The Waking Dreamer: The Study Catechism

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Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Born That Man No More May Die

Hebrews 2:10-18[1]

On Christmas Eve, we talked about how the light of God’s love shines in the darkness. And, as Henri Nouwen reminded us, “a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness.” For many of us, there’s no darkness we fear more than death. It’s the ultimate unknown. I realize that when we are young, death may seem remote and almost unreal. Until someone your age passes away. I had that happen to me when I was in college. Or perhaps a close family member whom you loved. Then the stark reality hits you. And when it does, most of us are unprepared for the fear that grips us. In response to that fear, we in this culture seem obsessed with keeping death as far away from us as possible. In days of old, people would die at home, and the family would care for their body. Now all of that is removed from our presence. And perhaps for good reason—there seems to be no logic, no rhyme or reason to the way the “grim reaper” takes its victims. Our inability to make any sense out of death only increases our fear.

But our New Testament lesson for today presents us with the good news that, because we bear this burden of mortality, Jesus also came as one of us, made of flesh and blood. He came not only to God’s unfailing love and continual presence with us, but he also came specifically bearing our mortality so that he could die as one of us. And the purpose of his death was to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (Heb. 2:15). Though the Scripture text doesn’t spell out precisely how it is that he sets us free from the fear of death, the New Testament elsewhere reminds us that Jesus didn’t just come to die, but also to be raised from the dead, and by doing so to triumph over all the powers of darkness in this world, most importantly death.

Part of the purpose of his coming in the vulnerability of our flesh and blood was to demonstrate that our God is not so high and exalted as to be unconcerned with or unmoved by our burdens. There have been many who have believed that throughout the ages. Some of our “founding fathers” in this country believed God was like a clockmaker who made the clock, wound it up and let it go. It’s a belief system called “Deism.” They believed that God created the world, stood back, and lets it go on its way, but doesn’t get involved. On the contrary, the “gospel of Christmas” is that, by entering our broken and confusing existence as Immanuel, “God-who-is-with-us,” Jesus took all the burdens that we bear on himself. And so he made it clear that God is not the cold and distant deity whom some people have cringed before, and at times even hated. Rather, God is the one who loves us so much that, as we say in one of our confessions of faith, Jesus died to show us God’s love as “a love that is ready to suffer for our sakes.”[2]

That may seem like a strange thing to say about God. It was the conclusion Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to as he sat in his cell in a Nazi prison camp. He said, “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. … only the suffering God can help.” I think Bonhoeffer knew whereof he spoke. It would not be long before he would lose his life at the hands of the Nazis. Our lesson for today puts it this way: “Because Jesus himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested” (Heb. 2:18).

But that really is the question, isn’t it? Can a God who is vulnerable enough to enter our brokenness really be powerful enough to do something about it? Wouldn’t it seem that a God who is able to suffer with us is a God who is just as impotent as we are in the face of our suffering and ultimately our experience of death? In fact, that has been what some have concluded: God loves us, and God suffers with us, but at the end of the day, that’s about all God can do for us. If that’s the case, I’m not sure many would conclude that a “suffering God” is “able to help” us at all.

Others are unwilling to relegate God (and us) to such a helpless state in which our experience with death leaves us with a mystery of suffering that we cannot solve by any means. So they insist that though our experience of suffering and death may be burdensome to us now, God will ultimately bring good from it. The same confession I cited earlier says, “nothing evil is permitted to occur that God does not bend finally to the good.”[3] And there is some comfort to that. But “finally” or “ultimately” can seem like a very long time. It can seem like a very long time. So what are we to do in the meantime? How does the suffering love of our vulnerable God help us here and now?

Well, for one thing, I think we must not underestimate the power of that love that was poured out at the cross. It may look like the Jesus who dies on the cross was just as weak as any other human being. It may look like God is unable to do anything except suffer the pain of watching his son die. And yet, if we were to conclude that, we would be vastly underestimating the power of God’s love. One of my schoolmates offered a clarification of Bonhoeffer’s famous phrase by saying, “Only the suffering God can help, but it is only the suffering of the God who has greater power than we do over suffering that is able to help.”[4] And God does have greater power than we do over suffering, and so he is able to help.

Yes, love can be vulnerable. It does not retaliate, it does not lash out at those who may in fact take the life of the one who is loved or even the one who offers love. But love always breaks the power of evil. As we say in that same confession of faith, “An abyss of suffering” has been “swallowed up by the suffering of divine love.”[5] All the death, all the pain, all the fear that we can experience in this life, God has swallowed up into the suffering of his own love for us. Love always wins the day, no matter how long it takes to get to “ultimately.” And that is all the more certain with God’s love! God’s love most certainly wins the day.

