Garbage

Philippians 3:7-11

by Daniel Harrell

Watching it snow in May has been enough to turn this Southerner into a raving existentialist. Here’s a scenario went through my mind: While up late trying to figure out what to say in this sermon, suddenly it’s 2 in the morning and I imagine myself going for a walk to clear my head. It’s cold out, snowing and slippery. Springtime in Minnesota. Once outside, I get an uncharacteristic hankering to walk along the creek, intrigued as I suddenly am by the unusual quiet of the night. I stroll down to the water’s edge, where the current rapidly courses up to the bank due to recent heavy rainfall and snowmelt. I curiously step too close to the edge, slip, bump my head on a rock and tumble into the torrent, unbeknownst to anyone. No one sees me fall. No one hears me splash. Unconscious, I am carried over the Minnehaha Falls down to the river and eventually washed out to sea.

Dawn awakes and wonders where I went. By 8AM she’s panicked and calls the police who initiate a search, but nobody thinks to check the river because Dawn knows I’d never go down there late at night in the snow. The search continues for a while, but finally dissolves into futility. There are tears (a few). Some nice remembrances (perhaps). But in time life goes on. Danielle gets promoted to my job. Revival ignites. Years later when asked whatever happened to her husband, Dawn sadly shrugs and shakes her head, saying how we have to live life as it is rather than as we wish it was. More years pass and no one asks anymore. Silence descends over this work I now so energetically sustain and value. It’s a potent irony. In the end, all of my conscientious effort at life evaporates into nothing.

OK, so it probably won’t happen like that. But it will happen one way or another. It is the perfect statistic. One terminal existence per person, each of us ultimately destined to a noiseless absence, our obsessions and energies over meaning and worth rendered absurd. Novelist DH Lawrence despaired that: “The search for happiness … always ends in the ghastly sense of the bottomless nothingness into which you will inevitably fall if you strain any further.” Famed French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre concurred, “All human actions are equivalent ... and ... all are on principle doomed to failure.” Søren Kierkegaard, the 19^th century Danish philosopher (and whose 200^th birthday we celebrate today), is considered the father of modern existentialism. For example, “I see it all perfectly;” he wrote, “there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.” 

Existentialists characteristically stress the utter pointlessness of human existence. If you’re doomed to die no matter what, why bother? Que sera, sera. You may find this depressing. A result of seasonal affective disorder, perhaps. Existentialists say they're just being realistic. It’s always darkest before it goes pitch black.

You can try to deny it. Or fight it. The premise at one local anti-aging clinic here in Edina, is that aging is an error you can fix. Your body naturally reduces its hormone levels over time which cause a rise in many of the diseases associated with aging, such as heart disease and dementia. By medically replacing these hormones, the clinic asserts you can stave off these diseases and effectively recapture your youth. The problem is that according to a recent study by government and independent health researchers, artificially increasing your hormones later in life also increases a risk stroke, blood clots, gallbladder disease, urinary incontinence and cancer. Hormones or not, you still die in the end. 

Then there are the Trans-Humanists, committed to the elimination of existential risk through the acceleration of human evolution beyond its current limits. Technology is the savior here, imagining a future of cyber-humans whose brains no longer degenerate, our lives and thoughts preserved though social media, our bodies cryonically frozen until nanoelectromechanical systems and synthetic organs advance to the point of replacing our messy and error-prone biology. The enlightened Trans-Human Manifesto confidently envisions “broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.” Unbuckle your seat belts.

Ethicist Gilbert Meilander, author of the provocatively titled Should We Live Forever? The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging, observes how “The classical understanding of virtue referred to what philosophers in recent decades have come to call human flourishing—the excellence that realizes and expresses the full potential of our human nature. Because that nature is an embodied one, we might suppose that, whatever human flourishing involves, it must include the aging and decline that characterize bodily organisms. Since, however, we are rational animals, our full potential may be realized only through our freedom to remake ourselves, transcending indefinitely the limits of the body. We try—rightly I think—to cure and even eradicate disease, but whether we should approach aging in the same way is deeply puzzling. Still more, when we notice that some of the more ambitious proposals for age-retardation seems rather like a desire to escape bodily existence itself, we may begin to wonder whether the aim is to transcend or to transgress the body’s limits.” 

Kierkegaard posited that while humans are indeed rational animals, we are also ecstatic animals. We possess an innate sense of transcendence which fuels our hunger for immortality. Prolongation of this life, sadly, no matter how long we prolong it, constantly fails to slake our hunger. It’s like a dinner party that won’t ever end. Or worse, a party that ends badly. “A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater.” Kierkegaard wrote, “I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”

 Existentialists describe life as existing in three dimensions: you, your world and that ominous maw of death they call the void which suffocates everything with its grim inevitability. To this three-dimensional existence, Kierkegaard advanced a fourth. Somehow, despite humanity’s most horrendous inhumanities—war, terrorism, torture and all sorts of individual evil—people persist in remolding new meaning and purpose. That survival and hope persevere in the darkest of voids testifies to this fourth dimension, which Kierkegaard recognized as the Kingdom of God. Human flourishing cannot happen apart from resurrection. By rising from the dead, Jesus changes everything—and not just the horrible deeds that kill, but the honorable deeds in which we falsely place our confidence too.

This was the apostle Paul’s existential realization as he languished in the darkness of his Roman prison cell contemplating execution. His words have proven worthy of cross-stitching, and I have devoted these Sundays since Easter to them. “God who began a good work among you will bring it to completion.” “Living is Christ and dying is gain.” “At the name of Jesus every knee will bow and tongue confess him Lord.” “God is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” I’ve seen this morning’s verses cross-stitched and hung in numerous places, most memorably over the toilet in a guest bathroom.

Chapter 3 commenced with Paul taking aim at those who insisted Christian faith be augmented with conformity to Jewish ceremonial ritual, specifically circumcision. Salvation by faith through grace by itself was not enough. We waltzed through this confusing territory last Sunday, confusing since Paul also argued that our salvation by grace be “worked out with fear and trembling” (coincidentally, the title of a Kierkegaard classic). Paul’s point, however, was not that our work can earn our salvation—grace is no reward for good behavior. And yet grace must still show itself to be true. Good works of love are the visible fruits of salvation.

Customarily, we Americans presume ourselves to be basically good people, exceptional sometimes. 71% of Americans still believe in hell, but less than ½ of 1% ever imagine themselves going there. After all most of us do not murder, do not cheat or steal to any criminal degree, do generally behave with baseline levels of kindness, and do as little harm as possible. There are mistakes to be made, a few sins here and there, nobody’s perfect, we’re only hummus, which is all fine and good until you find yourself at the edge of that existentialist void and discover that being good doesn’t do any good. You’re going to die anyway.

This is what happened to Paul. If anyone had any reason to think himself exceptional it was him. As the Pharisee Saul, his credentials were impeccable: circumcised on the eighth day, a descendent of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin, as Hebrew as you could get; zealous and blameless as to the law, a very holy man. Yet happily riding down that road to Damascus, Saul was violently cast into darkness by the light of Christ that exposed Paul’s whole life as a sham. “Whatever gains and assets I had, these I have come to regard as loss and liability, and flush down the toilet because of Christ.” It’s not as if Paul now minimized his credentials, humbling considering them to be no big deal. Uh-uh, Paul looks at his impressive successes and accomplishments and he is horrified.

I’ve told you about how easy it is for pastors to visit people who’ve just received bad news—whether it’s the bad news of sickness, a lost job or a troubled child just flunked out of school. Any pastor can pay that visit. People who’ve received bad news are actually glad to see us. As bad as bad news can be, it can also be the threshold for spiritual conversion. Good news, on the other hand, is spiritually perilous. It takes a better minister than me to visit a person who’s just scored a large bonus or bought a huge house or been promoted at work or whose child just got into Harvard. When things are going good, the last person we want to see is a minister. We don’t want God meddling with our success. We stay off Damascus roads. Jesus did not condemn Paul’s wickedness as a Pharisee. Jesus condemned Paul’s goodness. His treasured reputation and achievements were all garbage, filth fit only for law-abiding dogs. “I regard it as all rubbish,” Paul wrote, “compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whose sake I have suffered the loss of all things.”

