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The Benedictus

December 22, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Christmas2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The First Carols of Christmas – The Benedictus
Sycamore Creek Church
December 21, 2014
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas Friends!

Christmas and Christmas Eve are just around the corner.  I’m excited about SCC’s Christmas Eve services this year.  We’re going to be 1 Church in 2 Locations over 3 Days with 4 Christmas Eve services!  We’ve sent out 10,000 postcards to our neighbors inviting them to celebrate Christmas Eve when it works for them.  We handed out almost 1000 Christmas Eve invites with MSU Men’s Basketball schedules on the back at last Sunday night’s game.  So how is your own inviting going?  I want to continue to encourage and challenge you to invest in and invite three people to Christmas Eve this year.  Write those names down, and then pray for them.  Get on our Facebook event page right now and share it on your own timeline.  Make some special individual invites through Facebook.  Do it right now.  I think it’s going to be a great Christmas at SCC this week!

So today I want to wrestle with a problem.  On one level it’s a problem we’ve just been dealing with.  Here’s the problem: we tend to want the benefits without the cost.  We don’t want to go all the way.  We want the ends without the means.  We want to be fans of Jesus, not followers of Jesus.  We want the benefits without the cost.

When it comes to our church, we want the church to grow and reach more people, but we’re not always willing to take the challenge of inviting someone.  But this shows up in all kinds of other places too.  Take for example my own desire to play the guitar.  I’ve always wanted to learn to play the guitar.  Jeremy, our worship leader, led a small group this past summer that was about learning to play the guitar.  I participated and while I was in the group I set about fifteen minutes aside each day to practice.  But since the group has been done, I haven’t really wanted to put the time in that is needed to learn to play it.  I want the benefit of knowing how to play the guitar and the joy that comes with it, but I don’t really want the cost of setting time aside each day to practice and learn.

Wanting the benefit without the cost shows up all over the place.  We want money without work.  We want energy without exercise.  We want health without nutrition.  We want knowledge without study.  We want healthy relationships without confession and forgiveness.  We want happiness without holiness.  We want salvation without righteousness.

Today we’re continuing a series called The First Carols of Christmas.  We love singing Christmas carols this time of the year, but do you know the first carols?  There are four books in the Bible that tell the story of Jesus’ life.  One of them was written by a doctor whose name was Luke.  Luke tells the story of Jesus’ birth in a unique way.  It’s almost like a musical.  People are talking normally and then all of a sudden they break into song.  There are four songs in Luke’s telling of Jesus’ birth and one scene that was later turned into a song.  We’ve look at two of those so far: Gabriel’s Ave Maria and Mary’s Magnificat.  Today I want to look at Zechariah’s Song which is also called the Benedictus, or Blessing.  I want to explore the cost that Zechariah sings about that goes along with the benefit.

Zechariah is the father of a better known figure, John the Baptist.  Zechariah is a priest, and his wife, Elizabeth, is barren.  One day Zechariah is chosen by lot to offer incense in the temple.  While in the temple he meets Gabriel who tells him he will have a son, and he is to name his son John.  Zechariah isn’t quite so sure about this, because he and Elizabeth are old and past the childbearing years.  So he asks Gabriel how he will know this is going to happen.  For his lack of faith, Gabriel strikes Zechariah mute until John is born.  So Zechariah goes home mute and he and Elizabeth conceive a child.  He may not have had much faith with Gabriel but he had enough faith to jump into the sack with his wife!  In the meantime, Gabriel goes to Mary, and says, “Hail Mary, full of grace!”  This is the Ave Maria.  Then Mary goes to visit Elizabeth and sings the Magnificat.  Then Elizabeth gives birth to a baby.  They take him to the temple to be circumcised, and the temple leaders ask what his name will be.  Elizabeth says that his name will be “John”, and the temple leaders wonder why he’s not being named after his father, Zechariah.  Zechariah writes “His name is John,” on a tablet.  His tongue is loosed, and he is able to speak again.  At this point he breaks into a song that is usually called the Benedictus (Blessing) or the Song of Zechariah.