But there is more to it than that. Although our lesson doesn’t mention it, surely the implication is there: Jesus did not remain in the grave. Death was not powerful enough to hold him. God raised him from the dead, and by so doing he not only vindicated the power of suffering love, but also demonstrated that God does more than “just” suffer with us when we suffer. Rather, as Henri Nouwen reminds us, the resurrection is the demonstration that “God’s light is more real than all the darkness, that God’s truth is more powerful than all human lies, that God’s love is stronger than death.”[6] And so in the vulnerability of Jesus taking on flesh and blood and dying for us all, and in the astonishing power of God raising him to life, we see God’s light overcoming all the darkness, even the darkness of death. And, as the Scripture says, “The light keeps shining in the dark, and darkness has never put it out” (Jn. 1:5, CEV)!

[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 12/28/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE. The title, "Born that Man No More May Die" is taken from a verse of the Hymn/Christmas Carol "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," by Charles Wesley.

[2] The Study Catechism (1998), question 8.

[3] The Study Catechism (1998), question 22.

[4] Steven R. Harmon, “Hebrews 2:10-18,”Interpretation 59 (Oct 2005): 406.

[5] The Study Catechism (1998) question 45.

[6] Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 32

Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Backward Victory

Luke 23:33-43[1]

We live in a world where somebody has to lose for anybody to win. As I mentioned earlier this year in connection with the NCAA basketball tournament, in some cases, a lot of people have to lose for somebody to win. There are all kinds of examples of this win-lose scenario in life. Mathematicians and economists call it a “zero-sum game.” Although I wouldn’t say that I fully understand all the details, the idea is that if someone has to lose in order for someone else to win, then there is no real net benefit for the whole “system.” The alternative is a “win-win game,” where a win for one can be a win for many. In my mind, the many “collaborative” games out there, where everyone works to “win” together, are a good example. They point out the option that I wish the human family would learn: we gain more when we all win together than when we try to “beat” everyone else!

I realize that there are so many aspects of our lives that reinforce the “win-lose” scenario that a “win-win” scenario may seem positively alien. It’s almost as if we believe it’s the “American way” for there to be at least one loser (if not many) in order for there truly to be a “winner.” But there are so many examples in daily life that disprove that. Like when one farmer is injured and can’t harvest crops and the rest of the community pitches in to help out. I know that I’m an idealist, but I believe that everyone wins in that situation. I may also be a fool, but I think the world would be a better place if we all adopted that approach toward more than just the people we know. When you think about all the resources in this world—food and other commodities, money and the ability to generate it, talented and hard-working people—it really makes no sense for us in a global economy to think of anyone as an “enemy.” I may be a foolish dreamer, but I believe that if all the peoples of all nations worked together, we could make this a much better world.

Some of you may consider that to be “backward” thinking. I’m okay with that. There’s a lot about our faith that can seem “backward.” For example, today is the day in the Christian calendar when we remind ourselves that we believe that Christ reigns over all things and all people. I can think of no more “backward” way of doing that than with a Gospel lesson that describes his death on the cross! Kings don’t get dragged before their subjects and mocked by them. Kings don’t allow themselves to be spat upon and beaten. They’re the ones who are usually doling out those punishments. And on the rare occasion when a King or any other powerful person is publicly humiliated, that’s pretty much the end of their “reign.” But here we are, on this Sunday when we celebrate our faith that Christ is reigning over us all, reading the “good news” of his death on the cross.

The irony in this has raised questions since the day Jesus faced that ultimate test—especially for people who look at Jesus’ life and ask whether he actually accomplished anything. He gathered some disciples. He stirred up the Jewish leadership. And he got himself killed in the end. And while he was hanging there on that cross, vulnerable, showing all the weakness of his humanity, some in the crowd asked the question that many have repeated through the centuries: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” (Lk 23:35). In the light of Jesus’ humiliating death, many have asked what a Jewish preacher from the First Century can do to make my life any better in the Twenty-First Century. And many have concluded that Jesus may have had some fine ideals, but he really can’t do anything to help us in this day and time.

But that conclusion misses some important signs that point out just how powerful the reign of Christ is, even in this passage that apparently presents Jesus at his weakest. One thing we need to notice is that in Luke’s Gospel, while hanging on the cross, enduring unimaginable agony, Jesus has the presence of mind to respond to his hecklers by saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk. 23:34). And when Jesus dies, he simply says, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk. 23:46). In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus gives up his life calmly and intentionally, full of trust in God.

But there’s another detail that we’re familiar with, but I think it’s easy to miss point. While Jesus is hanging on the cross, seemingly undergoing the ultimate humiliation, one of the criminals with him saw something that most all of those who witnessed this event firsthand missed. He saw that there truly was something about Jesus that set him apart. And so he took an amazing step of faith: hanging there on a cross, he looked at Jesus and asked, “remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:42). How or why he had the faith to see Jesus hanging on the cross and believe that one day he would come into a “kingdom,” we may never know. But he did, and he asked Jesus to remember him.

