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Abide In Love (Sermon May 10, 2015)

1 John 5:1–6 (NRSV)

Faith Conquers the World

5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. ² By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. ³ For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, ⁴ for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. ⁵ Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Testimony concerning the Son of God

⁶ This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.

Over the course of the years many groups among the religious have made lists of who are Christian and who are not. It might surprise many about who are on which list. For example the author CS Lewis is considered by some as being a heretic because of his belief in purgatory and the possibility of evolution explaining aspects of creation, on this same list the reformer Martin Luther was considered a non-Christian because he raised questions about the numbers and figures in scripture. That is right the great reformer that took a stand for scripture over tradition questioned aspects of scripture and as a result some today question his very faith because of what? Honesty about doubts, differing philosophies about how God may have brought the world about or what the afterlife may be like? Great leaders today like Billy Graham are brought into question over differences of theology. Theology can only get us so far, because theology is the study of God and God is beyond our comprehension. So we must tread softly when we make claims in regard to God, we must always leave space for the possibility of a skewed human perspective.

These lists, denominations, and theological perspectives can all lead to division. Who is right, who is wrong? Which church is correct or which perspective is the most accurate? If we make a claim in any direction we risk demonizing an entire segment of the faithful and history. This is one of the reasons why Friends are very slow in making decisions and why they leave room within their theological statements, because when emotions are raised and arguments are made we can lose perspective and possibly follow our own wills instead of the will of God.

But how do we know God? How do we know which way to turn or what truth is? From the dawn of Christianity there have been different perspectives that have pulled on the faithful. Throughout the epistles we can read about various struggles that the early church faced. Every era of church history has faced something that threatens to pull the church apart or propel it into the next age. Today is no different. John wrote during one of those periods of history that faced these very things. There were people that proposed that the true faith was found only in following the ancient rites of the Jewish religion, others claimed that there was secret knowledge that could only be received by initiation and participation in secret ceremonies. We know the struggles because each epistle tells us about these struggles. John, the last apostle, writes to those that were faced with the end of an era. They have watched the apostles one by one pass to death, and as they witnessed this they began to question their faith. Things were not going exactly as they thought they would, and the ones that founded the church were no longer there to direct their steps. They lived through persecutions, they witnessed dehumanizing violence. They had also saw the miraculous, healings of diseases, people freed from bondages, and the feeding of thousands. Yet darkness always seemed to be gaining on them.

As darkness approached some began to rise up prophets calling people to walk one way or another, people began seek answers to direct their paths, yet they only saw a faint light. They cried out to God wondering if they had missed something, they began to listen to the words of man instead of waiting on the Spirit of God, and John their last apostle watched as a unified church began to divide and fragment. He watched as people of the church began to rely on their own wisdom instead of that of God. He watched and just as Jesus wept he too began to write through his tears because so many were seeking and lost yet were looking in the wrong direction.

Very quickly people began to question the faith, they deemed it in their own minds that they must do more at very least they should follow the Torah, and the fact that darkness was creeping into the world around them must mean that they must do more.  John says to them, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.” Yes that is what we said the prophets begin to argue, we must follow the law. But what are the commandments that John speaks of? They begin to consider the words that John the elder once spoke when he was younger. The words that he heard the Lord speak.

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. (John 15:9-17 NRSV)

Abide in the love of God. Abide is an interesting word, because it is one that is so difficult to do. It means to remain in, to tarry, to stay in, and to dwell. So John lovingly reminds them of the commands of Jesus to wait, and dwell in the love of God. This is the most difficult thing for mankind to do because we like action. To sit around and wait is so contrary to our nature. “We must do something…anything to keep the darkness at bay.” The prophets say to the people. Yet John tells them, “abide, just wait, remember the command of our Lord. Love one another. It is not burdensome. You do not have to add to it, just remain and love.”

