the time to decide whether we will open our eyes to see the “beginning of the fulfillment” of God’s promise to make all things new among us and around us already here and now.

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[1] © Alan Brehm 2024. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/17/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey: A Diary of his Final Year, 166-167: “life is not empty waiting. It is to wait full of expectation. The knowledge that God will indeed fulfill the promise to renew everything … makes the waiting exciting. We can already see the beginning of the fulfillment. Nature speaks of it every spring; people [speak] of it whenever they smile; …and all of history speaks of it when amid all devastation and chaos, men and women arise who reveal the hope that lives within them … .”

Every Hour I Need You!

Every Hour I Need You!

Psalm 107:1-22[1]

You may have noticed that we talk a lot about God’s “unfailing love” in our worship. As is the case with other elements of our service that I repeat week after week, that’s an intentional choice on my part. My understanding of God based on the central affirmations of the Bible is that God loves us all with a love that will never let us go. God loves us all, along with the whole human family, with a love that is unconditional, unchanging, and irrevocable. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it (and as I am fond of quoting), “There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. There is nothing you can do to make God love you less.” That’s my understanding of God’s love, but it’s also an understanding that’s based on and informed by almost 50 years of studying the Bible.

A statement like “50 years of studying the Bible” might sound impressive. It might sound like after 50 years of personal, professional, academic, and spiritual study of the Bible, I should have it all down. But I don’t. There are still lots of questions that I can’t answer. There are still questions about God’s unfailing love that I can’t answer. One question that I often struggle with is the fact that the Bible speaks about God’s love in “expansive” language. For example, as I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite verses is Psalm 36:5, which says that God’s “unfailing love is as vast as the heavens.” The idea is that there is nothing in all of creation that’s beyond the reach of God’s unfailing love. It’s a comforting reminder. But when I think about the vastness of all creation, I can sometimes wonder with the author of Psalm 8, “what are mere mortals that you should think about them” (Ps 8:4, NLT)? How can my problems really matter to a God whose love fills the whole universe?

That tension lies at the heart of what the Bible teaches about God. God is so far beyond us that his love can extend to the vast reaches of the whole universe. But God is also so close to each and every one of us that his love reaches into the everyday details of our lives. Another of my favorite Bible verses says it this way: “I am the high and holy God, who lives forever. I live in a high and holy place, but I also live with people who are humble and repentant, so that I can restore their confidence and hope” (Isa 57:15, GNT). It may be hard for us to understand how God’s love can extend to everything in all the vast universe and also at the same time can relate to the everyday concerns of our lives. But that is precisely what the Bible affirms about who God is and how God loves us.

I think our lesson from Psalm 107 for today addresses this question. The whole Psalm is a reflection on God’s love for people in various real-life situations they may have faced. And the point of it all is that God “is good to us, and his love never fails” (Psalm 107:2, CEV). Just to make sure that the message sinks in, there are several “stanzas” to this Psalm that demonstrate God’s goodness and unfailing love. The Psalmist reminds us that God’s love is such that “To everyone who is thirsty, he gives something to drink; to everyone who is hungry, he gives good things to eat” (Ps. 107:9). God’s love means “He breaks down bronze gates and shatters iron locks” to set free those who are unjustly imprisoned (Ps. 107:16). God in his love can “turn deserts into lakes and scorched land into flowing streams.” (Ps. 107:35). God’s love is such that “When you are suffering and in need, he will come to your rescue” (Ps. 107:41). The idea is that there is no situation in which we may find ourselves that God’s love cannot reach us and restore us.

More than that, this Psalm reminds us that God’s love for us is such that he seeks us out when we’re lost. That seems to be the point of spelling out the various real-life situations in the Psalm. The point is not only that God helps those who turn to him, but rather that God himself actually seeks out those who are in distress. Of course, there’s a balance here as well. God seeks us out, but it’s also up to us to turn to him. There’s a “refrain” that repeats through the Psalm. In each and every challenge, it says, “You were in serious trouble, but you prayed to the LORD, and he rescued you” (Ps. 107:6, 13, 19, 28). No matter where we may find ourselves in this life, we can turn to the Lord and ask him for help. And when we do, what we find is that God is always seeking us out in all the places of distress, shame, and even danger into which we may have wandered or gone astray. This is also what it means when the Psalm affirms that God loves us with a love that never lets us go.