I think what we need to pay attention to is Jesus’ response. It really was astonishing, if you think about it. There he was, having been beaten, having been humiliated by some of the Jewish leaders, having been strung up to die by the Roman empire. And he said to this man, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk. 23:43)! If you think about it, there was nothing about the situation that would have made anybody believe such an incredible claim under normal circumstances. And yet Jesus made the claim: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” The unnamed criminal left his request open-ended: “when you come into your kingdom, remember me.” He expresses faith, but he doesn’t pin Jesus down to anything specific. Jesus makes that astonishing claim any way: “Today,” not at some indistinct point in the future, “whenever.” “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” By doing so Jesus demonstrated not only that he was more than just an “exceptional man,” but also that what he was doing was not weak in any way. It was the ultimate display of the power of the one is the truest example there has ever been of a “king.”[2]

Despite the fact that it all seems “backward,” I think it is ultimately fitting to remind ourselves that Christ reigns over us with this story, because his death on the cross defines the way in which he exercises that reign even now. As one of our confessions puts it, “With no power but the power of love, Christ defeated sin, evil and death by reigning from the cross.”[3] The reality is that the only way for Christ’s reign of justice, peace, and freedom to be truly established in this world was through the path of the cross, where he exercised no power but the power of love. But his cross also led to his resurrection and ascension, where he was exalted, as St. Paul puts it, “far above … every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come” (Eph. 1:21). And that means that “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.” We associate those words with Georg Friedrich Handel, but he was quoting from Revelation: “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev 11:15, RSV). When you take the cross by itself, it can seem like the early Church got it all backward. But in light of the resurrection and ascension, I would say that they were able to see the true victory that came from giving up his life for us all.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 102, where he says that when we celebrate Christ as “king” it represents “the most radical reversal of the ideal of rule that can be conceived.”

[3] The Study Catechism, question 41.

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Because He Lives

Luke 24:1-12[1]

Today is the day when we celebrate one of the most important events in our faith: after Jesus gave his life for us all, God raised him from the dead on the third day. But, let’s face it, that first Easter Sunday happened a long, long time ago. And, truth be told, for most of us it’s something we only talk about in church. It’s not really something that impacts our lives on a daily basis. We may view faith as something that relates to our “eternal destiny.” But for many of us that feels like a future so remote that we may not really give it much thought. There are just so many other things going on in our lives that seem so much more pressing. Some of us may even wonder how something that happened so long ago and so far away could have much to do with our “real lives” right here and right now.

Of course, there are many of us who look to Jesus as an example for our lives on a daily basis. We find meaning in his teachings about how to live and how to love. But that doesn’t distinguish Jesus from any of the other great teachers throughout the ages. And the hard truth of this world is that from a certain point of view you could say it hasn’t really made much of a difference. There are plenty of people in this world who are still caught in vicious circles of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair. Right now, millions of people, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of human beings are at the mercy of those who put their faith in ideas like “might makes right.” In the face of all that, “love your enemies” can feel pretty empty.

But I believe that our Gospel lesson for today points us in a different direction—toward a hope that never dies, a hope for new life that makes a difference right here and right now. The story of the women discovering that Jesus’ tomb was empty doesn’t necessarily in and of itself prove anything. But there is more to it than just the empty tomb. Whatever you may think about “angels,” the gist of their message is couched in the question, “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead?” The point of the question is to make it clear that the one they thought was lying dead in a cemetery is actually “the Living One.”

Now, to fully appreciate this, we need to look at the background of that phrase in the Bible. Throughout the Bible, God is “the Living One.” He is the one who gives life to all creation, including those of us who are living and breathing here today. In contrast to the idols made of wood and stone and precious metals, the “Living” God is the one who is able to make a difference in people’s lives here and now. I’ll admit that doesn’t always happen the way we expect, but I will also insist that the God who is “the Living One” shows up in our lives in surprising ways. I don’t know about you, but in my experience, those surprises usually come at just the right time.

So when the angels at the empty tomb call Jesus “the Living One,” the idea is more than just a dead man who has come back to life. Rather, the idea is that Jesus again shares God’s own life. And the first Christians became convinced that this was true not primarily because of the empty tomb or the angels’ message, but because they encountered Jesus as “the Living One” personally. Those encounters made all the difference in the world for them. Instead of a tragedy that stole all hope away, the cross was transformed into good news. The cross shows us not the heartbreaking end of a failed would-be religious leader, but rather the suffering love of the God-who-is-always-with-us and the God-who-is-always-for-us. It shows us that not even death can prevent God’s love from claiming us all.

But more than that, encountering the risen Lord Jesus as “the Living One” points us to the power of God to bring new life even from death. That’s not just something that applied to Jesus all those centuries ago. It’s a promise that the goal toward which God has been working and continues to work even now is a whole new creation. Although it’s a pretty big concept to try to wrap your head around, that’s precisely the promise of Easter. It’s a part of God’s “plan” that I alluded to in our Good Friday service the other night. God’s plan is not only that Jesus would die to absorb all the vicious circles of sin and death into himself. God’s plan also includes raising Jesus from the dead, and in so doing restoring everything in all creation. I believe the plan has always been to return all of creation to the way it was intended to be in the first place.