I found an animated version of this scene that I think shows well the musical nature of this story.  The animation is for children, but I think all ages can gain something from watching it:

 

 

Here’s the Benedictus as found in the Bible:

Luke 1:67-79 NRSV
Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

The verse I really want to focus on is this one:

Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

Two Ways We Serve God – Holiness
We serve God in holiness and righteousness.  Let’s look at both.  First, holiness.  Holiness means being set apart for God.  What does it mean to be set apart?  Well, we set things apart for special uses all the time.  I set apart special decorations for Christmas.   They are holy.  I set apart special clothes for working in the yard.  Those clothes are holy.  I set apart special drinking glasses for special drinks.  One set of glasses for wine, one set for coffee, and one special set for anything else.  They are holy.  Then I have special, set apart time with my boys every Friday morning.  That time is holy.  I have special, set apart time with Sarah every Friday night.  That time is holy.  There is also special, set apart intimacy for marriage.  It’s called sex.  Sex is holy.  Then there’s special, set apart time for family vacations.  Vacation time is holy.  There’s special, set apart money for the church, my tithe.  It’s holy money.  We have a special, set apart candle for baptism anniversaries.  It’s a holy candle.  I have a special, set apart journal for prayers.  It’s holy.  I have special, set apart space to pray.  It’s holy space.  I have special, set apart toys for long trips in the car with our young boys.  Those toys are holy.

Speaking of those holy special toys for longs trips…After getting home from a trip to Indy for thanksgiving and putting away those “special toys,” I had this conversation with my four-year-old:
Micah: Daddy, where are the special toys?
Me: I put them away.
Micah: Why?
Me: They wouldn’t be special if we had them out all the time.
Micah: I don’t want them to be special.

Isn’t that just about how we all react to what is holy or set apart?  We say, “I don’t want it to be special.  I don’t want it to be holy.”  We want the benefit of special things without the cost, being set aside.  We want the happiness that comes with holiness but not the cost of it being set apart.

Two Ways We Serve God – Righteousness
Holiness is one way of describing the cost of salvation, but another way of describing it is righteousness.  Righteousness is being in a state of right relationships with God, oneself, others, your stuff, and the created world.  Righteousness and justice are closely related.  In fact, they are often the same exact word in the Bible.  Righteousness is well being for all, a soundness through and through.  I’m reminded of a car I saw one time up north in Petoskey.  It was a real junker of car.  What I would have called a hoopty.  But this hoopty had some seriously righteous rims.  They were fine.  But somehow the whole thing didn’t work.  The rims were righteous but the car was not.  God wants the whole car, not just the rims.  Or as C.S. Lewis puts it:

God became a man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.  It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature.
~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Righteousness and holiness are the cost of salvation.  We often want to be saved, but we don’t want to be holy and righteous.  We don’t want to be set apart for God or to work on having right relationships.  So here’s a big question for today:

Are you more holy and righteous than you were last year?

Two Keys to Holiness and Righteousness – Self-Evaluation
What I want to do with the time we have left is give you two tips for being holy and righteous.  The first is to set aside regular time for self evaluation and examination.  I suggest starting with these three simple questions:

  1. Am I avoiding evil and avoiding doing harm?
  2. Am I doing good?
  3. Am I staying in love with God?

I use these three questions each morning while I’m journaling.  I reflect on the previous day and evaluate if I avoided harm and evil.  I reflect on whether I did good.  I reflect on whether I was intentional about staying in love with God.

I’ve created an inventory that we use around the end of each year or the beginning of each year here at SCC.  I also use it in our partnership classes.  It fleshes out these three simple rules into all areas of your life.  I’d suggest taking some time as 2014 wraps up and 2015 begins to take this inventory.  Then create an intentional spiritual growth plan for how you’ll seek God to help you improve in each area.

Two Keys to Holiness and Righteousness – Confession & Authenticity
If self-evaluation is the first key to holiness and righteousness, then confession is the second key.  Now confession brings up a lot of negative connotations for many of us.  We think of “going to confession” in a little booth and telling a priest our sins.  Kind of like this Seinfeld clip:

 

 

Confession isn’t so much about a little booth and priest as it is about being authentic with yourself, God, and others.  Here at SCC we seek to ignite authentic life in Christ and fan it into an all consuming flame.  Authentic life in Christ is the real deal, not the hypocrisy of saying you’re one thing when you really are another.  Now it’s impossible to stamp out all hypocrisy, we are humans after all.  But here at SCC we’re seeking to be holy and righteous by creating an environment where you can be open about who you really are.  When you examine yourself, do you share your faults with others?  If not, you’re missing out on some real opportunity for growth.  Take last week for example.  I started last week’s message confessing about the time I was in the back of a cop car.  I asked if anyone else wanted to claim that experience with me.  About a third of you have been in the back of a cop car.  Being authentic just means telling the truth about yourself, even when the truth hurts and isn’t pretty.  In this way, self-evaluation and confession lead to holiness and righteousness.