The promise is that no matter where our lives may have taken us, God not only seeks us out, but he restores us to life. Of course, one of the big questions that I can’t answer is what to make of it when we turn to the Lord, and nothing seems to change. We go on being hungry and thirsty, we go on wandering in the wilderness, we go on suffering and there’s no rescue from it. It’s one of the biggest questions with the Bible’s teaching about God’s love, and I don’t think anyone can really answer it. Sometimes we turn to the Lord and call out to him to help us, and all we seem to get in response is silence. But I think it’s important, especially in those times, for us to hear the message of Psalm 107: God is always “good to us” and “his love never fails.” Even and particularly when it seems like God has turned a deaf ear to our cries for help, even and particularly when we feel like God has abandoned us instead of answering our cries for him to help us, we need to remember that God loves us with a love that will never let us go.

Some of you may wonder why I spend so much time preaching on passages like this one from the Hebrew Bible. I know that there’s a tradition of preaching from the Gospel lessons every Sunday in the Presbyterian world. I would answer that question by saying that in my opinion we have to understand the Bible as a whole in order to understand any of its parts. The foundations for the faith that Jesus proclaimed in his life and ministry are found in the Hebrew Bible. Without an understanding of how Jesus viewed God, we can easily turn everything he said into a rigid system that restricts access to God’s love only to those who “live up” to a certain standard. In other words, the very same kind of system for which Jesus challenged the Jewish religious leaders of his day. The point of his challenge was that God’s love is unconditional, unchanging, and irrevocable for everyone, not just for those who “measure up.”

For me, the lesson of this passage is that wherever we may find ourselves in this life, whether in good times or in hard times, the truth about us is that God loves us, always has and always will. And the truth about us is that we can look to God to care for us in any and every hardship we may be facing. When I read this Psalm, I think of that great old hymn, “I need thee every hour.” I think that’s the lesson of this passage for us today: every hour of every day, we all need the Lord. We need the Lord’s love in our lives every hour of every day. We need to know that the Lord is looking out for us, no matter what circumstance in which we may find ourselves. We need to be able to trust that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there’s nothing we can do to make God love us less. And that love isn’t just some nice sentiment. It makes all the difference in our ability to cope with all that we may have to face in our lives. We can face it all knowing that God is always “good to us” and “his love never fails.”

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[1] ©2024 Alan Brehm.  A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 3/10/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church.

Laying it All Down

Lay It All Down

Mark 8:34-35[1]

We all have burdens we carry through our lives. All of us have obligations that we have to meet, responsibilities to attend to, tasks that we need to look after. That’s just a normal part of life. But many of us have other burdens we carry as well. We may carry the burden of expectations that were placed on us at a young age. Those expectations may have taken the form of a “script” or a “plan” for our lives that our loved ones hoped, or perhaps even demanded, that we fulfill. They may have seen us as the ones to carry on the family legacy, and they may have had very specific ideas about what that should look like. We may carry other burdens, like the shame or guilt for mistakes we’ve made for which we just can’t seem to forgive ourselves. We may carry the burden of thinking “if they really knew me, they wouldn’t accept me.” I think that one is more common than we may know.

We have other burdens that we carry as well. We enter our lives with our own hopes and dreams about the path life will take and what life will or will not bring our way. Those of us who have been around the block more than a few times know that life has a way of frustrating our “plans.” Rather than a straight line from beginning to end, the course of our lives usually includes all kinds of detours, missed turns, wrong turns, backtracking, and just plain getting stuck. That can be a problem for us if we’re desperately clinging to our plans. More than that, when life takes us down roads we never dreamed of, or perhaps we could only imagine in our worst nightmares, if we cling to our plans as if that’s the way our lives “have” to unfold, we will likely find ourselves discouraged and perhaps even embittered. When we close ourselves to the possibility that good things may come from paths we didn’t expect, our hopes and dreams can become shackles that bind us.

