From the Second Birth to the First Birth...and the End Times...

The passage for this past Sunday is found in Luke 21: 5-19.  It is a difficult passage to read.  It starts off with people admiring the beauty of the worship space that is the Temple in Jerusalem.  Then Jesus prophecies how it will all be knocked down, how there will be false Messiahs, wars and rumors of wars, how they will be given over to the death sentence by relatives, all in all, not such a happy future.  “But not a hair on your head will perish…”  They may die, but not perish, for their souls are secure in the Lord.

We took that into the politics of today and that of the history of the church.  Made an interesting connection between verses 8 and 9.  Jesus says, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and “The time is near!”  Do not go after them. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be terrified, for these things must take place…”  The connection is between the false messiahs and the wars and rumors of wars.  The people wanted Jesus to be the “War Messiah”, in the mantle of King David, to make war on the Romans.

What if Jesus is warning against that here, not two distinct threats, false Messiahs and wars, but false Messiahs leading to wars?  What if the call to war in the name of God is what Jesus is warning against?  Because that call is repeated throughout history.  From Constantine marching to conquer the empire in the 300’s to America going into wars today, invoking the Almighty is pretty standard.

And if we are to measure the blood shed in the name of Jesus by those in political power who dare to speak in His name, where do we start?

In the life of Jesus, we are two chapters away from his death on the cross, so His spiritual state of being is focused on this event.  There is a frankness in his prediction of the future that is, frankly, depressing.  But that has been the mark of our history.

Our preaching calendar is based on the Common Lectionary.  This is a three-year cycle that draws out Scriptures for each Sunday.  The new lectionary year starts with Advent, which…gulp…starts next week.  Each year walks through one of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  The difficulty is that by the end of the year, approaching Christmas, we are at the ends of the gospels.  The very ends were preached on back around Easter, but now we are at the lead-up to Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Which is why we get this passage the week before Thanksgiving.

So at the beginning of the most…innocent season of the year, we are left with the promise that we may die, but in Christ, we will not perish.  Thus we consider the tension once more of a world with false Messiahs, wars and rumors of wars, disasters and devastating changes, all stacked up against the coming story of the Baby lying in a manger.

And the Baby wins the day.

Pastor peter

Resurrection, The Denial of Death, Dystopia, Politics, and Science Fiction

There is a lot wrapped up in the question of the Resurrection for us as people of faith.  We have only to look around at our present culture to grasp that.  We deny death.  There is a reason why the advertising focuses on a ‘younger’ look.  The older look reminds people of the end of life, despite a subtle change I have noticed.  More mature actresses are now spokes-models for cosmetic and beauty companies.  Helen Mirren represents L’Oreal (or she did).  But the message to me seems to be that we can stay younger even when we get older (I get the message but I don't understand the message).    

We want the Gold standard, not the Old standard.

Thus, when we throw around a technical faith word like ‘resurrection’, eyes glaze over and sleep creeps into the span of attention.  And who can say for sure, maybe we need to get old to ‘get it’.  Maybe the idea of living forever becomes more real when we begin to realize that we are, in fact, mortal, no matter what the commercials tell us. 

Or maybe we have fallen for the dystopian visions of the future where everything is going to end badly.  Pick your poison, zombies, plague, environmental disaster, a revolution in AI technology where the ‘meatware’ of the human being is made obsolete.  I am rather a fan of the alien invasion, although more like ‘War of the Worlds’, not ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’.  I prefer to lose a stand up fight.  Resurrection seems rather mundane in this vision of what is to come.  

Somewhere in the middle of all that Jesus says, “Come to me all who labor and are heavily laden and I will give you rest.” 

Maybe the problem with “resurrection” is not on the positive side, but on the negative one.  Because the Christian message is a two-edged sword.  There is a dualism, living forever in heaven OR in hell.  And a lot of my colleagues of faith spend an awful lot of time emphasizing what happens to somebody who does NOT believe.  Eternal barbecue where we serve as the main course seems to stick better than the idea of eternal love and happiness.  To make things worse, in this highly charged religio-political environment, there are Christians posting comments all over the web that they look forward to seeing unbelievers burn in hell.

