June 5, Ascension Sunday: Purpose and Power, Comfort and Joy

Acts 1:1-11,
Psalm 47,
Ephesians 1:15-23,
Luke 24:44-53

Thursday was Ascension Day. Ascension Day used to be a major holiday, and it’s still a public holiday in those countries in Europe which keep the connection of church and state. It’s kept a holiday so that people have off from work to go to church. Well, in America we don’t have the mind for such things anymore, and we think we don’t have the time for such observances, so we mark it on the Sunday following, which is today. But we still mark it because the Ascension of Jesus is an important doctrine and one of the major facts and mysteries in the Apostles Creed.

It strikes me that as you work your way down the Apostles Creed the things in it get gradually harder to believe. I mean it’s not that hard to believe that God created the heavens and the earth. Most people on the planet believe that, in one form or another. It’s not that hard to believe that Jesus was born of a Virgin; modern biology has begun to mimic that all the time in laboratories, and some species of creatures have always generated life that way. It’s not hard to believe that Jesus suffered and was crucified and buried. That’s actually attested in the documents of history.

But then you get to the resurrection, and that’s harder to believe, at least if you take it as it was first proclaimed, that he was resurrected in his body, not just in his soul. And then the Ascension is even harder to believe. Not if you just believe that Jesus went to heaven in his soul, because that kind of idea is assumed by most of the religions on the planet, and even by many of the philosophies. But to believe that he ascended into heaven in his body; that’s more difficult, and it’s much harder to imagine. It’s beyond our reckoning, both in its character and its meaning. And its meaning is complex.

But the Bible treats it as important. St. Luke is the most careful historian in the Bible, and he reports it twice, in our first reading from the Book of Acts and in our Gospel reading. And then the meaning of it is set out several times, especially by St. Paul, and especially in the Epistle to the Ephesians, in which the Ascension is a controlling theme. And neither St. Luke or St. Paul had seen it with their own two eyes. The other apostles all had seen it, but not those two, for they were not yet believers when it happened. So they are the ones who best communicate it to the rest of us, throughout the centuries, who would never see it either.

It happened between Easter and Pentecost. We think of those as Christian holidays, but for the disciples they were still the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuoth. It was forty days after Passover and ten till Shavuoth. You can see the Ascension as the completion of Easter and the prerequisite of Pentecost. The Ascension is about both body and soul, and flesh and spirit. It’s the vindication of Jesus in the flesh and his inauguration as the giver of the Holy Spirit. The Ascension is about both history and eternity. It’s about history in his coronation as the Messiah of Israel and about eternity as his exaltation as the Son of God. It’s both a completion and a commencement. It’s the completion of his special work on earth, for which the Lord became a human being and incarnated in human flesh, and one of us, and it’s the commencement of his special work in heaven, at the right hand of his Father, the work for which he maintains his incarnation, the work for which he is still a human being, still one of us.

For us. And how for us? Four things today. Purpose and power, and comfort and joy. Let me start with purpose and power. The Ascension is for our purpose as Christians, and for the power we have to do our purpose.

Our purpose as Christians is to be witnesses. Witnesses to his Lordship and witnesses of what life is like within the Kingdom of God. Witnesses of what life can be whenever we honor him as Lord. For a few of us with special callings, that witness is witnessing in the narrow sense of proclamation or evangelism. That has its place, but it is not for everyone. It is for those who are given special gifts for that, as it is explained in a chapter four of this epistle. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t feel called to go out and do that kind of witnessing. There is a much more challenging kind of witnessing which is for most of us, and that’s the witnessing that you do in terms of daily human life. What you buy, and why you buy it. What you spend, and why you spend it. How you eat, and why you eat that way. Who gets invited to your table, and why. Whom you serve, and why you serve that way. Whom you love and how you love and why you love that way. How you sing and dance. What you rejoice about it, what you take pleasure in. What you suffer, and how you suffer, how you deal with those who make you suffer and how you deal with the pain from it. How you deal with loss and how you deal with abundance, how you deal with death and how you deal with birth, how you are a human being, what it means to be a human being in the world of which Jesus is the Lord. That kind of witnessing is challenging, and needy people notice it.

That’s your purpose, and to fulfill you purpose you are given power. That power comes from the Holy Spirit, which I will say more about next week, on the feast of Pentecost. But the gift of Pentecost depends on the Ascension, for Jesus went to heaven make room for us, and to send the Holy Spirit to empower us who take his place. This power is not given you just for anything. And if you crave it you will not get it. It is the power to be a witness, which includes the power to face your losses and your death, as well as your successes and abundance, which are more difficult.

His Ascension is for comfort and for joy. For comfort, because the Lord of heaven and earth is a wounded human being, who bears our flesh and feels our frailty, but who is fully able to guide the world to his chosen goal. So despite what’s in the news, despite how fearful the world may get, or your distress with how things are going, your disappointment by your own personal performance, your lack of success in many things, the aging of your body, the fraying of your relationships, and the frustration of your aims, you can take comfort in his Lordship. It’s hard to believe, but you can believe him, and from the step of belief you can take the step of worshiping him, and that you will discover that worshiping him comes back to you in comfort.

And for joy. We read that the disciples departed with great joy, despite all that they did not understand. How joyful are you in your life? One of the chief goals of the Christian life is joy. Why are you a Christian? “To be joyful,” that has to be a great part of your answer. And here’s the deal: if you want to be more joyful, increase the measure of the Lordship of Jesus in your life. The joy in your life is a function of his Lordship in your life. Here’s a take home for today: If you want more joy, then you want more Lordship.

Let me encourage you to choose this joy. I don’t mean just enjoyment, not just entertainment, not the idolatry of fun and pleasure to which we are in bondage in America, but joy. Deep joy in the soul. Self-forgetting joy, like self-forgetting love, a joy that cannot be defended nor fully be explained. This joy hangs on Jesus’ Lordship. It is not spontaneous, and you cannot generate it in yourself. You have to choose for it, and that means choosing against some other precious things to you. If you want it, seek his Lordship. Learn the life within his kingdom. Learn to trust his kind of power and praise his kind of greatness and kneel before his love. It always comes down to love. For myself, I have so much joy in my life because I experience so much love in my life, and because I believe in his Lordship, I can see how all that love in my life has its source in God’s inexpressible and irrepressible love for us.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

Sermon for May 29, Easter 6: The Sign of Love

Acts 17:22-21, Psalm 66:8-20, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21
I had not planned to say anything at all about this Harold Camping “end-of-the-world” thing on Family Radio. I haven’t felt the need to address it since none of our congregation have asked me any questions or expressed any concern about it. The simple response to the whole fiasco is that Our Lord said very clearly that the time of his second coming would not be known to anyone.

But today in our first lesson we have some verses which are depended on by Mr. Camping and others of his ilk. Acts 17:30-31: “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” Mr. Camping would say that this is what he meant, that the day has been fixed, and that he figured out it was May 21, and if we think the whole thing is a joke, then the joke’s on us. And there is judgment on us too.

I have three friends from college who were members of the church where Harold Camping was an elder forty years ago, the Christian Reformed Church in Alameda, California. That church belongs to a denomination which seceded from the Reformed Church 150 years ago, and in that denomination some of us have relatives. Mr. Camping is not a pastor, but a civil engineer. He reads the Bible mechanically, like it’s engineering specs. He has no emotional intelligence. They say that talking to him is like trying to talk to a computer. He left that church in 1988 because the other members would not agree with him. He belongs to no church now, he says no church is good, that no church has the gospel, and that God has left the church. Just like Mr Camping did. Mr. Camping projects a god who is a lot like himself. (Don't we all?)

It would be funnier if he did not play on the hopes and fears of vulnerable people. One of my cousins figured he’d be raptured, so he went off on a spending spree in Europe, and now he’s got nothing left. He’s got to hope the world will end in October, or else he’s going on welfare, or whatever’s left of welfare.

To be fair to Mr. Camping, the media mistook what he was saying. He never said that May 21 would be the end of the world. He always said that the end of the world will be October 21. He said that May 21 was judgement day, the beginning of the end, with physical signs and manifestations, like earthquakes and suffering and the rapture. Last Tuesday he admitted he was wrong on only that. He says he was mistaken on the signs and manifestations, that they are not physical, but spiritual. There’s a dodge! Ah, the “spiritual” card. He still says that judgement day did happen on May 21, so that if you did not already repent by then, too bad, it’s over, there is no more chance for repentance. You can repent all you want till October 21, but it’s too late baby now, it’s too late. Family Radio is still in business, but they’re just comforting the true believers for another five months of spiritual tribulations. So what will they broadcast on October 22? The Mets in the World Series. That would comfort us true believers in our spiritual tribulations.