All that mattered now was being found by Christ as having no righteousness or goodness of his own. “[Grace] works like a trap,” Kierkegaard said. You cannot capture it. It has to capture you. There was an exceptional time in my life when I’d committed some spectacular sins, which I shamefully tried to hide though they ate me up inside. When I finally confessed, I did so to Christian people I didn’t know so well, not wanting to risk disappointing those I cared for most. These Christian acquaintances quickly brushed my iniquities aside, kindly providing rationalizations and excuses to guard my self-worth. Nobody’s perfect, you’re only human, everybody makes mistakes, you’re still a good person. Yet ironically, all their unconditional support only made things harder. It wasn’t my self-worth they needed to guard as much as their perceptions of me. How could we still be friends if I was a real sinner? Feeling this burden, it is was unbearably stressful to finally confess my sins to one of my oldest friends. Given our longtime relationship, I knew I would deeply disappoint him. But grace works like a sweet trap. My friend assured me I needn’t worry about disappointing him. He’d never thought that highly of me.

The efforts we make to impress and to generate admiration and attention, the résumés on which we count to earn merit and favor, these all inevitably evaporate into nothing. In the presence of Christ—whatever was gain is counted as garbage. And this is good news. Paul flushes all his meritorious efforts and credentials down the toilet gladly. Paul gladly gives up what is exposed as nothing so that he might attain everything. His loss is gain. His defeat is his victory. His death is his life. Grace captured him. “I have been found” he writes, “with no righteousness of my own that comes from obeying the law, but only that which comes through faith in Christ”—and not even necessarily his own faith. The phrase is just as easily translated as the “faith of Christ” such that in the end what saves us is not even our own faith—which can be so wobbly and uncertain—but instead Jesus’ faith in us based on what he has done for us and in us and to us. Grace is a sweet trap.

Grace is our hope—a hope that ethicist Gilbert Meilander describes as the virtue that sustains us on our way toward the true beauty we long for, the genuine  goodness that finally catches our heart and holds us still, protecting us against any presumption that an indefinitely extended earthly life could ever quench our longing, whether that life be organic or virtual, by way or hormonal replacement or technological trans-human cryonics. Our longing is for more than this life’s dinner party, sumptuous as it may be, something other than just indefinitely more of the same. Our life, however long, always seems less than complete.

This is why the communion table has always featured only a bite of bread and a sip of wine. It was never meant to be life’s banquet, but an hors d’oeuvre for the real thing. It whets our appetite and arouses our hope. As we gather around it, let us gladly flush our gains as losses, that we too, like Paul, may find ourselves sweetly trapped by Christ.

Work It Out

Philippians 2:12-13

by Daniel Harrell

If this passage sounds recently familiar its because you’re remembering Jeff Lindsay’s sermon from New Year’s Eve Sunday from these same verses. Following in last fall’s series on light, Jeff focused on Paul’s encouragement a few verses later that we “shine like stars in the world.” As far as this this morning’s passage, he did point out the awkwardness we Protestants feel at being told “to work out our own salvation” since as Protestants we’re all about being saved by grace alone. Tack on the “fear and trembling” part and the verse feels like a throwback to a pre-Reformation recipe for medieval Catholic guilt. “Fear and trembling” is an idiom long associated with divine judgment, setting up Philippians 2:12 as a legalist’s dream verse, and most likely the basis for another idiom that many people think is somewhere in the Bible; namely, “God helps those who help themselves.” Legalistic types worry that salvation by grace alone is nothing but dangerous permission to slack off when it comes to obedience. Work out your salvation yourself or you’re doomed.

Normally I’d wait a little longer before returning to a passage to preach, but you can’t do a sermon series from Philippians and skip this one. I was tempted to just replay Jeff’s fine sermon, but that would make me a slacker. So instead I’m working it out with fear and trembling myself. This the fourth in a series I’ve entitled “verses from Philippians most likely to be cross-stitched.” Philippians ranks as a favorite book in the Bible due to its prolificacy of memorable exhortations. We began in chapter 1 with: “God who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” Then we looked at: “Living is Christ and dying is gain.” Last Sunday brought us to chapter 2 and the collection of verses where Jesus is praised as the humble then exalted Son of God at whose name every knee will bow and every tongue confess his Lordship. This morning’s passage, well-known though it is, is less likely to be subject to needle and thread. It’s not nearly so much endearing as it is confusing.

Verse 12 begins with Paul commending the Philippians’ reputation for obedience. They are Christians who hear the word of God and do what it says. Obedience derives from the Greek word “acoustic,” which while placing an emphasis on hearing, also means that to hear something clearly is to heed it too. Good behavior is evidence of good listening. Likewise bad behavior results from selective hearing. Paul sits chained in a Roman jail and worries that the Philippians’ obedience may falter, especially given that it hinges on their humble and selfless love for each other. Nobody wants to hear about humility. While admired in others, it’s rarely a virtue you seek for yourself. Modern advocates of the importance of high self-esteem would go so far as to deem humility to be hazardous to your psychological health. In cultures devoted to self-confidence and personal ambition are paramount, Paul’s admonition that we “in humility, regard others as better than yourself” is bad advice. 

Yet as we read last Sunday, Paul lauds Jesus’ humility as the hallmark of virtue. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus ,” he sang, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” Humility and human are tightly entwined, both deriving from the word humus meaning ground or dirt. Some say humility is therefore all about “remembering where you came from;” but Christianity tends to shovel a little deeper. We all come from the dirt, Scripture says, made of the dust of the ground. But Scripture also insists that you are dirt, ruined by the sin in your life. No one can stake a claim to righteousness based on his or her own obedience, for as Paul wrote elsewhere, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

This severe, self-effacing character of Christian humility led the great theologian Karl Barth to equate it to a “startled [self-]consciousness of having nothing to assert in one’s favor.” To be so startled by our own deficiency may be what Paul meant by fear and trembling. You work out your salvation without any confidence that you can actually pull it off. On the one hand this feels like a set-up for more religious guilt, but on the other hand it does keep away any temptation toward selfishness and conceit. In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul uses fear and trembling to describe his inadequacy in preaching the gospel so that he has to rely on God’s grace. In 2 Corinthians 7, fear and trembling describes the Corinthians’ own obedience at hearing the gospel taught by Titus, realizing how they too needed God’s help to do it. In Ephesians 6, fear and trembling describes servants’ regard for their masters, analogous to the way we are to regard Christ as Lord. Fear and trembling is not so much quaking and shaking in the presence of God (though some of us could probably use a little more of that), but to that startled self-consciousness at our own scarcities and weakness. We’re just not as fabulous as we sometimes like to think ourselves to be. 

At a graduation ceremony in Wellesley, Massachusetts last year, the English teacher giving the speech began by shocking the cap-and-gowned seniors. He said, “Normally, I avoid clichés like the plague, wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, but here we are on a literal level playing field. That matters. That says something. And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all. Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same.  And your diploma… but for your name, exactly the same. All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special. You are not special. You are not exceptional.” Really? I’m not special? I’m not amazing? 

Imagine anybody ever saying that about a high school class in Minnesota! Every child is above average, right? Especially here in Edina as I understand it. The English teacher’s speech was so shocking that a video of it went internet viral. He had to go on television to defend it. He said, “In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another — which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.”