Just wait…just love…just do what Jesus has commanded. Do not worry about the darkness closing in around us it is merely an illusion, as long as we abide we will overcome the world. John can say this because he has seen it. He has seen the power of God working all around him. He had witnessed God coming into the lives of Jew and Gentile and totally changing everything. He has seen cities totally devoted to the worship of idols become cities earnestly seeking the one true living God. He was most likely writing this letter in the city of Ephesus, a city that contained one of the largest temples in the world devoted to the roman god Diana, and the city that Jesus spoke to in his Revelation about their zeal for truth and right doctrine. John saw many things. He saw these things because he learned the holy rhythm of Christ. A lifestyle devoted to worship, prayer, and service to others. Loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit and living the love of Christ with others.

When people participate in this holy lifestyle they begin to see change at first with one person, then multiplying as each person actively lives and participates. One by one as people turn to the lifestyle of Christ the trappings of the world begin to fall away, the darkness is overcome by the light and faith conquers the world. But is all begins with abiding in the love of God. Sitting in the love of Christ. Waiting for God and listening to His voice.

We do not have to have all the right answers, we do not have to have a theology that can answer every question of God. We do not have to save the world, because that is not our job. Jesus is the one that conquers the world. He is the one who came by water and blood, who was born and crucified for our salvation and who rose again to lift all mankind back into the glory of God. It is Jesus who does the work, we are only required to abide in him and love those he leads us to.

John encourages us to adopt the lifestyle the holy rhythm Jesus taught us to live for a reason. When we move away from this rhythm we begin to rely on our own strength and our own minds. We begin to think that we are the ones that are doing the work, that we are the ones that conquer the world. I said that Jesus said that Ephesus was seekers of truth and right doctrine, they were the strongest of the seven churches of Asia because they were earnest in their seeking of what was right, but Jesus spoke against them because they lost their first love. They pulled away from the holy rhythm and began to trust themselves and little by little they fell away from Christ and as they began to fall away darkness began to take hold of them again. So they began to seek more truth and right doctrine only to have more darkness close in, because they did not abide first, they did not abide in love.

What does this say about us today? We are living on the edge, many of us see darkness all around us. We see the world conquering the church instead of the church conquering the world. We feel as if we need take things into our own hands to speak out and force righteousness onto the people all around us. I ask one thing as we set off down this road, how long have we remained in the love of God today, yesterday, the day before, and how long will we abide in his love tomorrow? Have we adopted first a rhythm of life that reflects Christ a lifestyle that mimics Christ in all we do before we go out to conquer darkness? Have we been people loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit, and living the love of Christ with others? I ask because John says that that is the lifestyle that will conquer the world and bring light into the darkness. Abide in love first.

The writings of John are important to us as Friends. We derive our name from the words that he pinned at the closing of the era of Church history. Our original name The Religious Society of Friends means that our religion is a society based on becoming Friends with God. The only way for this to happen is for us to abide first and then live that love with others. We base our entire belief system on the idea that we can know where God leads us if we abide in His love, and then we can respond accordingly. Ephesus sought truth above all else, they sought righteousness and were great at exposing the false teachings of many, but they lacked one thing love. They left their first love behind as they moved forward into the world they were called to minister to. They walked into the darkness without carrying the light of Christ. Their eagerness to be right above all else caused them to live in infamy throughout church history because they forgot the main point. Love conquers the world.

As we enter into this time of open worship and communion as Friends, I encourage each of us to examine our lives and our lifestyles are we abiding in love or are we walking into the darkness without our first love? Are we focusing on being right in our own minds or are we allowing the Spirit to work through us? Are we making lists or are we encouraging all we meet to abide in the love of God where they are and walking with them as they begin to enter into the holy rhythm of Christ’s life? Do we as followers of Christ fear the darkness of the world or do we trust that Jesus Christ can overcome the world just as he overcame the grave? Do we truly believe and live in the power of the resurrection of Christ?

Peace, Receive, and Believe (Sermon April 12, 2015)

John 20:19–31 (NRSV)

Rowan and Irene LeCompte
Resurrection Chapel, Washington Cathedral
Washington, DC, USA

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

(Lk 24:36–43; 1 Cor 15:5)

¹⁹ When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Jesus and Thomas

²⁴ But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

²⁶ A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸ Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

The Purpose of This Book

³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹ But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Last week we celebrated the resurrection of our Lord and King from the dead. We contemplated the question, “what if we actually believed in the resurrection and if so how that would affect the way we live.” I gave us a couple of options to consider, do we kneel before an empty tomb caught somewhere between forgiveness of sins and life, or do we live as conquerors with Christ in his kingdom? I want us to consider this again as we reflect on this passage.

