Crucis: The World Upside Down

Crucis: The World Upside Down

God Turns the World Upside Down

Mark 1:9-15

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. Feb. 18th, 2024

The Acts of the Apostles recounts a riot that took place in Thessalonica. Paul arrived in the city and preached in the synagogue about Jesus, as was his custom. Some of the Jews were persuaded, but Paul had more success among the greeks and some of the leading women of the city. He had enough success in his mission that others in the city saw him as a threat. They formed a mob and set out to find Paul and his associate Silas at the house of a man by the name of Jason. When they couldn’t find Paul and Silas they decided Jason and the others in the house were a good prize. They dragged them before the city authorities shouting, “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has entertained them as guests!”

Turning the world upside down. How long has it been since the Church has had the same accusation leveled against her? Paul walked into the city of Thessalonica preaching to both Jews and greeks. He told women that they had the same dignity as men. He told the poor that God became poor for their sake, that they might have God’s riches. He told the Romans that Jesus, this crucified carpenter and not Caesar is Lord. He was disrupting the Synagogue, he was subverting the hierarchy. The accusation was not entirely out of place. These people have been turning the world upside down. As Mary sang, “He has shown the strength of his arm, He has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.”

It can be hard to see this reality. It can be hard to see why this should be the reality. But the world turned upside down is but one way to describe the Kingdom of God.

As we begin Lent, we return to the beginning of Mark’s Gospel. Jesus is baptized by John and the heavens are torn open like the temple veil, the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove, and Jesus hears a voice from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am delighted.” And as soon as this miraculous event takes place, the announcement of the Father’s delight, the rending of the skies and heaven meeting earth, Jesus is driven by the Spirit that was like a dove into the wilderness. There, in the wilderness, he is tempted by Satan for forty days with only wild animals and angels to wait on him. When the forty days are up, when John had been arrested, Jesus is ready to begin his public ministry.

“The time is fulfilled,” he says, "and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

The heavens torn apart, the Spirit of God driving Jesus into the wilderness, wild animals made tame, angels at his beck and call, Satan unable to lift a finger, this is all wild stuff. It’s like the new creation, with the spirit descending on the waters of baptism and the wild animals in harmony with Adam. It is the strange stuff of a new world. The time being fulfilled. The Kingdom of God coming near.

But while the heavens are open and the Spirit is moving Jesus says this announcement, these glad tidings, require a response. “Repent!” He says.

The word repent means literally a change of mind, or perhaps better put a change of heart. Because Jesus isn’t calling us to change simply how we think, change our ideas, he’s asking us to change our wills and our desires. He’s asking us to make a shift in the core of who we are. A shift away from life as we know it, to life in the Gospel. That is what it means to repent. To resolve to love as God loves. To resolve to be merciful as God is merciful. To resolve to see this world in a whole new way. To resolve to see the world turned upside down.

I don’t think I’m talking out of turn when I say things aren’t going well. Wars, plague, crisis. People without food, people without shelter, people gunned down. This world is not working. Perhaps it needs to be turned upside down. And that begins by recognizing what it is God has already done.

This Lent I’m going to focus on the cross. What is it that God has done? What is the strange way that God has turned the world upside down? What is the strange new world into which we are called? What does it mean to follow the way of the cross?

The Method to our Ist

Repentance means a change of mind, and a change of heart. John the Baptist prepares the way of the Lord by preaching repentance. He calls the people of Israel from the docility of their sins into the wild adventure of holiness. But it is so easy to say “repent.” It is harder to do.

Sin is not just a free choice, but an enslaving power. We become attached to our own laziness, or lust, or greed to the point that our sin begins to control us. It is no simple matter to simply change our hearts and minds. I want to give some advice.

John Wesley would preach repentance of sins and the forgiveness of God in Christ. He told people that if they wished to “flee from the wrath to come” that they were welcome to join the Methodist Societies. He knew the power of sin in his own life, and he knew it was not enough for someone to make a decision when they heard a sermon. They needed support, accountability, and a loving community. That community was the society, broken down into small groups called “classes.”