Just because somebody says you’re amazing doesn’t mean that you are. You have to do something to prove it. Applied to Christianity, God may love you just as you are, but that doesn’t make you amazing. It makes God amazing, which is why we sing about amazing grace. But to sing about grace without it having any effect is only hypocrisy. You can do nothing to earn your salvation, but you still must do something to prove you received it. Paul doesn’t say to work for our salvation, but he does say work out your salvation. Exercise it. Over and over, here in Philippians and elsewhere, Paul pleads with believers to live lives “worthy of the gospel,” worthy of grace, humble lives that look like Christ’s life. Not for humility’s sake, but for the sake of love. It was love that caused Jesus to humbly set aside his equality with God for us and it is love that spurs us to humbly set aside ourselves for others.

The Toronto Star ran an obituary last month for Shelagh Gordon, a 55-year-old woman who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm.  Given how so many obituaries read like résumés, Shelagh’s denoted nothing by way of extraordinary accomplishments. All it said was that she had been a loving aunt and a special friend. Surprised by so meager a mention, a newspaper reporter decided to explore a little more deeply and see what such an ordinary life looked like. She crashed the funeral and interviewed Shelagh’s friends. It turns out that Shelagh Gordon didn’t have a great job, she wasn’t married and never had children, so she wasn’t successful in any traditional sense. All she did was love people. And the people she loved couldn’t stop telling stories about her kindness. If Shelagh noticed your boots had holes, she’d press her new ones into your arms. When you casually admired her coffeemaker, you’d wake up to one of your own. A bag of chocolates hanging from your doorknob would greet you each Valentine’s Day, along with some clippings from the newspaper she thought you’d find interesting. It was said that Shelagh made people around her feel not just loved but coveted. Hers was not list of achievements, but a legacy of relationships.

Funerals serve as tearful goodbyes to a departed person’s life, but as the reporter found, funerals are also lenses through which we assess our own lives. Some fear and trembling can show up here too. We hear of such humble and loving people and wonder how we could ever measure up. What makes a life worthy? We easily ascribe value to the amazing: To the Bachs and the Bonheoffers, the Mandelas and the Mother Theresas, people who’s lives changed the world in extraordinary ways and influenced millions. But Shelagh was an ordinary woman who only a few people ever knew, each of whom had their worlds changed in ways a Mandela or Mother Theresa never touched. She changed them by loving them deeply and personally, in simple and ordinary ways, inspiring them to do the same to others though she probably never realized it. The reporter concluded, “Her life revealed that it doesn’t take much to make a difference every day — just deep, full love —and that can be sewn with many different kinds of stitches.”

So many of you gushed this week about last Sunday’s memorable Innové Award presentation. It was great. Amazing even. A number of you said it was the best thing you’d ever seen happen in church. Extraordinary. But when you stop and think about it, the things we’re trying to do with Innové are actually pretty ordinary: feeding hungry schoolchildren, making a college experience possible for a handful of students with disabilities, teaching men to be good boys, providing some clean water and interest-free loans, some fresh produce on a bus. In the vast scheme of things these are fairly unremarkable, except that these humble and ordinary acts, done with love, are the epitome of the gospel God calls us to obey.

 To call last Sunday amazing reminds me of a Sunday last year when  one of you gushed about a sermon I preached. You called it perfect. Talk about fear and trembling. I wasn't sure what to do with that, I should have quit while I was ahead. I hope I just said thank you and praise the Lord. Though at the risk of sounding cheeky, I told you how I wish I'd said something along the lines of "it's too soon to tell." That's because the true measure of sermonic perfection can only be the effect it has on our life as a congregation afterwards. The same with last Sunday. Describing last Sunday as amazing doesn’t mean that it is because while all these ideas we celebrated and funded are good things to do, we haven't done anything yet. We haven't fed any kids or made an interest free payday loan or loaded a bus with with fresh produce. We don't even have a bus to load. We still have something to prove, and this should humble us and even make us a little scared. We still have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. This is our obedience, and from obedience, no doctrine of grace can save us. In Jesus’ famous parable of the talents, where two stewards entrusted with their master’s money had increased its worth, a third steward gets sternly castigated by his master for burying his allotment in the ground. The steward put forth fear of the master as his excuse, not wanting to mess up what his master had given him. However the master quickly retorted how if the steward truly thought the master to be as imagined, the steward’s fear would have motivated him to get off his butt and do something. As it turned out, the steward wasn’t afraid. He simply didn’t care. Thus the master branded him “wicked and lazy” and cast him into the darkness to weep and gnash his teeth.” The moral seems to be this: refuse to work out your salvation and your salvation may not work out.

This should humble us, and even make us a little scared. Not scared of God, I am sure, but scared of ourselves and of the says we can so easily sabotage our salvation. Which is why Paul tacked on the cross-stitch worthy news of verse 13. We can work out our salvation because in the end it is God who does the work in us, hand in glove as Jeff put it, enabling both the desire and the effort to do what pleases the Lord.” What God demands, God provides. His spirit inspires both the will and the deed, the desire and the effort. As Karl Barth put it, “Salvation, the promised final deliverance that the Christian as such awaits, claims the movement, the activity, the work, the life of the whole person. In the reality of the kingdom of Christ, everyone who [will be] there [then] puts their future salvation into practice [now].”

God is the one who works in our work to provide both the will and they way. This humbles us too. Because God is at work, we praise the Lord instead of ourselves, which keeps us humble. “As for me,” Paul wrote to the Galatians, “God forbid that I should boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live,” he said, I’m dead as dirt, “but Christ lives in me.” The same with us. Do you see any humility or willingness to place the interests of others ahead of my own? That’s not me. I’m dead as dirt. That must be Jesus in me. Do you see any loving my neighbor as myself? Do you see me forgiving people when they wrong me? That’s not me. Do you see me regarding others as better than myself? Serving them with ordinary and beautiful acts of love everyday? That’s not me. That must be Jesus in me. Jesus at work in us, enabling both the will and the work for his good pleasure.

Good Attitude

Philippians 2:5-11

by Daniel Harrell

This has been a bad week: from the winter that won’t quit to Senate gun debates and a shaky stock market, from the horrible fertilizer factory explosion in Texas to the horrific Boston Marathon mayhem that played out like something from a Scorsese movie. As one website put it, “Maybe next time we have a week, they can try not to pack it so completely to the freaking brim with explosions, mutilations, death, manhunts, lies, weeping, bloody gunfights and lockdowns. You know, maybe try to spread some of that total misery across the other 51 weeks in the year. Just a thought.” None of it ever makes any sense. Dawn and I knew people who knew each of three victims killed at the Marathon on Monday. For such a large city, Boston can be a pretty small town. We know people who knew Sean Collier, the MIT police officer. We have friends who were at the hospital when Richard Donahue, the wounded transit cop was brought in and the first bombing suspect too. We know folks who lived down the street from the house with the boat.

My former church in Boston held a prayer gathering downtown on Tuesday. It was a full house. Then President Obama spoke to a packed South End Cathedral on Thursday. I find it fascinating and strangely comforting that the initial impulse of so many people following tragedy—believers and nonbelievers—alike, is to pray. Rather than fretting over “where was God” or how he could allow bad things to happen, the initial impulse for many is to rush to where they believe God can be found. That we do so instinctively turn to God in our troubles, and for some only then, may suggest why Scripture has God allowing the troubles he allows. We realize afresh every Easter season how the spring bloom of resurrection and eternal life emerges solely from the fertile soil of suffering and death. Paul joyfully expressed this disturbing gospel truth to the Philippians as he sat chained in a Roman prison. Jesus himself, King of kings and Lord of lords, is crowned only once he submits to death on a cross. This is God’s glory, Paul writes, a strange and redemptive reality that shines at the center of the Christian faith.

