Sermon: What Does the Lord Require of You?

I’m preaching this sermon tomorrow based on Micah 6:1-8. In light of current events, and the divisions within our culture, God’s people need to hear again the call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. I hope your Sunday is glorious!

What Does The Lord Require of You?
Micah 6:1-8 NRSV

1 Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel.

3 “O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.
5 O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

6 “With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Called To Testify

We lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia when I was subpoenaed to testify in a murder trial. I did not know the defendant, but I knew his parents. They were calling every witness they could to try to prevent their son, who had killed his wife, from being sent to prison. I was called to testify that I would be available to counsel and guide the young man should the judge sentence him to probation. It seemed like a long shot to me, and in the end it was. The judge sentenced the husband to life in prison. His family wept, while on the other side of the courtroom, the slain woman’s family celebrated.

What we encounter today in this passage from Micah 6, is no less dramatic than my courtroom experience years ago.

In verses 1-2, the prophet Micah says to God’s people —

1 Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel.

So, God calls on the mountains, hills, and foundations of the earth to be witnesses to the great case against Israel. (And, probably Israel here means both Israel and Judah because the prophet Micah preached about the judgment on both kingdoms.)

In verse 3 God asks rhetorically —

“O my people, what have I done to you?  In what have I wearied you? Answer me!

Then, in verses 3-5, God recalls three major events in the life of His people when God saved them from certain disaster and destruction. The first was when God used Moses, Aaron, and Miriam to lead Israel from bondage in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. The second was when Balak, king of Moab, tried to hire Balaam, a prophet who listened to God, to curse Israel as they made their way to the Promised Land.

And, the third event was when Joshua led the nation of Israel from Shittim, crossing the Jordan, and finally stopping in Gilgal in the Land of Promise.

While we might lump all those stories together as part of the Exodus/Promised Land narrative, God breaks down the narrative into its component parts to remind Israel that every step along the way God had intervened and saved them.

But now it’s Israel’s turn to testify. And in verses 6-7, Israel asks indignantly —

6 “With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

Micah is probably representing what he has heard from his countrymen a hundred times over. They don’t get why God has an issue with them. And, of course, they jump right to how they do worship, because they think they’ve been doing worship quite well, thank you!

So, they begin reasonably — “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

These are, of course, the standard and typical offerings presented to God. Yearling calves, offered on the altar.

But then, they get snarky —  “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?” they ask sarcastically.

Rams and oil are offered to God in Temple worship, but not by the thousands and ten thousands. No, these are people who are put out that God dares to question how they do worship, because, of course, they’ve been doing worship at the Temple since Solomon was king — over 200 years at this point.

But then, they go too far. “Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

While the firstborn was dedicated to God, the firstborn (or any child or person) was expressly forbidden to be used as a sacrifice. Other nations around them offered child-sacrifices, often to Moloch, but Israel was prohibited from doing so. Some scholars think this sentence indicates they might have (and we know they did at one time), but others think this is the ultimate outrageous rebuttal to God’s criticism of them.

But now it’s Micah’s turn. In verse 8, Micah stops speaking the very words of God, and rather plainly observes —

8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

In other words, “You know what to do, and it has little to do with what happens inside the Temple and everything to do with how you live your lives.” My paraphrase.

So, let’s look at what God requires, then and now.

First, there are three verbs in the second part of verse 8: Do, love, and walk. All action verbs. All with objects or modifiers. All indicating real life actions, not ritual affectations.

So, let’s break them down.

Do Justice

I’m not using my favorite translation, the New International Version, because I think the NIV misses the translation here. In the NIV the text reads “live justly.” But, Micah says God requires that we “do justice.”

Of course, theologians have often been accused of “straining at gnats and swallowing camels” (I think Jesus said something like that), but here I believe the distinction is critical to understanding what God is saying.

There is a difference in “living justly” and being required to “do justice.” Here’s what I think the distinction is: “living justly” implies that while I go about my individual life, I’m to do things correctly. Now, that certainly is true, but “doing justice” shifts the emphasis from my individual everyday life to an intentional assignment to make sure justice gets done.

As in our day, life in Israel 700 or so years before Christ contained not only individual injustice, but systemic injustice. Their injustice was like ours — the powerful abused those least able to stand up for themselves.

In Chapter 3, Micah notes:

“Listen, you rulers of Jacob, you chiefs of the House of Israel! For you ought to know what is right, but you hate good and love evil. You have devoured My people’s flesh; you have flayed the skin off them, and the flesh off their bones.”

In 3:9, Micah continues:

“Hear this, you rulers of the House of Jacob, you chiefs of the House of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight, who build Zion with crime, Jerusalem with iniquity! Her rulers judge for gifts, her priests give rulings for a fee, and her prophets divine for pay…”

The poor were exploited, those with cases to be heard had to bribe the judge to get a favorable ruling, and even in the Temple priests and prophets demanded more than their normal support to do their jobs.