Membership in the society was easy. All one needed was a desire to flee from sin, and to follow three rules. These three rules were to do no harm to oneself or others, to do good for others, and to attend to the ordinances of God. These three things, done in community, are a powerful way to repent and grow in discipleship.

The first two rules are to do no harm and to do good. As the old saying goes nature abhors a vacuum. It is not enough to stop doing something, you need to pick something up. It is not enough to stop sinning, but you need to replace the energy that went into that sinful desire with something else. In my experience it’s good to try to replace the sin with its opposite. I mentioned in the sermon on Sunday that I recognized I’m angrier than I’d like to be. And I saw practicing patience as the opportunity to work through that anger. Patience is the opposite of anger. The more patient I become the less angry I will be by necessity. Doing no harm must always, always, be tethered to doing good. If you want to be less greedy practice generosity, if you want to be less lazy practice cleaning your room, if you want to be less envious practice gratitude.

But it is not enough to simply do no harm and to do good. We cannot repent of our own power. We cannot lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We need God’s help. That is why we “attend upon the ordinances of God.” That is to say, we practice God’s means of grace. John Wesley listed seven “ordinances” he wanted those in the society to practice: public worship of God, hearing or reading scripture expounded, holy communion, family and private prayer, scripture study, fasting or abstinence, and holy or spiritual conversation. These are means by which God speaks to us, breaks through our mundane lives with his grace, and empowers us to lead lives of discipleship.

It is enough to say we do these things, but we need to be held to them. Which is why the society was created, and why everyone was put into small groups. If you want to follow the Wesleyan way of repentance this Advent, find a prayer partner you trust, search the scriptures together, talk about your week, and lovingly hold one another accountable to your walk.

Hurry Up and Wait! Repent

Hurry Up and Wait!: Repent

Repentance Opens Us Up to Happiness

Mark: 1:1-8

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. Dec. 10th, 2023

There’s a story I’ve often wanted to write. The trouble is it’s less of a story and more of an idea. So I’ve never been able to crack it. It’s science fiction. One of those alien stories. The aliens arrive and decide that we have advanced culturally to the point that they can open the secrets of the universe up to us. We can cure cancer, end aging, explore the universe. We can end poverty, heal the planet, and end war. No strings attached, no caveats. They aren't trying to eat us. They aren’t involving us in some intergalactic war. They’re not trying to make us their slaves. They only want to end our suffering, and they succeed.

All sorts of adventures await. We can explore the deepest trenches of the ocean. We can climb every mountain. If we want we can sail a starship past the pillars of creation. We can see where the black hole goes.

The story is from the perspective of someone who has lived hundreds of years, perhaps millennia. They have seen everything, done everything, experienced everything. And the end result is they’re exhausted. They’re bored. They want to die. Because you can only do these things so many times before they lose their luster. Even the great nebula become rote. Even a life full of pleasure eventually becomes monotonous. What we ultimately desire, what we ultimately seek cannot be satisfied in this life. We get glimpses of it, of course. But it’s all transitory and fleeting. Our true happiness comes from beyond ourselves, beyond this world, and we wait the time it is fulfilled for us.

Moreover, I imagine such a person would become all to well aware of their own personal limitations and the limitations of others. This wouldn’t be a life of moral purity. All the petty differences, squabbles, annoyances would break out once in awhile. There would still be inexplicable abuses. Sin would still reign. And with sin still reigning material abundance can only go so far. All the promises of this life cannot match the promises of the life God would give us.

Our gospel reading this morning speaks to the beginning of God’s work to restore our world, root out sin, and bring about our true and abiding happiness: the presence and love of God.

Marks’ Gospel opens, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” As Genesis opens “in the beginning” Mark’s gospel gives us a new beginning. That is the new beginning founded in Jesus, the son of God. While the world was hushed and people were caught up in the monotony of daily life, Jesus came to this earth to open us to the Father’s love. And he came to over come sin, and death, and to make known for us our own forgiveness. To make real for us our own salvation. To make true happiness possible.

But before that happiness can be made manifest there must first be a messenger. There must be one crying out in the wilderness, “prepare the way of the Lord!” This one is John the Baptist who comes clothed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey. He has a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Though he says there is one coming after him who is mightier than himself. One who will baptize not with water, but with the Holy Spirit. With fire.