This morning marks our third in a sermon series: “verses from Philippians most likely to be cross-stitched.” From his Roman imprisonment to what was likely the first church in Europe, Paul penned words that have become framed favorites among believers for centuries. We began with chapter 1 and verse 6: “the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” Last Sunday we looked at verse 21: “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” This morning brings us to chapter 2:5-11 and one of the grandest Christological expressions of all Scripture. These inspired and inspiring verses soar in their praise of Jesus Christ as the lowly turned lofty Son of God whose name, in fulfillment of all prophecy, spurs every knee to bow and every tongue to confess his Lordship.

While Paul hoped for release from prison and a return trip to Philippi, he knew chances were good he could end up executed for refusing to worship Caesar as Lord. Paul wasn’t worried about dying—to him that was gain—but he was worried for the Philippians. Like any church comprised of sinful people (which is every church), it risked division and rancor from within. Paul appealed to the unity that was already theirs in Christ, even if they had yet to fully experience it. He writes, “If there is any encouragement in Christ (which there is), any consolation from love (which there is), any sharing in the Spirit (which there is), any compassion and sympathy (which there is), then make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind—the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

By “one and the same mind” Paul meant that mindset of abject humility that drove Jesus to the cross. While admired, such humility is rarely sought and often begrudged as hazardous to your psychological health. In a culture where self-confidence and ambition are paramount, Paul’s admonition to “regard others as better than yourself” is just plain bad advice. Still, Paul lyrically points to Jesus’ humility as the hallmark of virtue, who despite being God in the flesh never considered equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself for our sake and became a slave, regarding us as better than himself, as impossible as that sounds. Maybe it came easy for Jesus. If you’re equal to God you can act as humbly as you choose and still be God.

Harder for us ordinary schmoes. For us to regard others as better than ourselves is a sure recipe for life in loser-land. Be a doormat and you’ll get treated like one. “Blessed are the meek,” Jesus said “only those who humble themselves will be exalted.” But this simply isn’t practical. Christian scholars have tried to lessen the impact by insisting that by “humble yourself” Jesus only meant that you acknowledge your intrinsic “creatureliness.” Since the English word humility is related to the word human, both deriving from the Latin word humus, meaning ground or earth, to be humble is to remember where you came from, that you are “dust and to dust you shall return,” that the meek shall inherit the dirt. On the one hand this punctures any inflated sense of self-worth or conceit, but on the other hand, it also can become a rationale for self-conceit or used as an excuse for self-centered behavior. When we choose badly we'll often plead, “I can’t help it, I’m only human.” And then of course, there’s the observation about how it really doesn’t do much good to exalt the humble anyway. People don't remain humble long once they’re exalted. The genuine article is hard to find.

Then again, we watched on Monday as scores of Bostonians, with little concern for themselves, ran toward the explosions, assisting the bloodied and injured in humble ways that were nothing short of heroic. The same with the way an entire whole city willingly abandoned the streets to make space for the bravery exhibited by scores of law enforcement personnel, police who then humbly discounted their bravery as just doing their job. It was another glimpse of the beauty that can emerge from intense sorrow and tragedy—a beauty which the Bible labels as the power of resurrection.

I talked to a number of Boston friends this week, and read the Tweets and Facebook posts of others. One of whom, named Steve, is a big Marathon fan, having run the race himself five years in a row. Steve is an assistant church facilities manager and a good athlete, but far from what you’d describe as an elite runner. The joy of competition or setting a good time was not what got him to run 26 miles. What got him running was the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a local hospital devoted to eradicating cancer in children. Thousands of weekend runners raise money running the Marathon every year. This is another reason the Boston Marathon is so sacred. The ones who run for charity are never the elite runners, they cross the finish line  a couple of hours after. It was mostly them and their supporters who were harmed by Monday’s bombing, and who remain fearlessly determined to run again next year.

For Steve, his passion for children’s cancer comes from the cancer his daughter Caitlynne contracted when she was seven. The good news was that her tumor was localized in her right leg. The bad news was that her leg had to be amputated. Steve and his wife Doreen were totally devastated, as were all of their friends. And yet we all rallied, including the Boston Red Sox and their Jimmy Fund, coming alongside their whole family with prayer and support, because that’s what people instinctively do when tragedy strikes, believers and nonbelievers alike. Steve and I were remembering this week the hours spent on the say of Caitlynne's surgery. She not only survived, but thrived, thanks to all this support and to a remarkable piece of surgery performed at Children’s Hospital.

Out of sheer gratitude for all of this, Steve started running the Marathon to raise money for other kids. And each year, during the last mile, Caitlynne ran with him. She’s 18 years old now and has received a full ride to Boston University. It is another glimpse of the beauty that can emerge from sorrow and tragedy—the power of resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus turned tragedy on its head. Suddenly loss now meant gain, leastness meant greatness, being a loser meant being a winner, death meant life, ankles become knees, and humility became the epitome of strength. It sounds crazy, and by itself, humility is crazy. But humility is never meant for humility’s sake. Christian humility serves the cause of love. It was love for sinners that caused Jesus to humbly set aside his right to exalted grandeur, and it is this same love, this same mind, that spurs us to humbly regard others as better than ourselves. Humility orients you away from delusions of self-importance and frees you to love courageously as Jesus modeled. “We love,” the apostle John famously wrote, “because God first loved us.”

Despite all the horrors that engulf our world, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things. Love never fails. Jesus’ love even conquered death, so we cannot lose heart. God who began his good work among us will bring it to completion himself. Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. Christian hope translates life’s tragedies into a beautiful tapestry of redemption, pointing toward that day, when by grace, all things will be made new and love remains. Confidence in that day gives us courage to live humbly in the present—as justice gets done against perpetrators of evil, as comfort is blanketed on those who mourn, as prayers are instinctively offered for peace, as doctors reconstruct bodies as previews of resurrection itself, as thousands run marathons to raise awareness and money for these causes, even as our own Innové project refashions profit-making business into the making of beauty and peace and justice and grace in the world—everything humbly done to serve the cause of love which is the cause of the name that is above every name and before which every knee and ankle that serves as a knee will bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Job Well Done

Philippians 1:3-11

by Daniel Harrell

Some things just take a long time to complete. Back in 1992 my wife Dawn decided she’d cross-stitch a Christmas present for her father who’s always loved gifts made by his daughters. For Dawn, the subject of the cross-stitch wasn’t so hard to decide: her dad served as a medical missionary in Angola and enjoyed CS Lewis. Put together Africa and Aslan and that meant cross-stitching a lion. Ten Christmases later, in 2002, Dawn was still working on that lion. Initially the problem was that the pattern was too tiny to read—so she enlarged it into eight pages taped together. It covered her bedroom floor. Not only was the pattern intricate, but it required some 200 different colors of brown thread—who knew brown came in so many shades? She’d gotten fairly deep into the project when she realized her count was off. So she ripped out the stitches and started over. The same thing happened a second time, causing no small amount of frustration.  Dawn began to resent her pet cat just for being a distant lion relative. 

Her sister intervened, and forbade that Dawn rip out the stitches out a third time. Her sister said that cross-stitching, like life itself, gets complicated and you inevitably lose count. The challenge is to deal with it and move on. Which is easier said than done. Daunted by both the enormity of the undertaking and the lack of headway despite her diligence, Dawn boxed and re-boxed the lion as she moved and married over another ten years. Some things just take a long time to complete.

This applies to people too. I received a framed, cross-stitched rendition of Philippians 1:6 many years ago: “The one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” It was crafted for me by an old girlfriend as her way (I think) of reminding me that I had plenty of room for improvement. You may remember my preaching this verse on New Year’s Day a couple of years back. New Year’s always brings with it resolutions for a better future--a calendar inspired chance to finish things this time that we’ve failed get done in the past. We resolve to be better people, to make those changes we need to make. And yet having tried and failed so many times before, most of us refrain from resolutions because we know we can’t keep them. Why compound the failure with only more frustration? Better to just box up the whole mess and avoid the disappointment. 