Micah rails against this type of injustice which is built into the Temple, the courts, and society in general. Remember, the prophets generally brought three charges against God’s people regardless of when they prophesied: 1) they worshiped idols; 2) they worshiped insincerely; and, 3) they did not care for the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the stranger. Here Micah speaks of all three transgressions and failures.

To do justice means to ensure that everyone — rich, poor, powerful, or humble — has an equal place at God’s table. Old Testament law provided numerous ways for the poor to be fed, the widows to be cared for, the orphans to be nurtured, and the stranger to be welcomed. But, over and over, Israel’s spiritual and civic leaders bend the rules for their own benefit, while at the same time pretending to be righteous and upright. Jesus will condemn this same hypocrisy in the first century, 700 years later.

God’s requirement to “do justice” is not directed at our modern political parties, civic leaders, or social trendsetters. This is a requirement of God’s people. This is our duty, our job, our responsibility.

In LaGrange, Georgia last week, the chief of police, Louis Dekmar, apologized to the African American citizens of LaGrange on behalf of the city and the police department. He apologized that his department did nothing to protect a black teenager named Austin Callaway in 1940. Callaway had been charged with offending a white woman, and had been placed in the LaGrange city jail. That night, 6 white men with one gun, held the jailer at gunpoint, forcing him to open the jail and release Callaway to them. Later Callaway was found shot several times. He was transported to the hospital where he died of gunshot wounds. Chief Dekmar found there were no case notes, no investigation, and no one was ever arrested for the murder of Austin Callaway. That is an example of systemic injustice. But the courageous apology of a white police chief brought some justice to that community 77 years later.

But if we are not in positions of authority to see that justice is done in our social settings and systems, still we are required to be working to bring about changes in our society so that justice is done, and so that all share God’s blessings, all feed at God’s table, and so that all — not just some — flourish in God’s creation.

Of course, justice also means that good is valued and evil is judged. That’s a part of justice, too. That aspect of justice keeps our society ordered, and our social corrections proportional.

Justice then, is both systemic and personal.

Which brings us to the second requirement —

Love Kindness (Mercy)

No translation is perfect, and here the New Revised Standard Version lets me down. The Hebrew word translated “kindness” here is the word “hesed” which means “lovingkindness.” But, I guess it sounded awkward to say, “Love lovingkindness.” But lovingkindness also means mercy, so the good old King James Version gets it right when it translates this phrase to “Love mercy.”

And, loving mercy goes hand in hand with doing justice, obviously. If you just do justice — especially that which judges and sorts out good from evil — with no allowance for mercy, kindness, and forgiveness — then you have missed the example of God’s own lovingkindness and mercy.

That’s the point here — we do what God does. We “do justice,” but we “love mercy.” That sounds to me like mercy might be as important, if not more so, than doing justice. Justice always has to be tempered with mercy or we become a society with no heart, no compassion, no empathy.

Dr. Richard Hayes of Duke University writes of mercy — “Mercy precedes everything: that, and only that, is why the announcement of the kingdom of heaven is good news.” — (The Moral Vision of the New Testament, pg. 103.)

The story is told of two ancient rabbis who were walking together one day. One bemoaned the fact that they no longer had the Temple in which to worship God. “But,” the other reassured his colleague, “we still have hesed.” His point was, that even if there was no Temple in which to worship, they could still perform acts of mercy and lovingkindness.

Do justice. Love mercy. Do we love mercy, or do we extend mercy as a last, begrudging resort, just because sometimes we have to?

Walk Humbly with Your God

Then Micah adds the final requirement — to walk humbly with your God. “Walk” of course is an analogy for the way in which we live our lives. We speak of people who are hypocritical because they “talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk.”

The idea of walking with God has its origins in the Garden of Eden where God walked with Adam and Eve each evening. Our walk with God is not only our conduct before him, but our fellowship with Him.

There are, I suppose, any number of ways we could walk with God. Certainly we could walk regularly with God. Adam and Eve did so until they sinned, and then they hid from God.

We could walk gratefully with God. Scripture in both Old and New Testaments is filled with exhortations to give thanks, and prayers and songs that give voice to thankfulness.

We could also walk confidently with God. John writes in 1 John 1:5-6 — “This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.” So our walk with God gives us confidence in our relationship to God.

But while we might walk regularly, or gratefully, or confidently, Micah reminds us that what is required of us is that we walk humbly with our God.

According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the virtue of humility may be defined as: “A quality by which a person considering his own defects has a lowly opinion of himself and willingly submits himself to God and to others for God’s sake.” St. Bernard defines it: “A virtue by which a man knowing himself as he truly is, abases himself.” These definitions coincide with that given by St. Thomas: “The virtue of humility”, he says, “Consists in keeping oneself within one’s own bounds, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one’s superior”   — (Devine, A. (1910). Humility. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved January 28, 2017 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07543b.htm)

And there it is: humility is knowing our limitations, especially in light of God’s limitless love, grace, and mercy.

To walk humbly with God is to fellowship with God knowing that our relationship is not between peers, but of Creator to created, and of Redeemer to redeemed.

Walking humbly with God also reminds us that God has acted justly and shown mercy on our behalf.

