Our scripture reading today comes out of Paul's letter to the Galatians.
Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by our faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian. [...] But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if the child then also an heir, through God. [Gal. 3:23-25; 4:4-7]
Take a moment and imagine a book that you have read more times than you can count or a movie that you have seen so many times you can nearly quote the whole thing and yet somehow, this story doesn't ever get old. When you start reading it, you can't put it down and even though you know exactly what's going to happen, you're riveted. You're watching the movie, annoying everyone by quoting along with the characters, and then someone interrupts the movie and you want to say, "Shush! We're going to miss something!"
I think that watching a movie you truly love with someone who is watching it for the first time is a ridiculously stressful experience. I spend the whole time sneaking peaks to see if they are laughing at the right moments and looking appropriately dumbstruck at the shocking revelations and then they say something like, "Yeah, I figured it all out in the first 5 minutes," and I feel crushed.
The Christian calendar works very much like watching a movie that you love and know well. Every December, we pretend to be ancient Israelites; we put ourselves in the shoes of Abraham and Isaac and generations of people yearning for a Messiah to come save us. We get all giddy and excited and tell the kids and each other, "He's coming! Jesus is coming and he will wipe away every tear! The Messiah is coming!" We already know how the story ends and that it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, but in December we groan with those who groan for the coming of a Savior.
Then on Christmas, we tell the story about how "the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood." It really is an amazing part of the story, one of the most amazing parts of the story, and even though we know that it still isn't the end of the story, we rejoice that God has come down from Heaven to save us.
In a lot of ways, the day after Christmas feels a lot like the moment when I walked out of the first Lord of the Rings movie. It's awesome and we're so stoked, but at the same time, we're left hanging!
And in the Christian telling of the story, we're left hanging for 3 months until Easter! In those three months, we celebrate Lent and imagine ourselves tagging along with Jesus on his 40 days in the Wilderness, then every year in Passion Week, we retell the story of the final days of Jesus. We celebrate his last Passover Seder in communion. On Good Friday, we come together wearing black to mourn the death of the one who was supposed to save us. We know that it's totally worth it because we heard this same story last year, but for some reason, we come back again and mourn the death of a savior.
Then Easter and what a finale! He did it! The veil in the Temple is torn and now our sins do not separate us from God because Jesus conquered death! Except dang it! They left it open for a sequel and now the whole cycle starts over and we're back to waiting and yearning and groaning for a savior to come for us. This is the paradox of our faith: Christ was born. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. Jesus has made it possible for us to be in direct relationship with God and at the same time, we will not be in a direct relationship with God until Heaven.
The best stories are strange and complicated enough that every time you hear them, you are baffled again, and this is certainly a strange and complicated story.
So here we are: the first Sunday after Christmas, the end of the first act in this new story of grace. I am exhilarated that we worship a Creator who would enter His creation but at the same time, I am left hanging, wishing it was Easter already!
I have always felt that this is an interesting service in the Christian calendar. It seems that we have today every year the difficult task of both debriefing the end of the Advent season and looking forward to the new year that is rapidly approaching.
So Christ has come. Now what? Sure, it's a great story, but I am already thinking about New Year's Resolutions and wondering if maybe I will be a better person next year than I was last year, desperately hoping that the pain I caused and felt this year will not happen again next year, but I am afraid my odds are not very good. I look at the new year and think, "How many years have passed when I said it would be different next year?" It's easy, after Christmas is over, to doubt that the amazing story we tell every year was really that transformational because - bluntly - the world still sucks. We still suffer. We still cause suffering to those around us and we still don't really know why. But Christ has come.
So here we are, in the middle of our favorite story. We know how it ends and we know it's awesome, but right now, we're not sure because a lot is going wrong. As we enter this new year, let's take a moment and think about the END of the story, how incredible a story it is, about what it is Jesus did for us on the cross.
Earlier we read some of Galatians in the New Revised Standard Version. Let's take a look at the section in The Message.