But this is what makes Philippians 1:6 such good news. You don’t have to try so hard anymore. You don’t have to avoid disappointment. “The one” who began a good work in you is no other than God himself. And He’s the one who promises to bring it all to completion.

Philippians is a favorite among the apostle Paul’s letters. Many of its verses are habitually committed to memory. They appear on greeting cards, t-shirts and websites, and they get cross-stitched for gifts. It is to these particular verses in Philippians, the ones most likely to be cross-stitched, that I’d like to devote my energies for this Eastertide and into Pentecost.

Paul embedded this verse within an extended salutation wherein he thanks the nascent Philippian church for their financial support. He describes their support as their sharing or “partnership” in the gospel—the gospel being the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Nevertheless, as I mentioned last Sunday, the resurrection can be very upsetting. For Jesus to rise from the dead means that everything said about him is true: He is the Son of the Living God, the King of kings, Truth and Life, Master and Lord. To believe in Jesus means you have to live your whole life differently--which Paul and the Philippians were only to eager to do. 

Their “sharing” in the gospel is a translation of the Greek word koinonia which we typically translate as fellowship. Koinonia means to have all things in common; it’s where we get words like community and communion. Koinonia was epitomized in these early churches where everybody gave up everything so that no one would need anything—these communities held all things in common. In this way fellowship is connected to stewardship, the economic concern Christians share for each other’s well-being, and a convenient way to remind you that our church fiscal year ends this month and yes we’re running behind again.

The koinonia of Philippians 1 is certainly economic. The life and mission of the church always requires financial support. And generous giving grows out of a generosity of spirit. “Your heart is where your treasure is,” Jesus taught, meaning that you can tell everything about a person by what they do with their money. Therefore Paul speaks to a koinonia of spirit--both with Jesus and with each other. It is love for God and neighbor that motivates us. Elsewhere Paul writes about the right hand of fellowship (koinonia), which we still extend to each other whenever we pass the peace. More than a handshake, the right hand of koinonia tangibly acknowledges our common bond to each other through Christ. In 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks of communion as our koinonia in the body and blood of Jesus. More than partaking of bread and wine, communion is our partnership in the Jesus’ death and resurrection: His dying and rising will be our dying and rising too. No longer fearful of any condemnation due to our sin, the communion table looks to that day when we will rise to feast with Jesus at his table forever. God who began his good work in us will definitely get it done.

Specifically described as God’s good work yet to be completed, Paul’s emphasis in Philippians is plainly on the future. His gospel reference is to God’s saving work, which we all know can take a lifetime. Christians might customarily speak of somebody getting saved, but in reality we’re just as much people in the process of being saved. Like Peter who sank when he tried to walk to Jesus on the open sea, our troubles and doubts still overwhelm us and drag us down too even with Jesus right in front of us. Paul pens these words while chained in a Roman prison with no guarantee of earthly release. For Paul, the “day of Jesus Christ” might mean the day that he dies, and he’s fine with that. “To live is Christ and to die is gain” he will write. For Paul, death is no longer terminal. The resurrection has opened the way to new life. So certain is Paul of this new life that he can live in the present as if his future has already happened--because it has. God always finishes what he starts.

Theologians have long described Paul’s confidence in terms of “realized eschatology,” which is just an arcane way of saying that God's future can be experienced now. His good work is already a job well done. The substance of Christian hope is not on a future that might happen, but on God for whom the future has already happened. We neither worry nor fear despite the troubles we endure in the meantime; the certainty of our future enables us to endure our troubles. We hope in the God who always finishes what he starts.

This Christian hope for a certain future drastically differs from that hope we mean when we say, “I sure hope the Louisville Cardinals win the NCAA Basketball Title tomorrow night and save my March Madness Bracket.” That’s a future that may or may not happen--as Louisville came close to discovering last night against lowly Wichita State. Christian hope is not like my hoping that my University of North Carolina Tar Heels would have won the championship. That would have been delusional hope this season. The University of Michigan, however, has made it to the Championship for the first time in twenty years. 1993 was the year of their vaunted NBA-ready Fab Five team, which I mention since that was also the year they succumbed to my University of North Carolina in the championship game in a most memorable fashion. 

Given no hope to win, my Tar Heels took Michigan down to the wire, leading by two with eleven seconds to play. As basketball aficionados will recall, this was when Michigan’s Chris Webber, his team with the ball, called the time-out that the Wolverines did not possess. This resulted in a technical foul, two more points and the ball back to North Carolina. Game over. I couldn’t believe we’d won!

I recorded the game on a trusty videocassette, which for those under 50 is this rectangular box with black tape inside that people used before DVRs or YouTube. I watched the game again the next morning to be sure that I hadn’t been dreaming. I watched it any number of times after that, just for the happiness of it all, and each time I watched I would still feel anxiety and stress at the end of the game even though I knew the final outcome. The only difference was that now I neither worried nor feared no matter how anxious I felt when I watched because North Carolina won every time! That’s what Christian hope is like. In the end, no matter how troubled and anxious life gets, God always wins.

“This is my prayer,” Paul writes, “that your love may overflow more and more with sincerity and understanding to help you determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness—a righteous character that comes from Jesus—to the praise and glory of God.” How can Paul pray that the Philippians be pure and blameless and righteous? Nobody lives that kind of life no matter how hard they try. But this is the point: Paul’s prayer is already answered. In Christ we are pure and blameless and righteous already. It’s just that our experience has yet to catch up with reality. Thus we need not worry or fear in the meantime, God who began a good work in us will bring it to completion. Even when we fail, the cross of Jesus stitches us back together so we can get back up and show what resurrection looks like. To be blameless and righteous is not to be flawless, but rather honest and humble and full of grace.

God is the one who began a good work among us and it is God who will bring it to completion. Christian hope is based on his work in us, not on our own ability or accomplishments. Christian hope fosters no illusions of human self-improvement. As opposed to those who’d look on the bright side and deny the effects of evil and sin, Christian hope understands that any real hope cannot found itself upon personal potential or wishful thinking. Christian hope views the effects of evil and sin for the tragedies they are, but then translates them into what they really are by the power of the cross: Suffering, rather than meaningless pain or just desserts, translates into meaningful redemption and reinforced character. Death, rather than a terrifying end, becomes the gateway to new life. Christian hopes stitches life’s tragedies into a beautiful tapestry of resurrection, pointing toward that day, when by grace, all things will be made new. Our confidence is in the Lord who always completes what he starts.

When we Harrells relocated to Minnesota almost three years ago, Dawn unpacked a box and found that unfinished African cat staring her in the face. Had it really been twenty years she’d been working on this thing? She determined again to finish in time for Christmas. Like Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia, that lion started following us everywhere: on our road trip to Yellowstone and back, whenever we got on a plane, on a cabin vacation where Dawn so wanted to read a book. But rather than getting frustrated by the project this time, she grew increasingly excited as the lion’s face took shape and she could anticipate its joyous completion. Finally, on the last night of sewing, as the clock approached midnight with only the whiskers remaining, she realized too late that she didn’t have the right whisker color. Obeying her sister’s voice, she dealt with it and made the best of it, just like the Lord does with us, making us into the absolute best because it is God who does it.

It was beautiful. Dawn took the finished lion to Needlework Unlimited. The ladies who blocked the stretched fabric on which it was stitched and straightened the edges oo-ed and ah-ed. The framers oo-ed and ah-ed. Dawn posted her finished work on Facebook and Facebook oo-ed and ah-ed too. She sent it home and her dad was delighted. He said it was worth the twenty year wait, and like Aslan himself, as CS Lewis writes, it was “so bright and real and strong that everything else began at once to look pale and shadowy compared with him.” God will finish what he has started in us, because in Christ, he is already done. In time our experience will catch up with reality. We neither worry nor fear despite the troubles we endure in the meantime.