I find these questions difficult to answer even though my professional status within our community is as a spiritual leader. Because I know in my mind that that tomb is empty and it is empty for a reason, yet this happened so long ago. Could we possibly be following some invention of man? Yes, I doubt at times. Doubt is an important part of our faith because doubt should drive us to seek answers. It is only when we dwell in the doubt allow the doubt to consume us where we have trouble. Every single one of Jesus’ disciples doubted. Peter and the disciple that Jesus loved, who we assume to be John though he humbly does not name himself as that disciple, both saw the empty tomb and they went back to the house wondering. They saw the grave cloths that once covered their lord. They knew the ones that wrapped their beloved teacher in those cloths, it might be that those very men were in that very same house and they asked them for a testimony. They sit confused and in doubt. They believe in an empty tomb yet that does not comfort them. They sit there behind locked doors worried that the darkness all around them will take what little hope they have away. They kneel at the empty tomb caught somewhere between, in limbo, a very real purgatory a place between heaven and hell.

The knowledge of an empty tomb does not move them to action. It just adds to their fears, will they have to give an account to the temple official as to why that tomb is barren? If so they face very real problems and they have absolutely no answers. As every moment passes the doubts rise, the fears mount, they remember the teachers of Jesus yet they do little to comfort them because they saw him die and now they do not even have a body to point to as the source of the teaching. The words spoken by their teacher are as seeming empty as the very tomb Peter and John left Mary at.

Mary has a very different experience. She came back with some crazy tale in their eyes. They left her weeping at the tomb, they left her there without an escort weeping, and she returned to the house after going throughout the city excitedly telling everyone that would listen that Jesus was alive that he had spoken to her just outside of the tomb. Peter and John are both contemplating how big of jerks they were for leaving her and wondering if the grief had broken this woman. They allow the knowledge of her past to reenter their minds, she was a woman of great sin…she was once possessed by demons…could they have returned? They sat there looking at her, everyone else was crying and here she was sitting there telling them he was alive, and reminding them of His teachings.

Their teacher is dead, the tomb is empty, they have a friend that had a questionable background that is raving like a lunatic and we wonder why they were sitting with the doors locked. They are bound, they so want to believe but the story just seems so supernatural that they cannot even begin. “Remember that day at my brother’s funeral,” Mary says, “Jesus told us that He was the resurrection and the life, remember that Martha, and what did Jesus do just after he wept with us? He stood at the mouth of the tomb telling Lazarus to wake up. Remember? Look over there! Look at my brother, he was in the tomb for four days and Jesus called him out. He was dead. Martha and I both helped prepare the body, and you were all there and witnessed our grief.” She continued to talk and everyone nodded with agreement, but it was one thing for a living man to call life back into the dead and quite another for a dead man to raise himself.

For hours this had continued. Mary went to the tomb before the sun rose, now it is evening, for an entire day they had sat there with the knowledge of an empty tomb and the fear continued to mount. They sat, stood, paced, they checked the doors again and again, and they jumped at imagined sounds because they knew that the darkness was going to overcome what little hope remained. Suddenly, a voice startled them all. Right there in the center of the room a man tells them, “Peace be with you.” A man that was not there just a moment before, they just checked the doors, they were secure yet a man got in, then they look at him. He lifts up his hands. They see the marks, the marks where nails once occupied. Those mark hands slowly move to his side and they each stare in amazement as the wound from the spear is revealed to them and they all fall to their knees. Again the man says, “Peace be with you.”

They rejoice! Mary is right This Is Jesus! The tomb is empty and there is life. He has risen. He laughs and jokes with them and then he says, “As the Father has sent me so I send you.” The laughing stops. Confusion again settles in. And Jesus walks around to each of them embracing them, and breathes on them. Each one present feels the breath on their face, they breathe in as Jesus exhales before them. Their minds race back to the very dawn of time and they remember the story of their first father and the breath of life that God gave them, they remember the story of the fall, the separation from God that their fall from grace ushered in, and the death that resulted from it. Jesus with his nail scared hands gently touched them brought his face close to theirs and breathed. This is not the breath of a phantom, there is warmth in the embrace and humidity in the air that is hitting their faces. Death no longer held this man, the curse of Adam did not hold him. Life now occupies the body that was once dead, buried and sealed behind a stone. Life is being breathed back onto the ones that were caught somewhere in between. “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He says to them.