Last week we talked about waiting for the Lord and how we are to wait in prayer and hope. This week we are talking about the way of God, the way of love, and the way of happiness. But that way is marked, on our end, by repentance. We who are in the time of Advent need to heed the call of God’s messenger. We must repent.

The way of the cross, the way of love, is a way of repentance. We do not repent simply out of a feeling of guilt. As if it were the role of the Church to make us feel guilty all the time. More importantly we repent because God has punctured the monotony of our lives and revealed it for what it is. We repent because God has beckoned us to something still greater. To know a peace that is still greater. To experience a joy that is still greater. And we know we cannot hold onto what we have if we are going to enter the heavenly kingdom. We repent because we know what we cast aside is infinitely less than what is on offer. We change our minds and our hearts in repentance because we know God can do for us infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.

There’s an old story that I’m told isn’t true, but it still makes a good sermon illustration. The story is that in some regions they have a sort of monkey trap where some fruit is put inside of a jar and the opening to the jar is just large enough for the monkey’s hand to get in, but not large enough for the monkey’s hand grasping a fruit to get out. And the monkeys are so greedy that they won’t let go of the fruit. Sadly that isn’t true, but it remains a great image of sin and repentance. Im our sin we seek to grasp hold of things that do not belong to us, or we are not supposed to hold. But in repentance we let them go and find ourselves freed.

Repentance is freeing and liberatory. It frees us from the power of sin, and it opens us up to the infinite promises of God. The Advent of Jesus, his second coming, is all about securing our happiness. And repentance is one way that happiness becomes manifest here in this time, in this day, before his coming again.

Hurry Up and Wait! Hope

Hurry Up and Wait!: Hope

Advent is the Season of Waiting

Mark: 13:24-37

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. Dec. 3rd, 2023

I noticed this year that Walmart had Christmas decorations up before Halloween. The Christmas music began to blare through store speakers disconcertingly early. Even downtown got lights on as soon as Halloween was over with. We like to rush to Christmas. We want to rush to caroling, presents, Santa, family, chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nibbling at your nose. But before Christmas we have Advent. A time for waiting.

I enjoy Advent because Advent is the season of our lives. It is the time we devote to waiting for the coming of the King. We look back at how the prophets, Joseph, and Mary waited for Jesus. And when looking back we look to ourselves, who also wait for the coming of Jesus. We are the ones who are to keep awake. We are the ones who are to wait in expectant hope. Advent calls us to take seriously this waiting, this period of history, as we wait for the end to come.

Appropriately, then, our first gospel reading concerns waiting for the end. Though it may not seem very Christmas-y itself. Linus is probably not reading Mark chapter 13 at the end of a Christmas special. But Jesus has been walking among the Temple with his disciples, and his friends marvel at the structure. Jesus uses the occasion to teach them about the end. That the day is coming when not one stone will be on top of another. And they will have to be ready.

“Beware,” he says, “keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” Jesus is insistent on this point, “Therefore keep awake. … And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” We may need to fall asleep for Santa to arrive, but we are expected to keep awake for Jesus to arrive. When he’s so insistent it must be important. But what does this wakefulness mean? What does it mean to keep alert? Surely he does not mean for us literally to stay awake, our eyes open, keeping vigil? What does the alertness, the wakefulness, Jesus calls us to here look like?

Jesus’ call to keep alert reminds me of his praying in Gethsemane. After the last supper with his disciples Jesus heads out with Peter, James, and John to a garden to pray. “My soul is very sorrowful,” Jesus says, “Even to death; remain here, and keep awake.” He goes out to pray. He asks that the cup be taken from him, if it is his Father’s will. He sweats blood. He knows what is coming. He is wracked with anxiety and fear. But when he returns to his disciples he finds them sleeping. “Simon,” he asks, “are you sleeping? could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.”

He goes to pray again. And when he returns the disciples are once again asleep. A third time he goes to pray, and returns to find them asleep! “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come; the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.” Judas arrives, Jesus is taken.