As our affirmation of faith for today puts it, Jesus’ resurrection brings the promise of “a new world … in which God is really honored as God, human beings are truly loving, and God will … make all things right on earth.”[2] That may sound too good to be true, but it’s a theme that runs through the entire Bible. At the end of the book of Revelation, God declares “now I am making everything new” (Rev. 21:5). And we see it in the way the Bible ends where it began: with a whole new garden, on a whole new earth, in a wholly renewed creation. There the river of the water of life is available freely to all who are thirsty. There the tree of life is available to all, and its “leaves” are for “healing” all the nations. That’s where the Bible ends, where it began!

And what makes all this more than just “pie in the sky” wishful thinking is that God raised Jesus from the dead. In Jesus, “the Living One,” God’s new creation already breaks into this world. It changes our world by promising that all the pain and suffering will be turned into good, and all the death and destruction will be changed into new life. I know it seems too good to be true. But that’s the promise of what happened on that first Easter! It still has the power to change our lives right here and right now. One way it does that is the assurance that Jesus “the Living One” is with us gives us courage to face the present challenges of our lives. But more than that, as “the Living One,” Jesus points us to the final hope that we will all share the life of God with him in the end. We have this hope because Jesus is “the Living One.” Or, to borrow a phrase from the hymn, we have this hope “because he lives” in our hearts even now.

Without Jesus “the Living One” and the hope we have in him, life in this world can seem empty. When all you can see is the vicious circles of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair, there’s not much left to give life meaning. But the fact that Jesus overcame even death to become “the Living One” points us to the promise that nothing, not even death itself, can separate us from the hope we have through him. Because Jesus lives even now, the new life that raised him from the dead spreads from him to everyone who encounters him. And as we encounter the “Living One,” we each take our place and do our part in spreading that new life throughout all creation until finally God makes the whole world new again!

[2] Adapted from “The Study Catechism: Full Version,” Approved by the 210th General Assembly (1998), qq 85, 87, 88.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Making a Difference

Hebrews 4:14-5:10[1]

I believe most of us want to make a difference in this world. As we’re growing up, we try to figure out a way to do that with our lives. We choose a career based on our interests. Whether our job takes us in a direction that we feel like we’re actually making a difference in others’ lives, I would say that we do so just by the way we show up and treat people. Even if our job isn’t one that seems to “make a real difference,” most of us get involved in other activities like sports leagues or community clubs so that we can give back to the people around us. I think one of the challenges we face is that we have a hard time recognizing all the ways we contribute to the lives of other people. It seems to be wired into who we are as human beings to want to make a difference.

The most fulfilling experiences of my life have come from the opportunities I’ve had to make a difference in someone’s life. That’s why I started down the path of ministry at the ripe old age of 17. That’s why I’ve worked all my life to learn all I can about the Bible, Theology, History, Philosophy, and life in general. And that’s what still keeps me going over 45 years later. What energizes me is making a difference in someone’s life. It may sound strange, but that’s why I find it fulfilling to be with those who are hurting. Especially at the end of a loved one’s life. Yes, those times can be challenging and hard, but those are the times when I feel like I’m truly making a difference.

Of course, not everyone is called to be a pastor. We need all kinds of people doing all kinds of things for the world to work. But I think we all want to make a difference. One problem with trying to make a difference, however, is that when we put ourselves out there to help others, we’re putting ourselves in a position to wind up getting hurt. We’re opening ourselves to criticism, some of which may not be so fair or kind or respectful. Those who have been in a position where you’ve put yourself out there to help other people know what I’m talking about. Any time we try to make a difference in the lives of people around us, we’re at risk of our motives or our actions (or both!) being misinterpreted or perhaps even misrepresented. The bottom line is that whenever we try to make a contribution to others, we are likely going to have to endure some kind of unfair or hurtful treatment.

I think this aspect of our lives relates to our scripture lesson from Hebrews for today. It talks about how Jesus made a difference for all of us by what he did. In giving his life for us on the cross, he shows us who God is: the one who’s willing to take all the suffering of the world into himself. More than that, what Jesus did shows us what God is doing in the world: God is in the process of restoring everyone and everything. By dying on the cross, Jesus was fulfilling God’s desire for the whole human family to be restored to him. And in so doing, our lesson says that he has become the source of “eternal salvation” for all who turn to him in “trusting-obedience” (Heb 5:8-9 MSG). All that sounds good to us. But the lesson also says something that may sound strange to our ears. It says, “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered” (Heb 5:8, NLT) That sounds more than strange. It’s shocking: why would Jesus need to “learn obedience”? Wasn’t his whole life, in fact his whole existence, one of obedience to God? So why did he have to “learn obedience”?