One ancient rabbi said that Micah had taken the 613 laws of Moses and reduced them to their essence when he observed —

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God?

When you watch the news this week, ask yourself, “Are we as a nation doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God?” And if the answer is “no” or even “maybe not” then we must remind ourselves that God has shown us what is good. And that good means that we must do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. That is what the Lord requires of us.

Taking the Light Down from the Mountain

Last Sunday I preached on the Transfiguration of Jesus. But the lectionary reading this year couples the story of the mountaintop Transfiguration of Jesus with the healing of a young boy down in the valley. The common interpretive wisdom on this passage (Luke 9:28-42) is that you have to leave the spiritual high of the mountain to go down to the valley where the real work of ministry is done. But, I think these two stories say something different. Could it be that the Light of Transfiguration on the mountaintop changes everything in the valley, too? Here’s the podcast. Let me know what you think.

Podcast: Trusting God and Giving All

Jan Luyken’s The Widow’s Mite, wikimedia commons.

Last Sunday, November 8, 2015, I preached from Mark 12:38-44 about the widow who gave everything she had. Here’s the audio of that message titled, Trusting God and Giving All.

Podcast: Where God’s Name Is

I preached this sermon on Solomon’s dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem last Sunday, August 23, 2015. The biblical text is 1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, and 42-43, the Year B lectionary reading for that Sunday. The point of the sermon is that 5 important things happen where God’s name is found.

The New Living Dead

First it was vampires, now zombies. Our appetite for the bizarre and scary seems to know no end. Of course film-wise, it all started in 1968 when George Romero directed the cult classic, Night of the Living Dead. Even the Library of Congress has recognized that film as a giant in its genre, and selected it for the National Film Registry.

However the Apostle Paul may have been the first to write seriously about the living dead. In Colossians 3:1-11, Paul reminds the Colossian Christians that they not only “have been raised with Christ” but they have also died to their previous way of life. In other words, first century Christians were the new living dead–alive to Christ, but dead to the world out of which they had been saved.

Paul lists specific behaviors to which the Colossians should have been dead: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed. If those aren’t enough, he adds more like anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language. When we look at that list, our spiritual pride tells us we are not as bad as the Colossians. But before we get too self-righteous, we need to realize that Paul was simply reminding the Colossian Christians that before they came to Christ they acted like everybody else in their society. In Roman culture, sexual mores were lax by Christian standards, and society prized the strong, the rich, and the powerful. The Colossian Christians weren’t worse than we are, like us they had just been doing what everyone else was doing.

For Christians then and now, to be dead to our old life means to stop living like the culture around us lives. To be alive in Christ means to live as Christ enables, with new values, new ethics, and new behaviors.  In this new society driven by the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, there are no ethnic, political, or social divisions — “no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all.”

Christians are the new living dead in the 21st century. It doesn’t take long to realize that our Western culture glorifies casual sex, worships at the cult of personality, and values material possessions as trophies of success. As the new living dead, Christians should be like dead people to the culture in which we find ourselves. We might be immersed in it, but we should not be enmeshed in a culture that is at odds with the Kingdom of God.

However, just because Christians are dead to culture doesn’t mean we are not a pervasive presence. Our living essence is salt and light, preserving and illuminating the world that God created and is redeeming.

The next time you watch a zombie flick, just remember: there are some experiences more amazing than horror film accounts of the dead who come back to life. The real living dead are followers of Jesus Christ who have been raised with Christ, but who are dead as mackerels to the culture around them.  Pretty incredible stuff when you think about it.

Podcast: Life in the Spirit

Trinity Sunday offers an opportunity to examine Paul’s idea of life in the Spirit. According to Romans 8:12-17, living in the Spirit means that we don’t live by the “flesh” — which is a word Paul uses to identify that which is dying and passing away, that lifestyle to which we were slaves prior to coming to Christ.

Life in the Spirit means we are God’s children, and as God’s children we form habits as we are led by the Spirit of God. Those habits will bring us into conflict with the world that lives by the “flesh” and we will suffer as Christ suffered because we are living by the Spirit. But, Paul reminds us that if we suffer with Christ, we will also be glorified with Christ, too. Here’s the link to Life in the Spirit. 

Sermon: Finding Your Place in the Kingdom

Stories are powerful vehicles for shaping a community.  But when his nation’s story becomes misinterpreted in the first century, Jesus retells it by placing himself at the center of that story.  

Finding Your Place In The Kingdom

Matthew 21:33-46

³³ “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. ³⁴ When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.

³⁵ “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. ³⁶ Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. ³⁷ Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

³⁸ “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ ³⁹ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

⁴⁰ “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

⁴¹ “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

⁴² Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

⁴³ “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. ⁴⁴ He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.”