In that moment, the resurrection becomes a freak show.  People of faith enjoying the vision of other children of God burning in hell?  I guess I should not be surprised.

On a whim, I googled “Is this all, is there nothing more?”, looking for a source to try and bring some closure to this post.  Turns out there is!!  This is the title of an article by Robert Lanza, looking at “biocentrism”, yet another attempt to explain what happens when we die.  (robertlanzabiocentrism.com).  Apparently, it is a whole book-except salvation and resurrection are integrated into the physical universe, or multiverse and not in Jesus Christ.  I need to read that one, get a handle on the 'opposition'.  LOL

At the end of the day, the Resurrection means this for me:  It means that those people I have known and loved who have already died, I will get to see again.  It means that all those whose Funeral Services I have been privileged to offer, I will get to meet them.  It means that the love of Christ, which I get to see in shining moments of heavenly intervention in this life, will become the norm.  It means that the aches and pains, the sadness and tears, the ‘down’ and ‘dark’ of this life, will be concluded for the promise of something better.  It means that the Children of God will be gathered to our God who loved us so much that God sent Jesus, God’s only Son, to save us.

It reminds me that Jesus, and what He did, is the Reason for the Season as we count down the days to Christmas Madness.

Pastor peter

What Is So Important About the Resurrection?

                There is an expression I have heard in the movies, going after a target “with extreme prejudice”.  It basically means kill them as intensely as possible.  We get a hint of that from Jesus in our passage from Sunday.  He was pretty clear when he talked about “…those who are considered worthy of a place…in the resurrection…” that the Sadducees had some work to do.  The Resurrection is the promise of an afterlife, of an eternal life, of a place of perfect love and fulfillment as Children of God.  To summarize what the Bible has to say about this, consider the Catechism lesson from this past Sunday:

Q. 37. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?

A. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory¹; and their bodies, being still united to Christ², do rest in their graves till the resurrection³.

Q. 38. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the 

resurrection?

A. At the resurrection, believers, being raised up in glory¹, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the Day of Judgment², and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God³ to all eternity⁴.

                Jesus is going to die so that he will rise again.  In his resurrection, these promises will be accomplished.  That task is almost upon him and it looks like he is feeling its weight.  Remember, our best explanation of Jesus is fully God and fully human.  He felt everything, was tempted in every way that a human is tempted.  This includes a desire NOT to end his life this way.

                This is the power of the Book of Confessions, of the Westminster Catechism.  What does the Bible have to tell us about the Resurrection?  Here it is in capsule form.  Where do they get it?  Do we trust the ‘scholars’?  They used the same book we do.  Here are the footnotes:

Q. 37.

1. Luke 23:43; Luke 16:23;

Phil. 1:23; II Cor. 5:6–8.

2. I Thess. 4:14.

3. Rom. 8:23; I Thess. 4:14.

Q. 38.

1. I Cor. 15:42, 43.

2. Matt. 25:33, 34; Matt. 10:32.

3. Ps. 16:11; I Cor. 2:9.

4. I Thess. 4:17. See preceding

context.

                The Resurrection provides us hope in this world and the next.  The Resurrection is the culmination of the Ministry of Christ among us.  The tension of being a Christian is a delightful one.  There is the question of living and loving in Jesus here, and in the hereafter.  Let us thank the Lord for all that Jesus has done for us, in his life and death, and resurrection.

Pastor Peter

Don't Mess With Jesus Where the Resurrection is Concerned

                This past Sunday, 11/10, we looked into Luke 20: 27-38.  We are late in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is in that part of his ministry that is leading to the cross.  And in this passage, the very heart of Jesus’ work is challenged.  One of the sects of the leadership in the time of the New Testament is identified as the Sadducees.  What marks them is a lack of belief in the resurrection.  Thus, they have come to challenge Jesus. 

