That the Whole World Might be Saved through Him: But How?

In the Gospel of John 3:14-21, Jesus tells Nicodemus that like the bronze snake lifted up by Moses in the wilderness, so must the Son be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life!  This is what Grace looks like, that one person, in this case one Christians believe to be both human and divine is willing to live, and perhaps die, in such a way that the person’s relationship with God and life’s actions bring people into (or back into) a saving relationship with God and with other human beings. “This is the first and great commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your soul and mind and strength. The second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no Commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31) 

Grace continues as we hear the familiar words from John 3:16, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  Eternal life according to the Gospels is “to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom the true God has sent.” (John 17:3)

 

The Grace of eternal life for Christians, then, is that we will know God and Jesus Christ, and that eternal life will be nothing like anything we have ever experienced.  Being in the presence of God, wherever that may be and whatever it looks like is sufficient grace for me.  The details I leave up to God.

 

John14-21 continues to provide comfort to those of us who believe in God through Jesus: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the whole world might be saved through him.” As one who believes that God wants to save the whole world, I find this exciting and life giving, a source of Joy. My joy is short lived, however, as I move from what I consider to be one of the most comforting and inclusive passages in the Gospels, to what I consider one of the most uncomfortable and exclusive passages, without even moving to another chapter, much less another book.

 

Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. How do those of us who believe that God loves all of God’s children reconcile this statement recorded as the words of Jesus?

 

I truly believe that God wants to save the world and that the “world” in scripture refers to “all people,” thus, that God wants to save all people. But Scripture clearly says something different.  How can we remain faithful to Jesus and still believe that God can save God’s children around the world who follow different faiths, or no faith at all?

 

First, I believe that we who are Christians do, in fact, know God most fully through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and if Jesus brings Grace into the world, that perhaps, this grace is not limited only to those of us who know God in this way. If this is a possibility, then I am willing to take a chance on letting God out of the box we often place God in. After all, in his teaching, Jesus invited his fellow Jews to love the Lord their God with their entire being and to recognize their God through him, not to worship Jesus, himself. He also tells the Samaritan Woman that the “day is coming when the Jews and Samaritans will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth. 

Perhaps the last section of this Gospel can help us move to an understanding that will allow God to be God: 

And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’ 

If our deeds are done in God, then I believe that the scripture has not changed, but that the Holy Spirit has led us to see the Gospel and the World in a new light. I believe that we have been able to let God out of the box and that God’s Spirit continues to lead us and guide us into all truth: a truth that all who do what is true come to the light of God. A truth based on our openness to scripture, tradition, reason, and life experience as shown to us by God’s holy, eternal, unchanging and life-giving spirit.  

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— ⁹not the result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)

 

 

God is Giving us a New Word for a New Age

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jewish leaders then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jewish leaders then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:13-22) 

Jesus definitely caught Peoples’ attention when he caused such a ruckus in the Temple. Remember, people came from all over the Jewish world on Passover to celebrate their freedom from slavery and oppression in Egypt. They were not always able to bring a sheep, a goat or even a dove to sacrifice for their cleansing for their sins, so the vendors provided a very important service. It may be that they took advantage of a captive audience to increase prices and thus their profits. Whatever the reason, Jesus sensed that they had converted a place of worship into a marketplace. 

So Jesus, a private citizen with no legal or religious authority, declared that he was God’s son, turned over the tables of the money changers, drove the animal vendors out of the temple and TURNED THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN 

I believe Jesus’ actions in the Temple and his statement about rebuilding the temple in three days had two important consequences: first, I believe his confronting the religious and political leaders of his day (with no earthly authority) lead to his execution. 

Second, his statement that he would raise the temple up in three days, gave hope and power to his followers and through them to us. Jesus was again claiming that he was the word and that the word was with God and that the word was God. Jesus was not appealing to any past theological consensus. HE WAS CLAIMING THE FUTURE FOR GOD. 

To proclaim that he would rebuild the Temple in three days was to give hope to God’s people, to proclaim resurrection, to proclaim God’s Kingdom on Earth NOW!!! 

Jesus is moving us from the Past to the Present to the Future: only in time to come will we see what God has in store for us. Remember, Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life and that you might have it abundantly.” 

GOD IS TRULY GIVING US A NEW WORD FOR A NEW AGE! 

We do not end our journey with the Bible, we begin it with the Bible! We see the saving acts of God throughout scripture, throughout history. But we do not live in the past, we live in the present and we look to the future. We learn from the Saints and the Prophets of the faith; we learn from Jesus and what he preached and what he did, including turning over tables. 