I think the answer has to do with what happened when the Son of God became a human being. It’s not like he was inherently willful and disobedient and had to be taught by the consequences of his actions how to obey God. The very act of becoming a human being was an expression of his obedience to God. But I think what Jesus learned was a first-hand experience of what it means to live as a fully human person.[2] And part of what that means is that anyone who wants to make a difference in the lives of others is probably going to suffer criticism, or undergo attack, or perhaps even in his case give up his life. There have been many who sought to make a difference in this world who have given up their lives because of it. In his obedience to God, Jesus had to learn what human suffering is like. And the ultimate expression of his trust in God as well as his obedience to God was to give his life for us all on the cross.

While it’s not necessary to restrict what our Scripture lesson says about Jesus to this one event, it’s natural to think of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane. I find it wonderfully reassuring that, when faced with one of the cruelest methods of executing a person ever devised, Jesus asked God to deliver him from it! It’s hard to imagine Jesus being truly human and not facing the cross with feelings of anguish and praying “with loud cries and tears” (Heb. 5:7). And yet, the end result of his prayer struggle in that garden was that he decided to go through all of it in order to fulfill God’s desire to make a real difference in all of our lives.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the lessons for us to take away here is that the process of God becoming flesh in Jesus of Nazareth is not just about showing us who God is, it’s also about showing us that God is working to restore us all. Throughout the ages many have wondered why God went to all that trouble. Why not just “say the word” and make everything right again? I think one answer to that question is that the only way to truly make a difference in human life is to take the risk of getting involved that person’s life. The only way to truly help anyone is to enter fully into their experience and pour into it the love that can change them. That’s what Jesus was doing on the cross. As one of our confessions of faith puts it, he went into the abyss of human suffering in order to redeem all of us who have been trapped there.[3] There’s no depth of suffering in human experience that Jesus did not reach. And the profound love he poured out for us all at the cross changes everything! By entering fully into our experience, Jesus truly made the difference for us all.

I think it’s part of our identity as human beings that we all want to make a difference. But making a difference will very likely cost us something, just as it cost Jesus. When we doubt whether Jesus makes a difference in our lives, I think we should remember the friends and loved ones who have made such a difference in our lives. While we may not be able to relate to Jesus as directly as we can to them, we can remember what he went through, and that he did it precisely to make a difference for us. It’s a bit like the way the friends and loved ones we’ve lost still make a difference in our lives today. And when we doubt whether we’re making a difference in anyone’s life, we should also remember the friends and loved ones we’ve lost and how much we miss them. No less than they did when they were with us, we all make a difference in the lives of others just by being who we are.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1.2:158: “the New Testament has treated the vere homo [truly human] so seriously that it has portrayed the obedience of Jesus throughout as a genuine struggle to obey, as a seeking and finding.”

[3] The Study Catechism, 1998, q. 45.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

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.

[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).

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Who's To Blame?

Who’s to Blame?

Matthew 13:24-43[1]

These days it can seem like nobody is willing to take responsibility for their actions. From a child in preschool who has a problem sharing a toy to those at the highest reaches of our society wrangling over power, the standard answer is “It’s not my fault.” The idea that “the buck stops here” could have very well from “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised at that. After all, resolving our problems by pointing the finger at someone else started in the Garden of Eden! It seems that the human family has always had a tendency to blame someone else for the problems in this world.

I think that natural tendency only gets stronger in times of crisis. When we are surrounded by realities that keep us up at night, as we are these days, many of us find comfort in knowing whom to blame. And there’s no shortage of people out there who are willing to try to convince you that they know exactly who’s to blame. But those who are constantly pointing the finger don’t offer any constructive solutions other than the (hollow) promise that if we give them power, they will fix things. Of course, for those of us who have been around a while, it’s all too obvious that they either never could or never intended to make good on their promises. Maybe we should have seen through their attempts to blame someone else. In my experience, the only way things change is if we take responsibility for our part in a problem and try to do something about it ourselves.

Our Gospel lesson for today comes from a situation of extreme crisis. The early Christians for whom Matthew was writing his Gospel were likely Jewish converts. But because of their faith in Jesus, they had not only been expelled from their synagogues, but also likely had been shunned by their families. They were treated like heretics and blasphemers. They had found new life through Jesus’ promise of blessing for the poor, the merciful, the peacemakers, and those who were longing for God’s righteousness to renew the world. Part of what troubled them was the fact that their friends and family, people whom they loved, either couldn’t or wouldn’t see the truth that had set them free.

In fact, that still troubles faithful Jewish people to this day. One of the reasons why they have such difficulty accepting Jesus as the Messiah is because they believe the Messiah is supposed to heal the world. Since the world is obviously not healed, then in their minds, the Messiah cannot have come. But Jewish people aren’t the only ones who are unimpressed by the “kingdom” that Jesus proclaimed. In that day, Jesus’ death and resurrection didn’t change the fact that the Romans were still in power, and they wielded that power with cruelty and brutality. The wealthy still oppressed the poor with no accountability. Religious leaders used their position not to serve the people but to gain wealth and power for themselves. Suffering, violence, injustice, and oppression were still overwhelming the world. I can understand why some thought that whatever “kingdom” Jesus was talking about must not have made much of a difference. When you think about it, all of those things are still true today.

