Scripture: Isaiah 50:4-9a
I wonder what it would be like to have a prophetic vision. What would I do with it? Would I keep quiet or would it stir in me such passion that I would proclaim it to the world? To be honest I don’t know what I would do. I have heard people speak as if they had seen a vision from God, yet usually I’m right in the crowd laughing when they are proven wrong.
I imagine the prophet in the Hebrew scriptures would probably feel like I do, just before they actually received their vision. Most probably did not want to be a prophet since there is only profit in it when people like what you have to say. To be honest the only reason we know what the prophets of ancient ages said is because people didn’t like what they had to say and it came to pass, so they recorded it as if to say, “oops our bad, sorry we killed you.”
Which leads me to think how well do I receive the words of other? If they say something I dislike or think is judgemental am I thinking that because they are being jerks, or is it because I am? I am guessing in my case I’m the biggest jerk.
Isaiah speaks of a vision, one that we see reflected in the final days of Jesus. I do not know if Isaiah himself faced this sort of trial but I wonder. Either way we have two people that gave all they had: their reputations, financial security, and lives for a cause. The cause to draw people back to God.
What do we give ourselves to? I consider my own life, I am a pastor yet I work outside the church too. Do I do this because I need the money or do I have other employment because I like money? You can judge me if you want. To be honest your words eiher way would have a prophetic ring to them. The point is we should encourage those around us to draw closer to God. Our words, actions, employment, and our leisure should be encouraging a deeper relationship to God, if we claim to be disciples of Christ. If we do things out of selfishness or personal profit we may not be encouraging those around us as much as we could. In the same breath we could live a life of total self sacrifice and not promote any spiritual growth either. How do we know if the life we are living is promoting the faith we claim? That is where taking time to spend meditating on scripture and listening to God is so important. If we are seeking God and being a prophet to those around us (proclaiming the Gospel) then we only need to please one person…well if you are married two.
I am reminded of a conversation between George Fox and William Penn. Penn wanted to become a Quaker, but they spoke against war and promoted peace. So he asked George about the sword he carried, Penn was of the noble class so it was fashionable to carry a sword. Fox gave probably the best advice he could. He knew that Penn was considering his faith and was developing a deeper relationship with God so he said to Penn, “carry it as long as you can.” No judgement, no proclaimation of right and wrong, he simple said carry it as long as you can. This meant that if Penn, in his pursuit of friendship with God, could justify continue to carry a weapon of war while learning about and embracing the peace of Christ he should carry the weapon. If you were to move forward in time you woul learn that William Penn stopped wearing the sword.
Do I live for profit or prophet? Do I live my life to promote a deeper relationship with God or do I seek my own desires. Jesus lived His life to bring honor and glory to God knowing full well that the message He brought of the kingdom would lead to His death. But it was too important to give up. It ment that there would be life, love and friendship between god and mankind. His followers too followed in his ways many of them lost their lives as well. The passion of Christ and His followers tell me that something is important here. And in the face of death they go down forgiving those that caused harm, and praising God.
What a life. So what would I do if God gave me a vision? I still don’t know but I can say I will I will continue doing what I am as long as I can. And if I need to change directions He’ll let me know.
Scripture: Psalms 118:1-2, 19-29
Today I am just glad to be alive. Last weekend I spent time at worship and hanging out with the family. Even took in a couple of hockey games. Which I know is odd for a Quaker pastor but it is a very intresting game. Today I consider this scripture as I sit in the open air enjoying the spring air. I sit in a place with a church’s cross up on a hill and the smell of Bar-B-Que lofting through the air. I live in Kanas City the air always smells like this! I sit here thinking isn’t it great to be alive.
How often do we just slow down enough to worship? Truely worship, not the worship we do at our “meetings for worship” or church, but just being in a place where we stop worrying, stop planning, and just be. This Psalm reminds us of worship and praise. I consider what the writter encourages the worshipers to use in worship. Branches of trees, this means that the worship began not in the temple of God but somewhere else. It began in the fields, in the yards of the houses. Our worship starts at home as well. We should already be engaged in worship long before we enter our Meeting Houses.
They begin to praise God, they cut branches and they make a procession all the way to the temple. They praise for a simple reason, God’s love endures forever. Spring time encourages me in this. I know scientifically the cycles of growth and dormancy, yet I stll am drawn to worship God. Life is all around the beauty of creation is emerging before my eyes and the aroma of all that I love tickle my nose. Life is good.