Do we get a glimpse into this passage? Do we see the power of the words? In the beginning God breathed life into the clay formation of Adam and he lived. Adam and Eve our first parents once walked with God in the Garden of Eden, the very Garden where the Tree of life and the tree of knowledge stood. The garden was the kingdom it was the place God lived in communion and love, it was the very place that He created to bring pleasure to himself, an outpouring of the great love and joy that flowed from His very being. In that place He created life, and that life was transmitted through breath.

Then sin entered the Garden because mankind sought to take for themselves the gift of knowledge. They looked at the fruit and saw that it was good, they reached out and took what was not given, and suddenly everything changed. What was once living became death. There were two trees one knowledge and one life. They took knowledge, they ate of Sophia and could not handle it. One could say that this is an image of the Trinity. Where humanity tried to harness the power of the Spirit of God, or wisdom without that being given. We were not ready and be in the presence of the raw spirit kills. Consider the first born of Egypt during the plagues, consider those that happened to touch the Ark in ancient Israel, consider the tongue of Zachariah when he questioned God. The Spirit of God is wild it is only tamed and reigned by God himself it is not something to be mastered by man. They ate the fruit and set forth a dangerous chain reaction. They sought knowledge but did not have wisdom. Without wisdom death enters. The affects are still felt today. Read any scientific journal or health magazine, a generation ago they said one thing was healthy and in the next that very thing causes death. A multitude of people took believed in the knowledge of man and as a result they face agony.

But Jesus breathed on them, and says receive the spirit. Receive what was once stolen. Be restored. For in the body of Jesus the Spirit of God was tamed and through Him life returns, creation is redeemed, and reconciled.

Receive, this word is one of deep meaning. Its usage can mean: Take hold of, grasp, obtain, benefit, collect, select, believe, experience, cause to experience, put on, and do. Those very things was the things we as humans try to do through our own efforts, and Jesus breathed on the disciples and told them, “if you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven, if you retain the sins of any they are retained.” What is he saying? Though humanity tried to take what was given, I have restored it and have tamed it so that humanity can experience it. We tried to steal the spirit and it brought death, and Jesus tamed the spirit so that those of us in Him can then use that spirit to restore. This is a very powerful essence we wield. It can bring death or life. It can restore or destroy. I failed to mention one possible meaning of the word we translate as receive and that is to exploit.

Exploit. This is the knowledge of man. The use of knowledge to rule over others. The misuse of knowledge to gain what is not ours or to control what is not ours to control. Forgive or retain, exploit or experience. Kneeling at an empty tomb or feeling the breath of life. Do you believe in the resurrection and if so how does it affect your life? Jesus stood there among his disciples in a room that was locked out of fear, he said to them peace be with you, he embraced them and breathed on them and then challenged them. Will you join him? Will you believe in the resurrection or just look into an empty tomb. Will you receive and pass on the gifts of grace or exploit? Will we live lives that will encourage others to take steps toward God or will we bar the gates of heaven? Will we be a people loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit, and living the love of Christ with others? That choice lies in each of our hearts and in the collective of our community. But this experience in the room changed everything about the disciples. They once stayed behind locked door out of fear and then they ventured out. And their testimony remains with us even to this day and just as Jesus breathed on them they breath on us and say “Peace, receive, and believe.”

Will you Save Them? (Sermon March 22, 2015)

John 12:20–33 (NRSV)

by Temporary-Peace

Some Greeks Wish to See Jesus

²⁰ Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. ²¹ They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²² Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. ²³ Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴ Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵ Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

Jesus Speaks about His Death

²⁷ “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. ²⁸ Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” ²⁹ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” ³⁰ Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. ³¹ Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. ³² And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

So often we look out at the world around us and get a feeling that all hope has left, and that everything we once stood for is in vain. For so long I lived in that darkness, the darkness where the only hope we had was for the return of our lord and the end of days. I would pray for the rapture and wake up in the middle of the night fearful that I might have been left behind. I also woke up thinking aliens were in my room but that is a different story. But over the course of the past couple of years my perspective changed. I do not know when it exactly began to change or even what triggered this change but through all the darkness I began to see rays of light shimmering and filtering through the shadowy figures around me. When I began to see these glimpses of light hope began to take hold, I began to see God working in the lives around me, I began to see seeds of love growing in places I once perceived to be barren wastes. Dawn is rising in a new era, the kingdom of God is near.