Harold Camping is just an extreme version of so much current Christianity, especially on the right. They claim to speak for Jesus, and they quote some of his words, but they distort the gospel as they shout it. They stoke our anger and they stroke our fears. They turn love of country into lust, and freedom into greed, and independence into self-indulgence. If St. Paul were to visit America today he’d say how extremely religious we are, and also how many idols we have. American idols. The projections of what we want for our ourselves. Not just of talent and good looks and greed, but also of military power and economic power and materialism, and of the loss of power, the idols of fear and anger, which we are indulging in America today. But our epistle tells us, “Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.”

I wish my cousin had prepared for his being raptured by selling all his possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor. He’d still be disappointed by May 21, but he wouldn’t be ashamed. I wish Harold Camping had told all of his listeners to do the same. He’d still be wrong, but we would all honor him anyway. As our epistle says, “do it with gentleness and fear, so that when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.”

Yes, we certainly do believe that Our Lord will come again, and we say so in our Creeds. We say that he is seated at the right hand of his Father and so we certainly believe that he is the righteous judge of all the world. But here’s the difference from the distortion. His judgment is not just at the end, he has been doing it all through human history since his resurrection. He does it by his Word and Spirit, as his Word is pronounced among us and as we obey him in the Spirit. He doesn’t do it by sending earthquakes or disasters, but only and always openly, that we may love him and keep his commandments. He doesn’t do it by starting wars and rumors of wars, those are always all our fault. He only and always judges lovingly—that’s how we know it’s him.

His judgement is right now, and active—active in the world, as the words of his gospel take effect within our lives individually and in our cultures corporately. Look at the desire for freedom and democracy in Libya and Yemen, that is the long term fruit of the seed of his gospel and the impact of his judgments. He chooses justice not only for those who believe in him, but for all the offspring of his Father, Christian or Muslim or Jew or Hindu or pagan. He is Lord not only of those who believe in him. He is Lord of all, no matter whether they know him; in him “they live and move and have their being.” His judgment is for life and being. It’s not for the destruction of the world but for the saving of the world.

So now let me give a better translation of our text: While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he summons everyone to turn from their ignorance, because he has fixed a day by which is intending to judge the civilized world in justice, by a man whom he appointed, offering assurance to all by having raised him from the dead.

We have a great mission, bringing the justice and righteousness of Jesus Christ to all of human civilization, the love of him, and the doing of his commandments. I don’t know how long we have, I really don’t care. I don’t know how long we have before he comes again, it wouldn’t matter to me if it were 10,000 years, or at least long enough to let us change our ways enough to cool the globe back down a few degrees and bring back to life the coral reefs. We have a lot of sins to own up to and confess, and a lot of righteousness to learn. I have an idea that Jesus tends to take his time.

The self-giving love of Jesus is the judgment of the world. Whenever you follow him in that love, you judge the world. And this is a judgment that does not condemn the world, but saves it. To have Jesus as your Lord will give you some success, some real success, but it will also be the cause of suffering. With Jesus as your Lord, you can expect to be misunderstood, you can expect to be doubted, you can expect to be abused, if not physically or even mentally, then socially, you may be called foolish or naive, quixotic or unrealistic, disloyal or unpatriotic, whatever.

Look, everybody suffers. Americans have to suffer too, and we ought not increase the suffering of others in order to decrease our own. To accept the suffering of the world with love is what Jesus has commanded us, and if that’s the command that we obey, then we love him too. We love him because he first loved us. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the future of the world, but I can certainly rule out a lot of options and hope for some others when I consider these two things: the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus, and how much God loves us.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

Sermon for May 22, Easter 5, by Rachel Daley

Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

I’ve been a seminary graduate for less than 24 hours, but as I’ve prepared and planned and packed up my belongings, I’ve had plenty of time to think about my journey over the last few years. I’ve thought a lot about Old First, the excitement and trepidation I carried as I visited and began my involvement. I began full of vocational goals and had a plan for how to accomplish them. I was right to be afraid. Being in community, especially this community, I began to perceive that God was leading me to imagine a future that was different than what I thought I wanted.




The greatest blessing at Old First was finding that there was so much space for me. As a worshipper I experienced that there was room for my questions and space for the mysteries that transcend our understanding. I experienced a commitment that whatever we do in God’s name should not only be true, but should also be good and beautiful. As a seminarian I found a place to explore my call in freedom and in safety, receiving in turn words of encouragement and words of challenge. When I put on this robe, I still feel like a kid playing dress-up. This playful quality of my work here has been a wonderful gift, allowing me to take tentative, sometimes faltering steps toward that office called “Minister of Word and Sacrament.” As happens so often in life, I found myself on a path long before I knew why, or where it would lead me. For this and so many other gifts, I give wholehearted thanks.



But this really isn’t a story about me, nor is it really a story about you. It’s a story about an entire people and especially about the God to whom they belong. This is a God who acts in unexpected ways, and with unexpected people. A God who is sometimes distant from the obvious places but present among those who are easily overlooked. Maybe not in magnificent buildings, but among the poor and downcast. This is a God who goes before our plans and intentions and makes of us something that we did not believe possible. While we are hard at work, we realize that God is creating something else entirely. What God builds may be different than what humans want to build. What God is up to might be different than what our religious institutions are doing.



This was part of the witness of Stephen. We don’t really see this because the reading from Acts dips in only at the end of Stephen’s story. We miss the whole sequence of events leading up to his death. We glimpse this final scene: an angry mob set against Stephen, who remains spiritual and serene. Stephen is an exemplar for all who will face martyrdom or persecution because he faces his end with grace and faithfulness. Cutting the reading short leaves unanswered questions. For one: Why did Stephen die? What was his crime? He did not transgress a legal code. But he did – and quite deliberately I think – provoke some very powerful people. To hear his story, we’ll need to back up and listen also to the words that got Stephen killed.



So here’s a bit of back-story: Stephen was one of the early Christians who went around Jerusalem preaching and performing signs. He was arrested on false charges and called to defend himself. Stephen the defendant immediately sets to preaching - a sweeping, somewhat revisionist account of ancient Israelite history. Then he gives the whole thing a theological spin that attacks cherished institutions, shocking and offending his audience. Among several other contentious points, Stephen sets up a polemic against the temple built by Solomon. He argues, “the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands” (7.48). What would be a fitting place for God to dwell, who has already shaped every stone, formed all metals and planted every tree? Surely the God who inhabits all of heaven and earth will not be contained by human works, however extravagant or skillfully constructed. Stephen’s point is the utter contrast between the works of God and of humans. Human projects cannot limit God’s presence, control God’s activity, or manage the exercise of God’s power.



But Stephen doesn’t intend this to be a teaching moment. Instead he wraps things up by recasting himself as judge. He calls his accusers faithless and disobedient; he names them as betrayers and murderers. The angry reaction isn’t really a surprise. The message had a bitter taste for Stephen’s audience. They’re not the usual hooligans you would expect to find in a bit of a skirmish outside the city limits. Stephen did not address criminals or soldiers, but a council composed of religious leaders. They are elders and priests; upstanding members of their communities. As protectors of the temple and of religious life, they do not react warmly to Stephen’s remarks.



The story spins in unexpected directions. The council was the best of human intellect and religiosity. Stephen accuses them of being frauds. By the time we drop in to glimpse Stephen’s death, the pretense of moral superiority is revealed as a sham. The judicial proceedings inexplicably gave way to mob violence and the death of Stephen. It’s a bizarre twist: maybe like a supreme court judge being caught exercising a bit of vigilante justice. These respected individuals are just ordinary people who respond to a threat with violence and anger.



The council and the temple are two symbols of human accomplishment. If God were to dwell anywhere on earth, it would certainly be within a costly, beautiful, and well-protected temple. If the wisdom of God were to be found anywhere, it would be among the members of the council: well-educated, religious, good. But the most ornate building is not able to contain the Most High God. Even the most just and most wise ruler can take the place of God who reigns from heaven.



This is a stumbling block. We’re used to the idea that God has a problem with the worst of what humans have done. God came to save the criminals, the fanatics, the broken and damaged. What are the “worst” human achievements? Maybe war, waste, racism. It’s because of all these bad things that we need God, and from all of this bad stuff that God comes to save us. God has a problem with my sin and my shadows and failures, but all the good stuff - like charitable deeds and religious devotion - those things can remain more or less intact.



The story of Stephen reveals a different truth. God rejects the best of what humans have to offer. It’s not just because of the fiascos of human history, but because our best is not enough for a perfectly righteous God. Even the great achievements in architecture: the pyramids of Egypt, China’s great wall, Machu Picchu, even these were hewn of rocks that God made. Even political and social advancements like democracy and human rights fall short. Even cherished institutions- churches, well-run schools, and centers of learning- even these are not adequate to mediate God’s presence on earth.



What humans build may not be what God is building; human plans may not be God’s plans. Here the reading from 1 Peter stands as a counterpoint to the story of Stephen. If not the temple, what will be the site of God’s presence on earth? The letter commends the churches, “Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” The new temple is built of living stones, living, breathing people who have come to Christ and have tasted that God is good. But their role is passive. Stones themselves cannot build; they must be built. Stones are nothing until they taken in hand by an architect or an artisan. They are chosen and then cut, ground, trimmed until they are the right size and shape and can be useful for building.