⁴⁵ When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. ⁴⁶ They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.” – Matthew 21:33-46 NIV’84

Right Story, Wrong Interpretation

The parable that Jesus taught in the passage we just read seems very obvious to us.  Here is how we interpret the story:

The landowner of the story is God, the God of Israel. The vineyard that has been planted and nurtured by the landowner is the nation of Israel.  The tenants are the rulers of Israel both in the past and in Jesus’ day.  These rulers include the religious leaders of the day.  The servants the vineyard owner sends to collect the harvest are the prophets whom the evil tenants kill.  The son of the landowner is obviously Jesus, whom they also seize and kill.  In other words, this story is rebuke of the rulers of the nation, both political and religious, who have betrayed their calling to be the people of God, who have failed to produce the fruit of the kingdom of God, and who will lose their place which will be given to others.

Now, to a certain extent the religious leaders understood exactly what Jesus was saying, they just didn’t agree with his interpretation.  Not only did they not agree with the way Jesus characterized them, they saw Jesus as the threat to the nation’s stability, way of life, and religious practice.

In this passage we have the age-old account of one story and two interpretations of it.  The Pharisees would have said that they were preserving the way of life, the worship of God, and obedience to the Law of God in the face of overwhelming assault from Rome, the culture of the first century, and pagan influence.  Jesus obviously did not see it that way.

One Story, Two Interpretations

Let me give you an illustration of how one story can have two interpretations.  When the Roman general Pompey conquered Palestine, overthrowing the Hasmonean dynasty in 63 BC, he immediately wanted to confront the Israel’s God.  After all, the great Pompey, under the protection of the Roman goddess Roma had just defeated the Jews, which indicated that the god of the Jews was not as strong as the gods of the Romans.  It was kind of an ancient world version of  “my daddy can beat up your daddy” argument.

Pompey enters Jerusalem, finds the Temple, and barges into the Holy of Holies to confront the God of the Jews.  But once inside the most sacred room of all Judaism, Pompey looks around and finds no image, no statue, no representation of the Jews’ God at all.

Of course, we understand the reason for there not being an image of God in the Holy of Holies.  The 10 Commandments expressly forbid the making of any kind of “graven” image to represent YHWH, Israel’s God.

Pompey, of course, doesn’t know this.  All Pompey knows is that Rome has an image for all of its gods.  Therefore, if no image of a god exists it must be because the people do not believe in any god, and are therefore atheists.

See how the same story can be understood in two different ways?  That is the point of this parable.  Jesus is telling the Pharisees, and by extension all of the rulers of the Judea, that they have misunderstood the story of God and Israel.  And because they have misinterpreted the story, they have done the opposite of what they should have done.

The Story From Isaiah 5:1-7

The most powerful stories are the stories that are woven into the culture of a nation, into its very social fabric.

We have stories like that here in America.  What would the American story be if we did not have the story of the Declaration of Independence being written and signed?  And of course we all know John Hancock, and his story, because of his signature written larger than others.

What would the American story be if we didn’t have the story of Abraham Lincoln, born in a log cabin, self-taught by the fire of his family’s hearth, and rising to become president of the United States?  That story is the story that above all others that convinced a young America that anyone could grow up to be president.

And what would America be like without the stories of defiance?  The best example is the rousing speech from Patrick Henry that concludes, “Give me liberty of give me death!”  Those seven words are burned in our nation’s psyche and because of the value they represent, we as a nation support the struggle of people everywhere for freedom.

But at times the story gets confused.  For instance, it is a well-known fact that the United States government supported Saddam Hussein when it served our purposes.  We don’t tell that story because it doesn’t fit with the bigger story we believe characterizes our country.

We also don’t tell the story of how the Declaration of Independence really applied only to white males.  Women and slaves did not count in this great experiment we called democracy.  Thankfully we have corrected, or at least have attempted to correct, those parts of our story that don’t fit the greater story we tell about our nation.

But you get the point I am trying to make.  In the face of concrete facts to the contrary, human beings can rationalize, ignore, or rearrange current stories to make them fit the story they believe they are living.

That’s exactly what happened within Judaism of the first century.  The story that Jesus was telling was actually taken from the scroll of Isaiah.  We know it as Isaiah 5:1-7.  And, when you read that passage of scripture, what Jesus was saying becomes even clearer.

Listen to these verses:

¹ I will sing for the one I love

a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.
² He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.

³ “Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.
⁴ What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?
⁵ Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.
⁶ I will make it a wasteland,
neither pruned nor cultivated,
and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it.”

⁷ The vineyard of the LORD Almighty
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are the garden of his delight.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t the only person who would have understood instantly that he was paraphrasing this story from Isaiah.  Isaiah writes this “song” and then explains what he means.  The Pharisees, who were renown for knowing and interpreting Scripture, would have known immediately that Jesus was taking an old story, and reinterpreting it to blame them for the troubles of the nation.

But they still didn’t get it all.  Isaiah was writing these lines just years before the Temple, the first Temple built by Solomon, would be destroyed and the nation taken into exile during the Babylonian captivity.

Jesus was not only signifying that the nation and its leaders were to blame for their current state, but he was also extending the story and including himself in it.

And Jesus includes himself as the son of the vineyard owner, or the Son of God.

If that isn’t enough, to further make sure they get his point, that he is the Messiah, and that he, Jesus, has come to set things right, he also quotes from Psalm 118.  The psalm is one that was sung in procession going to the Temple.  It begins this way:

¹ Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever.