But still is wonder what caused this change? The only answer I can give is that the Spirit of God was working, as I sought to follow the ways of Christ more fully. I cannot say that it was something that happened instantly but little by little as I walked along in my journey with Christ. Along the way God would bring people into my life that I could encourage and we would walk for a while and I witnessed just a bit of light shine through their eyes. I first noticed this change when I went to Ukraine to teach English classes, as I spoke with fellow students from a land I had always perceived to be the enemy I began to see a unity and that unity was Jesus.

As I read through this passage today I am reminded of that first glimpse into true unity in Jesus. There were some Greeks that wanted to speak with Jesus. It is quite simple to gloss over this and just say that this passage was a precursor of the kingdom of God being opened to all people. That is true, and I would venture to say that it was always true, but I feel that that does not really catch the true gravity of the situation. These were Greeks, not just gentiles but Greeks. Often we forget the magnitude of why the gospel writers made sure to include the heritage of these particular people. We understand that the Romans were not exactly loved by the Jewish people of Jesus’ day but the Romans were there for a reason, they were there because they were invited. The Greeks were conquers from the days of Alexander the Great. When Israel and Judah were sent into exile they were conquered by Babylon, then Persia, and then Persia pushed back to their farthest eastern regions by the Greeks. The Greek empire stretched all the way east to India and Israel was occupied by this culture. Under Babylon the temple of God was destroyed, but when Babylon fell to the Persians the temple was rebuilt. When the Greeks came into Israel they began to saturate the land with their culture. They would not allow the people to speak any language other than Greek, they taught Greek philosophy and religion. It was the Greeks the performed the original abomination that causes desolation when a pig was sacrificed on the Alter of the Living God. Shortly after temple worship was restored and the people could worship again as their ancestors did the Greeks tried to put a wedge between God and mankind. This desecration provided the spark that would ignite beneath the people which lead the Maccabees to revolt and under their leadership the Greeks were pushed out of power in Israel and worship was restored. From that moment on the Greeks were regarded as the worst of the Gentiles.

The Greeks lost power but they had establish colonies throughout the land, and as time passed these colonies began to unite and grow in influence threatening the young kingdom of Israel that was established, so an alliance was found with the growing power of Rome. The Romans were invited to Israel to help protect the people from the Greek influence. And the Romans stayed.

Now imagine the situation, there were Greeks seeking to speak with Jesus. Greeks wanting to speak to the newly proclaimed King of the Jews. And they sought this audience through one of the disciples, Phillip. The Greek influence over Israel was deep, even after the revolt that pushed them out of power and allowed Israel to re-establish their temple yet again, one of the closest disciples of Jesus was given a Greek name. The Greek culture, for many of us in the west, did not seem that bad. They are the ones that gave the world the governmental system that we in America love so much, they were the ones that civilized the west. Yet to the east they were a parasite that was sucking the life out of their culture. To all of those that held tightly to the ancient traditions, the Greeks and their culture were darkness. Yet that darkness reached into every aspect of life in Israel, even into the lives of the disciples of Christ.

Contemplate that for a moment. The Greek culture colonized the East, they saturated the east with their ideas, their language, their culture they totally disregarded every tradition that was held dear to those of the conquered lands yet these people were seeking to speak with the newly proclaimed king of the Jews. Does that strike you as odd? What exactly did they see in Jesus that caused them to seek his counsel?

The only reason is that Jesus brought to the world a different life. A different way of life and a different way of living. He did not seek to conquer the world but to love the world. He did not seek to condemn the world but redeem the world through him. Without raising a single sword this traveling teacher gained the respect of the nations. Jesus spoke of a different type of life, a life that opposed everything the world knew where people would conquer with friendship instead of violence and where faith was expressed with mercy mankind instead of religious rites. They sought his counsel because everything Jesus taught brought hope not only to the Jewish people but all people.