                This chapter in Luke has been all about coming at Jesus.  The first part of the chapter has the leadership questioning Jesus’ authority, but he confounds their question and leaves them angry.  After a parable that “when the scribes and chief priests realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to lay hands on him at that very hour, but they feared the people.” (vs. 19-bold added)

                So they come at Jesus another way, trying to divide him from the support of the people.  It is the question of taxation.  Should they or should they not pay their taxes?  If Jesus says they should, he is a collaborator with the Romans and a traitor to the people.  If Jesus says they should not, he is preaching sedition and it is grounds for his arrest (which the leadership is seeking).  Jesus stumps them again with “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”.

                Now the third round, the Sadducees have come to undercut his message.  And they are going to do so with a farce.  There is a provision in the Law of Moses that if the eldest son dies without an heir, his brother should marry the widow to produce a family for him.  This is because the land of Israel was holy to the Lord, and each portion within it.  Every year of Jubilee, there was a reset button.  Every real estate transaction was undone and each family reoccupied that portion of the Land that was given to them by God.  Since the heirship passed through the eldest child, marriage included a huge component of transactional necessity.  It was necessary to have an heir to carry on the family name.  Finding love in marriage, it was not an official part of the work.

                So the farce is this.  We rename the popular musical “One Bride for Seven Brothers”.  The oldest brother marries, dies without an heir, up to bat comes brother two.  Same thing happens.  It is a shut out all the way down the line, seven brothers, seven weddings, no heir, all die, then she dies too.  The direction of the conversation seems to lead into interpreting the Law of Moses concerning the inheritance of the land.  But that is not their intent.  They have come to make fun of Jesus.  “Whose wife is she in the resurrection?”

                Jesus’ response is one of anger and one that raises the stakes of the game considerably.  First he says IF someone is worthy of the resurrection, there is no marriage in heaven.  We are as the angels.  Given the transactional nature of marriage, in which women were basically units of worth, Jesus’ statement is revolutionary.  All are children of God in the resurrection.  All are equal in the resurrection and marriage, a relationship of power, no longer exists.  That is, if they even make it there-and the implication is that the Sadducees will not.  But then Jesus fights Moses with Moses.

                Not going to the section and subsections of the law, Jesus goes to the founding of Moses’ authority, when Moses stood before the Lord at the Burning Bush.  The very dirt he was standing on was made holy and Moses had to take off his sandals.  At that moment God is mentioned as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the patriarchs of the Israelites, an even more foundational authority than Moses.  And it is present tense, that they are alive and God is their God, because God is the God of the living. 

                So the Sadducees are pushed completely off their game.  They open the door to Moses as their authority for the farce they hope to perpetuate on the ministry and preaching of Jesus.  Jesus turns things around and slams the door on their lack of belief in the resurrection by the same authority they dared to appeal to.  And while the Gospel does not speak to this explicitly, I believe it is a fair assumption to think that the Sadducees joined the scribes and the high priests in their desire to lay hands on Jesus at that very moment.

Pastor Peter

Presbyterian Women Meet This Sunday: It is an Opportunity to be Together

                What does the church do for the Christian?  What would a congregation have done for Zacchaeus?  That question contains some difficulties as Z. came to Jesus during the time of His ministry.  The church did not officially begin until after the coming of the Holy Spirit, fifty days after his resurrection.  But it seems reasonable to assume that even Zacchaeus found some like-minded followers of Jesus in Jericho to continue and sustain his newly renewed faith.

            If Zacchaeus was coming to our church this Sunday, he would find a couple of things going on.  The first would be the service of worship.  That is the centerpiece of the Christian community of the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.  What is worship?  It is giving God the glory.  Our Lord is the reason for our lives, for our salvation.  All that we are and all that we have, we owe to our Lord.  So we celebrate our Holy One.

            But fellowship goes on this Sunday as well.  Presbyterian Women meets after service.  Being in Westminster Hall has pressed upon us a tremendous opportunity during these Sundays out of the Sanctuary.  We cannot simply flee with the last ‘Amen’.  We take the time, as a community, to re-form the room from a worship space to a space of fellowship and mission.  We are doing something together.  It is not a complicated mission project, but is our community in support of our mission.