² Let Israel say:
“His love endures forever.”
³ Let the house of Aaron say:
“His love endures forever.”
⁴ Let those who fear the LORD say:
“His love endures forever.”

On the way to the Temple, the worshippers are praising God.  But then the song turns to prayers for deliverance, and draws to a conclusion with the admission of the singers:

¹⁹ Open for me the gates of righteousness;
I will enter and give thanks to the LORD.
²⁰ This is the gate of the LORD
through which the righteous may enter.
²¹ I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
you have become my salvation.

²² The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone;
²³ the LORD has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.
²⁴ This is the day the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Of course, the Pharisees would also have understood that reference, but Jesus carries it one step further.  He brings in a passage from the book of Daniel, an apocalyptic vision from Daniel that shows the Messiah bringing judgment on all the kingdoms that oppose the work of God.  In Jesus’ day this would include the rulers of the nation.

Jesus talks about the stone the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone, or in some translations the capstone. The idea is the same in either reference.  The cornerstone was that from which all the other dimensions of the building were built.  If the cornerstone was not carefully hewn, if its dimensions were off, then the entire building would be built wrong.  That’s why a faulty stone was rejected.

But Jesus is not a faulty stone, he’s the true cornerstone.  But he is also the stone referred to in Daniel’s vision — the stone that shatters the kingdoms that oppose the kingdom of God.

Listen to Daniel 2:

³¹ “You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance.³² The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, ³³ its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. ³⁴ While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. ³⁵ Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

³⁶ “This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king.

⁴⁴ “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. ⁴⁵ This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.

“The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy.”

In one parable Jesus has identified himself with the God of Israel.  He has identified himself as God’s Son.  He has gone on to say that not only is he God’s Son, sent by God to the nation of Israel, but that he is the stone of judgment that will crush all those who oppose the kingdom of God.  He is the Messiah of God, whose kingdom will never end or fail.  Matthew says that the Pharisees recognized that Jesus was talking about them, but they were afraid to do anything to Jesus because they feared the crowds that followed him.

Ultimately, they will turn the crowd against Jesus, and they will kill the son of the vineyard owner, just as Jesus prophesied.

How Do We Find Our Place in The Kingdom of God?

What’s the point of all of this, and of this parable specifically?  Just this – if you misinterpret the story of God, changing it to fit your own preference, changing it for your own benefit, you lose your place in the Kingdom.

God’s work will go on.  God’s purposes will be accomplished.  God has a plan, God is weaving a story.  God’s people are part of that story, but they are not really God’s people if they don’t understand and cooperate with God in the fulfillment of that story.

The first century Jews made the same mistakes we still make today.  They compromised the word of God, making deals with the Roman empire for their own benefit and survival.  I am sure they justified it in the process by saying, “Be a realist, this is the best we can do right now.  We’ve cut the best deal we can get, under the circumstances.”

But God isn’t about accommodating his Kingdom to the standards of the world system that is opposed to God’s making all things right.  God’s Kingdom is coming, has been inaugurated, and God invites his children, his creation, into the joy of that Kingdom.

The fruit of the Kingdom that Jesus came looking for is found in trusting him as God’s Son, believing that in his death on the cross he defeated sin, death, and the grave.  And, in living the crucified life of obedience to Christ as a demonstration of the Kingdom of God now.

So we gather here today at this Table, a memorial to keep us from forgetting that this bread is not only bread that nourishes us in this world, but it is the Bread of Life that feeds our souls.  That this cup is not only the product of the crushing of grapes, but is the symbolic product of the shed blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

To find our place in the Kingdom we must not only know the story of God and what God is doing, we must interpret it correctly, make it our own story, and live our lives in light of its truth and power.

Podcasts now available on all formats and devices

Podcasts of my sermons are now available across all platforms (Apple, PC, iPhone, Android, etc), and on all devices.  You can access my sermon podcasts in three ways:

1. Go to the iTunes Store, search for “Chuck Warnock,” then click “Subscribe.”  (If two podcast choices appear on iTunes, click the one with my photo, not the one with the WordPress logo, which is an inactive account.)
2. Go to my blog, chuckwarnock.com, Confessions of a Small-Church Pastor, and I’ll post the podcast episode each Monday.  To access all the podcasts in one place, go to the right widget column and click on the Podcast RSS feed for the specific episode you want to hear.
3. Go to my libsyn blog, which will contain all the podcast episodes at http://chuckwarnock.libsyn.com/webpage.  The podcast RSS feed is also live at http://chuckwarnock.libsyn.com/rss and you can subscribe directly through your feed reader.

However you get there, I hope the sermon podcasts will be helpful. Peace. -Chuck

New Sermon Series, “The Wisdom of ….”