But that’s why Jesus told the parables in this chapter of parables in Matthew’s Gospel. He knew firsthand the hardship, the hostility, and the rejection they would face. So he told them parables to help them understand the “mystery” or the “secret” of the kingdom of God. And that secret is this: despite the appearances to the contrary, God’s kingdom will ultimately change all things and everyone. We see it in the “Parable of the Sower,” where the “fruit” produced by the good soil far exceeds all expectations. We see it in the “Parable of the Mustard Seed,” where a tiny seed becomes a “large tree.” We see it in the “Parable of the Leaven” where the yeast inevitably works its way through a large batch of dough. The idea is that the change the kingdom of God is bringing will inevitably work it’s way through this whole world.

One of the lessons I think Jesus wanted believers to come away with is hope. Despite all that remains wrong with this world, I think Jesus wanted believers of his day and every day to fully embrace the hope that one day the kingdom of God will right all the wrongs. There’s so much that seems wrong with this world, it’s hard to wrap our heads around this promise. More than that, the promise is that the kingdom of God will lift all the burdens. It will do away with violence in all its forms. It will restore all people and all creation to the way God intended when he made it all “very good.” The problems in this world can get even the best of us down at times. More than that, they can cause us to doubt whether God is as good and loving and powerful as we’ve always believed. But we don’t have to resort to trying to figure out who is to blame for all the wrongs in the world. It doesn’t really help anyway. What helps is the assurance that God is going to make things right in the end.

That leads to a second lesson from these parables. The hope that none of the wrongs in this world will ultimately prevail against God’s love that is powerful beyond measure[2] leads us not only away from getting caught in a cycle of blaming others. It also encourages us to do what we can here and now. One thing we can do is to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Mt 6:33). What that means is illustrated by a couple of parables that follow our lesson for today. Like a man who found a treasure, or a merchant who found a flawless pearl, “seeking the kingdom” means that pursuing God’s ways, extending God’s love, and working for God’s peace become the most important focus of our lives. The hope that God will set all things right is no “opium of the masses” that keeps us from working to set things right.[3] It is the very guiding light that inspires us to engage in that work with all our hearts and minds and strength!

Our world has changed a great deal. The church was once the focal point for “seeking the kingdom.” For better or for worse, that’s not always the case any longer. The “worse” of it is that many of us don’t devote as much time and energy to “seeking the kingdom” through the church as we once did. There are all kinds of distractions that pull us in so many other directions that we just don’t have the “bandwidth” for church. But the “better” of it is that there are all kinds of people out there “seeking the kingdom” in all kinds of places and in all kinds of ways that those of us in the church might not be able to imagine. I can’t say that I’m happy that those people are doing their work outside the church because I’ve been in the church all my life and I love the church. But what I can say is that I’m happy they are “seeking the kingdom,” and that’s the point of it all. That means the kingdom of God is still growing like a mustard seed that will become a huge tree. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in “real” life, but in the kingdom of God, all things are possible!

[2] Cf. “The Study Catechism” 1998, questions 7-8.

[3] As Karl Marx (in)famously said in “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 7 & 10 February 1844.

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

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.

[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.

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

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.

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

Friday, December 23, 2022

Jesus the Messiah

Matthew 1:18-25[1]

The assumption that everyone you meet has a similar notion of God is not one you can make these days. We live in a world in which people increasingly view the notion of “God” as irrelevant. They’ve grown up, lived their whole lives, and may be at the point of facing the end of life, all without any reference whatsoever to God. And we are living in a time when children are being raised by parents who have lived without any faith in God (in some cases grandparents). When you’re looking at the third generation of people who live their lives without any reference to God, it’s hard to find common ground as a basis for sharing the good news of Jesus’ birth.

Even the church, we can’t assume that everyone shares the same view of God. We believe in a God who loves us all unconditionally, undeniably, and irrevocably—from eternity past, throughout time, to all eternity. Most Christians would agree with that statement. But for many, God’s love is reserved only for those who do all the right things, say all the right words, and look acceptably “Christian.” Those who fail to “live up” to a particular standard are simply excluded from God’s love. And they believe that happens by design and for all eternity. I don’t know about you, but I find the idea that God only loves people who look and think and talk and act a certain way pretty scary!

Still others have been raised in a setting in which God comes off as anything but a loving father. The foundation for their whole framework of faith is not God’s love, but rather human sin. When you grow up in a church that constantly hammers into you that God disapproves not only of what you do but who you are, it can be hard to even want to have anything much to do with God. If your “faith” beats you down on a regular basis, it should come as no surprise that those who have a choice about whether or not to participate walk away from it. I wouldn’t want to subject myself to that kind of treatment either. It’s toxic!