Being Light
Zechariah continues his song:

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
~Luke 1:79 NRSV

I want to be that kind of a church.  I want to be the kind of church that gives light to those who are in darkness.  Giving light is not be being perfect or having all the answers.  But being light is about seeking holiness and righteousness.  Being light is about having the benefit of salvation because we were willing to pay the cost.  Giving light is about showing others who are in the darkness where you found light.  It’s about searching for healing from abuse.  It’s about searching for meaning amidst hopelessness, peace amidst a gluttony of stuff, friendships amidst loneliness, a way forward amidst confusion.  Giving light is about searching for God amidst uncertainty.

It’s my hope and prayer that SCC would be a community set apart to practice right relationships, a community inviting others into the light, into holiness and righteousness.  We invite them into that light especially at times like Christmas, and we do it every day. So let’s go back to that big question:

Are you more holy and righteous than you were last year? 

Prayer
God, I confess that I have not always set myself apart for you.  Too often I have wanted the benefits of following Jesus without actually following Jesus.  Forgive me, and continue to make me into a new person.  Make me into a person who is holy and righteous, set apart for a right relationship with you, with myself, with others, and with the world around me.  I give myself to you today.  In Jesus’ name and by the power of his Spirit working in me, amen.

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God on Film: Maleficent – Real Evil

June 2, 2014 by Leave a Comment

GodOnFilm

 

 

 

 

 

God on Film: Maleficent – Real Evil
Sycamore Creek Church
June 1 & 2, 2014
Tom Arthur

 

Peace friends!

Today we’re beginning a new series called God on Film.  During the summer we’ll be looking at some of the summer’s biggest blockbusters and exploring the themes those movies raise from a biblical perspective.  Today we’re kicking the series off with a nice light topic, evil.

There are three kinds of evil that we find in the world.  The first kind is supernatural evil.  This is the kind of evil that a movie like Maleficent brings to mind.  Supernatural evil from a biblical perspective would include demons and the chief demon, Satan.  Then there’s what is often called natural evil.  This would include things like natural disasters.  Consider Hurricane Katrina or the tornado that recently hurt nine people in North Dakota.  The third kind of evil, and perhaps most disturbing, is moral evil.  This kind of evil would include war like the Ukraine civil war going on right now or the girls kidnapped in Nigeria or the shooting by Elliot Roger at  University of California, Santa Barbara that killed six or even more close to home the shooting at Frandor a couple of weeks ago.  It’s not hard to look around the world and see all kinds of evil.

A book that has been helpful to me preparing this sermon is N.T. Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God.  If you want to explore this issue further, pick up Wright’s book and read it for yourself.

The Predictable Argument
When it comes to these three kinds of evil—supernatural, natural, and moral—there is a very predictable argument that springs up for the Christian.  It goes something like this:

If God is all powerful and all loving, why did God create a world that allowed evil?  We all have heard this argument and most of us probably know the predictable response to it.  Perhaps one of the most succient and clearly articulated responses to this argument comes from C.S. Lewis:

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can’t. If a thing is free to be good it’s also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they’ve got to be free.

Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (…) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.
~C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

The Unpredictable Argument
So that’s the predictable argument and while there is more to be said about it, that’s not really where I want to spend our time today.  I want to wrestle with the unpredictable argument.  The unpredictable argument goes something like this: What is God doing about evil?

The answer to this question is not so predictable, but there are two things that God is doing about evil:

  1. God judges evil;
  2. God promises to overcome evil.

Let’s go back to the very beginning of the story and see where evil enters in.  Right at the beginning of the Bible in the book of Genesis, which means beginning, evil enters the story.  God creates Adam and Eve and a garden with one rule to follow: don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  A snake shows up and tempts Adam and Eve to eat the fruit.  They do, and their eyes are immediately opened to what good and evil are because they have just participated with evil.  Of course we want to know the answer to all kinds of question chief of which is, why was there a snake, how did he get there, and what is he doing talking?  But the Bible doesn’t seem very interested in these questions.  The Bible assumes that evil exists and doesn’t try to explain why.  Rather the Bible tells us what God does about this evil.  He judges it.  Here’s how God judges the evil that has been done in his creation.