I’m starting a new sermon series this Sunday using texts taken from the Revised Common Lectionary readings for July and August.  As I read through each of these scripture selections, I picked up a theme of “wise living” from them.  Each text seemed to me to be pointing out the wisdom of one or more virtues or practices of God’s people.  Here are the titles I’ve given each week’s sermon:

• July 4 – The Wisdom of Humility, 2 Kings 5:1-14
• July 11 – The Wisdom of Obedience, Deut 30:9-14
• July 18 – The Wisdom of Compassion, Amos 8:1-12
• July 25 – The Wisdom of Justice, Genesis 18:20-32
• Aug 1 – The Wisdom of Mercy, Hosea 11:1-11
• Aug 8 – The Wisdom of Repentance, Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
• Aug 15 – The Wisdom of Faith, Hebrews 11:29-12:2
• Aug 22 – The Wisdom of Reverence, Hebrews 12:18-29

I may be on vacation on August 1, but I included the August 1 title and text to complete the series.  Are any of you doing a summer series, and if so, what are you preaching on?

Entertaining Angels: Who are Angels and Why Do We Need Them?

Entertaining Angels:  Who Are Angels and Why Do We Need Them?

Hebrews 1:1-7, 14

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, ²but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. ³The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. ⁴So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.

⁵For to which of the angels did God ever say,
“You are my Son;
today I have become your Father”? Or again,
“I will be his Father,
and he will be my Son”? ⁶And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says,
“Let all God’s angels worship him.” ⁷In speaking of the angels he says,
“He makes his angels winds,
his servants flames of fire.”

¹⁴Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

Why Angels?

Today I am beginning an eight-week series titled Entertaining Angels.  That might seem to suggest that we’re going to look at the most entertaining angels in the Bible, but that’s not quite it.  Frankly angels have been called a lot of things, but entertaining is probably not one of them.

But I’m taking the title from the passage in Hebrews 13:2 KJV, which says —

²Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. -Hebrews 13:2 KJV

My interest in the topic of angels was piqued over the Christmas holiday by the news that Anne Rice has come out with a new book titled, Angel Time.  You may remember Anne Rice as the wildly popular author who gave vampires a very hip and sexy remake in her Vampire Chronicles series.  Tom Cruise played Lestat, the very attractive yet deadly vampire, in the 1994 movie, Interview with the Vampire. Rice is generally credited with reviving, if you’ll forgive the pun, the entire vampire myth and making vampires a part of popular culture in the last decade of the 20th century.

But something happened to Anne Rice, avowed atheist, along the way:  Anne Rice returned to the faith of her childhood, the Roman Catholic Church.  I’ll let you explore the details of her recommitment to Christ, but shortly after her change of heart, she began writing about Jesus.  Her first book about Jesus published in 2005 was Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, was followed by a second in her announced four book series, called Christ the Lord: The Road To Cana.

Her latest book, Angel Time, is the first in her new Songs of the Seraphim series.  Rice being the successful author that she is, knows a good thing when she sees it.

I recently posed the question in my blog, Confessions of a Small-Church Pastor — “Are angels the new vampires?”  By that I meant, Will Anne Rice do for angels what she did for vampires in the last decade?  I posted the article that asked that question last Sunday.  In less than one week over 1,000 people read that article.  And, to make things even more interesting, Anne Rice (I’m sure it was someone who works for Anne, and not Anne herself) linked my article to her website under reviews of the book, Angel Time.

The response to my article got me to thinking about the interest in angels, and about what we typically know about angels.  When Dan Brown published The DaVinci Code, the American Christian community was up in arms over that book which told an intriguing tale of secret societies, and the heretofore untold story of Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene.  All of which, was totally made up stuff, but Dan Brown didn’t care because he sold millions of copies, and created a flurry of publicity that made even those who disagreed with Brown want to read his book.

My point in resurrecting The DaVinci Code controversy is to tell you why I’m preaching this series on angels.  Wouldn’t we be better off to know more about what the Bible and the historic church fathers say about angels than not?  So, before Anne Rice does for angels what she did for vampires, we’re going to look at what the Bible has to say about angels for ourselves.

But, there’s another, more important reason than Anne Rice or Dan Brown or popular culture for entertaining the idea of angels:  No other topic in scripture is so widely misunderstood, or ignored than the topic of angels.  So, we’ll be entertaining angels in this series for the next eight weeks.

According to a 2005 Harris Poll, 68% of Americans believe in angels, 15% are unsure, and only 17% do not believe in angels.  These were not church members necessarily, but a cross section of American adults.  If you add those who believe in angels and those who don’t know, that’s a total of 83% of Americans who believe, or don’t know, if angels exist.  Only slightly more than that believe in God, so angels are pretty popular with the general public.

Who Are Angels?

In the Christian Year, angels crop up on two primary occasions — the birth of Jesus and the resurrection of Christ.  Christmas and Easter, in other words.  But, as I said earlier, there is probably no topic, no other doctrine, that is so widely featured in Scripture both Old and New that is so widely ignored.  It’s as though we see the word angel, and simply skip over it, or relegate the idea of angels to another day and time.