This may seem like a strange way to introduce our Gospel lesson for today. After all, in our lesson today Jesus not only announces that his path of obedience to God would lead him to die on a cross. He also tells all who would follow him that they must “deny themselves and take up their cross” (Mk 8:34). Just as we discussed with Jesus’ call to repentance last week, I’m not sure we even understand what Jesus is asking of us when he calls us to follow him. In our culture, “being a Christian” can simply be part of our identity as Americans. Some of us view faith as a means of getting all that we want out of our lives: comfort, happiness, status, and security. In a setting where people “select” churches like they are picking out a new car, and where they selectively participate only to get what they want out of it, I seriously doubt that we can even hear what Jesus is saying when he calls us to “deny ourselves and take up our cross.”

Our problem starts with “denying ourselves.” That call goes completely against the dominant message of our culture. In our consumer-driven culture, we’re told we “deserve” the best, and that we “owe it to ourselves” to make sure we get it. That’s pretty much the basic message behind the whole advertising industry, from Superbowl ads to local business appeals on the evening news. The basic premise is that “you’re worth it,” so you “deserve” to “treat yourself” with everything you want. And we’ve made it easy for you to get it—no payments until 2030! So when Jesus calls us to “deny ourselves,” it just doesn’t compute. As a child of this culture, I must confess I’ve wrestled with how to communicate what this means to us. The best answer I can come up with is that Jesus calls us to let go of our own aspirations, our own hopes and dreams for our lives, or even the very notion that life is “supposed” to bring us all that we could want or ask for. More than that, I think Jesus is calling us to lay down our preoccupation with our own welfare, to let go of the basic orientation that makes ourselves the focus of our lives.

Now, I’m aware that this is difficult for us to even hear, let alone comprehend or actually embrace as a way of living. It just seems wrong not to make “self” the center of our lives. But I wonder if in fact Jesus may be onto something that eludes us. I wonder if perhaps our very preoccupation with “self” isn’t one of those things we cling to that become shackles that burden us. Think about it; we like to hear Jesus calling us to “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mt 11:28-30). That invitation sounds a lot more appealing than the one in our lesson from the Gospel of Mark for today to “deny yourself and take up your cross.”

But I wonder whether they may be more alike than we think. Jesus goes on to say in our lesson for today that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mk 8:35). I’m not sure Jesus would say it this way, but in our day and time I think “losing your life” can mean laying down the burdens we carry when we box ourselves into the trap of making “me, myself, and mine” the center of our universe. When we get trapped in the prison of our own interests, our own wants, or what “I” deserve, it becomes a place that robs us of the very life we’re clinging to so desperately. I think what Jesus was trying to say is that in fact the only way “save your life,” the only way to truly live, is to give yourself away for the sake of others. I think he may be calling us to lay down all the things we cling to so tightly in that small place of “I” and open ourselves to the people around us in compassion, understanding, and love. Of course, there is a balance to be struck here between a healthy sense of self and giving ourselves away for others. We can go too far in both directions.

Giving ourselves away for the sake of others brings us to the part about “taking up your cross.” Again, I’m not sure we can hear how shocking that must have been to Jesus’ disciples at that time. They had seen many of their people brutally executed on crosses. In their ears, “take up your cross” must have been even more difficult for them to hear than “denying yourself” is for us. It might have been like calling us to “take up your hangman’s noose.” But he was pointing them to his own example. He had just told them that his path of obedience to God was going to lead him to his death. And he proceeded to call them to follow him on that path. And, in fact, there have been many who have followed Jesus to the point of giving up their lives.

Most of us don’t live in a situation where we literally have to give up our lives to follow Jesus. But I think we can still learn something about what it means to “take up our cross.” On the cross, Jesus set the prime example of what it means to love others enough to lay down your life for them (cf. Jn 15:13). It’s not likely we’ll be called on to do that by literally dying. But laying down our own interests, our own wants, our own hopes and dreams for the sake of others is a path that we can all take. Just as with repentance, “denying yourself and taking up your cross” is not easy. I don’t think it’s a way of living that comes easily to any of us. In fact, I would say that it will take us a lifetime to learn what it means to truly lay down your “life” and give yourself away for the sake of others. And even then we won’t have it all down.