“I am confident of this,” Paul insists. And we can be confident too.

To Believe is to See

Luke 24:1-35

 by Daniel Harrell

As most of you know I spent a good portion of this Lent with members of our congregation on a wonderful pilgrimage to Israel. I’ve been pulpit-bombing you with stories and pictures since, apropos to the Lenten season. So much of what we saw was where Lent and Easter happened. From the steep Palm Sunday road I showed you last week, and the ridge overlooking Jerusalem where Jesus wept, to the Temple Mount where Pontius Pilate sentenced Jesus to die. We trod the Via Dolorosa, on which Jesus carried his cross, which winds these days through an Old City shopping district. Each Station of the Cross offers a variety of Calvary-themed souvenirs, little crowns of thorns, rosaries and crucifixes, peddled mostly by Muslim vendors. The road ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which tradition marks as that place where Jesus was crucified, dead and buried. And from whence on this day he rose from the dead.

I’ve told you how competing branches of Christianity fight over who gets control of this premier religious site—sometimes with real punches. The Roman Catholic and Armenian Orthodox Churches each have their respective corners roped off, with the Ethiopian, Syriac and Coptic Orthodox Churches claiming various doorways and closets as their own territories. The literal infighting among Christian factions over the years in the church has led to a number of hospitalizations and incarcerations. So much for loving your neighbor. Thankfully a Muslim family owns the keys to the church’s main door or things might get really out of hand.

The Sepulcher proper, that is the empty tomb itself, is managed by the Greek Orthodox Church, which in turn has constructed an elaborate mausoleum out of what we presume would have been a humble hole. Hours long lines snake to the entrance, so we never got a chance to go inside. Just outside burns this single candle from which pilgrims from all the world come to light votive candles of their own. According to Greek Orthodoxy, this candlelight is Holy Fire that ignites in a most miraculous way. On the eve of every Orthodox Easter, this year on April 27, thousands of pilgrims will encircle the Sepulchre and sing hymns and beat drums in anticipation. A clean sweep will be made of the tomb to remove any trace of fire-making paraphernalia. When the hour of the miracle arrives, the masses will keep silence as an Orthodox high priest fearfully enters the tomb. He will kneel where Jesus’ head would have been and will intone a series of ancient prayers. At the amen, from within the core of the very stone on which Jesus lay, an indefinable and mysterious light rises up. 

According to a priest who witnessed it, the light “cannot be described in human terms. It rises out of the stone as mist may rise out of a lake. The light does not burn—I have never had my beard burnt in all the sixteen years I have received the Holy Fire. At a certain point the light rises and forms a column in which the fire is of a different nature, so that I am able to light my candles from it. When I thus have received the flame on my candles, I go out and give the fire to all people present in the Church.” 

I asked our secular Jewish guide what happens if one of the pilgrims trying to light their her candle accidentally snuffed out the holy fire. “It never happens!” our guide replied, a slight smirk betraying her own suspicions. “It is a miracle!” To which I say, hallelujah and praise the Lord! For anybody who died and rose from the dead, lighting and keeping lit a couple of candles a year is easy to do.

Protestants, being Protestant, have our own version of the empty tomb on the opposite side of the city. Located right beside an Arab bus station, our version dispenses with any iconography or liturgical folderol in favor of a simple and serene cemetery—with its own gift shop and souvenirs of course. At this empty tomb, there is no long line. You can step inside and lay where Jesus lay, and even take pictures like I did. As you can see Jesus is not here, which came as a huge relief. The gospels tell us how an immense stone covered the tomb that had to be rolled away. The gospels, however, don’t mention these iron bars guarding the grave—which must have made for an especially spectacular resurrection on Jesus’ part. 

A recent Rasmussen poll has 78% of Americans believing Jesus rose from the dead, which is an impressive statistic until you read that 73% of Americans also believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Another poll, from Ohio University a few years back, seems a bit more probable. It reported that among professing Christians in America only 46% believe that Jesus really rose from the dead. In other words, most professing Christians do not believe the thing that makes Christianity, Christianity. And this would be surprising if not for the gospels themselves. As we’ve heard read this morning, the reaction from the first responders to the resurrection ranged from perplexed and terrified to skeptical and curious, the last emotion from the disciples themselves. There’s not a confident Hallelujah or Praise the Lord heard anywhere.

Later that first Easter day, two disciples of Jesus’ walked to Emmaus, a seven mile jaunt from Jerusalem. Artistic renditions of the scene notwithstanding, these disciples were not out for a Sunday stroll. They were heading home. They had likely never expected to see home or their families again; Jesus had been clear that following him meant giving all that up. But Jesus also said that back when he was alive. He was dead now. Executed in fact. And they were done. As far as we can tell—despite all that the Scriptures and Jesus himself taught—these disciples did not believe Jesus really rose from the dead either. 

Sure, they’d seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, albeit temporarily. They’d seen him feed 5000 people, heal the blind and cure disease. They probably saw him walk on water and calm that fierce storm on the sea of Galilee. They’d heard him say how he’d get killed and buried like the other prophets. And no doubt they’d heard him say how after three days he’d rise up again. But crazy talk about his own rising from the grave likely got filed alongside all his other strange sayings, like about eating his body and drinking his blood, or about hating your father and mother, or about the last being first, the lost being found, the poor being rich or the least being greatest. None of that made any sense either. 

Luke says these disciples were discussing all this as they walked; but the verb he uses is stronger than that. They actually were having more of an argument. Given the high hopes they’d had for Jesus—from the hope he’d eliminate Roman tyranny to the hope he’d eliminate world poverty—to have it all end so tragically had to have made them angry as well as sad. Deeply disappointed too. Seems they’d wasted some of the best years of their lives.

It was probably at this point that Jesus popped in. He’d been making the rounds that morning. These disciples didn’t recognize him, and I understand that. If it’s one thing you ought to be able to count on it’s the dead staying dead. For all of the hope that it offers, resurrection can be very upsetting. It can mess with your head. A few weeks ago we held a funeral for a faithful gentleman who was a longtime member of our church. Though he and I had not been closely acquainted, I vaguely had placed his name with his face. And I was sad to hear he’d died. Then last Sunday he walked up and said hello. I thought I had the right name and face, but now I’m a little scared to ask.

The disciples didn’t recognize Jesus, but if you read the fine print, Luke writes that they were kept from recognizing him. Luke uses a voice theologians label “the divine passive,” which means that they were kept from recognizing Jesus by God. God was messing with their heads. Jesus asked what they were arguing about. One of them, named Cleopas, wondered aloud: “Are you the only stranger in town who does not know the things that have taken place in these days?” Luke displays his cleverness as a storyteller here. Cleopas was shocked that Jesus didn’t know about Jesus, when the reality is that Cleopas didn’t know about Jesus, even as he stood looking at Jesus. This is ironic. 

Jesus played along as Cleopas went on, “Have you not heard about Jesus of Nazareth? Powerful prophet? Mighty miracle worker? Prospective Redeemer? Total Rock Star? Crazy Talker? Condemned by the religious authorities? Sentenced by Pontius Pilate? Executed as a criminal? Some women reported his body missing this morning. Said some angels told them Jesus was alive. We sent our guys over to check it out (you know how women exaggerate). They were right about the body being gone. But nobody saw Jesus.”

Cleopas said “nobody saw Jesus” while looking straight at Jesus. What a chowderhead. “How foolish you are,” Jesus said, “and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” And then beginning with Moses, Jesus interpreted to them the things the Scriptures predicted. About how Moses anticipated another prophet like himself who would emerge to save God’s people from slavery again—not from Egypt, but from slavery to sin and death. About how Isaiah foretold a suffering Savior, one to be “pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities,” and “by whose wounds we are healed.” And how King David sang in the Psalms of a Savior whom God would never abandon to the grave nor let rot in the ground. A coming King who would draw all nations into his glorious Kingdom. All that and more, it was all in the Bible. Why didn’t they believe it?