The Curse: Genesis 3:14-20 NLT
Then the Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this, you are cursed
more than all animals, domestic and wild.
You will crawl on your belly,
groveling in the dust as long as you live.
And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Then he said to the woman,
“I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy,
and in pain you will give birth.
And you will desire to control your husband,
but he will rule over you.”
And to the man he said,
“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
It will grow thorns and thistles for you,
though you will eat of its grains.
By the sweat of your brow
will you have food to eat
until you return to the ground
from which you were made.
For you were made from dust,
and to dust you will return.”

God judges the evil that has happened.  He holds it up to the standard of good and finds it lacking.  So he pronounces a judgment, a curse, upon the evil.  This continues throughout the entire Bible all the way to the end of the Bible in the book of Revelation.  We see in Revelation the story coming full circle.  Jesus returns to judge the evil that has taken over the world.

The Second-Coming of Jesus: Revelation 19:11-16 NLT
Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war. His eyes were like flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself. He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his title was the Word of God. The armies of heaven, dressed in the finest of pure white linen, followed him on white horses. From his mouth came a sharp sword to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod. He will release the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty, like juice flowing from a winepress. On his robe at his thigh was written this title: King of all kings and Lord of all lords.

Jesus comes in a “robe dipped in blood.”  This is a reference to his death by crucifixion.

One of the key claims of the Christian story is that Jesus’ death and resurrection is the ultimate victory over evil.  I don’t want to go into this a great deal right now because in August we’re going to do a whole four weeks on the question: why did Jesus die?  Rather, what we see in this story is that Jesus is the King of all kings and Lord of all lords, and thus, he rightfully pronounces judgment on evil.  The story continues…

The Final Judgment: Revelation 20:11-15 NLT
And I saw a great white throne and the one sitting on it. The earth and sky fled from his presence, but they found no place to hide. I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds. Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death. And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Jesus sits on this throne and judges all who come before him.  “All were judged according to their deeds.”  Even death itself is judged and is thrown into the lake of fire.  No more death.  Death is dead.  So if death is dead, what’s left?  What’s left is God’s promise to overcome evil and restore and renew creation.

The New Creation: Revelation 21:1-2, 22-27
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband…I saw no temple in the city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light. The nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the world will enter the city in all their glory. Its gates will never be closed at the end of day because there is no night there. And all the nations will bring their glory and honor into the city.  Nothing evil will be allowed to enter, nor anyone who practices shameful idolatry and dishonesty—but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Notice that “nothing evil will be allowed to enter.”  Evil is done.  No longer.  Kaput.  Sayonara.  Hasta la vista, baby.

So what is God doing about evil?  God judges evil and God promises to overcome evil.  But that’s not the end of the story.  Because it’s not enough for God to overcome evil at some future point.  God is in the business of overcoming evil right now.  That’s where you and I come in.  We participate in God’s judgment of evil and restoration of creation.  So now the answer to the question about what God is doing about evil becomes another question: what are you doing about evil?  God has given us three things that each one of us and we as a community are to do about evil.  We are to pray, seek holiness, and establish justice.  Let’s look at each one.

What Are You Doing About Evil?  Praying.
Prayer is fundamentally about aligning our will with God’s will for creation. The other day I was in Noodles and Co in East Lansing, and I thought prayer was making a comeback.  There were lots of young college students in the restaurant.  I was one of the older people there. I looked over at a table and saw a young woman sitting with her head bowed and I thought, “That’s cool.  She’s praying.”  Then I noticed her fingers twitch under the table and I realized, “She’s not praying. She’s texting with her phone under the table!”

One of Jesus’ disciples named John wrote about prayer.  He said:

And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
1 John 5:14 NRSV

Did you catch that?  This is an “if…then” statement.  If we ask how?  According to his will.  Then we know that God hears us.  Prayer is a process of aligning what we’re
asking for with what God wants for us.  Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th Century Christian Philosopher, said, “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

So how do you do this?  I think you do it by listening in prayer.  Prayer is essentially communication.  And most of our prayer, I think, is us talking expecting God to listen.  While this isn’t bad, don’t forget that communication goes both ways.  You ask and you listen.  Or maybe you listen first then you ask.  Prayer can be understood as an acronym, P.R.A.Y.  Praise, repent, ask, and yield.  The key word for our conversation today is “yield.”  You ask and listen and then you yield to God’s will.