1 Peter lets us in on another secret: God does not build like you might expect. What would make a stone a good candidate for a building project? Human builders will aim for strength and uniformity. A builder will covet materials that retain their strength and appearance and resist decay over time. Aesthetic qualities are important, like color, texture, and pattern, so that the many pieces will cohere into a unified whole.



God’s new project starts with unlikely materials. Christ, rejected by humans, becomes the cornerstone. This surprising pick becomes the rule for all that follows. When God builds, many of the pieces will be unremarkable. Some are not particularly strong or resilient. Many will not be beautiful. What they are, is chosen and precious in God’s sight. It is not by their properties, but by God’s choice that they are worthy of inclusion. God’s aesthetic vision is transformative, working a masterpiece out of stones that others passed over. The new temple is the entirety of those whom God gathers together. We are those stones; being joined to Christ, we are joined also to one another. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s own people.



What this means is that no one finds their way here on accident. However disjointed or ill-matched we may feel we are for one another, each has been gathered for a purpose. Even if the paint peels, cracks widen, and in spite of dissension within and opposition without, still God gathers and builds. Even if we are embarrassed by or enraged at the actions of other’s who call themselves God’s followers- none of us get to make judgments about who is in and who is out. And if the walls of the God’s house should ever crumble, it may be because we are prone to constructing walls in all the wrong places. In the Easter season, we’ve heard that Easter is not church property, that the signs are not church property. As it turns out, not even the church is church property.



What is the difference between building and being built by God? They might look indistinguishable from the outside. Being built means that our plans are always provisional, our ways of doing things always open to revision. To be built by God is continually to ask ourselves the question: How do I best align with what God is about in this world?



Maybe you first came to church thinking how God might fit in your plans. I want God to help me carry out my goals and ideals. What we encounter is something far better - that God draws all of us into a project that spans across generations and across continents…swept up in something greater than what we could accomplish or imagine.



This “chosenness” is not simply a status. It is a vocation. Whenever Peter tells the churches who they are in Christ, he also tells them what to do about it. They’re not builders, because their action is always derivative of God’s action. Rather they are commissioned as a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ. They proclaim the mighty acts of God who has drawn us from darkness into light.



Many offer seemingly insignificant sacrifices: sleepy prayers, homework assignments, food for families, getting out of bed in the morning, a good effort at a job you hate, swallowing hateful words. Yet God is able to build anything out of these small offerings. None of us can see what God will make of our gifts. No work of human hands can house the God of heaven and earth. But when God builds, every act performed with love is a spiritual sacrifice and a taste of God’s goodness. When God builds, even the most ordinary and humble materials become a window to God’s light.

Installation Sermon for Rev Dr Linden De Bie, May 22, at the Community Church of Douglaston (RCA)

Texts for Easter 5, Acts 7:55-60, Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16, 1 Peter 2:2-10, John 14:1-14

If I were to produce the Gospel of John as a stage play, I would make all the scenery to be temple scenery, for all three acts. The backdrops and furniture would suggest the temple for every scene of the play. I would suggest how every action of Jesus in this Gospel is a temple action, even when it happens out on a hillside, feeding five thousand; or at the cross, which is an altar of sacrifice, an altar outside the temple. I would suggest that Jesus himself is the temple, in whom God’s Glory dwells, wherever he is upon the stage; he is the tabernacle, he is the moving location where the living God is fully present to God’s people. Wherever he is, he is his Father’s House.

You know the temple of Solomon had twenty upper rooms built up against the walls of the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. These were the chambers where the priests would go to eat their portions of the sacrifices, where they had their meals with God, where they were close to God. Well, I would use the scenery to suggest one of these rooms as the setting for our gospel for today. The upper room in which the disciples ate the Passover was a substitute temple room. On the backdrop I would mount some large painting of the visionary temple of Ezekiel, the temple of the future, which had many more such rooms, almost a hundred, all around the temple courts. That’s what Jesus refers to when he says, “In my Father’s House are many rooms, where I am going to prepare a place for you,” where you can commune with God as intimately as I do; you can be as close to God as a child with a Father.

But how shall we get there? He’s the way there. If you want to know the God of Israel as Father, he’s the way to the Father, and the truth of the Father, and the life of the Father. And you can know this now, and you’ll need to know it for your life hereon as my disciples. When he says that’s he’s the way, the truth, and the life, he’s not talking here about who gets to go to heaven when they die, he doesn’t say here, “no one gets to heaven but by me,” he’s not speaking of boundaries, he’s speaking of entrances, of access and intimacy, of opening the curtain and the outside going in and the inside going out, of getting close to God not by getting away from the world, but in the world in order to take on all the trouble and suffering and misery of the world. John 14:6 is certainly for mission, but not a mission of exclusivity, rather a mission of welcome and hospitality and healing the world.

In the chapters of John which follow, Jesus lays out how his disciples themselves will be the temple. How their community will succeed him as the location of God’s real and faithful presence in the world, how the community of believers will be a living temple in which God’s glory dwells for the salvation of the world. And for once, St. Peter paid attention, and in our epistle lesson he repeats the image which Jesus had given them that night in the upper room, and he makes it more concrete. Of necessity, because the early Christian congregations to which he wrote his epistle had no churches, no shrines, no temples, no altars, none of the ordinary places where ordinary people go to get close to the gods, to say their prayers, to make their sacrifices and enjoy them. The early Christians were considered to be atheists by their pagan neighbors. What kind of a strange religion is this gospel anyway, what can you offer us concretely where we can find your God? What locations do you offer for ordinary people to get close to God?

The location is the community of believers in its life together. Your congregation is the house of God. Your congregation is more than an association of like-minded people. In your congregations’ life together, God is really present, especially when you break bread. It is a humble sort of presence on God’s part, to be fully present in people like us who gather here, it is a humble sort of glory to be seated upon the singing of the children’s choir, and to accept the sacrifices that we make when we happen to be home on the weekend and have money to spare. But God has deemed it satisfactory to be present in the world through us. My goodness. Not only us, but certainly us, and faithfully us. Why aren’t we trembling when we come to church?

The Lord Jesus has deemed us so acceptable that he tells us, “I will do whatever you ask in my name.” Now that’s the kind of thing we like to hear. That’s what people have always wanted from their gods. They visited their temples to ask their gods for rain and sun and health and wealth and victory in war. He says it again. “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” You like to hear it, but then you reflect how often he doesn’t seem to do what you ask him, even if you ask in his name. Does he really mean this? Or should you just stop asking so as not to be disappointed?

You have called your pastor here to lead you in prayers. Your pastor is required by the Reformed Church’s constitution “to call on the name of the Lord on behalf of the whole congregation.” This is the ministry of prayer, which is no less important than the ministries of preaching and teaching and counseling and visiting and governing the church. Prayer is what goes on inside a temple, and if you together as a congregation are a living temple, then what happens among you should be a lot of prayer, and he is installed among you as a leader of your prayers. He leads the prayers among you when you gather, and he prays for you in private when he is alone. When you don’t feel like praying, he leads you anyway. When you don’t know what to ask, he teaches you. When your answer doesn’t come and your hope flags and your faith fails, he counsels you and prays on your behalf. He is responsible to help you reconcile your not getting what you ask for with the promise of Jesus here that he will do it.

(If I’m honest I confess that for professional reasons, I wish Our Lord had not promised that. I wish he had said something like, I will do just about 22% of what you ask, depending on the wars and weather. But he ups the ante, he seems to mean 100%. So when you pastor reconciles you to that I wish one of you would call me up and repeat his explanation so that I could use it too.)

You have called your pastor to be an architect. An architect of the temple that you are called to build inside this structure called the Community Church of Douglaston. He is the architect who will instruct you and show you and help you construct the living temple of your congregation. The prophet Moses gave the plans for the Tabernacle at Mount Sinai, King Solomon gave the blueprint for the Temple in Jerusalem, and the priest Ezekiel had the vision of the Temple of the future. Your pastor, by his preaching and teaching, will give your congregation the plan and the blueprint and the vision. I ask you to be receptive to his vision, and do not stone him like they did to Stephen. Do not stumble over the stones he lays by disobeying the Word of God. Receive how he shows you your temple inside this sanctuary, and in the Sunday School rooms, in the church kitchen and the parlor and the parking lot, and outside in the village, wherever you walk upon the stage of Douglaston, even in your homes. Receive his ministry, and you will discover how close is God to you.

Nine years ago I said a few words at a dinner on Wall Street, and a lawyer came up to me and said, “You know, I am a Catholic, but I have great respect for your denomination. I’m from Douglaston, and some friends of ours, not church members, had a tragic accident, and it was the pastor of the Community Church who ministered to them.” Well, I know that’s what Dr. De Bie would do too. When I heard that he might come here, I knew right away that he was God’s choice to show you and help you become what God intends for you to be. Yes, in past years you have done great work here in Douglaston, but you will do greater works than these. Listen to verse 12 of our Gospel: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, because I am going to the Father, you will do greater works that these.”