This is a good question. Especially if you’ve ever read a Bible. It’s pretty unbelievable. Even if you ignore the prophets and just read what Jesus said: Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor and have treasure in heaven? Consider the lilies and don’t worry about your life? Pray for whatever you want and it’s yours? Love your enemies and forgive your persecutors and you will be blessed? Kill me dead and three days later I’ll rise? I don’t know.

I once had a church visitor ask how she could know the Bible is true. I reeled off reasons such as the Bible being the most reliable document in antiquity, the reams of corroborating archeological and historical evidence, the countless billions of people who have been totally transformed by its words, the continued thriving existence of the church itself; but these reasons only take you so far without faith. 

I had another inquirer ask whether the Bible condoned free-market capitalism; said he couldn’t believe in a God who was a socialist. He could have said the same about a lot of other things, from same-sex marriage to evolution, from slavery and suffering to pets in heaven. I asked this inquirer whether he believed Jesus rose from the dead. “No, not exactly,” he replied. “Well then why in the world would you care what the Bible says?” I wondered. In the end, the Bible is only true if the resurrection is true. As the apostle Paul famously put it, “if Christ was not raised then our faith is futile and we’re the biggest losers on the planet.”

We sometimes think believing would be easier if we had visible proof. If only Jesus would show himself to me, and walk me down the road, explain the Bible to me. I’d believe if I could see. But then you have these two who did see Jesus risen and they didn’t believe it. So what chance do I have? I don’t even know what Jesus looks like.

As the disciples neared Emmaus, Luke writes that Jesus “walked ahead as if he were going on.” That’s right, he faked it. He was messing with their heads again. He wasn’t going to chase them this far for nothing. But he wasn’t going to force himself on them either. He wanted an invitation and knew that by acting as if he was leaving the disciples would invite him inside. How did he know? (Well, because he’s Jesus, duh!) But also because cultural obligations of hospitality required them to invite inside any stranger met on the street at nightfall. The bad news was that they still considered Jesus a stranger; but the good news was that they invited him to join them for supper. Good news usually happens in the gospels over supper. Luke reports that as they sat down to eat, Jesus, shifting from guest to host, took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them—just like he’d done in their sight when he fed the 5000. Just like he’d done in their sight the other night when he told them this bread was his body.

And suddenly, Luke writes, again using the divine passive voice, their eyes were opened, and then, just as suddenly, Jesus vanished from their sight. Once they no longer saw him, they were able to recognize him.“Were not our hearts burning within us?” To believe is to see. Now everything changed. 

Which is another reason that resurrection can be so upsetting. To believe Jesus rose from the dead saddles you with all that implies: namely, that Jesus is the Son of the Living God, that He is King of kings, that he is your Master and your Lord. Resurrection upsets everything and turns your world upside down. The last being first, the lost being found, the poor being rich and the least being greatest all now make total sense. And once you believe, everything changes and you have to live your life differently because if you don’t, then you don’t really believe.

Had these two disciples stayed put after recognizing Jesus, Luke would have left them out of his story. What kind of gospel just has people sitting around? But there’s no way these disciples could have stayed put. As soon as they believed, they were out the door. Even though it was late at night, they took off and ran the seven miles back to Jerusalem, where they found the rest of the disciples, and became part of a handful of changed people who ended up changing the whole world.

How do you believe in such a way that not only changes your life but also changes your world? There’s only one way. God has to open your eyes. To which I say, hallelujah and praise the Lord! For anybody who died and rose from the dead, opening your eyes is unbelievably easy to do.

The Tracks of God's Tears

Luke 19:28-44

by Daniel Harrell

The Palm Sunday outside Jerusalem is steeper than I thought it would be. Coming down off the Mount of Olives is a downhill run into the Holy City. And this being Holy Week, Jesus was definitely headed downhill. For the last leg of his journey into Jerusalem, he had two disciples round up a donkey colt. He did it like you’d expect a Son of God to do it, all wrapped in mystery and prophetic foresight: “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here.” The reason is found in Zechariah 9.  “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Jerusalem, for your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious, humble and riding on the colt of a donkey.” Jesus staged his grand entry to make a Messiah statement.

Indeed there was great rejoicing when Jesus made his grand entrance here in Luke. And you’ll note that the people understood his statement. “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” they sing. However you’ll also note that there wasn't a single palm. Instead, people took off their coats and laid them in Jesus path.  This was how people paid homage to kings back then, a gesture akin to taking off your hat for the national anthem. So technically, we should call today Coats Off Sunday. But since this is Minnesota in March, we’ll stick with the palms. They remind us of Florida.

Now I should say that, technically, we didn’t walk down the actual Palm Sunday road in Israel. We definitely didn’t stop by the village where Jesus got his donkey colt either. Nobody is sure of the location of Bethany or Bethpage. They’ve long since been covered by succeeding civilizations. One of the things about walking in the footsteps of Jesus in Jerusalem is that you have to dig down deep to do it. But as with the colt, Jesus predicted this would happen too. Of Jerusalem he says, “not one stone within you will be left upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” This prophesy was violently fulfilled by a savage Roman assault. Had Israel received Jesus as king, things might have been different. This is why Jesus weeps.

There’s a church for just about everything Jesus did in the Holy Land. As you walk down the Palm Sunday road, just off to your right, is Dominus Flevit,  The Church of Jesus Weeping. As you would expect, it dramatically overlooks Jerusalem. And as you might not expect, it’s shaped to resemble a teardrop (though it takes a little imagination to see it).

This is one of two times Jesus cries in the Bible, the other time over the death of his friend Lazarus. You might wonder why Jesus only cries twice, but then the Bible never has Jesus laughing even once. If it had I assure you there would have been a church built to commemorate it, probably shaped like a smile.

As for the tears Jesus shed over Lazarus, he wipes them away by raising Lazarus from the dead. But Jerusalem gets razed to the ground. Jesus’ lament echoes the one Danielle preached about a few chapters back. That lament had Jesus bemoaning Jerusalem’s history of killing its messengers, prophets sent to call God’s prodigal sons home. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,” Jesus said, a desire commemorated on the altar of the Teardrop Church. “But you were unwilling,” a rejected Jesus despairs, leaving Jerusalem to its own devices, and then sternly declaring “you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’” This line comes from Psalm 118, and is commonly sung to welcome pilgrims to Jerusalem.

But again, you note that Jesus’ welcome committee changes “blessed is he who comes” to “blessed is the king who comes,” which you’d think would count as Jerusalem recognizing “the time of your visitation from God.” Their mention of peace on heaven is weird, its almost as if they sense peace on earth is impossible. Luke is clear that it wasn’t any city delegation that welcomed Jesus, but instead “the whole multitude of disciples.” The official response, represented here by the Pharisees, is rebuke. Jesus is told to tell his disciples to knock off the messiah worship. Such praise is reserved for Israel’s legitimate king. Jesus replies that shutting them up won’t do any good for then the stones would take up their praise. Jesus wasn’t just King of the Jews. He was King of Creation.

Sadly, Jesus’ royal welcome rapidly deteriorated into a bloody coronation. His crown would be thorns and his throne a cross. It’s a tragedy we recount every Good Friday. If Jesus’ intent is to establish his kingdom and gather his people, why do it as a chicken? Why allow yourself to be plucked and slaughtered? Why not a stone-cold display of brute force? Bring down the armies of heaven! Zechariah foretold a king humbly riding on a donkey colt, but read the rest of that prophesy, and you’ll find a humble King of Creation convincingly triumphant by way of fire and hurricanes, thunder and lightening. It’s easy to be humble once you’ve pounded your enemies into the dirt. But here, Jesus’ enemies pound him onto a tree. That’s not humility. That’s humiliation and humiliation doesn’t gain you much. Loss is no pathway to victory. Weakness and failure only get you run over.