How often do I forget to remember to praise God for the simple reason that God created this world for us to enjoy. He allows the cycles of life to continue every spring, and it shows the vast love of God.
When I add in the Gospel of Christ everything builds to something even greater. God’s love is so vast that He came to live with people just like me. He taught us how to be human, not only taught but showed us how to be human. And he gave his life so that I can live free. In the darkness of winter a light came a light that became the hope of humanity. Just as life begins to emerge we remember that the hope is fulfilled when Christ, God incarnate rose from the grave to live again.
What great love. I sing, “Lord save us” along with all the ancients. And I have the assurance that he will and can because he proved it to us all in his life, death, and resurrection. Blessed is He that coms in the name of the Lord. I encourage you to just be in God’s presence tonight praise the one whose love never ends and whose grace is new every day. As for me I’m going to grab some bar-b-que don’t judge sometimes eating is worshipful too.
Scripture: John 12:20-33
Adam has a hobby. Some might say that it is a worthless pursuit but he enjoys it. When he engages in this activity it seem to possess him totally the people around him find him more pleasant, more alert, more open. It is as if this Adam is the true expression of who he is. Yet Monday rolls around and Adam again is transformed into the serious business man, the logical, calculated man.
What makes the difference? The one version of the man is experimental, risky, takes a chance. The other will only advance and act under careful consideration. One even questions if the two aspects of the man can be united. One man lives by the heart the other by the wisdom of the world. One man lives by dreams the other by the knowledge of the world.
This passage brings to light a very interesting aspect to the life of Christ. Maybe I see it because that is what I do. The world in ancient times was a diverse place. People moved around much more than we tend to think. This is evident because throughout the world there are Jewish communities centuries old. And for those who study language they can find influences from areas that looking on a map seem impossible. Even in the native American cultures, which many assume to be descendants of Siberian Asians, they have found influences of extinct cultures originating in France. Humans are mobile. They look to explore the world around them, and they find a way to survive. Israel is an example and testimony of the mobility of humanity. When one looks at the empires of history they grow out of obscurity rise in power and influence, and grow toward other empires to eventually dispute. Israel emerged as a nation on the highway connecting the empires. They themselves were never the superpower but they held the land that controlled the definition of true power. They controlled the highway of ancient trade. They connected the east to the west and the north to the south. there were other routes but this one had the greatest profit.
This means that Israel has always had a diverse population. Groups of people were constantly moving through on their journies. They brought with them goods to trade, as well as cultural knowledge. This led them to want a king, this led them to seek alliences with other nations, this ultimately lead them to become controlled by Rome. Yet through all of this they have kept a unique culture of their own, no matter where they live or who controls their homeland. They have always been a light to the nations, but never the empire. Gentiles, or the nonJewish person has had a curiosity with this group of people. At times it has been positive and other times negative. Their influence has been seen in every major empire around the world, with a few exceptions. The Greek culture tried to spread their influence to the ends of the world yet they held the Jew in curiosity. They allowed them to remain to some degree. Many Greeks even embraced the Hebrew life. The Romans and Persians were annoyed yet intreged by these people. These conquered people that seemed to never seemed to be assimulated.
The Gentiles of Jesus’ day were curious, they wondered what drove these people, there was something that both attracted and repeled them. Jesus’ popularity was growing among the Jewish community, it was growing among the Sumaritan population. Both have a history as Israel. Now those outsiders of the Gentile populous were curious.
The Greek culture is one that takes pride in the pursuit of knowledge. They had schools of philosophy, where they studied the ideas of knowledge and how to come to a conclusion. They taught students how to make a case, how to argue and debate. They heard the stories about Jesus now they wanted to sit at His feet to listen to the teacher.
I find this story interesting in many ways. It shows the openness Jesus had as well as the invitation he provided to all people from the very beginning. Of all the disciples there was one who had an 100% non-jewish name, Phillip. This is who the Gentiles went to to gain an audience with the great Rabbi. Phillip was not just a back ground disciple either. He was the third disciple called to follow, and he quickly found his friend Nathaniel, saying ” we have found the one spoke about by Moses and the prophets.”
This man though Jewish had a foot in the gentile world, through him the door was opened for all to come to Jesus, and he was the third to be called. Very early the choosen one of Israel was to be the light to the world. And as soon as the Gentiles sought Christ the message took a different tone.
Until this point Jesus said not to speak because His time had not yet come. Now the Greeks want to talk and Jesus says now it is time. Now it is time for Him to be glorified, for the fullness and purpose of His mission to be set into motion. Now the attention of the world has been gained, now the message of the kingdom has extended beyond the temple courts and has found its way to the university of the Greeks.