I don’t think it’s an idle detail that in Jesus’ parable of the doorkeeper he says, “you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn.” That Maundy Thursday Jesus had his last supper with his disciples in the evening, was betrayed at midnight, was denied by Peter at the cockcrow, and delivered to Pilate at dawn. The wakefulness Jesus expects of us is analogous to the wakefulness Jesus expected of Peter, James, and John in the garden. And the wakefulness Jesus knew Peter would not have in the courtyard as the rooster crowed.

That wakefulness, that vigilance, is shown in two ways.

The first is that we remain hopeful. Peter is prepared to die for Jesus until Jesus refuses to fight back. Then despair overcomes him and he denies his Lord. The disciples flee the hour when they were called to be awake. They did not see that the cross was not a defeat but a triumph. They lacked hope. But we are called to remain hopeful. To know that we are in the time of God’s patience, the God who regards a day as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. That hope that we have means we should regard each day as the end. Each moment as a moment where Christ may return. And to be ready for that. Because that is our hopeful expectation. Not forgetting that hope.

The second is that we are to remain in prayer. What does Jesus expect Peter, James, and John to do as he prays in the garden? They are to pray as well. But they cannot. They are overcome by sleepiness. They shirk their duties and do not keep vigil. We are called to keep vigil. We are to be a people of prayer. Who pray for ourselves, pray for our friends, our family, our world. We are to hold up all things in prayer as we keep watch. Waiting for that day when “thy kingdom comes, thy will is done, on earth as in heaven.” And our prayers are ultimately fulfilled.

Jesus thinks it is of the utmost importance that we stay awake. How do we stay awake? Through hope and prayer. Through prayerful hope. The hope of knowing Christ will return and could return this very second. The discipline of prayer where God makes himself known to us in our hearts, and by which we lift up the concerns of our world. If we want to keep a holy Advent, prayer and hope are the ways to start.

Christ the King

Christ the King

God Reigns

Ephesians 1:15-23

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. Nov. 26th, 2023

The City of Ephesus was ancient, even in Roman times. She was a bustling port city, a center of Roman power in Asia Minor. Even today many of her buildings remain, though in ruins. The great Library of Celsus, a massive theater that could hold over twenty thousand spectators. But the most prized, and most renowned monument was the famous Temple of Artemis. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The Temple lay just outside the city of Ephesus, clearly seen from within the city’s walls. Many would travel hundreds of miles just to see its splendor. The festivals and games associated with the sacred site would last weeks. Ephesian life was dependent on the success of the Temple, literally centered around the Temple.

In Acts chapter 19 we read about Paul’s first missionary trip to Ephesus. We are told right before he planned to leave to Macedonia a silversmith by the name of Demetrius caused trouble for the small church that had just been planted there. Demetrius made little silver shrines to Artemis for travelers, his income dependent on the success of the Temple. When he heard about the Christians, and how they were growing in numbers, he became concerned. The Christians, like the Jews, rejected idols such as the silver statues he made. But the Christians, unlike the Jews, were winning converts. He told the other craftsmen in Ephesus, “Men, you know that from this business we have our health. And you see and hear that not only at Ephesus but almost throughout all Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable company of people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may count for nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.”

His speech riled up the crowds who began to shout, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” They knew the threat these Christians posed. The end of their way of life. The destruction of their gods. Dishonor and disrepute to the great city of Ephesus.

The whole city was thrown into confusion. They rushed into that twenty thousand plus seat arena carrying Gaius and Aristarchus, two of Paul’s companions. But there was no order to the mob. Everyone was thrown into confusion. And no one knew quite what to do.

Finally, the town clerk quieted the crowd and said, “Men of Ephesus, what man is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from the sky? seeing then that these things cannot be contradicted you ought to be quiet and do nothing rash. For you have brought these men here who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess. If therefore Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against any one, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls; let them bring charges gains tone another. But if you seek anything further, it shall be settled in the regular assembly. For we are in danger of being charged with rioting today, there being no cause that we can give to justify this commotion.” And, with that, the mob dispersed. And the handful of Christians in Ephesus were protected.