God has giving us scripture through the prophets; God has given us wisdom through philosophers and teachers, and knowledge through scientists and historians; we have learned through preachers and teachers and experience, that our faith is not simple, but that OUR FAITH IS LIFEGIVING. Lifegiving not only to us, but to others who seek God in different ways than we seek God. 

We have learned that human rights are God Given, and that God’s Wisdom is greater than our Wisdom, and that God has given us people with whom we disagree so that we can begin to understand others and see that the kingdom of God is bigger than we could ever ask or imagine. 

We have learned through the resurrection of Jesus that God is even bigger than we could ever ask or imagine. We have learned that God is using us to bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth as in is in Heaven.

 

The future is God’s, the future is ours, the future is Good! AND THAT IS GOD’S GOOD NEWS FOR US TODAY!

God’s Word, Jesus Christ God’s Son

“O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son.” (Book of Common Prayer, Page 218)

Our opening prayer reminds us that our God is merciful and gracious and has given us the Word of God, Jesus Christ his son, to lead us into all truth. Note, that God’s word is not the Bible, but the Bible, a wonderful Library that records the words of God’s people as they try to explain their experience of God, Points us to The Word of God, Jesus Christ God’s Son.

In the Gospel of Mark, the writer gives us a sense of God’s truth when he writes, Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?” (Mark 8:31-38)

In following Jesus and the Gospel, the Good News, we find life. And when we find life, we want to share it, no, we must share it. The powerful poetry of Psalm 22:22-30 draws us into a way to begin to share life.

22 Praise the Lord, you that fear him; stand in awe of him, offspring of Israel; all you of Jacob's line, give glory. 23 For he does not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty; neither does he hide his face from them; but when they cry to him he hears them. 24 My praise is of him in the great assembly; I will perform my vows in the presence of those who worship him. 25 The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and those who seek the Lord shall praise him... 26 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall bow before him. 27 For kingship belongs to the Lord; * he rules over the nations... 29 My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him; they shall be known as the Lord’s for ever. 30 They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.

 

Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 and advocate for the Poor, echoes the words of Psalm 22 when she says, “We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.”

 

Often, I lose sight of poverty. I am comfortable and warm; I have many friends. But if I, venture far from my home, poverty stands right in front of me, sometimes blocking my path. Then I see it, whether I want to or not.

 

Within the past two weeks this has happened more than once: a young couple knocked on my door to see if they could do some work in my yard; a young man from India was walking down the street in the rain and asked how far it was to Guntersville where he was to meet someone. And just last Friday I went kayaking with friends on the Flint River near Huntsville, Alabama and we saw what we thought was an abandoned car under the bridge where we put into the river. We realized that the van was not abandoned but a woman and two children were inside. Four hours later we shuttled back to pick up our trucks and the family was still there, apparently living in their van and found this to be a safe place to spend the day, if not the night.

 

I was not able to give much help to any of these people, but it made me aware of our calling from Jesus to help bring about God’s Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven. The Psalmist proclaims that “God hears the call of the poor and that they shall eat and be satisfied.” My experience in the past two weeks reminds me that we who are comfortable my just be the Lord’s servants who make sure that the Poor eat and are satisfied.

 

“O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Give us strength and a steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son.”

 

The Wilderness Changes Everyone

The Wilderness Changes Us

 

“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him…. (Mark 1:9-15)

My sense is that Jesus went into the wilderness to prepare for his ministry which God had sent him into the world to do. At his baptism, God had proclaimed him His Son and that he was well pleased with him. However, the human side of Jesus needed time to reflect on his life in this world, his purpose in this life, and how to approach the people God had sent him to.

The Wilderness is a place where one can be alone, away from distractions, away from noise. The wilderness gives us uninterrupted time to think about, to pray about what is important to us, about what God has called us to do.

I believe Jesus reflected on God’s words: what does it mean to me to be God’s Son? What does it mean that God is pleased with me?

And then prayed: How and where do I carry out this mission? Who will help me do this? What if people get upset with what I say or do? Who will continue this ministry after we are all dead, not matter how that happens?

I like Mark’s Gospel because he does not waste any words. He gives us the facts, just the facts, and moves on.

So, right after Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, Mark tells us, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” And immediately after that Jesus recruits the first four disciples.”

Yes, we will get more details, from Matthew and Luke, but Mark gives us what we need to know, including some answers to the questions I believe Jesus wrestled with in the wilderness. 

I truly believe Jesus’ wilderness time was not only important to him and his ministry but set an example for us to follow in our lives. Lent is our opportunity to spend wilderness time as Jesus did. Time reflecting on why God sent us here, what are our gifts and talents, what are we called to do to be Co-creators with God in helping fulfill the petition of the Lord’s Prayer for God’s” Kingdom to come on earth as it is in Heaven.”