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

Sermon for May 15, Easter 4: Wonder Bread and Wonder Girl

Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2:19-25, John 10:1-10


On the baptism of Evelyn Elizabeth Cribbs

Our Epistle lesson, from First Peter, was particularly addressed to the slaves who belonged to the early Christian congregations. They were usually house slaves, not field slaves, and not abused as badly as our slaves in America, and they did not suffer the added cruelty of racism, but they still were slaves, and they had no right to their own lives. They could be punished by their masters with impunity, with no regard for innocence or guilt. They had no rights at all, and loving Jesus gave them not advantages but extra disadvantages. So how should they carry their suffering?

The problem extends to all of us. All of us have to carry suffering. Some of our suffering comes from doing right, when the right thing is not welcome in the world. Some of our suffering comes from doing wrong. Sometimes the difference is irrelevant, and our suffering just comes, it comes from having bodies and bones and skin and blood, and living on a watery planet with seismic activity. So much of our lives is out of our control, even if we are not slaves. The problem is for all of us.

First Peter calls us to follow Christ as an example. The Christ who was willing to go all the way to his death on the cross. We should not walk away from suffering, but enter into it with love. Because if you walk in love you will get extra suffering. Not only from the opposition of the powers of the world, which fear the law of love as a threat to their equilibrium, but because living in love will develop in you extra sensitivities, and the suffering of others will touch you too. The call of First Peter is a call to action, not passivity. But you can’t free others from suffering without having to suffer some yourself. You can’t free others from abuse without it costing you. I believe you know this, and yet you want to live this way.

But Christ is more than an example. The cross leads to the resurrection, and he lives. He’s also actively the shepherd and guardian of your souls. What First Peter means by “soul” is not some disembodied spirit, but your personality, your mind, your emotions, your breath, your life itself. He is the living guardian of all that. As your shepherd and guardian he does not spare you from suffering, but he gets you through each next valley of the shadow of death. He doesn’t say you don’t have enemies, but he sets a table before you in the presence of your enemies. Because he is our guardian, our enemies have no power to compel us not to love. Death is real, but his love is stronger than death, because he is the shepherd who has beaten death.

Last week I said that we are not given proofs of the resurrection, but signs of it. I said that a proof is the ending of a process of an argument, and it settles things, but a sign keeps things moving because it points to something else. A proof concludes and a sign suggests. You have to work a sign. The more you work a sign the more you it tells you.

Last week we saw that Our Lord designed the “breaking the bread” to be the chief sign of his resurrection. We work this sign each week in Holy Communion. I said it isn’t obvious what breaking bread might have to do with his resurrection, but the more we work the sign the more we get from it. We need to embrace the sign with our hearts and minds and our imaginations.

We have to wonder at the sign. Our Lord designed the sign to appeal to our sense of wonder. We should call it wonder bread! The sign suggests so many things. It means his broken body and his poured out blood. It means his presence among us as the true host at the table. It means that he feeds us with his risen body just as certainly as we eat the bread. It means that he pours his life into us just as certainly as we drink the cup. It is a wonder and a miracle, a small and weekly miracle. We do miracles in church. Or I should say that God does miracles among us, in the signs and wonders that we do each week by his design.

We have another wonder today, another sign of his design, and that is Holy Baptism. He told us to do it, and so we do it. He told us to do it in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, so that is what we say when we do it. It is a sign of something which God does real in us, and we work the sign by wondering at all God does in us. You are baptized just once, but as certainly as you were washed with that water, so the Holy Spirit works in you your whole life long, and you can embrace the sign of your baptism with your life, your heart, your mind and your imagination.

To our eyes it looks so simple. So un-miraculous. Just water on the skin. What people do everywhere, since time immemorial. It’s a sign so ordinary, so basic, as basic as bread. The signs make use of actions as common as eating and washing. We have to wonder at Our Lord’s design. We have to wonder at the world God made, we have to wonder at our lives, with a wonder that is not just free fantasy, but of obedience and humility, reading the signs as God designed them, working the signs to get from them the wonders of God’s love, the wonders of God’s love, a love so basic and natural that even a child can know this love.

This morning you will see that second sign. You will see me putting water on a baby. You will hear me say her name: “Evelyn Elizabeth,” and then you’ll hear me say the name of God: “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Now, she’s certainly been washed before, and called by name before, but today for the first time we will do those two very ordinary things together before the congregation, and under the name of God. So simple, but the more you see in it the more it opens up. That has to be true for Evelyn herself as well. As she opens up her life in coming years, she can open up the promise in her baptism. She can apply it to her needs in all the stages of her life, she can apply it to the calling of her life, the work she does, the words she speaks, all that her name will come to stand for in the world, for all of her life she can work the sign of her own baptism.

The Christian community is charged to give her what she needs to work that sign. For the first few years, her parents are the agents of the church, but early on the rest of us have obligations too. In just three year’s time she will be welcomed into our program we call Godly Play. She will hear the story of the Good Shepherd. She will play with that story.

We tell that story several ways. We tell it flat, with paper characters on felt, and we tell it three-dimensional, with little wooden figures, as you see right there. It’s the central story of our program, and we tell it to the children several times, and they can play with it as often as they like, in order to inspire their imaginations. So it will be with Evelyn. She will imagine herself as a sheep in the shepherd’s care. She will imagine living in the sheepfold, where the shepherd keeps her safe. She will imagine going out and coming in. She will imagine going out to pasture where the shepherd watches over her to keep her safe. She will imagine him calling her by her name, because he knows her name and likes to say her name. We will teach her this and she will play with it, and we will invite her to wonder at what all it means.

We want to help her get this deep in her. She’ll need to remember it when her sufferings come. She’ll need to remember this when she has to face a choice of doing the right thing or the easy thing, the costly choice or the safe choice, the loving choice or the self-preserving choice. I think you cannot really love your neighbor, it is too risky and difficult, unless you can believe that you have a loving shepherd and a powerful guardian into whose care you can place your life. But she can remember that she is baptized, that she belongs to him, that she’s marked with a brand on her forehead which even after it evaporates he can still see.

God will help her remember. The Holy Spirit will remind her. The Holy Spirit is the one who is most active here today, doing signs and wonders. You cannot see the Holy Spirit, not directly, but you can see the Spirit’s sign and seal. And you can see the signs of love, which is the chief work of the Spirit. All the love that you see going on here today among us is a sign which points to the love of God.

Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

Sermon for May 8, Easter 3, Working the Signs

Acts 2:14a, 36-41, Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19, 1 Peter 1:17-23, Luke 24:13-35


My text is from our epistle, First Peter 1:17, If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. "The time of your exile." Do you feel like an exile? A resident alien? How are you exiles? And why?

Some of you say that you like how Old First is so rooted and grounded in the history and geography of Brooklyn. The names of our members are on the streets: Polhemus Place, Boerum Place, Bergen Street, DeGraw, Hoyt, Schermerhorn, Joralemon, Hicks, Middagh, Varick, Suydam, Dikeman, Rapelye, Wyckoff, Classon, Conover, Cortelyou, Remsen, Gerritsen, Lott, Schenk, Van Brunt, Van Dyke, Van Voorhees. All these names belonged to our church, and now one of them is back. To the other five new members today, I cannot offer to name a street after you, so you’ll have to be content with a spot in Greenwood Cemetery, which is another way of being rooted and grounded in Brooklyn’s history and geography.

When the Hoyts and the Schermerhorns first settled here they were like exiles in the wilderness, but they soon became the establishment, and our church was founded as an established church, supported by taxation. When we put up this building, 120 years ago, we obviously wanted to express our sense of establishment. When we begin to raise the millions of dollars we’ll need to renovate our stained-glass windows, we’ll have to be pleasing to the establishment.

So are we establishment or exiles? If you’re a Christian, how are you an outsider and how are you at home — a resident or an alien or both? How much can you fit in to even where you are at home? The exiles addressed by St. Peter were not foreigners. Some were Jews and some were Gentiles, but they were native to where they lived. And yet they were exiles socially, politically, and economically, because of their loyalty to Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah and the Lord. The Jews among them no longer could share in their family celebrations. The Gentiles no longer could join the local festivals. The slaves among them had to fit in with their masters against their consciences, and the wives of non-believers faced a similar dilemma. All of them would be regarded by their neighbors as more or less disloyal, kill-joys, spoil-sports, worthy of discrimination and distrust.

They need encouragement. They need advice. How to navigate their lives. How in their predicament to be loving, not bitter, to be joyful, not resentful, to be generous, not defensive. How to be loyal to Jesus as Lord, and also honor the Emperor, as St. Peter advises them in chapter 2. There’s a needle to thread!