I tell this story to give some context to the passage we heard from Paul’s letter to those same Ephesians this morning. It is easy for us to imagine the letter being written in a large beautiful sanctuary such as our own. The church in Ephesus made up of at least one hundred or two hundred people. But our best estimates are that the church in Ephesus may not have been any larger than 40 persons, and that they likely gathered in small homes or in apartments in tenements. And when they gathered it likely was not as the whole church, but as cells of the church. They would have experienced extreme isolation from the rest of Ephesian society. Not able to participate in the festivals, likely unable to participate in the craftsmen associations. Dependent, largely, on each other. On charitable giving they called love. Always knowing that a man like Demetrius might cause a frenzy again, that they may be persecuted again. That they may lose their lives.

We must keep this context in mind as we imagine the Ephesians gathered in a dingy, cold, candle lit room on a Sunday morning before the sun rises. They are at table. They’ve been singing psalms. Perhaps they heard a scripture read. Or heard a testimony. They have with them a special guest, an associate of Paul’s who has a letter from him. He hasn’t been able to visit because he’s in prison. They pray for him. As the guest begins to read they hear, “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

It ought to strike us as absurd. These poor, outcast, put down people being told that Caesar is not Lord of this world but a crucified Jew is. And that the Crucified lives, is at the right hand of the power on high, and is head over all things. Not only does he rule over all things but he rules over all things on behalf of them. The marginalized, the ostracized, the objects of mockery and scorn. But as ridiculous as it all is they receive the word as it is. A prophetic message. And they have hope.

The announcement of Christ’s Kingship is not any less absurd today than it was when Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus. It is absurd to put our faith in this crucified Jew. It is absurd to believe that in spite of all that is going on in the world it is this man who is in control. It is absurd to believe that he rules all things on our behalf. For our good. For the benefit of his Church. It is far more easy for us to imagine that we may take the reigns of history, not that we would entrust them to Christ.

But this is what Christ the King Sunday is for. To remind us that in spite of all we see, in spite of all that we may face, it is this Jesus who we know who rules. And soon all his enemies shall be overthrown. The last to be overthrown being death. As the Ephesians in their own circumstance held this hope so must we. He reigns so we don’t have to. He is bringing all things to their end. And every tear will be wiped away. He is the good shepherd who cares for his sheep. And he will make all things right on that day.

Social Holiness: Hope

Social Holiness: Hope

God’s Salvation is Not in Our Grasp

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. Nov. 19th, 2023

One summer I was out to visit a friend and he took me to two worship services. One worship service was in the morning. It was a venerable church with a large endowment. They had a pipe organ with a top tier organist. They hired a choir from the nearby university. Everything about the production was excellent. Only there were hardly any people, and those who were there didn’t seem all that engaged. Despite all that was put into the service the spirit was lacking.

Later that day he took me to another church that met in the parish house. It was a ragtag group of old hippies and college students. They sat in a circle, almost like a Quaker meeting. One of them broke out a guitar and they sang hymns and praise choruses. Someone brought a message. They gathered in prayer and made intercession for all the ills of the world. Even though they lacked a building, an organ, a choir, or an endowment; and even though they were small in number, yet the Spirit was present in that gathering. I felt the Spirit’s stillness, and hopefulness.

When we gather in worship it is not simply to meet old friends or to hear edifying messages or to enjoy music. It is not to sing our lungs out or to raise funds for community work. It is so that we, as the gathered body of Christ, might know the Spirit’s presence. That we would witness to the living God. It is the Holy Spirit that makes a holy Church. And where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. Freedom from sin, freedom from guilt, freedom to be faithful, loving, hopeful people following Christ.

We need to have conviction about the Spirit’s presence. Jesus promised that it was to our benefit that he would ascend to heaven because he would send the advocate, the comforter to us. A downpayment of our salvation. The presence of God in our midst that propels us on and teaches us what we need to know to follow Christ. But we also need to have a certain awe and reverence. The Holy Spirit is not a power given to us like we were some superheroes, the Holy Spirit is the Holy God in our midst and Lord over the Church. The Holy Spirit gives us life. And the Holy Spirit is not, not, at our command.