As we observe Lent, we will have opportunities to be together. To worship and study and enjoy fellowship as we build up the body of Christ on Earth.

I also hope we will all have wilderness time, whether that wilderness is in the forest or on a river, on a walk in our neighborhood, or even a few minutes alone in our homes or garden or yard.

From 1990 until 1995, Psychiatrist and Writer, Gerald May found peace and the presence of God, and meaning in the wilderness. May would go into the forest, and spend days and nights, sometimes just gazing at a fire and “doing nothing.” The Wilderness experience did for May what I believe it did for Jesus. He found a connection with creation and with nature. The nature around him as well as the nature inside of him. He connected with his humanity and with humus, the soil. May rediscovered the presence of God, a presence he referred to as the Slowing.

Five years later, May was diagnosed with cancer and over the years of his treatment and ultimate death, the lessons and he gained from his wilderness time gave him the wisdom and courage to stay connected to creation and to the presence of God, the Slowing, he found.

Wilderness is a place and a time where we find peace, where we find wisdom and guidance. Wilderness is where change can take place.

Wilderness Changes Us: Wilderness changed Jesus and Gerald May and it will change you and me.

Lent leads to Wilderness, leads to Mystery, leads to Change, leads to Life. In wilderness we find our deeper, wilder, more natural selves, and we find God.

The Passion of the Christ--Not the Movie

 When I first wrote this article on Maundy Thursday, 2018, I believed its message was vitally important to us as a nation and to all of people of the world. Today, in March of 2023 just 3 days before Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week and just days after the murder of six people at Covenant Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, I believe Jesus’ message to us is still vitally important. For this reason, I share it with you again. My prayer is that as we Journey with Jesus from Palm Sunday through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday to Easter, that we will be strengthened and blessed to live with the courage and power of Jesus. 

Join me now on a journey to Jerusalem at Passover in the Year of Our Lord 33. We see Jesus’ Triumphant Entry and how people praised him as the king who came in the name of the Lord and spread their cloaks and leafy branches along the road for him. All well and good, but I want to suggest that as important as this was, it was not “the Triumphant Entry” that actually took place on that day. I suggest that the “Triumphant Entry” actually took place from the West and stared Pontius Pilate rather than Jesus. Passover was an exciting, crowded and potentially volatile and dangerous time in Jerusalem. Jews from all over the Mediterranean and Middle East gathered to make their annual sacrifices, renew their faith and enjoy time with friends, old and new. 

The Emperor of Rome made sure that Jerusalem was secured by legions of soldiers on foot and horseback. These soldiers along with Pilate, most likely on a strong white stallion, made up the “Triumphant Entry” into Jerusalem from the coast. Jesus and his motley crew, on the other hand came in from the East, with Jesus, not on a mighty steed, but on a donkey. Yes, on a donkey. I believe Jesus’ entry was, in fact, an act of protest, an act of resistance against the worldly and religious forces which were exploiting and oppressing the people of God. As the people proclaimed “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” they were proclaiming that Jesus is Lord. And, if Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not. Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God, and if God is King, Caesar is not. The very next day, according to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus enters the temple and drives out the Money Changers, the sheep the goats and the doves, and those who sell them. 

This is exactly the kind of disturbance the empire did not want, and therefore the kind of disturbance the Chief Priests wanted to avoid. This attracted too much attention and could bring about persecution for all Jews. A plot was developed to have Jesus betrayed and executed. 

As I reflect on Jesus’ act of resistance and his courage in his time, I reflect on resistance by some of his followers in our day. Martin Luther King Jr.’s resistance by his work with the Memphis Sanitation Workers in April 1968, and Archbishop Oscar Romero’s work for the poor of El Salvador in 1980. And just the day before Palm Sunday 2018, a major act of resistance took place to bring changes to gun laws and save lives of Americans was participated in by millions of, mostly young, people and lead by students from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. 

Jesus warned his disciples that he would be tortured and crucified by the powers of this world. Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed that as desirable as longevity was that there were more important things, and proclaimed, “I have been to the mountain top and have seen the Promised Land; mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Archbishop Romero worked tirelessly against poverty, social injustice, assassinations and torture. All three were executed or assassinated. 

So far the March for Our Lives organizers have not been killed but they have been the subject of vicious lies, made up stories and photo shopped posts on social media. Yet they have not backed down. 

Jesus was persecuted and executed because he proclaimed by word and example that the kingdom of God was for all people. He turned over tables and spoke truth to power. His church has been and will continue to be persecuted when we do the same. And yet, do the same, we must! 

Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord! Blessed are we who follow him! Amen!

Get Right With God

Long before there were interstate highways, many of us who grew up in the south remember signs on the highways throughout the countryside stating in huge letters, “GET RIGHT WITH GOD!” We do not see these signs as often as in the past, but the question they bring up is just as important today as it always was. “How do we ‘get right with God?’”

 

That question has existed since the arrival of Homo Sapiens on the earth. “Exactly how do we know; how can we know God’s will for us? We who are Christians have been taught, and believe that reading the Bible, and attending worship, singing hymns, and receiving communion point us in the right direction. I believe this is true as far as it goes. The Bible and worship definitely point us toward Jesus who points us toward God the Creator, but is this the answer or is this the “doorway to the answer?” To dig deeper, lets look back at the eighth Century B.C. Hebrew prophet, Micah, and see what he teaches the people of Israel and then follow his teaching forward 900 years to Jesus and his teachings.

 

We read in the sixth chapter of the book of the Micah, his instructions reminding the people of God’s love for them and God’s promise that he will be their God and they will be His people. Then Micah continues: “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? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of 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 6:6-7)

 

In this passage Micah recounts as I just did the details of the worship of his day, the details the people believe will get them “right with God.” He does not say, don’t do these things, but he implies that there is something more than this, or perhaps, he is saying that there is something less. Micah continues in verse 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?”

 

That’s it? Something that simple? Yes, that’s it, it’s that simple. However, simple is not necessarily the same thing as easy. To be “right with God” in this fashion, we must recognize that humility means realizing that we are not always right, that the poor aren’t necessarily poor because they are lazy. We will begin to realize that God is bigger than we can ever ask or imagine and that He welcomes people into the kingdom of God whom we would exclude. Again, simple but not easy.

 

God’s justice reminds us that human laws do not always bring justice to the poor and oppressed and challenges us to work together to change some of society’s laws. It would be easier if we could just pray, study the Bible, and sing hymns, but even Jesus teaches us that this is not enough. When the lawyer asks Jesus what the first and greatest commandment is he answers:

 

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and you shall Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)

 

Again simple, but not easy. Thanks be to God that Jesus promises to be with us always, even to the end of time, giving us God’s help to carry out these simple, but not easy, tasks so that we might “be right with God,” and with God’s People.

Life, Marriage, Death, Baptism, Life

This past weekend, my wife, Lynn, and I went back to the city we consider our second hometown: New Orleans: The Big Easy, The Crescent City. A city whose motto in French is “Lalissez Le Bon Temps Rouler.” “Let The Good Times Roll. New Orleans is a city that prides itself in living life to the fullest and in every moment. This includes all of life, from birth to death and beyond, from Mardi Gras to Lent to Easter and beyond. 

Our reason for the trip included all the above! Thirty years ago, I met a couple in my first week as pastor/rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church. He was fifty-nine and she was thirty-nine. They met in the parking lot of their apartment building and wanted to be married on St. Andrew’s Day, November 30, because the bride’s maiden name was McKenzie. The bride knew she would likely be a widow for a long time. As it turns out, she died this past December leaving her almost ninety-year-old husband widowed. Friends of Nancy’s from all aspects of her life: broadcasting, Caledonian Society, University Education, and St. George’s Church, planned and organized a Memorial Service and Time of Remembrance for her and asked me to participate. What an honor and a pleasure. We prayed, we read scripture and told stories, ate her favorite Petit Fours, and drank her favorite wine. Truly in life there is death and in death life as seen in the following scripture which was read at her memorial.

 

“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death for ever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” (Isaiah 25:6-9) Rest in Peace my friend.

On the next day, Sunday, as we visited St. George’s where I had been rector for twelve years, we received even more confirmation of God’s presence throughout our earthly lives and beyond. Eliza, nineteen-month-old daughter of a young family was to be baptized and receive the sacrament of new life. Baptism, whether of an adult or child is always a joyful event, a time for all of us to renew our own Baptismal Covenant, and Eliza’s baptism was no different: until it became different, and even better! As we left the church building, we were met by a Jazz Band and led in a “Second Line” around the block on which the church is located.

A word of explanation for those not familiar with the “Second Line” and its importance in the life of New Orleans. The “First Line” is the slow, solemn, and mournful jazz procession to the cemetery. The “Second Line” is the joyful, life affirming procession away from the grave with dancing and waving of handkerchiefs and umbrellas celebrating life and resurrection. In New Orleans the Second Line has come to be a celebration of life on almost every occasion. What better way to celebrate Eliza’s new birth into the death of Christ so that she will be raised with him in his resurrection.