On Monday afternoon, one of you wrote me this email: “Daniel, Is it just me, or are you weirded out over all the rejoicing over bin Laden’s death? I mean, I get it – this guy is something of a modern-day Hitler – but . . . I just find it hard to be excited about anyone’s killing.” That’s the feeling, the feeling that First Peter 1:17 is getting at. “If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.” We pray to a God who judges us no less than anybody else. So we want to live our lives in reverent fear. Not in fear as anxiety, but fear in knowing our limits, our fragility, our humility and our dependence, how much we daily need of grace and mercy. The great surprise about this reverent fear is that it results in joy and love, both counter-intuitively and counter-culturally.

The opposite is what St. Peter calls “futility”. The good thing about our predicament is that we are exiles also to futility, although we can sometimes feel like kill-joys. Futility could mean the fifteen minutes of fame. The shallow celebrations. The easy revelry. The superficial prosperity. The facile patriotism. The ideology of individualism. The economy of consumption. The idolatry of violence. We may stand outside of these.

But we do not stand outside the world. We stay within the world and for the world, because the resurrection of Jesus is both the judgment of the world and the affirmation of the world. It’s a judgment on the flesh but an affirmation of embodiment. It’s a foretaste of the future for the sake of life right now, right here and now. The resurrection is against the world and for the world, as both a judgment and a blessing, the future against the futility, the dawn against the darkness.

We are not given proofs of it, but we are given signs of it. As I said last week, the proof was given only to the apostles, in order to credit them as witnesses. To us are given signs. A proof is for a verdict and a resolution, and you can say, “That settles that.” A sign is something that points beyond itself, to get you moving there; you have to follow a sign, you have to use a sign, you have to work it. We are given signs, not proofs, of Jesus’s resurrection. The signs won’t tell you anything unless you use them, unless you work them. The more you work them, the more you get from them. One of the signs we’re given is the breaking of the bread. It isn’t obvious what this might have to do with the resurrection. Until you start using it. Until you use it more and more, and let it unfold itself to you, the more it shows you Jesus and confirms his life in you.

The signs are free for all. The signs are not church property. The other way around — they make the church. The signs are gifts of God to us. You don’t have to be a church member to enjoy them. That’s why we are indiscriminate, intentionally so. You are free to take the signs for free. But six of you are standing up today to say you want to work the signs. You want to put more into them to get more out of them. You commit to learn them and share them and take responsibility for them. You commit to the body that is broken in the bread. You commit to working God’s designs to see what they reveal.

You commit as well to our own secondary signs, the signs of our design. Like the organization of Old First, and our own particular missions and traditions and programs, which have their passing place as secondary signs of resurrection. Like the public water fountain. Like the respite shelter.

Like that painting. The Empty Tomb. That sign was commissioned by the Cortelyous and Suydams and Schenks to express what they believed. It’s remarkable. They were so Calvinist that the sanctuary they gave us has no crucifix – the only cross is faintly in that window over there – and yet they gave this lavish painting, by a Catholic Italian, a pride above place above the pulpit. Perfectly fitting in one way and contradictory in another. And a sign of Jesus’ resurrection is wonderfully offered all year round to anyone who walks into this sanctuary. You six are committing to maintain such signs, such secondary signs in all the contradictions of our culture and establishment.

The sign of the painting, the sign of the table, and the signs of your own lives. A third kind of sign, just as passing and enculturated, just as contradictory, and just there in your brokenness and how you deal with it and share it. Working the contradictions of being both a resident and an alien, of feeling both at home and in exile, and working your contradictions not in frustration but in love, that’s how you exhibit in your own life the signs of resurrection. The rest of us here are encouraged and inspired that you six want to this, and we want to bless you for it.

We need you and you need us, because you cannot work the signs on your own, not if you want to work them in love. St. Peter counsels “mutual love.” That’s a combination of all three kinds of signs, the love in your own life, the love within the organization of the church, and the love which Jesus gives us in the breaking of the bread. It’s a love regarded as unrealistic by the world, but that’s only because the world keeps failing to work it. It’s a love completely natural, it’s the love which is the primal energy of this present universe, and just as much the energy of the new creation. We work these signs together, the signs of resurrection and the signs of love. That you’re here is a sign of God’s love to all of us.



Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

Easter 2011: The Small Bang Theory

Rembrandt's Painting of Jesus and Mary Magdalene

Acts 10:34-43, Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24, Colossians 3:1-4, John 20:1-18

Welcome to Easter. I am glad that you are here. Members and friends, visitors, passers-by, whatever your belief or unbelief, Christian or not or something else, you are welcome here today. Easter is public, Easter is not church property, Easter is a gift of God to all of you, so it’s good for you to be here to receive this gift.


If Easter were church property we would have done it differently. We would have been keeping vigil at the tomb so we could witness the moment of his rising and watch him actually come out. We would have brought along some impartial witnesses and even some hostile witnesses, like those who were present at his crucifixion, who could substantiate our claims. We’d have him go show himself to the opposition, not just to his followers.

His followers did witness him alive again, and ate and drank with him, but they missed his actual rising, because none of them expected it. They didn’t believe it either, not at first. So I don’t blame you if you find it hard to believe. This belief at the center of the Christian faith is maybe the hardest to believe of our beliefs. And it raises questions which we cannot fully answer.

If Easter were church property we would have arranged it to answer the questions which it raises. We would have held on to him, like Mary Magdalene wanted to, and kept him close for observation. But he kept departing, and came back only for six Sundays, until forty days after his rising he ascended bodily into heaven. What does that mean? It’s not a problem if he’s purely a spirit, but his witnesses all claim that he rose again in his body, a real body, with real physicality. Well then, where in the real universe is his body now? What is he standing on? What does he eat? Who cuts his hair?

Such impossibilities have led some theologians to suspend their belief in his bodily resurrection, like suspending the writ of habeas corpus. They say that Jesus does live on, but spiritually, not bodily. Well, that’s just Plato. We didn’t need the gospels for that. That means that God did nothing really new and different in the world, and that there was no gift, just flowers and a card.

It takes some faith to receive this gift, to choose improbabilities, to choose a different wisdom than the wisdom of the world. It also requires your imagination: for you to imagine the new world generated by his resurrection, a new kind of life, a new kind of ethic, a new kind of wisdom, a new way of loving your enemies, a new way of imagining what God wants from you and what God wants for the world, a new way of imagining your own body and your soul.

When I say imagination I don’t mean like, “just my ’magination, runnin’ away with me.” I mean as the physicist Arno Penzias imagined the Big Bang from the background radiation picked up by his telescopes, as Albert Einstein imagined the theory of relativity from looking at the town clock in Zurich, as Copernicus imagined a heliocentric universe from the same celestial evidence that gave everyone else to believe the earth was at the center, and as our dancer today imagined a resurrection both spiritual and physical, with physical strength and physical speed. I mean that kind of imagination which leaps forward from the evidence to make real advances in the world.

We may imagine the resurrection as long as we do not presume to capture it. Some of our images are better than others. The gospels correct our images as much as they inspire them. That Mary Magdalene did not recognize him at first suggests there’s something new about him, but then she recognized his voice immediately, which suggests the same vocal cords. That evening he showed his followers the same hands and feet, with holes in them. So our images have to be of his having his very same body, but somehow transformed.

We’ve been trained to imagine him up there in heaven. This seems confirmed by our epistle, Colossians 3:1, which says, “Seek the things which are above, where Christ is.” But that word “above” in the original Greek is not υπερ but ανω. Which means above, not like straight up over us, but above the horizon, upward and forward, like the dawn, like the rising of the sun. Let yourself imagine Jesus in the future, already in the future. Imagine that his appearances to his followers on those six Sundays are his coming back from the future to enter into their time and space. The future he comes back from is the new heaven and earth, the new creation, which already is, a gift of God, a Promised Land, which waits for us.

If you watch the sky, it looks so obvious that the sun is moving through it over us. Copernicus had to imagine that the sun is still, and that our earth is turning toward it. Just so let yourself imagine the new creation as already there, where Jesus is, and that our time and history are turning toward it. We are approaching it because its light and energy are drawing us to it. That’s where Jesus is, already, in his resurrected body, the firstborn of the dead, not floating in the heavens, but standing on the pavement of the New Jerusalem, eating the food of the great celestial banquet. Imagine and believe that you too, when you die, will jump there forward, to join him in the final future, and join each other too, in the company of all those who have gone on before you, from death to enter into life.

This new creation started on that first Easter Sunday, inside the old creation, a new heaven and earth, within the old heaven and earth. This new creation was a small bang, not a big bang. It was only the size of a human body. Of course, even the Big Bang began quite small. Scientists suggest that the original singularity might have been no larger than a basketball, it just got very big very fast. We don’t know for sure, because no one was there to witness it. Arno Penzias had to imagine it from the extra radiation in the universe. If we had been there maybe we could answer many questions still outstanding, like the unsolved problems of dark matter and quantum gravity. Yet we believe in the Big Bang because we trust the scientists, and if it’s true it does explain a lot The resurrection is like that. You can believe in it, you can trust its witnesses, and if doesn’t explain everything it does explain a lot. Which questions are the ones that you want answered?