As we continue observing the season of Lent, I hope we realize that the kind of sacrifice Jesus calls us to make for the sake of our faith has nothing to do giving up meat or chocolate for 6 weeks. If we would follow Jesus on the path to the cross during this time, he’s going to call us to go far beyond that. He’s going to call us to lay down our very lives for the sake of others. But the “good news” in this seemingly demanding call is that it is precisely as we “lay down” our lives that we truly find life. As we let go all our expectations and plans, as we let go all our hopes and dreams, we may discover that they were the very things keeping us from the life we were looking for. As we lay it all down and follow Jesus on the path of giving ourselves away for the sake of others, we truly “find” our lives.

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[1] ©2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/25/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

(Re)Turning

 (Re)Turning

Psalm 25; Mark 1:15[1]

The language of “sin” and “repentance” doesn’t get much traction in our world these days. For quite some time now, we’ve been much more concerned about enhancing self-esteem than confessing that we’ve done wrong. Even, and especially among those of us in the church, there are many who bristle at the notion of gathering every Sunday and praying a prayer of confession together. There are those who not only reject the language of sin, they also object to any kind of admission that they are fallen, or broken, or less than whole just as they are. It would be nice if that were true, but if we’re honest with ourselves and with each other, we have to admit that we all fall short. And we do it far more often than we’d probably like to admit even to ourselves. Confessing our sins together week after week may not be the most comfortable part of our worship, but it is necessary.

To some extent, I understand what motivates those who object to the language of sin. Over the centuries, church leaders have used that language like a club to beat people over the head. They’ve used guilt to manipulate and control people. Especially in traditions a particular leader is the only one “authorized” to “dispense” forgiveness. And I understand the importance of maintaining a healthy sense of self-esteem. The fact that we have sinned makes us human, not worthless or shameful. Unfortunately, the language of our worship has at times created that impression. Even some of our beloved hymns have lyrics that can undermine a healthy sense of self-worth when taken to extreme. Phrases like “a wretch like me,” or “such a worm as I” don’t exactly resonate with a healthy self image. Even acknowledging our unworthiness can communicate to some people that they are “worthless.”

I would insist that we don’t have to abandon our sense of self-worth altogether to recognize and admit that we all fall short. In fact, I would suggest that part of a truly healthy sense of self-worth includes admitting that we all have room for improvement. Our lives are a journey, and in part that means we never stop growing. But in order to grow, we have to be willing to admit that there are areas of our lives that we could change. Again, the fact that we all fall short, that we all have room for improvement, that there are areas in our lives where we could change and grow, means that we are human, not shameful or worthless. It also means we acknowledge that, for all our efforts at following Jesus, none of us follows him perfectly. And we never will until we’re standing face-to-face with him and his love has made us completely whole.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Mark tells us that Jesus’ message was “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mk. 1:15). Or as the version we read today puts it, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!” I think we’re familiar with the “good news” of the “kingdom of God.” I’m not so sure that the language of repentance connects with us these days. It’s just not a word that we use in everyday life outside the church. I would imagine there are many in our day who might not even know what “repentance” means. One of the ways for understanding passages that have language that is unfamiliar or difficult I recommend to people studying the Bible is to compare different translations. I personally use the Bible Gateway website, because it makes it easy to compare many English translations at once.

When you compare translations of this verse, you find an interesting interchange in a couple of the translations we use on a regular basis. One is the Good News Translation, or “Today’s English Version,” first published in 1966. It translates the word “repent” in our Gospel lesson as “Turn away from your sins.” The other is the Contemporary English Version, first published in 1991. It translates the word “repent” as “Turn back to God.” What makes that interesting to me is that both of them were published by the American Bible Society. While the second translation wasn’t meant to be a “revision” of the first, there is a sense in which the Contemporary English Version was meant to be the successor to the original “Today’s English Version” or the Good News Bible. I think that makes it even more interesting that one translates “repent” as “Turn away from your sins,” while the other translates it as “Turn back to God.”