What Are You Doing About Evil?  Seeking Holiness.
The second thing each of us can do about evil is to seek holiness.  Holiness is another word for righteousness or right relationships.  Holiness is having a right relationship with God, others, ourselves, and all of creation.  When we seek holiness we seek to align our actions with God’s love for creation.

Holiness is kind of like growing up.  Holiness is a kind of maturing.  It’s like moving from being a grown up toddler to be a grown up adult.  What if we adults all still acted like toddlers?  It might look like this:

 

There would be no peace anywhere!  The ultimate effect of a holy alignment between our will and God’s will is peace.  The prophet Isaiah said:

The effect of righteousness will be peace.
~Isaiah 32:17 NRSV

Perhaps the most important way you can align your will with God’s will is to read scripture daily, or at least as often as you can.  A couple of months ago we did a series called Committed to Christ.  One of the sermons in that series was making a commitment to read your Bible.  Many of you made commitments to read your Bible daily.  How are you doing?  Read your Bible to learn what holiness is all about, to align your will with God’s love for all of creation.

What Are You Doing About Evil?  Establishing Justice.
Let’s review where we’re at so far.  We’ve been exploring what God is doing about evil.  God judges evil and God promises to overcome evil.  One of the ways God is overcoming evil right now is through each one of us and what we’re doing about evil.  We judge evil and overcome evil through prayer and holiness.  We also judge and overcome evil by establishing justice.  Justice is aligning our systems with God’s image in all of creation.

Sometimes justice happens on an individual level.  I recently read about some eBay justice.  A guy posted and sold two sports tickets for $600 to a woman.  He kept waiting for the payment but it never came.  The night before the game he got this email from the woman who won the bid: “I overbid and my husband won’t let me buy these. Sorry and enjoy the game! :)… It’s eBay, not a car dealership. I can back out if I want.”  With time running out he tried to sell to the other lower bidders but had no luck.  He decided to take justice into his own hands.  He set up another eBay account and a Google voice phone number.  He emailed the original winner with a fake name telling her that he saw she won the tickets and offered her $1000 for the tickets.  After some assurances were made, she emailed the guy back and offered to buy them for her original bid of $600.  The met at  midnight to exchange the tickets.  Then he emailed her back under his pseudonym saying, “It’s eBay, not a car dealership. I can back out if I want.”  LOL!

The Psalms are the prayer book of the Bible and Psalm 94 says:

Judgment will again be founded on justice, and those with virtuous hearts will pursue it.
~Psalm 94:15 NLT

Justice isn’t just about individuals.  It’s also about entire systems.  This past year I was given season passes to Peppermint Creek Theater Company (PCTC) right next door to North Elementary.  Sarah and I were thrilled to have a theater so close to our house in South Lansing.  The passion statement of PCTC is: to produce contemporary theatre that addresses vital issues in our society, raises awareness, and encourages dialogue while entertaining. In other words, they want to engage issues of justice in our culture in a way that is engaging and entertaining.

The last play of the season was called Clybourne Park and was about racism and white-flight in Chicago.  The first act was set in the 1940s in a white neighborhood.  The family is moving out to the suburbs and has sold their house to a black family.  The local neighborhood association sends a representative over to try to stop the sale.  The sale goes through.  The second act is in the same house, but this time the neighborhood is a black neighborhood.  The family that wants to buy the house is a rich white family.  The neighborhood has created guidelines for remodeling these homes so that the current residents are pushed out by rising housing prices and rising taxes.  This phenomenon is called gentrification.  The issues are complex and there are no easy answers, but I was grateful for PCTC putting on the play and creating the opportunity for reflection and dialogue around this issue of racism and justice.  I was reminded of a distinction that I learned in college between prejudice and racism.  Prejudice is an attitude of superiority or bias.  Prejudice is individual.  Racism, on the other hand, has to do with systems that unjustly privilege one group over another.  You can be unwittingly and without prejudice participating in racist structures in society.  This distinction helped me humbly examine my own actions and how they play into privilege without getting defensive about whether I was prejudiced or not.  Clybourne Park brought up all these questions in my mind again.  It was an opportunity to ask: am I living justly or am I buying into unjust systems that perpetuate racism?  So if you want to live justly, one step you could take is to go see some plays at Peppermint Creek Theater next season and allow the play to challenge and examine you.  I don’t always agree with everything the theater does, but I do appreciate the opportunity for self reflection.