Of course, that is exactly correct.  Before the Enlightenment of the 16th and 17th centuries, the world was thought to be inhabited by spirits, both evil and good.  Gargoyles perched on the sides of the great cathedrals of Europe to serve as downspouts, but also to remind worshippers that evil lurked outside the walls of the church.  Some also believe that gargoyles also were placed on church buildings to frighten away evil spirits.  Either way, most people, including Christians, believed that unseen spirits existed and affected personal and community events.

But with the Enlightenment and the adoption of the scientific method, religion was relegated to the world of superstitions and improbabilities.  There was no scientific proof of angels, demons, or even God Himself, and so while it was okay to continue to believe personally and privately in the scientifically unverifiable, religion was not a suitable subject for rational people to go on about.

While the Enlightenment did give the world great advances in the sciences, religion and the belief in the unseen world became merely a source of speculation, opinion, and superstition.  That included angels and demons, of course.

The Flaw of the Excluded Middle

Paul Hiebert, the late Fuller Seminary missiologist, wrote a classic paper titled, “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle.”  In that paper, Hiebert painted the picture of the typical Western missionary beliefs, or for that matter the typical Western Christian beliefs.

Hiebert, who served as a missionary to India himself, tells this story:  One day while teaching at the Bible school Shamshabad, a local Indian pastor named Yellayya appeared at the classroom door.  He was obviously tired from the long walk from his village.  Hiebert finished the class and greeted his friend.  As they talked, Yellayya explained that many in his village had contracted smallpox.

As was the village custom, the elders, who were not Christians, had consulted the local diviner who told them that the goddess Maisamma was angry with the village.  The village would have to perform the water buffalo sacrifice to appease this goddess.

To conduct the sacrifice, each village family was asked to give something toward the purchase of the buffalo.  This shared offering was not just to raise enough money, but to show that all the villagers recognized Maisamma’s anger and were making this sacrifice together.

Of course, you can imagine the reaction of the Christians in the village.  Although a minority, the Christian families refused initially to participate in the offering or the sacrifice because Maisamma was a pagan goddess.  Under extreme pressure, some Christian families wanted to participate because merchants were refusing to sell to them, and they had been forbidden to draw from the village well until they gave.  But their pastor, Yellayya, would not give them permission.

To make matters worse, Yellayya said that one of the Christian girls had also contracted smallpox.  Yellayya wanted Paul Hiebert to come to the village to pray for the girl’s healing.  Hiebert went, but as he knelt in prayer in the village, he said the thoughts of total inadequacy raced through his mind.  He believed in God, he had attended seminary, and yet here he was praying a prayer for healing in a spiritual showdown between Hinduism and Christianity.

It was at the moment that Hiebert realized that his faith had answers for the future including heaven and God’s eternal reign.  He also realized that his faith had answers about the past including how sin had come into the world, and how Christ had come to provide forgiveness to humankind.  But Hiebert realized, he had very few answers for the present, like what do you do when a child is sick, or others explain life events by the presence of unseen spirits.

Hiebert returned to his teaching, and the next week Yellayya showed up again.  The girl had died.  But Yellayya was excited because the non-Christian villagers had seen the hope of resurrection and the belief that her family would see her again in heaven.  All of them realized that even if the girl had been healed, she would have died eventually as all do.  But the Christian hope for a life beyond this life had captured the imagination of those who were not Christian, and they wanted to know more.  — Paul Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues, pgs. 189-201.

Even though that story turned out well, Hiebert still wrestled with the gap in Western Christianity and our ignorance of the unseen world.

And that is why we are talking about angels for the next eight weeks.  What would you have done if Yellayya had asked you to come to his village and pray for the healing of the Christian girl?  Would you have faced the same internal conflict Paul Hiebert did?  Would you have had the same uneasiness about the unseen world, and about the ability of God to heal?

The Basics About Angels

Who, then, are angels?  Although almost 7-out-of-10 Americans believe in angels, we believe mostly in the cartoon or greeting card version of angels.  Or we love the cute and cuddly cherubs that adorn our Christmas cards each year.  But who are angels, if they are not as we commonly see them portrayed?

First, angels are created beings.  In Colossians 1:16, Paul says that —

¹⁶For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

The terms Paul uses — “thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers” — are believed by most theologians to be an incomplete list of the orders of angels.  Even Billy Graham, in his book Angels: God’s Secret Agents, acknowledges these words as titles for part of the hierarchy of angels.

An early heresy that surfaced in the first century stated that angels “emanated” from God, as though they were part of God Himself, now separate from God, and therefore divine and worthy of worship.  Paul also refutes this idea in Colossians 2:18 —

¹⁸Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions.

Secondly, angels were created before the world.  In Job 38:4-7, God says to Job —

⁴ “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.

⁵ Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?

⁶ On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone-

⁷ while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?

So, the angels were present at creation, but are themselves created beings.  In addition, here are some other characteristics of angels that Christians have believed during the 2,000 years of church history —

• All the angels were created at once, and there are no more angels now than there were at their creation.
• The angels who rebelled against God did so prior to the creation of earth and mankind.
• There are more good angels than there are those who rebelled.
• Angels are individuals, yet they have no bodies unless they take an appearance to communicate with humankind.  — Pascal Parente, The Angels

Why Do We Need Angels?