I point this out because I would say that based on my study of the Bible, I think they’re both right. Calls to “repent” in the Bible are meant to call people to turn away from their sins. At the same time, they are meant to call people to turn back to God. “Repentance” includes both movements: turning away from that which is harmful to us and to others, and returning to God, who is the sole source of life that is full and free. But that can be hard for us to do. We have to acknowledge that something we’ve done is “sin” in order to “turn away” from it. And we have to acknowledge that in choosing to sin we have turned away from God in order to return to him. It can be humbling to make either of those confessions, even to ourselves.

Again, I would say that humility can be a part of a truly healthy sense of self-worth, as long as it doesn’t turn into shame. I think that’s part of what our lesson from the Psalms is about. It’s a prayer of humility, recognizing that we all need help in order to truly follow God’s ways in our daily living. And that’s what the Psalm promises: God’s help. Our lesson says it this way, “The LORD is good and does what is right; he shows the proper path to those who go astray. He leads the humble in doing right, teaching them his way” (Ps 25:8-9, NLT). Notice, it doesn’t say that God shows the proper way to those who are already in the right, but rather to those who go astray! As a person who is fallen and flawed and who “goes astray” more often that I’d like to admit, I find that to be a great comfort! The promise of Scripture is that God shows us all the “proper way” and leads us in what is right.

The language of sin and repentance in the Bible isn’t meant to shame us or to beat us down with the notion that we’re worthless. It’s meant to inspire us to “change our hearts and lives.” That’s the way the Common English Bible, the version we used for our Gospel lesson today, puts it: “Change your hearts and lives.” This is no easy task. Sometimes we have to “hit bottom” before we’re even willing to admit that we need to change. Making changes in our lives means recognizing that we fall short. It means taking responsibility for what we have done as well as what we’ve failed to do. It means, as the Psalmist says, admitting that we need help to follow God’s ways in our daily living. It reminds me of what Jesus said in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God” (Matt. 5:3). I like the way the Message translation puts it: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.” Being willing to confess our sins and repent, both in the sense of turning away from what harms us and others, and in the sense of returning to God, isn’t about thinking of ourselves as worthless or shameful. It’s simply about being humble enough to recognize that we need God’s help. And the promise of Scripture, is that to those who are humble enough to acknowledge we need help, God provides it time after time after time.

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[1] ©2024 Alan Brehm.  A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/18/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Glimpses

 Glimpses

2 Corinthians 3:16-4:7[1]

Our world is not one that makes it easy for us to hold on to our Christian faith. The message that the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and reign of Jesus points us to a way of living that promises us true life is only one among many messages out there competing for our attention. If you want to be seen as a person of worth and value in our world, you need youth, beauty, talent, wealth, or power. Or as many of them as you can get. Youth and beauty mean people notice you. Age and the signs of aging mean people overlook you. Talent means you count, in some cases to the tune of millions of dollars, in some cases to the tune of tens of millions. Wealth and power go hand in hand in our world. Those with enough wealth have the power to get their way, whether it’s right or not. It can be hard to see how Jesus Christ makes much of a difference in a world like that.

Part of the problem stems from the various media sources in our world. These sources are means of communication that have given us ready access to information and have made it possible for us to stay more connected to one another than ever before. And that’s a good thing. But they also have the power to shape our perception of the world in ways that can distort the truth. Every “report” is an interpretation from a particular point of view. And any media source that doesn’t recognize their own point of view is likely intentionally distorting the truth for their own purposes. What counts these days is being the first to “break” a story, not making the effort to ensure that you got the story right. Or that the way you presented it was fair. And we’ve faced this distortion of reality for so long that many people would be hard-pressed to explain why they view the world the way they do. It’s just what they heard from their favorite media source.