Easter is not church property. The gift was such a surprise to us because we did not see it as in our interest. We keep looking for confirmation of ourselves, and this gift offers transformation. We are bothered by guilt and fear and death, and we seek to be excused and preserved and kept alive. This gift does not excuse us, it rather judges us and forgives us and sets us free for love. This gift does not preserve us but it reconciles us and set us free for joy. This gift does not keep us alive, but it is in dying that we are born into eternal life.

That life is already born in you, a very small bang inside you. It comes from the future, here into your life right now, the future you that you will be, you can start already living here right now, in this world, living by the physics and the science and the laws of that new world. Already. Maybe you can’t see it directly, but you can sense the extra radiation in your life, the reverberations of reconciliation, the hints of healing, the counter-intuitive selflessness, the unfathomed forgiveness, the unlikely love, even in all the dark matter that remains. You can live your life right now by making the choices which anticipate the future that began on Easter. You cannot generate it on your own, it is a gift of God to you, but it will give you joy.

Dearly beloved, this gift is for you. I invite you to give your life to it and seek in it your transformation. I invite you to imagine your life as an example of its evidence and to make real on your images. I invite you to seek the signs of it in the people you deal with in the world around you. And I invite you, whatever your belief or doubt, simply to receive this gift for the joy of today, to take the pleasure of God’s love for you, to accept the privilege of God’s irrepressible and unfathomable love for you.


Copyright © 2011, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.

April 10, Lent 5, Keys of the Kingdom: Opening Your Grave

Ezekiel 37:1-14, Psalm 130, Romans 8:6-11, John 11:1-45


Martha told Jesus that she believed that Lazarus would rise again on the last day. Martha and Mary and many Jews back then (except the Sadducees), believed in a resurrection like in Ezekiel 37. This vision of Ezekiel is the first suggestion of resurrection in the Bible, and it comes late, from the time of the Exile, when the Jews had been carried into exile by the Babylonians.

The Old Testament has no interest in the afterlife. It rejects the fixation on immortality that it saw in Egypt, with its pyramids and mummies and treasure chambers for the dead. Not once does the Torah mention the immortality of the soul and not one prophet suggests that your soul goes to heaven after you die. The Israelites believed that when your body died, your soul did too, and then nothing but a passive shadow of yourself went down to Sheol, where it wasted away until the last of your loved ones died, and then even your shadow ceased existence altogether.

The hope of Israel was not for heaven, but for the Promised Land, the land, the land, the land. Not immortality in heaven, but generations of their descendants enjoying their inheritance, sitting under the fig trees they had planted, keeping their names alive throughout the generations. Not immortality in heaven, but to live in comfort and die in peace in the literal Kingdom of God.

So the exile to Babylon was a theological catastrophe. To be removed from the Promised Land was a contradiction of their faith in God. An answer to this catastrophic contradiction was the vision of Ezekiel. The vision was a metaphor of returning to the Promised Land and the restoration of the population in the Promised Land. But the metaphor was so graphic and so powerful that it took on added meaning by the time of Mary and Martha. They believed that one day in the future, every Jew who ever lived would rise again bodily from the dead, and finally get the life that they were promised in the Promised Land. Like being born again. That’s the resurrection that Martha believed in for her brother Lazarus. Some day.

But Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Here and now, when you listen to his voice. You live right now the life you hope to live some day. The Kingdom of God is here with him, right now. Listen to him, and be born again into it right now. Lazarus was dead, but listened to him, and was born again. Like the beggar born blind. Like the woman at the well.

His voice is the key. His voice unlocks the door of the grave. But even with the door unlocked, how can a dead corpse have the energy to hear the voice of Jesus and obey it? His voice conveys the power you need to listen to his voice. His voice is the key that ignites the life it opens up. We have his voice today. We hear it every week, right here, in different voices but a single voice. Just listen to that voice and let it generate new life in you. Listen to it even silently at home. The voice will come through, to open you and to energize the new life that is in you.

For the last few weeks I have been saying that there are two of you, that you simultaneously live two lives, your old nature and your new nature, the old you dying-away and the new you coming-to-life. Your two natures are as distinct as life and death but also are inseparable as life and death. They are both in everything you think and do. Your new you has to deal with your old you all the time. Much of the virtue of your new you is precisely in how you deal with your old you. Much of the joy of your new you is in dealing with the misery of your old you.

I am inviting you to believe that there is a new you rising in you by the gift of the Holy Spirit. But the old you still remains a part of you. You can’t just discard your old nature. You know the Bible never uses the metaphor of a butterfly for being born again, as if you leave the caterpillar behind and fly away. Your old nature remains a part of you, for your new nature to deal with, to process, and to forgive. Contending with your old nature is one of the good works of your new nature. Some Christians suggest that the new life in Christ is free and pure and happy and victorious. So when you feel your old self still so much in you, you start to doubt your faith, you doubt your salvation, you doubt the promises of God. You get cast down into the depths, like Psalm 130. What’s wrong with me, that my old self is still so strong in me?

One of the chief good works of your new nature is to keep on loving your old nature, even though it has to die away. It was for love that Jesus wept. The people saw him weep and said, “See how much he loved him.” Jesus wept for the death of Lazarus even though he knew that he would raise him from the dead. Jesus loved the old life of his friend, even though it had to die.

During the ten years of my ministry here I’ve made mistakes and done dumb things and hurt some people and had conflicts I should not have had. There are people who when I see them on the sidewalk, I feel myself turn red, and I think, boy did I blow that one. My old nature clings to me, and I often myself getting wrapped up in my grief and guilt.

And then I have to listen to the voice of Jesus when he says, Come out. I have to believe in my own resurrection, already, I have to believe in the new life that is in me. My new nature has to forgive my old nature, seven times, seventy times seven times, because of God forgiving me. Not excuse myself, not justify myself, but forgive myself in Jesus’ name, to unwrap myself from the negative power of what I’ve done, and to live within the positive power of the life which God is opening up to me. I have to believe in my new life in Christ. I don’t believe in my old life, and I do grieve it, but I can love it. Not to try to keep it alive, but as I love a dying relative.

I believe that part of the power of my new nature is for loving my old nature. Not liking it, but loving it. Not indulging it, not protecting it, but staying with it, working with it, engaging it. Sometimes it’s like there is a war in you, you have a lover’s quarrel going on inside you, but you still have to love the one that you are quarreling with. Faithfully dealing with your old nature is one of most important good works that your new nature does in the world.

Here’s a take home: One of the most important good works of your new life in Christ is to love the old and dying nature that lives on in you. Some of the most important forgiving that you do is to forgive the sin and guilt that lives on in you.

The fruit of this is that as you deal with your old nature, so you will deal with other people, so you will deal with all the pain and suffering and ugliness that is out there in the world. Also this: if you love it your old nature, you can let other people help you deal with it, you can let the Christian community help you unwrap yourself. Jesus told the community to unwrap Lazarus, it’s part of the sign, it’s an image of what the community of saints must do for each other. Your new life is not your life alone, it’s in community and for community. You don’t offer the community just your best self, just your new nature, you also offer it your old nature, not to be defended and preserved, but to be touched and loved and wept for and helped to die. And in return, to have to keep on forgiving the old natures of others in the community does not prevent your believing in their new natures too.

When at last you die, what dies is your old nature. Your new nature will live on. In the mind of God the new you is already living in the new heaven and new earth. The world of time and space may take some time to get there, but the mystery of the resurrection is that, in Christ, you are already there, where there are not two of you but one of you, simple and single, in body and soul, to live with integrity and internal harmony and love. It is be the victory of love, and we have that victory already.

Copyright © 2011, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.