We’ll explore more of the characteristics and mission of angels in the next seven weeks, but we need to answer one other question first — Why do we need angels?

After all, aren’t angels sort of Christian folklore — nice to read about, but more like fairies, leprechauns, and other fantastic creatures? Why do we need them in the 21st century?

Here is where our Baptist statement of belief — The Baptist Faith and Message — is strangely silent. Nowhere is the word “angel” mentioned in the Baptist Faith and Message. But dozens of scripture passages are cited to support the statements of belief and many of these refer to angels. Do we really need angels now, and why?

First, it’s not up to us to determine whether or not we need angels. Angels are God’s creation, and as such are good, as all of creation was pronounced by God.

But angels are in a class by themselves. In the coming weeks, we’re going to see that there are at least 9 varieties of celestial beings, but for now we’ll just call all of them angels. But even at that angels are unique in several ways.
Angels were created before mankind, and mankind is said to have been created in the image of God.
Angels are higher than mankind in the created order. In Psalms 8:6, the psalmist is praising God’s creation of man, but he does so by saying — 4What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Angels are God’s messengers. Angels appear in both the Old Testament and New, delivering the message of God to God’s people. Consider the life of Jesus —
angels announce his coming birth to both Joseph and Mary;
an angel announces the birth of John the Baptist to his father, Zacharias;
angels announce the birth of Jesus to shepherds;
angels minister to Jesus in the desert after his temptation by Satan;
angels announce his resurrection at the empty tomb;
angels accompany Jesus as he ascends into heaven;
angels appear to the apostles on several occasions;
and John writes of Jesus coming with all his holy angels when he returns to earth.
And those are only a few of the references to angels as God’s messengers.
Angels are more numerous than we can imagine. In scripture, as they are beheld by the writers of the Bible, the angel hosts are described as so numerous “no man can number;” in the book of Daniel, they are described in this manner — A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

Secondly, angels are God’s messengers, God’s army, God’s protectors, and God’s servants. They perform their work for the holy Trinity of God, most of which is unseen or unknown by us. Angels exist, not for our entertainment or contact, but for God’s purposes.

Third, Jesus spoke of angels, angels attended him, and he will return with the entire host of heaven under his command. It would probably do us some good to know a little about “the angel armies” before that time comes.

Finally, angels are at work in the world today. Imagine sitting next to you on the pew, right beside you, is your guardian angel. Or, imagine that as we sing each Sunday, angels “join the mighty chorus” of our praise to God. Imagine this building ringed with part of the angel army of God, swords drawn, allowing us to worship without interference of either man or demon.

The writer of Hebrews, in the passage we read today, reminds us —

14Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

So, the question today is not, Do angels exist, or do we have angels? The question today is what are we doing to cooperate with the messengers of God who daily do God’s bidding? If we have no idea what our answer is, then that is all the more reason we need to be aware of this part of God’s creation we call angels.

A Story of Angels

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 2001, Tobi Gabriel and her young son, Gage, left her mother’s home to rent a movie and see some friends. In Moncton, New Brunswick, the weather was rainy and the temperature was dropping. When Tobi and Gage had not returned home by 11 PM, her parents phoned the police and reported her missing. Most folks usually turn up okay, they were assured, and the police told them that no accidents had been reported, so everything must be okay. But it wasn’t.

Early on Christmas morning Linda Belliveau, who lived in the nearby town of Lower Cove, went out to watch for her parents who were coming for Christmas breakfast. Despite the roar of the ocean waves behind her, Linda heard what she thought was the sound of a child crying. Of course, that was impossible at that hour of the morning and in the frigid weather.

But the cry continued and Linda made her way to the beach. There she saw a car lying upside down on the beach. She thought it had probably plunged off the roadway during the night because the ocean spray often turned to ice on the seaside road.

But there was something else that caught her eye. A small figure crawling toward her on the sand. A little child, drenched and frightened. Linda ran to the boy, picked him up and took off her own coat to wrap him in.

In the waves she saw the body of his mother, floating face down in the surf.

Little Gage was taken to the hospital. An investigation determined that Tobi’s car had skidded off the road sometime between 6 and 10 PM that night. No one heard the crash, however. Tobi was killed on impact because she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt. Little Gage somehow survived.

Sergeant Dale Bogle of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police visited little Gage in the hospital, asking him very gently some questions about the accident.

Little Gage looked up at Sergeant Bogle during a quiet moment.

“I saw two girls,” Gage said.

Office Bogle was amazed. “You did? Where?”

“Standing in the water, next to Mommy. Their dresses were white.”

Sergeant Bogle asked, “Did they talk to you?”

“No,” Gage replied, “They just smiled at me all night until the other lady came.”

Gage’s grandfather calls him a “gift from God.” He’s older now, of course, and hardly speaks of the accident at all. –( Joan Wester Anderson, In The Arms of Angels, pgs. 1-6.)

Were the “girls” he saw angels? No one knows, except of course, God. Angels are, after all, His messengers.

Amen.