Amid the competing versions of “truth” that are out there, what matters isn’t whether you have done your due diligence to fact-check what you say. Rather, what matters is how well you “spin” your story so that it’s convincing. I find myself speechless at times over what we as a people believe to be “true,” and the flimsy basis upon which we believe it. And I’m dumbfounded that in a country that still to a large degree considers itself “Christian” we follow people and embrace ideas that blatantly contradict everything Jesus stands for. But then, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when what really counts for us is the size of your home or your bank account, or whether you get to drive the latest and greatest car and sport the finest in fashion. When our values are measured by what we have instead of who we are, we have truly lost our way.

All of this brings us back to how important it is for us as those who profess Christian faith to make the message about the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and reign of Jesus Christ the one that truly defines our lives. This brings us to our lesson from 2 Corinthians for today. St. Paul himself had lived his life based on a message that was very different from the one that Jesus taught. His view of the world was one that had been defined by the distinction between those who are “righteous” and those who are “sinners.” And that distinction was based on things like your ethnic background, your loyalty to the “right” people, or even by the foods you ate. It was something that could be measured, and anyone who didn’t “measure up” was a sinner. Like most people in that kind of system, it was always the “others” who didn’t “measure up.”

St. Paul was so committed to that view of the world that he considered Jesus a blasphemer because he offered God’s love and grace and mercy to everyone regardless of whether they “measured up” or not. And he considered all those who followed him and spread his teachings not only to be a threat to his way of life but also as “enemies” of God. And so it was that he set out for the ancient city of Damascus with authorization to arrest and even kill any Christians he found there. But St. Paul met someone he didn’t expect on the road to Damascus: he met the risen Lord Jesus himself! And in the face of the Jesus, he saw something he also didn’t expect. He saw “the glory of God.” As St. Paul says in our lesson for today, “For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6, NLT). I think he was referring to the “light” that he saw in the face of Jesus on the road to Damascus!

It was that encounter that changed St. Paul from a man who was “breathing out murderous threats” (Acts 9:1, NIV) against the followers of Jesus into a man who completely changed his life to follow Jesus himself. Because of what he saw in the face of Jesus, because he could say that God had made that light “shine” in his heart, St. Paul changed his life from being a man who believed he could and should measure everyone else by his own life into a man who recognized that he could never truly “measure up,” and nor could anyone else. And his life would never be the same. He gave up a life in which he was considered one of the ones to “watch” as an up-and-coming leader to one who was seen as a “fool for Christ” and the “scum of the earth” (1 Cor 4:10, 13). He walked away from everything he had valued in order to follow Jesus.

But more than what he gave up, St. Paul tells us in this passage what he gained by that dramatic change. What he gained was nothing less than the life and the love and the power of God at work in him. In our lesson for today he says it this way: “as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him and reflect his glory even more” (2 Cor. 3:18, NLT). But reflecting the glory of the risen Lord Jesus Christ is a very different thing from the glory of this world. The glory of this world is based on how much you have. But the glory of Christ is based on how much you’re willing to sacrifice. The glory of this world is based on how well you look to your friends and others. But the glory of Christ is based on how well you serve the least, the last, and the left out among us. The glory of this world is based on how much power you have to get your way. But the glory of Christ is based on how consistent you are about treating all people with kindness and respect, especially the most vulnerable among us.

A life that’s based on following Jesus is one that looks very different from one that’s based on the values of this world. Sometimes it can seem like the values of this world have so much more appeal, so much more impact than the values of our Christian faith. But I choose to believe that what God is doing in our world through Jesus Christ is ultimately more powerful. To believe that, we have to “hope for more than we have yet seen,” as one of our confessions of faith puts it. It’s a matter of believing that in Jesus, especially in his resurrection from death to new life and in his reign in our lives through the power of love, we see a glimpse of the work that God “will surely finish” one day. More than that, as we embody the way Jesus lived in our own lives, we reflect the glory of Christ still to this day. We become living “glimpses” of the one who died for all people, who was raised to life to defeat the power of death, and who reigns over all the powers of this world.

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[1] ©2024 Alan Brehm.  A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/11/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.