April 3, Lent 4, Keys of the Kingdom: Opening Your Eyes

1 Samuel 16:1-13, Psalm 23, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9

I have good news and bad news. Well, actually it’s good news and good news. It’s all good news, it’s bad news only if you don’t take the good news as good. That’s how it is with the judgment of God. The judgment of God is always good. There is a single judgment. God does not have one judgment which is merciful and another judgment which condemns. The single judgment of God is good if you accept it, but if you refuse it, then you condemn yourself by it. When we confess that Jesus, in heaven, judges the world, it’s not that he is approving this and condemning that, rewarding this and sending down some punishment for that, like Zeus or Jupiter. The judgment of Jesus is right down here with us, it is public and open and laid out clearly for us in the gospel. The gospel is the public judgment of the world, and as we read it and hear it and respond to it, we judge ourselves by it. It’s not just for the end, it’s for everyday. It’s not a final doom, it is a daily gift. As it judges us, it opens up to us the kingdom of God. If you accept the judgment, the gate swings open, and you enter the kingdom, and you look around and you see that you were in it all the time. If you don’t accept it, it means you can not see the kingdom of God. You’ve built a wall around yourself, a shell, a dome of hardness like the hardness of your heart, a fortress, and you look out through your periscope. Your vision is sharp, but narrow, and without perspective. All you see is what you’re looking for, and you miss the signs you are not looking for. The kingdom is closed to you if you don’t want it. Why wouldn’t anybody want it? Fear of exposure? Fear of looking weak? Fear of needing help? Fear of other people disappointing you and failing you, of the community not being a community of saints? Fear of admitting how helpless you are? How hard you’ve worked to get to where you are; you protect your achievements and accomplishments, your convictions and commitments, you protect the control you think you have. So you say, “No thanks, I’m fine. I don’t need it. I’ve got it.” I hear myself say that all the time. The advantage of the beggar was that he knew he needed help. The beggar knew that he was powerless to help himself. So, as helpless as a baby, he is being born again. Like a newborn, he is learning to see the world without control of what he’s looking at. Like a newborn, things happen to him; he doesn’t do things, but he learns to see from what is done to him. We watch him gain insight and perspective, and how to read the signs. He can see his parents now. He’s always known how his parents sound and smell, but he can see them now and he learns the signs of fear upon their faces, their fear of being tossed out of the synagogue. He watches the Pharisees. Their confidence in knowing what God wants, their vision of how to get the kingdom of God to come back, the hardness of their faces, and their judgment against this sign from Jesus, a sign of healing which points away from their vision of the world. He sees the anger of the Judean elders. They fear the synagogue’s disruption. They fear the insurgency of Jesus, like the insurgency of David which Samuel ignited against King Saul. The elders have worked it between Moses and the Romans, they saw it as the best that they could get, they saw themselves as realists, and their vision of the world was pessimistic and defensive. In anger and fear they judge against the sign of a new world in their midst. The beggar is thrown out. He’s been judged and condemned. He’s gained his sight but lost his place. He’s in a crisis now. (To be born again is not all peaches and cream.) And where is Jesus in all this? Out of sight, off stage. That is how it is with Jesus, in our lives as well. Whatever he might have done for you, you cannot prove that it was him. You can argue it away, what he does for us. Especially if his doing is beyond the scope of your expectation, outside the perspective of what you’re looking for. Your periscope is focused very sharp, but you cannot see around you or behind you. The beggar is cast out, we find him out back in the alley, downcast, tempted to prefer the old familiar darkness. Jesus comes to find him. Of course he isn’t recognized, the beggar hasn’t ever seen him yet. Jesus speaks to him, but with an unexpected question. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Why that question, why that specific title for himself? From the prophecy of Daniel 7, the vision of “one like a Son of Man,” lifted up to heaven to share with God the judgment of the nations and the government of the world. What does that heavenly and global vision have to do with this poor beggar here in the alley? The beggar says, “Who is he?” Jesus says, “You’re looking at him.” The beggar says, “I believe you.” That must make sense of everything, because he worships him, and Jesus accepts it. Who does Jesus think he is? Rather an exalted view of his own identity. It looks for all the world like he’s just another Jewish rabbi in an alley in Jerusalem, but the vision we’re offered is that the Kingdom of God has come, on earth as it is in heaven, and that the beggar is in it, and he can start to see it, and he can see the world around him in terms of the Messiah, the Son of Man. The irony is that the Pharisees and the elders of the synagogue are in the Kingdom too, but they choose not to see it and they are in the dark. They have made their judgments and they will keep them. They judged who was wrong and who was right, who was the sinner and who was not, who was at fault and who can be assigned the blame. That’s the way we judge each other all the time, in order to justify our own decisions and desired actions, to justify our preferences and prejudice and how we see the world. Jesus does not judge like this. He is not interested in who sinned, the beggar or his parents. His interest is in what we do with what we see. You will say, “That depends on what I see.” And because of our inclination to see only what we’re looking for, and because we need to own up to our helplessness, we need the good news to help us see the good news. Does that sound circular? How about this: You can see the world correctly if you see it in terms of Jesus as the Son of Man. I mean that you can see the world accurately if you look at it in terms of Jesus judging it. I mean that you can regard the world with hope if you see it in terms of Jesus calling it to where he wants to take it. I mean that you cannot see the world accurately unless you look at it in terms of Jesus as the Son of Man. You have constantly to correct your vision. You have always to look for signs of Jesus in the world. One reason you come to church is to learn the signs of Jesus here in order to discern the signs of Jesus in the world. You learn to see the world as God sees it. You could see the world as dangerous and fearful; it shows itself as painful and alienating, and it touches your own pain and alienation inside you, encased within the iron chest of your anger and your fear. Your own insides tell you that your vision of the world is sharp and accurate. But if you worship Jesus as the Son of Man, like a beggar, needing help, in the wisdom of your helplessness for your own life, his judgment of the world is the judgment of you, which is the key that opens up that iron box. He reaches in, and holds your pain in his hand, and on your angry alienation he puts his spit and mud to humble you and soften you. You hold your breath, and then you give in. You couldn’t see him do it, because it was inside you, but you can feel the signs of Jesus in your life, and you can look for the signs of Jesus in the world. Even when the world is dark, you can see into it, because the light you need to see it with is shining out from your own face, not a light you need to generate yourself, but the light of Christ reflected off your face. In his light you see light. And you can find his signs in the world. You can go out into the world, as it says in Ephesians 5:10, and “find what is pleasing to the Lord.” It’s like learning to see, it’s like being born again into the world. “Wake up, sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Copyright © 2011, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.

March 20, Lent 2; The Keys of the Kingdom: Opening the Border

Genesis 12:1-4a, Psalm 121, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, John 3:1-17


I want you to use your imagination. Imagine that on a clear day, you’re high up in the air, and you’re looking out over a great wide landscape, of farms and roads and villages and a city or two. But there you see a round valley, maybe a couple miles across, not very deep, a shallow depression in the landscape. The valley has its own towns and farms and such. Then notice there’s the circle of a wall around it, just below the rim of the valley, and the wall is just high enough to block the sight from inside of the land outside.

You zoom in closer. You notice that the wall is painted with scenery, lifelike, like a movie set, so that it doesn’t look like a wall, but like you’re looking out into the wider world. Imagine now that you were born in this valley and that you live in it. It’s all you know. You can’t see the world outside. In the wall there is a single gate. And in the gate there is an iron door. The door is locked. You cannot open it. You do not have a key. You are locked inside this valley, this depression, although you are so used to it you think it’s all the world. You have never seen the great outside, you cannot even imagine it.

The world outside is the Kingdom of God. Jesus says, “You cannot enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the spirit.” What does that mean, “born of water and the spirit?” Jesus says, “You cannot even see the Kingdom of God without being born from above?” What does that mean, “born from above”? Or does Jesus mean “born again”? His Greek words are ambiguous, they could mean “born from above,” or “born again.” Either way, what does he mean? He speaks in puzzling metaphors.

Nicodemus cannot track what Jesus means. After his third question he falls silent, like he can’t stay in the conversation. What could Jesus mean? Even for us, it takes the whole remainder of the gospel of John to track what Jesus says, because Jesus will work on these metaphors all the way through chapter 21.

I can tell you this. The Kingdom of God is right here, it’s not a far off country, which you have to journey far to go to, like Abram had to do. The Kingdom of God is not distant up in heaven or far off in the future, that you have to die first to get there. The Kingdom of God is right here, all around us, only you can’t see it from the perspective of the world, which is all closed in on itself. You can’t see it unless you are already out in it You have to enter it to see it, and you have to be born again to enter it.

Nicodemus was looking for it but he couldn’t see it. He spend his whole life working for it but he could not enter it. Nicodemus was a scholar and a politician, and a member of the council of Judea. His political party was the Pharisees, which, like most Middle Eastern political parties, was both political and theological. The Pharisees were looking for the political restoration of the Kingdom of God in Judea, and the removal of the Romans. The Pharisees believed that the Romans were in power because God was angry at the Judeans and therefore had abandoned them. The Pharisees believed that the way to get God to forgive them and come back was for every last Judean to be scrupulously righteous, which perfect righteousness would win them God’s forgiveness, and bring God back, and the Messiah would come and kick the Romans out like David did to Philistines, and take the throne David, and the Glory would come back to the Temple and the Kingdom of God would be reality.

But the political party in power was the Sadducees, and they were in the way. The Sadducees were the limousine liberals. They controlled the temple and had worked it out with the Romans. The Pharisees hated the Sadducees. So when Nicodemus saw Jesus cleanse the Temple, which is in the previous chapter of John, which was an insult to the Sadducees, Nicodemus thinks it’s time to go under cover of the night and make an alliance with this new guy.

He’s diplomatic in his opening, and Jesus comes back at him like this. “You want the Kingdom of God? You don’t even know what you’re looking at. You couldn’t even enter it, you of all people who assume you have the right to it, just by virtue of your birth. Nope, you’d have to be born all over again.” Jesus is saying that the issue is not the Sadducees or the Romans, the issue is yourself, Nicodemus. The Kingdom of God is already here, indeed, it’s sitting right across from you, only you can’t see it, the Kingdom of God is already here, only you can’t enter it, unless you deal with the issue of yourself.