One thing we have to understand about the story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s Gospel is that it is about reframing our view of God. What you may not know is that Jesus completely redefined the way in which people understood God. As I’ve mentioned before, there is a very different view of God in some books of the Bible. The sacrificial system was based in part on the belief that they had to kill an animal in order to keep from being killed by God, who was angry with them for their sins. The very idea of getting “close” to God was the opposite of what people believed: if you got too close to God you could wind up dead!

That understanding about who God is was literally set in stone at the Temple. The very walls of the Temple were there to keep the “wrong” people from getting too close to God. And only certain people, following certain rigidly prescribed procedures, could even dare to think about entering God’s presence. That was a privilege reserved for a select few, while most people could only watch from a distance, if they were even permitted to do that. In a very real sense, Jesus came to tear down the walls that had been built up around God by the Jewish religion and its leaders. He came to open the doors to God’s presence to everyone.

That was his role according to Matthew’s Gospel. And Matthew explains all of this by calling Jesus “Messiah,” “Savior,” and “Immanuel.” These ideas weren’t new in that day, but Jesus filled them with new meaning that most people didn’t expect. When the people of his day looked for a “Messiah,” they expected someone who would ascend to the throne of David. That was what Isaiah looked forward to: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore” (Isa 9:6-7, ESV).

Given our traditions of worship at Christmas, we naturally assume that Isaiah was predicting the coming of Jesus. But Isaiah was speaking to people living 700 years before Jesus was born. It seems clear that Isaiah was talking about the birth of a king who would lead the nation of Judah to freedom by establishing peace and justice. But even the best kings were only human. The promises God made to his people through the prophet were never fully realized. And that gave rise to the hope for one who would truly and finally bring peace to the Jewish people.

Given the fact that Jesus didn’t exactly follow the “script” people were expecting, we might wonder why Matthew would make such an effort to identify Jesus as the “Messiah.” Part of the answer is that Jesus also redefined what it meant to be the Messiah.[2] And, as we saw last week, this was about what Jesus did, not about trying to figure out the theological problem of Jesus as God and man. Jesus fulfilled the role of the Messiah by carrying out the promises of salvation, promises like “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (Mt 11:4-5). Matthew called those actions the “deeds of the Messiah” (Mt 11:2). Jesus was the Messiah because of what he was doing: he was acting to “save his people,” just like the Angel told Joseph in his dream.

But just as important was the fact that Jesus the Messiah was also “Immanuel,” or “God is with us.” Jesus also fulfilled this role by what he did. As he engaged in his ministry, he broke through all the boundaries that the Jewish religious leaders had thrown up to keep “undesirable” people away from God’s blessings. Jesus’ preference for spending time with the “common people” became such a scandal that he came to be known as a “friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Mt 11:19). That was not a good thing! What really turned the tables on them was the fact that Jesus shared meals with “unclean” people.

All of this was simply Jesus carrying out his role as “Immanuel,” “God-who-is-with-us.” It redefined not only their expectations about a Messiah, but also their prejudices about who was “acceptable” and who was “outcast.” By sharing God’s love with those who were despised and rejected, Jesus demonstrated that not only God’s love, but also God’s presence and God’s blessings could not be limited by the narrow constraints of those who were smugly “holier-than-thou.” As Jesus would tell them all, God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt 5:45). This was Jesus fulfilling the role of “Immanuel,” the one who definitively and once and for all made it clear that God is “God-who-is-with-us,” and that includes all of us![3]

When I think about the many ways people either misconstrue who God is or ignore God altogether, I’m comforted by the news of Jesus’ birth as “Messiah” and “Immanuel.” It reminds me of something that the Study Catechism that we use in Confirmation class tells us: that “God does not will to be God without us.”[4] Because of God’s very nature, God seeks us all out through Jesus.[5] And that means that no matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done, God is with us, loving us to all eternity. Whether we joyfully celebrate the embrace of a loving God, or we cringe and shrink back from a God we fear will punish us, or we go about our lives without giving God a second thought, God is with us. Jesus made that clear just by being born. But he also made it clear by the way he lived, by carrying out the “deeds of the Messiah” in his ministry, by dying on the cross and rising again to new life, and by promising that “I am with you always” (Mt 28:20).

[1] © 2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 12/18/2022 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE. For a video recording of this sermon, check out my Pastor Alan YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/KD-rPMjNnJI

[2] Cf. M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible VIII:270: “To say that Jesus is the Christ is not only to say something about Jesus, but to transform the meaning of Christ as well” (emphasis original).

[3] Cf. Boring, “Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible VIII: 138: “for Matthew, the story of Jesus is a way of talking about God. In Jesus and his story, God is with us.”