23-24Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely in faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic law. The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.
25-27But now you have arrived at your destination: By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start. It also involved dressing you in an adult faith wardrobe—Christ's life, the fulfillment of God's original promise.
28-29In Christ's family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are Christ's family, then you are Abraham's famous "descendant," heirs according to the covenant promises.
1-3Let me show you the implications of this. As long as the heir is a minor, he has no advantage over the slave. Though legally he owns the entire inheritance, he is subject to tutors and administrators until whatever date the father has set for emancipation. That is the way it is with us: When we were minors, we were just like slaves ordered around by simple instructions (the tutors and administrators of this world), with no say in the conduct of our own lives.
4-7But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, "Papa! Father!" Doesn't that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you're also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.
Can you believe that? Really? I mean it sounds great to hear that I am not alone. That we are not alone in this suffering. It's quite a story, that our hope for salvation has come and it is a so much more than we expected, but is it true? C.S Lewis talked about the utter enormity of Jesus's message in God in the Dock. He said:
The things [Jesus] says are very different from what any other teacher has said. Others say "This is the truth about the Universe. This is the way you ought to go," but He says, "I am the Truth, the Way, and the Life." He says, "No man can reach absolute reality, except through Me. Try to retain your own life and you will be inevitably ruined. Give yourself away and you will be saved." He says, "If you are ashamed of Me, if when you hear this call, you turn the other way, I also will look the other way when I come again as God without disguise. If anything whatever is keeping you from God and from me, whatever it is, throw it away. If your eye, pull it out. If it is your hand, cut it off. If you put yourself first, you will be last. Come to Me everyone who is carrying a heavy load, I will set it right. Your sins, all of them, are wiped out, I can do that. I am Rebirth, I am Life. Eat Me, drink Me, I am your Food. And finally, do not be afraid, I will overcome the whole Universe." That is the issue.
In Advent, we hope through the despair. We look back at the suffering of our year, and our lives, and of humanity and then dare to hope despite the overwhelming odds.
Now we move on.
As C.S. Lewis made perfectly clear, Jesus was and is a big deal, more than just a good moral teacher. Jesus changes the equation, and once again, like every year, we recall that He has come down and entered the neighborhood. So now, our time of groanings is over.
The Messiah has come!
The story isn't finished, but the equation has changed and now we have this opportunity in the darkest days of winter to dream enormous impossible dreams of what things could be like.
If you're like me, it can be hard to forget that the days still are dark and cold. It's hard to look past the fact that there's still suffering in my life, that the story really hasn't ended. In some ways, this year I am especially prone to the cynical, to sneer at God and say, "We've gone through this hopeful dreaming thing for thousands of years and what difference has it made?" Part of me isn't ready to give up the groanings of Advent and wants to cry out for a savior to come rescue us. And why not? We're back to that old paradox of Christianity: Jesus has completed us, made things better, torn down the wall between us and our Daddy God. And at the same time, He is not yet finished completing us, and one day things will be right between us and God.
A part of me will always and should always live in the perpetual waiting for a savior for as long as there is that God-shaped hole in my soul.
But now is not the time for wallowing. It is a new year! So now we get to dream. G.K. Chesterton said the following in Orthodoxy:
"...to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that God makes all daisies alike; it may be that God made every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."
For we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. Let me introduce another part of the Christian story that we celebrate over and over and over again. In a word: rebirth. In Christianity, we participate in Christ's death and resurrection in baptism, and in that moment, we believe that we experience New Birth. John 3:1-8:
1-2 There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. Late one night he visited Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it."
3Jesus said, "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to—to God's kingdom."
4"How can anyone," said Nicodemus, "be born who has already been born and grown up? You can't re-enter your mother's womb and be born again. What are you saying with this 'born-from-above' talk?"
5-6Jesus said, "You're not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the 'wind-hovering-over-the-water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it's not possible to enter God's kingdom. When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.