So what’s the key, and what’s the gate, and what’s the wall? The wall is inside you. The border of the Kingdom of God is inside you. It’s not out there. The Kingdom of God reaches into you, but you have a wall against it, a wall that’s built of fear, like all encircling walls. So what are you afraid of? You do have much to be afraid of. If you look at the scenery on your wall, you can see what you’re afraid of. What people might do to you, based on your real experience. The dangers out there you are painfully aware of. Or how you might end up if things go on like this. The mistakes you’ve made that you might repeat, the mistakes that you are paying for.

The gate is guilt, a bastion of great strength, which we have talked about at other times. And the iron door is unbelief. And the key, the key is belief, according to John 3:15&16. But unbelief is closer and tighter and safer and easier. But your belief will open the iron door into the world, the whole world, which is your proper inheritance, according to Romans 4:13, the whole world as the territory of the Kingdom of God.

So what’s belief? What is it to believe? Well, you can believe in Jesus as the Messiah, and the kind of life he offers. Start there. And you can believe in the promises of God he offers, the promises we summarize in the Apostles Creed. We often say that we believe the Apostles Creed, but actually the Creed is a shortcut. It’s the promises of God we believe in, of which the Creed is the summary. Here’s a take home. If someone asks you, what do Christian believe in? You can say, we believe in the promises of God which Jesus has offered us. What Christians believe in is the promises of God that Jesus offers us. If you ask me what I believe, I can say that it’s not in ideas about God but promises from God which Jesus has conveyed to us. The key is belief, and the lock is the promises, and when the door swings open it lets you out to find your place in the world.

You can also believe in something about yourself. You can believe there is another you. There’s the you that lives on one side of the wall and the you that lives on the other. When you are baptized you become a dual citizen, it’s like being born again in another country, so that you are a citizen there as well. And you have to grow up into it, and it takes time. It’s not like you immigrated into it as an adult, but that you came into it like a newborn baby, and you have to learn it from the ground up like a child.

You know the old you, you know it so well, and, for all the grief you cause yourself, you love yourself. You don’t know the new you near as well, but you can believe in it, you can believe the promise that the Holy Spirit has given birth to it in you. You can live into your new self, even as your old self is still with you. And you can even love that old self, that old troubling self. You regard your old and sinful self not in hatred but in love. Because the kind of people who live out there in the Kingdom of God are people who have learned to love even the unlovely, as God so loved the world.

Copyright © 2011, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.

Lent 1, March 13: The Keys of the Kingdom: Unlocking Satan's Riddles

Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 83.
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7, Psalm 32, Romans 5:12-19, Matthew 4:1-11

The serpent in the garden is not evil by nature. The serpent is innocent until we give it power, until we believe it. The serpent gives voice to the attraction of the world, to the allure of nature, to the mystique of our desires and the seduction of our potentials. Our appetites distract us from the special devotion of our species to God, our flesh diverts us from the obedience to God which comes with the special station of Homo sapiens on the earth. The voice confuses good and evil. The voice makes a riddle of our meaning in the world and of our relationship to God.

The Genesis story is always true. It’s a paradigm story, we repeat it all the time. In the Garden the voice was a serpent, today it is the good life, or economic growth, or the best for our children, whatever. It is attractive and reasonable. It never actually lies; it just never tells the whole truth. It speaks for the wisdom of the world, and for the certainties of experience, and for social science in the expertise of its small capacity. You can never answer this voice from within the world. The Genesis story is always true: from our life within the world we keep failing to solve the riddles of our existence and the riddle of good and evil. The only way to solve these riddles is from a perspective from outside the world but which still includes it, the perspective of the Kingdom of Heaven. The keys of the Kingdom unlock the riddles of good and evil in the world.

Our gospel lesson takes place just after Jesus’ baptism, just after he heard the voice from heaven call him the Son of God. That title confirmed him as the Messiah, the heir of David, the rightful King of the Jews in whose reign the Living God would come again and dwell with them. Okay, so now what? Do it like David? Like Alexander the Great? Solomon began his reign by going on retreat to a lovely place to seek the will of God. Jesus went into the desert to fast and pray. More like Moses and Elijah.


His temptations are not three easy choices. The hardest temptations are not the ones to do what’s clearly evil, but to choose the wrong good, which might be good by other rules. The devil dares him, “If you’re the Son of God, then act like it. Shouldn’t you be doing miracles? Back in the Exodus, didn’t your Father make bread in the wilderness? If you saw 5000 hungry people and you had on hand only five loaves and two fishes, wouldn’t you do a miracle?” Your followers will pray to you for help when they are suffering. Wouldn’t you use your power to help them?

Jesus is determining the policies of his Kingdom. Yes, he will do miracles but not to save himself or win his people’s loyalty. He will prove himself in the world not by breaking the laws of nature but by simple obedience, by faithfulness to the Word of God, even at great cost. Jesus’ perfection is a moral perfection—not in being a superman or invulnerable, but in his faithfulness to the Word of God. He believes that the Word of God is the moral diet of ordinary human beings. That’s the first key of his kingdom, the key that is the word of God, which opens many riddles in the world, by which we know what’s good and evil in the world, which opens the mysteries of our own lives and our experience.

But opening this riddle leads right to another. Satan says, “Oh, ‘every’ word of God? Well, how about this one: it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you.’ Live by that word, Jesus, abandon yourself to God’s incredible promises, I dare you. Why aren’t you jumping? Do you doubt the promise of your Father to rescue you?” Where is your God? Where is your faith?

The riddle uses scripture, but it’s a trick. This is not a true-to-life example of how we have to put our trust in God. It’s not for getting rescued whenever we’re in a scrape or for having a nice and easy life. To use our tie with God to play with God for a comfort of our own is “tempting God,” as Jesus calls it here. The special care of God for us is for the purpose of enhancing our mission. God’s special care for us is our incentive to risk a life of love and service, which love and service will probably lead to what, from the perspective of the world, might look like an increase in our suffering. The purpose of God’s special care for us is to get us through the suffering that comes with our mission, not to keep us comfortable.

Jesus does not accept this dare, this artificial test. But three years later, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he will pass an even harder test in this same subject. He will take the test upon the cross, he will have to enter the cold, dark door of death as if it’s his Father’s warm and loving care. He will trust in a silent and distant God without resorting to the supernatural. He will submit to all that we endure, and he will ask no miracle of God to free him from the burden of ordinary human existence. Because he has a key—the key that God’s will for us contains God’s care for us, and that God’s care for us does not exempt us from the realities of our humanity, but gets us through the realities of our humanity for the sake of our mission and to do God’s will.

Unlocking the second riddle leads you to the third. “Okay, so you’re not going to resort to any special power, you’re going to accept your limitations and be righteous within them. That means you’re going to lose. Our side has the power, we are in control. We will beat you, we will bury you. So be realistic and make your peace with the powers of the world. I’ll even make you Number Two, I’ll let you run the whole thing. You can save your people just like Joseph did in Egypt when he was Number Two. It’s Biblical. I’ll be Pharaoh, you be Joseph.”

The voice that every single politician listens to. The voice of the powers and principalities that tell you they control the world. In the Bible, the devil is not a voice from hell, he doesn’t even live in hell (that will be the place of his punishment). The devil dwells on the surface of the ground, like the serpent in the Garden, but the original innocence of the serpent has been corrupted by all the human evil since Adam.

The voice now has the pride of its misery, it has sophisticated doubt and well-developed deconstruction, it has angry ingenuity and bitter independence. It seems more real, while obedience is less glamourous, less heroic, less cool. It feels that way to me. I don’t want to be out of it with the world. I want to fit in. I want to enjoy it, I want to be included.

The third key is to worship God. To honor God and pledge to God your absolute loyalty, to confess your other loyalties and be released from them. The worship of God is not just praise, but also the of confession and absolution. This key unlocks so much. Because you have riddles in your life that Adam did not have, the riddle of your guilt, the problem we hold up high in Lent. Look, we have just read the Sermon on the Mount, and heard the teachings of Jesus, and we’ve had described the way of life that we must live inside the Kingdom of Heaven, and we recognize that we fall short, and we confess our guilt. And even by the standards of the ordinary world you feel your guilt. Your guilt and frustration can drive you to even greater doubt and unbelief than if you’d never heard of God. The voice of the serpent is most powerful when it reminds you of the truth of your guilt, as the problem you cannot solve. But it’s not the whole truth.

The whole truth is only known from the news that comes beyond the world, the good news that Jesus not only taught us but also suffered for our redemption and forgiveness. The weekly promise of the gospel is the theme of our worship, the key that unlocks this riddle to open the mystery of grace in our own lives, the mystery of Christ in our place, the mystery of lavish love, the mystery of the world that finds its meaning and its truth in the love of God which overcomes the world.

Copyright © 2011, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.