So what is God doing about evil?  God is judging evil and overcoming it.  How is God judging and overcoming evil?  God will have an ultimate day of judgment and renewal of creation but in the mean time, God is working through you and me.  So what are you, what are we doing about evil?

 

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In the Wilderness – The End of Wilderness

March 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment

in the wildernress logo

 

 

 

 

The End of Wilderness
Sycamore Creek Church
March 24/25, 2013
Numbers 13:25-30
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

What is the longest “wilderness” you’ve been in?  I’m not talking about a literal desert.  I’m talking about a state of feeling like you’re in the wilderness.  Several long wilderness moments in my own life come to mind.  One night when I was a student at Wheaton College, a suburb of Chicago, I drove down to Chicago to meet some friends and watch a concert.  It was raining, and I was running late, so I didn’t pay much attention to where I was parking.  I just pulled in the first open spot I saw.  When the concert was over at 2AM, and I came out to drive home, my car was gone.  I looked up and saw a sign posted telling me where it had been towed to.  I used the last bit of cash I had to take a taxi to the impound.  The impound wouldn’t take a debit card, so I walked a mile in the rain to the closest ATM.  The ATM wouldn’t take my debit card either.  I broke down.  At 3AM in the morning, I called my dad in Indianapolis. I woke him up with my sobs on the other line.  I didn’t know what to do.  He helped me get my bearings and make a plan which included calling my roommate and having my roommate get the $100 in cash my dad had just sent me as a gift and that I had left in an envelope on my desk.  The only problem was that my roommate was at hockey practice at 3AM.  They rented ice when it was cheapest.  So I had to leave a message.  There was a Dunkin Doughnuts within sight so I went there and scraped up enough change to buy a hot chocolate that I nursed for the next couple of hours waiting for my roommate to get out of hockey practice and bring me the money.  It was one of the longest nights of my life in the concrete wilderness of a big city.

All of us find ourselves in the wilderness from time to time.  There’s the wilderness of not being employed.  The wilderness of being employed in a job you hate.  The wilderness of a broken family.  The wilderness of an abusive relationship.  The wilderness of wanting a romantic relationship.  The wilderness of homelessness.  The wilderness of a dry spell of faith.  The wilderness of trying to figure out what to do with your life.  The wilderness of reality not matching expectations, like in the movie 500 days of summer:

 

While we all end up in a wilderness from time to time, wilderness is not where we were meant to live.  Wilderness does come to an end.  I’m not still sitting in the Dunkin Doughnuts on the north side of Chicago nursing a cup of hot chocolate.  Sometimes the wilderness won’t end this side of heaven, but it will end.

We’re wrapping up a series today called In the Wilderness.  We’ve been exploring the Hebrew people, the Israelites as they wander through the wilderness for forty years as told in the book of Numbers.  We’re seeing what we can learn about our time in the wilderness as a church and our time as individuals.  Like the Hebrew people, we too don’t yet have a home.  We too have to set up and tear down a tent every time we want to worship.  We too are a bit tired and cranky from time to time.  We too are on a journey of becoming the people God wants us to become.

Thomas Dozeman, a scholar of the book of Numbers, says, “The wilderness is a road (Isaiah 40:3), and a place of miracles (Isaiah 41:18-19) that signals and may even lead to the return of Zion (Isaiah 53:3).  But the wilderness is not Zion.”  We weren’t made to live in the wilderness.  Let’s get back to the book of Numbers and see what we can learn today about the end of wilderness.

Numbers 13:25-30 NLT
After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned to Moses, Aaron, and the people of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land.

This was their report to Moses: “We arrived in the land you sent us to see, and it is indeed a magnificent country — a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is some of its fruit as proof. 

But the people living there are powerful, and their cities and towns are fortified and very large. We also saw the descendants of Anak who are living there!  The Amalekites live in the Negev, and the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Seaand along the Jordan Valley.” 

But Caleb tried to encourage the people as they stood before Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!”

While most of the scouts sent to spy out the Promised Land come back fearful about the obstacles for bringing their wilderness experience to an end, Caleb (and also Joshua elsewhere) is ready to bring this wilderness time to an end.  They trust God’s goodness and God’s provision for their future.  Unfortunately, no one else does.  This has some pretty dire consequences for everyone else when it comes to the end of wilderness.