7-8"So don't be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be 'born from above'—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God."
We also celebrate this new birth that Christ made possible throughout the year in Communion, metaphorically taking Christ's body and blood into our own, to become the tissue of our cells.
So you see how the story of Christianity, from Adam through Jesus, is one of those great stories that you just keep telling over and over again because you can't get enough of it. So today, as we look toward another year, we once again tell each other the story of a rebirth so that the cynicism and wounds of the past year can be healed.
Our sins are forgiven, we are reborn and have the chance to be like the children Chesterton spoke about, like our Father God. We get to look with child-like adoration at what Papa is doing in the world and say "Do it again!" with "the eternal appetite of infancy."
The prophet Joel spoke of that incredible moment after rebirth when all things are possible:
28-32 "And that's just the beginning: After that—
"I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
also your daughters.
Your old men will dream,
your young men will see visions.
I'll even pour out my Spirit on the servants,
men and women both.
[...]
Whoever calls, 'Help, God!'
gets help.
On Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be a great rescue—just as God said.
Included in the survivors
are those that God calls."
Two days ago we celebrated the arrival of that Great Rescue and now we get to be giddy and new. This reminds me of the scene in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that we watched earlier, when finally Aslan comes back from death and roars through Narnia, breathing life into a long-frozen land. It's exciting!
We're about to enter Thin Space, which is a term from the ancient Celtic Christians that describes a moment in our daily lives when the veil between Heaven and Earth is thinnest, when we can most closely experience God. In other Christian traditions, these moments are called sacraments, and one of the sacraments of our new birth in Christ is Communion, which we will take in a few minutes to celebrate a new year, but first, I have a question for you:
If this were all true, if we serve a God who has cleaned us of the sin of being old too young, who gives us the wild exuberance of childhood, if you weren't afraid of all the things that have hurt you and pushed you down anymore, if today, you really were a new creation, what would you let yourself dream? What will you let yourself dream?
I am not looking for your New Year's Resolutions here. I am looking for your wildest dreams. I believe 2010 can be the year that old men dream dreams and young men will see visions if you let yourself see visions and dream dreams. How amazing could 2010 be? What passion is God laying on your heart for this year?
I sincerely believe that God does not want 2010 to be just another year for you. God doesn't want you to "get by" in 2010 and he doesn't want you to survive it. I believe that God wants this to be a year full of Thin Spaces, a year of dreaming big dreams, of being reborn daily in God's grace. In Habakuk 2:2-3, the prophet says,
2-3And then God answered: "Write this.
Write what you see.
Write it out in big block letters
so that it can be read on the run.
This vision-message is a witness
pointing to what's coming.
It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait!
And it doesn't lie.
If it seems slow in coming, wait.
It's on its way. It will come right on time.
Write your vision so big you can see it running!
So I have something for you to dream about. "In 2010, I imagine a church/family/marriage/friendship/job/city/nation/etc where..."
You see that we have on the back wall a long strip of butcher paper with those phrases written on it. We're going to play a worship song now and I encourage you to sit in silence for a time and allow yourself to imagine what rebirth means for you, what dreams God wants to give to you this year. When you are ready, I ask that you do three things.
First, come forward and celebrate your rebirth in Christ which allows us to cry Daddy, Father, to our God through Communion. Then, in keeping with Habukuk's command to write our vision in big block letters, I ask that you write your visions and dreams for 2010 on the paper, not in tiny letters in the corner, but in big letters you can see while you're running. Finally, celebrate! Come back together and worship our God who gives us dreams and passions. When we are through, we'll close in prayer.
In First Corinthians 11, Paul wrote:
23The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." 25In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." 26For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
So it's two days after the first act ended and we feel that something new is in the air, that Jesus is here among us, in the neighborhood, and in a few months, we will celebrate His death and resurrection. What an amazing story. So when you're ready, come be a part of it in communion and in dreaming.
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kul post
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