            We say “with you, through all”.  It carries an intensity of being with those going through the most difficult of circumstances.  But on Second Sundays, it is a group of believers taking a moment to work together to allow for the shared ministry spaces of our church to be changed over together.  It is not “your” concern as the worshiping group.  It is not “your” concern as the fellowship group.  It is our concern as one congregation, under God.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Beyond the Lightning Flash of Faith

November 5, 2019

What happens when we give our lives to Jesus Christ?  When Zacchaeus came out of the tree and ran to the Lord Jesus, what changed in his life?  Trying to put that into words is difficult because how can we begin to fully explain what the Lord does for us with the limits of human language? 

The Westminster Shorter Catechism tries to put it into words.  These are the questions and answers for this week.  They are meant to teach us what happens when Jesus becomes the Lord of our lives.  We are made right with God (made righteous), we are adopted by God (made into renewed children of God), and we are made sacred (sanctified-made holy) by the work of God.  All of this is by God’s free grace, through Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. 

  

Q. 33. What is justification?

A. Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein God pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in God’s sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.

Q. 34. What is adoption?

A. Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all privileges, of the children of God.

Q. 35. What is sanctification?

A. Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole person after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.

These questions and answers are a means of instruction in the faith.  If you know Jesus as Lord and Savior, you know justification and adoption and sanctification in your life.  It is how things change because of Jesus.  As a means of teaching us about our own faith, it might be better to ask the question this way, “What is justification FOR ME?”

For our church, these are the marks of change that occur in our lives when we truly accept Jesus.  This is the cosmic change that occurs to the Christian.  To know this, to understand it, it deepens who we are as Christians, and helps us to understand the importance of what it means to share this gift of free grace with the world.

Pastor Peter

Luke 19:1-10 “Zacchaeus and the Call to Faith”

November 4, 2019

Worship was yesterday.  We shared the Lord's Supper.  Took a few minutes after worship to check out the interior of the Sanctuary.  I was in the custom of publishing the sermon on the blog.  The number of hits were...discouraging.  But the message is important.  So, for those who missed Sunday, here is a summary.

The Monday after the Sunday before.

                The Sunday School song I grew up with was “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he…he climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see…”  He was a little man, but a big deal, the Chief Tax Collector in Jericho, an important city on the Jordan River.  But to the locals, he was a ‘sinner’, maybe better understood as ‘traitor’ and ‘collaborator’.  He aided and abetted the Romans in their policies of taxation and made himself rich off the backs of his fellow citizens.

                He was a Jew. 

If I were to ask someone their faith, their country, and their ethnicity of origin, what would that look like?  For me, I am Christian, of the Presbyterian flavor, I am proudly an American, and I come from Canada but my forebears are from the Netherlands. 

For someone to be a Jew, that implies all this information and perhaps more. 

All of this is in Zacchaeus’ background, living in the identity of Judaism, like Jesus, but it seems to be irrelevant to him.  Rather, he chose riches over his faith, deliberately turning against his faith and upbringing to become a Roman collaborator and traitor in the eyes of his people.  Which is why the people branded him a ‘sinner’ and reacted so badly that Jesus was going to his house to eat.

But it was in Jesus that Zacchaeus found the truth of his faith.  Something drove him to make a fool of himself by climbing a tree to see this Jesus guy.  There was then a lightning flash of understanding as he found forgiveness and truth in Jesus.  There was repentance and there was restitution and his life was changed forever. 

The people didn’t like it, but Jesus told them the hard truth.  This was a Son of Abraham who had gotten lost and been found.

I think we are far more like Zacchaeus than we are willing to admit.  We are Christians, as a nation, still telling the pollsters we are all spiritual and such.  But church…well, Sundays are inconvenient for so many.  I pray for the lightning flash.

I pray that the truth Zacchaeus found in Jesus that renewed his faith will come to us.  I pray that we will wake up and embrace once again the wonder of the truth of our faith that comes in Jesus.  And I pray that we, the church, will be ready to welcome the joyous wonder-struck back into our midst.

Amen and Amen.