For modern Israelis, military might is vital to their security. A belligerent Lebanon and a violent Syria border their north. An increasingly Islamic Egypt churns to their South. A bellicose Iran threatens just over Jordan to the east, and resentful Palestinians smolder in both the West Bank and Gaza. What unites their enemies is the desire to wipe Israel off the map, a desire expressed by the fact Israel doesn’t even appear on Palestinian maps. Stoking Israel’s security concerns is the dark memories of Holocaust, a ghastly reminder of how the world hates Jews. Israeli law mandates that teenagers visit the Holocaust Museum three times so as to drive this reminder deep into their identities. The Museum somberly narrates the Nazi atrocity start to finish, from the vicious propaganda to the segregation and oppression, to the collectivizing and the ghettos, and ultimately to the extermination of six million people. Oddly, the Jewish teenagers there during our visit mostly seemed unaffected. They were too busy flirting and texting to worry about hatred.

Afterwards we made our way into Bethlehem, despite official US State Department warnings against traveling there that day. Bethlehem sits in the West Bank, where Palestinian protests flared. But as Christians wanting to see the manger, we ignored the warnings and went to Bethlehem anyway, which these days means crossing a heavily armed checkpoint into a city surrounded by a massive security wall, seen here from a distance. You must swap your Israeli guide for a Palestinian since each is not allowed in the others’ territory. Poverty and unemployment are rampant behind the walls, with strict limits on every movement blatant oppression, leading more than one of our traveling companions to take note of the irony: “Israel is doing to the Palestinians what Nazis did to the Jews.”

We visited a Palestinian Lutheran church whose pastor held out little hope for genuine peace. President Obama has come and gone, as have plenty of Presidents before him, and nothing really changes. The pastor was obliged to suggest everybody give Jesus a chance, but Christian quibbling over who runs the Church of the Nativity makes Jesus seem like a losing proposition too. And , it’s hard to see in Jesus anything but another losing proposition. And loss is no pathway to victory. Weakness and failure only get you crucified dead and buried.

I’m participating in a Bethel University theology and work initiative with a group of business and seminary professors. Given our own Innové project, I’m interested in the ways our faith as Christians can influence entrepreneurship and the marketplace proper. This is not as easy as it might sound. Too often influence runs the other way. So much of what matters to business runs contrary to the gospel, be it the primacy of shareholders over service, gluttonous profits, avaricious career ambition or the over-accumulation of capital. As I mentioned last Sunday with Jesus’ parable about an uncharitable rich man, to prosper financially is not a Biblical vice. But wealth does tempt us toward greed and injustice and extravagance, none of which bode well for our souls if the rich man’s eventual torment in hell is any indication.

Having just preached that parable as I sat in the theology and work conversation, I wondered out loud what Christian faith can noticeably contribute to the way we do business. The Bethel scholars offered up the Christian virtues of honesty and integrity and hard work, along with Christian concerns for service and fairness. And I agree. To believe in Jesus is to value all these things. But you can value these things without believing in Jesus. Is there anything else that is distinctive to Christianity? What about humiliation and loss? Although he was Almighty God, Jesus wore weakness as his human identity, riding in as king on a borrowed burro. Over and over again he stressed how the last shall be first and the humble exalted. He speaks of the importance of lost sheep and lost coins and lost sons and losing your possessions and even your life for the sake of the gospel. That is distinctive.

As far as I know there’s not a business plan on earth that puts loss in its mission statement. Loss is not a pathway to profit. Unless, of course, you buy the gospel. Our Innové judging commences this Saturday. What if we chose as our winners those social entrepreneurial projects deemed certain to lose? Granted, one of the mantras of the startup world is fail faster. Mistakes are an inevitable step on the path to true innovation—but you want to get through them quickly. Nobody makes mistakes their goal.  That would be ridiculous. As ridiculous as changing the world through death on a cross.

Jesus weeps for Jerusalem, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now it’s too late.” Too late and too bad. Embedded in Jerusalem’s name is the Hebrew shalom, a kind of peace that goes beyond the mere absence of enmity to include justice and righteousness and tranquility. This city was supposed to be heaven on earth. God’s own house was located there, the Temple where the Lord himself resided, making Jerusalem the nexus of holiness and humanity. But now the Temple would be ruined by the Romans, as the Babylonians had ruined it centuries before. The prophet Jeremiah cried over Jerusalem then, and Jesus wept now, the only difference being that unlike after Jeremiah, God’s house would not be rebuilt this time.

In Jerusalem we walked where the Temple once stood, on the stones Jesus actually walked on himself. There are some religious groups who believe that if the Temple gets rebuilt then the Messiah will come and walk there again. Their fervor has led them to remake the Temple’s furnishings according to Biblical specs in preparation for that day. Standing in they way, however, is the fact that the Temple mount is under Islamic ownership. To try and build a Jewish Temple there and you ignite World War III. Not even Israel will allow that. The Roman Emperor Julian tried to rebuild it in 363 AD, but an earthquake halted construction. Apparently God wouldn’t allow it either. That’s because in Christ, the stone house of God gave way to a human body, The Lord in the flesh, which is another reason Jesus wept. “You did not recognize the time of your visitation from God” meant Jerusalem did not recognize Jesus as God himself coming to visit in person.

But again, this is understandable. What kind of God comes to visit dressed like a vagrant and riding a donkey? Even his disciples dump him once they see how deadly serious Jesus was about humiliation and loss. Loss is no pathway to victory. Weakness and failure only get you crucified dead and buried.

If you’re going to win, brute force and muscle are the ways to do it. It's how the forceful Romans eventually burned Jerusalem to the ground. It's how the mighty Persians rolled in later and destroyed the Romans, followed by the stronger Byzantines who pounded the Persians. A few decades later Islam powerfully emerged and Arab armies took over the city, who in turn were beaten down by the more powerful Turks, who massacred all of Jerusalem’s inhabitants during their reign. Christians, under Pope Urban II, took offense and the Crusades commenced, leading to the slaughter of 30,000 Muslims and Jews in one battle. More Crusaders followed making Jerusalem a Roman Catholic stronghold until the tougher Ottoman Turks invaded and reduced the city to ruins once more. The Ottomans ruled for 400 years, and then the Egyptians moved in, and then the Russians and the French and finally the brutish British who made Jerusalem part of a colony called Palestine, named for the Philistines, Israel’s ancient enemy and a subtle reminder that Israel will always have its enemies. Jerusalem became the capital of a fortified Jewish state after World War II and the Holocaust, but there is no shalom.

Of course there's no Roman Empire anymore either, or Persian or Byzantine Empires for that matter. Muslims violently divide as Shiite and Sunni. The Crusades proved a colossal failure, and the Ottomans have been reduced to living room furniture. The British still have their Queen, but she’s only a force as far as the tabloids are concerned. And even Israel, while strong, won't last forever. No human civilization ever does. Someday Jerusalem will be reduced to ruin again and another civilization will be added to the pile. All earthly displays of power and might fade away, but 2000 years later, we still do Easter. Next Sunday we’ll  rejoice and shout and sing yet again about the victory of weakness and the power of  humiliation and acknowledge once again that loss truly is the way to new life, giving thanks that resurrection defeats death every time. It’s no coincidence that at the end of time, Scripture envisions heaven as a brand new Jerusalem, finally situated at the top of the pile. There’s no Temple there or any need for light, for the glory of God and the Lamb of God is all the light that you need. On that day every knee will bow and every coat will come off there will be no more crying. All will finally recognize that God didn't just come to visit. He came to stay.