Then he speaks about life and death, love and hate. Passion. I began today with a story of Adam, a man, who lives a double life. His hobby life and his business life. Both consume him. The businessman consumes the creative man, while the hobby life consumes the rational man. He is fully engaged in each sense. Jesus speaks of this. Unless a grain of wheat dies it won’t produce fruit. Unless you are all consumed in your task you will not produce. This is not just a spiritual commitment it matters in everything you do. If a member of our local hockey team isn’t all in, they will not make the cut, but when each player is fully engaged all consumed by the game, it is a beautiful and exciting game. When my coworker and I are fully focused on the task we get things done quickly without, mistakes, and usually have fun too. An artist is probably the greatest example of someone totally consumed by a project. When they get a taste of inspiration they start to create with such a ferver that they lose track of time, they forget to eat. At times they may not even realize you are in the room. until fruit has been made they are totally focused. Are we all in for God?
Historically speaking when people fully engage in their pursuit of God they attract attention. When Francis of Assisi’s father said he was a freeloader never to amount to anything Francis gave his father everything even his clothes and pursued God, he started a movement that still survives today after hundreds of years. When Fox fully pursued God in the English countryside he attracted thousands. If we fully engage fully serve we will see results. Why don’t we? Why do we fully engage our lives in work, or hobbies yet only spend a few minutes with God? I think we are afraid. We are afraid that maybe God may direct us into something we couldn’t control, that growth would be so rapid we couldn’t anticipate it.
To live passionately make us vernable. to live passonatly we fully invest all of our mind, body, and spirit. This sort of investment consumes us entirely we are lost in it, we cease to exist apart from it. This is what God calls us God, in all that we do. God created us to have passion to get excited and to go all in. I often wonder if we miss read this passage, I believe we mix up the charactors.
He is speaking to the Greeks, these men are filled with Greek philosophy, much of which says that we should not worry about our bodies because our bodies are just prisions of our spirit. This idea entered into Christian thought through the gnostic herises This concept pushes the idea that aslong as I do spiritual things I will inherit eternal life, and what I do with my physical body doesn’t matter. Jesus engages this idea he calls it what it is, an unproductive, uncreative, shell of existance. If we live a life of hating this world and only wanting to get through it so we can get on to heaven, we miss the point. Life is important. Life is so important that God came to this world just as we all do through the womb of a woman. He developed from a single cell, into an embryo, to a fetus, passed from the womb to become an infant, grew to be a boy, and finally a man. He lived life fully, he celebrated weddings, cried at funerals, he got angry, and told jokes. This is not a man who hated life. He loved life he invented life. He did not create us to as spiritual prisons but living humans created to glorify God in life. Those that hate life on this world will keep it for eternity. They will keep the empty, purposeless existance forever. The Greek idea of the human shell was invading humanity and keeping the truth from becoming fully realized. Life does matter.
This life does matter. But living a hollow shell of a life is unacceptable. Living life devoted only to worldly pleasures are unacceptable, living passonatly for a cause to promote life, to promote life more fully is a life lost in the one who created us. We were made to live. Created to enjoy life and to glorify God in the process. I want to do that as much as possible. I want to live my life in such a way that everyone around me will love life and praise the giver of life. I want to enjoy life so much that I can cross over to the other side and know how to act around those saints already sitting at the Lords banquet table. I want to lose myself in the passion of living a life for God.
What does this life look like? I can’t fully discribe it, it is a existance were the rational man and the creative man are joined together it is where the artist and the business man strive together to lose themselves in each others passion for life. It is a place where the weapons of war are made into tools of creativity and growth.
The message of Jesus was that the kingdom of God is at hand, the kingdom of Heaven is around us. He said this multiple times. So much that it got the attention of the entire world. He lost himself in that message which is filled with love and life. The world did not like that message. It spoke against their ways. They sought to silence the message because their ways promoted darkness and death, not light and life. If life was not important, if our actions and how we live are unimportant why did Jesus live a full life? If God did not love all people both Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female why did he engage every aspect of Life?
We are bearers of light in the darkness promoters of life in a culture of death. As we enter our time of open worship let us consider our own lives are we embracing our life fully and glorifying the giver of life? Or are we living as shells empty of life and empty of hope? My prayer is that we will lose ourselves in life and passionately love God, embrace the Holy Spirit, and live Christ’s love with other.