At the beginning and the end of the book of Numbers, there are two big census lists.  This is where the book gets its English name from, “Numbers.”  (The Hebrew name is “In the Wilderness.”)  As we read the census list at the end of the book we see that there are only two people who make it out of the wilderness.  Out of hundreds of thousands, only Caleb and Joshua were alive at both the first census and the second census.

Numbers 26:63-65
So these are the census figures of the people of Israel as prepared by Moses and Eleazar the priest on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.  Not one person that Moses and Aaron counted in this census had been among those counted in the previous census taken in the wilderness of Sinai.  For the LORD had said of them, “They will all die in the wilderness.” The only exceptions were Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.

There are three things I think we can learn about the end of wilderness from the book of Numbers.  First, some of you are thinking: “I’ve missed the boat.  I’ve screwed up.  God is no longer going to let me enter the Promised Land of [fill in the blank].”  I don’t know if this is true or not, but sometimes there is something in you that has to die before God can bring you into the Promised Land.  What has to die in you before you can enter the Promised Land?   Second, the Promised Land may be different than you expect.  It may not be what you had in your mind.  It may not line up exactly with your vision.  It may even be very very different.  Thirdly, patiently prepare for the “Promised Land.”  You may not see the end in sight, but prepare for it.  Begin now by taking the steps you need to take to plan for the end of the wilderness.  I want to dwell for a moment on this idea of patiently preparing for the end of wilderness even when you can’t see the end.

If you read chapters 28-30 of Numbers, you will find all kinds of preparation for rituals and laws for entering the Promised Land.  They haven’t even gotten there yet and Moses is instructing them about how to live once they get there.  In chapter 34 you find a division of the land between all the different tribes.  Again, they aren’t even there yet, but they’re making plans.

So if you’re in the wilderness and you can’t see the end, then begin to patiently prepare for the end.  Pray.  Worship. Search the Scriptures.  Resist Sin. Seek Holiness.  Some of us get stuck on this big question about what God’s will is for our life.  What is the “Promised Land” that God wants for me?  Sometimes we get so wrapped up in that question that we forget the immediate answer to it.  What is God’s will for your life?  To be holy.  So if you’re in the wilderness and you don’t know which path to take to get out of the wilderness, ask this question: Will A or B lead you to be more holy?  If neither is the clear winner, then know that it will delight God for you to do what delights you more.  So while you’re in the wilderness, do what you can, wait, rest, and let God do the rest.

Recently I was talking with someone whose marriage had come to an end several years earlier.  A lot of bitterness had been present.  It was a wilderness time.  But one day in worship doing what she was supposed to be doing and waiting for God, she realized that the wilderness had come, almost imperceptibly, to an end.  She had spent several years angry full of questions to God.  Then that day in worship she realized that she no longer had any bitterness.  It was gone and had been replaced with forgiveness.  The wilderness was slow to end, but it did end.

Consider this verse from the prophet Habakkuk:

Habakkuk 2:3 NLT
But these things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.

Let me speak for a moment about how this end of wilderness might come for us as a community.  There is a question on my mind right now: Is a building the Promised Land for SCC?  I don’t know the answer to that question.  I do know that a building is a good and worthy desire.  But a building and desire for a building can also become an idol, something we begin to worship rather than worshiping God.

I recently spoke with someone whose church spent thirty years setting up and tearing down each Sunday in a school.  They had it worse than we did.  We have a closet we can store stuff in.  They had a trailer.  In the last year they found a building that had 80,000 square feet that they bought for an amazingly low price of $400,000.  Then they promptly put $7,000,000 into remodeling it!

I don’t know how much a building is going to cost in the end.  But in the meantime, we are patiently preparing for that day by saving for it.  Our current capital campaign likely won’t be enough.  So we will have to patiently save some more.

In the meantime, let me share with you what I am sure is the Promised Land for SCC: more and more people ignited with authentic life in Christ, and that spark of faith fanned into an all consuming flame.  To this end, we will always be in a wilderness period until every person in every corner of the world knows, loves, and serves Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:9-11 NLT
Because of this, God raised him up to the heights of heaven and gave him a name that is above every other name,  so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, 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.

May God lead us into this Promised Land, whatever form it might take.  Amen.

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