These Greek individuals came to Jesus and Jesus responded by saying, “The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.” It seems like an odd response but it is fitting. Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save it through himself. The Greeks the most worldly of the gentile population was beginning to turn toward him this very action was a sign that things were changing and a new era was about to dawn. The powers of the world were losing their hold on the populous, not because of force but through the heart and the mind. This threatened the powers of Rome and of the temple. If this traveling teacher could attract the support of the Greeks over a third of the Roman Empire could be turned, if this teacher kept the hearts of Jewish people the power of the temple would no longer rule the faithful.

It is now time for the Son of man to be glorified. To most in the world the glorification of Christ is not something seen as powerful, it is often regarded as the exact opposite because Jesus did not use the tools the world used. In the world influence is gained through wealth and force. Jesus told the wealthy literally to give all their wealth away, and he told his disciples those that live by the sword will die by the sword. Everything about Jesus opposed the cultural norms of every civilization of the world, as does the kingdom that he established. It was not a kingdom of violence and force, it was not a kingdom of wealth and greed, but it is a kingdom of charity, service and love. Jesus is glorified because he established a new perception within the world a perception that those around us are more important than organizations, cultures, and nations. This threatens everyone who relies on wealth and force to maintain influence. Those that required those tools would then lash out and use those very tools to try to silence this emerging idea.

This new focus, this new era, the glorification of Christ is something that every generation struggles with for one very simple reason, it goes against everything the world teaches us especially in the western cultures whose roots are found among the Greeks.  Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” What is it that Jesus is saying what exactly does he mean? He is saying that our lives only have lasting value if we invest everything we have and everything that we are into those outside ourselves. Jesus is saying we only have true value and true life if we live for others. This is easy when it comes to people we like, it is easy for us to invest our lives in our children and our families. It is quite a different story when it comes to people beyond that, when our enemy comes knocking on our doors seeking an audience.

This is where the lights began to shine through the shadows in my life. For too long I saw the world falling apart and darkness overtaking the light, but then in the eyes of people perceived as enemies to my nation I saw something different. I saw them as they were, a human being as I was, someone that had passions and fears just as I had passions and fear. I saw that just as I was seeing them as an enemy the very same words were being used against me. And we all learned something, those words were lies. So I had to reevaluate my life and my world view because even though they may have different ideas on many things they were people, lovely generous people. They were not enemies but friends, and we were united in Christ. I came home and God began to show me many more things, not quickly but little by little. I began to see people around me differently. I began to hear the spiritual yearnings in their voices. What I once saw as darkness was actually cries for light. God is still working and he is still teaching me. The world around us is crying out to God yet do we hear their cries? They cry out to us through actions, in songs and lyrics, in art and in novels. Listen to these words, listen to what the world is seeking through the words of a song:

When I was a young boy,

My father took me into the city

To see a marching band.

He said, “Son when you grow up,

Would you be the savior of the broken,

The beaten and the damned?”

He said, “Will you defeat them,

Your demons, and all the non-believers,

The plans that they have made?”

Because one day I’ll leave you,

A phantom to lead you in the summer,

To join the black parade.”- My Chemical Romance “Welcome to the Black Parade”

Do you hear the cries? Will you be the one that will encourage the broken, the beaten, and the damned? Will you be the one to defeat the demons, and the cynical? They cry out and yet feel hopeless. They seek yet do not find. My heart aches for those people. Those people are our people. They are not the people in the jungles of Africa or the heights of India, but people all around us. People left broken and defeated conquered by the world yet loved by Christ.

They seek but they do not see the church as a refuge because all too often the church has joined with the others to damn them that broke their dreams, and left them struggling to find a way in the darkness, because often we forget what the Glorification of Christ is. It is for these people Christ died. It is for the perceived enemy, the artists, the bands, the people we label with countless labels and push to the fringe of society. And we forget that we must die with Christ so that those in the world might live. The Greeks sought Jesus and he came to them, will we open our lives up to them so that they can see the light of the Glorified Christ in us?

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