[4] The Study Catechism, 1988 (question 88 in the full version, question 66 in the confirmation version). This originated with Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II.2:735: “God does not will to be without us, but, no matter who and what we may be, to be with us, that He Himself is always ‘God with us,’ Emmanuel.”

[5] Cf. Desmond Tutu, Made for Goodness, 198: “For Christians, finding our way home to God is not a ‘self-help’ project. Jesus Christ is our hope for complete wholeness, for healing that is salvation. And that hope has already been accomplished. So we are constantly called to experience the truth about us: that we are beloved of God.”

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Suffering Servants

Isaiah 53:1-12; John 13:1-35[1]

It’s hard to look at this world and not be overwhelmed with all the suffering you see. Most of us don’t have to look very far, because in some form or another suffering is a part of our lives. What makes that hard for us is our tendency to resist suffering. We think it’s not “supposed” to be that way. We’re “supposed” to be happy and joyful. But life doesn’t work like that. For some of us suffering comes sooner, for others it comes later, but it inevitably comes to us all. We can either accept it as a part of life, or we can beat our heads against a “wall” trying to avoid it. I think a lot of us probably do some of each.

One of my favorite authors has a different view of suffering. He says that our experience of suffering connects us with the human family, because suffering is something that we all have in common.[2] When I think of our Scripture lessons for this evening, I think that our suffering is what makes it possible for us to serve others the way Jesus did. It’s hard to actually serve someone if you aren’t able to relate somehow to their life experience.

Our lesson from the book of the prophet Isaiah is one of the most beloved passages of the Bible. This lesson paints a beautiful picture of what it looks like when someone is willing to answer the call to serve others, even when it means suffering on their behalf. The main theme of Isaiah 53 is that the “Servant of the Lord,” whom we identify as Jesus, took our sins upon himself so that we might be made whole and right with God. I must confess, however, that the part of this passage that comforts me most is the statement, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isa. 53:4, RSV). That’s the language of older translations; it’s not found in our pew Bible. I like the older version because it reminds me that Jesus not only bore our sins, but he also knew the grief and sorrow we bear in this life. Jesus knows what it’s like to suffer for the sake of others!

One of the challenges some people have with this thought is that somehow an “angry God” made Jesus suffer in this way to satisfy a need to punish us for our sins. That image of God is a scary one in a world where people so often abuse others. But I don’t think that’s the point of Isaiah 53. The point is that God’s “Servant” is called to suffer on behalf of others because that’s what God does. The God who never quits loving us is a God who suffers for us and for with us.[3] What we see on that cross is God’s love poured out for us all, taking on all the pain and suffering of the world, in order that we might find God right in the middle of it all, using it to create new life. And we see in Jesus a “suffering servant” who is willing to fulfill God’s love for us even when it leads to a humiliating death on a cross.

That brings me to our lesson from John’s Gospel. As Jesus was preparing his closest disciples for his death, he shared a meal with them. And at this meal he did something none of them would even consider doing for each other: he washed their feet! I think what Jesus was trying to impress on them was that this humble, self-sacrificing love is the kind of love that defines God’s very character. It’s the kind of love that Jesus shared with his disciples. And it’s the kind of love that Jesus commanded them to share with one another: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn 13:34).

Jesus showed them what this kind of love looked like in real life by washing their feet. He washed the feet of Judas, who would betray him. He washed the feet of Peter, who would deny even knowing him. He washed the feet of the others, who would abandon him and run for their lives. I think Jesus knew all of this, and yet he still loved every one of them by washing their feet. And he commanded all who call him “Savior” and “Lord” to love others in the same way.

When we understand Jesus’ command to love one another through the lens of his willingness to follow the path of the “suffering servant,” I think it opens up some new ways for us to understand our lives. If we decide to obey this command and love others enough to humble ourselves as Jesus did, we’re going to find that choice uncomfortable at times, like washing people’s feet would be. But there are going to be times when loving others will be painful. Instead of trying to avoid the path of suffering, we can choose to embrace it.

That doesn’t mean that we go out looking for suffering. But when it comes, and it will, we can look for the good that God is doing in our lives, and through us, in the lives of those who are hurting all around us. Like Jesus, we may have to suffer to truly serve the hurting people in our lives.[4] We choose that path because suffering love is the way God loves us. We serve others through what we may have to suffer because that’s the way Jesus served us. And Jesus calls us to follow him on this path as “suffering servants,” loving others even when it’s uncomfortable, serving others even when we suffer for it.

[2] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing, 5-11. He challenges us to embrace our suffering in the faith that God will redeem it and use it for good rather than seeking to avoid it.

[3] Cf. “The Study Catechism,” 1998, q. 14: “In Jesus Christ God suffers with us, knowing all our sorrows. In raising him from the dead, God gives new hope to the world. Our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is himself God's promise that suffering will come to an end, that death shall be no more, and that all things will be made new.”

[4] Nouwen, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing, 11: “In Christ we see God suffering—for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world.”

The Waking Dreamer