It is a continual temptation for the Church in all ages, and by extension for Christians of all ages, to assume the Holy Spirit is ours as a possession. That the gifts of God are ours for our disposal. But the Spirit is not our possession, he is not at our disposal, the Spirit is the living God in our midst. As the Lord was present to the Israelites in their wilderness wanderings as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day, in these latter days God makes his presence known among his people in his Spirit.

It is easy for us to think of God as at our disposal because God is so faithful and generous. There’s an old GK Chesterton line about God’s eternal youthfulness, "Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” So too it is when we clasp our hands in prayer or gather around the table. God never tires of our prayers or our intercessions. But each and every time God acts out of his free love and grace. Not out of any command we might make of God. Not on account of our own authority.

We are yet sinners. We are yet broken and incomplete. God’s full salvation has not yet been seen. We are all pilgrims on the way, sinners seeking salvation. What we will be has not yet been revealed.

God makes his presence known in the Holy Spirit. And yet at the same time God promises more. The full promises of God have yet to be fulfilled. This morning Paul turns our attention to the end. The end, Paul says, that is coming like a thief in the night. The end, he says, that comes in sudden destruction. But an end that need not surprise us. Because we are children of the day, not the night. We have the Holy Spirit in our midst teaching us all things. And through the Spirit we know we are not destined for wrath, but we are destined for salvation in Christ. And that same Spirit may keep us sober, keep us awake, prepare us for the fullness of the Lord’s coming.

We should never presume that salvation is in hand. We should never presume that we have such authority that we can call down God’s power at will. We should never presume that we have made it, that our salvation is secure. If we presume we are no longer a people of hope.

The future is in God’s hands. The movements of the Spirit are the free movements of God. Our salvation is in God’s hands. Recognizing this is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom, and also the beginning of holiness. All is in Gods hands. But he is patient, long-suffering, full of loving kindness. The love of God endures forever. We may have hope in his promise. A promise he makes known in the Spirit of God in our midst.

Social Holiness: Rapture

Social Holiness: Rapture

God Renews All Things

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. Nov. 12th, 2023

Sin can be characterized as selfishness. It is our tendency to curve in on ourselves at the expense of others, and ultimately at the expense of ourselves. Sin leads to death, because we need to be open to others in order to live. So pride is placing yourself above others, greed is seeking to possess as much money and resources as possible, envy is wishing what someone else had was yours and hating them for it, lust is seeking to possess someone else as a sexual object, and so on. Holiness is the opposite of sin. Where sin draws us in on ourselves until we die, holiness opens us up to others that we would act selflessly and in love.

Holiness, in that sense, requires hope. As holiness opens us up to God and neighbor that we would encounter them not as the objects of our own satisfaction but as subjects we may love, hope is our open dependence on God. Our trust that he will bring his promises to past and bring all things to their end. You can’t have holiness if you are without hope.

You can’t follow Christ if you don’t have hope.

It is no surprise, then, that Paul speaks to our hope in Christ this morning. Paul tells the Church in Thessaloniki that he does not want them to be uninformed about those who have died, that they might grieve like those who have no hope. Perhaps Paul had heard that people were worried about people who had died since the Church was established since Christ had yet to return. If Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead, and people die before he comes back, what becomes of them? How can this be? Paul wants to answer this.

He tells them that through Jesus God will bring with him those who have died. And he explains how. When Jesus returns the dead in Christ will rise first, and we will all be caught up with them to meet Jesus in the air. This, Paul says, ought to encourage us.

This passage is often misunderstood and it’s important to get some clarity because it concerns our hope in Christ. And if Paul wants us to be encouraged by his words we ought to be encouraged by what he actually says not what we think he says. This passage has often been interpreted as a text about the rapture. That is the idea that before Jesus comes to earth he will rapture up all the Christians so they will not have to endure the great tribulation. The most famous exponent of this theory now is probably the Left Behind series of books. The trouble is the rapture is taught nowhere in Scripture and no Christian believed it before the 19th century.

Our hope is not that we might leave the earth behind, or God might deliver us from suffering. The whole book of Revelation makes no sense if you assume the Church will be raptured before the tribulation takes place. The book is written to console Christians in tribulation. It presumes the Church will suffer, is suffering, and wants to know how long until Jesus returns.

Our hope is in our bodily resurrection and a new heaven and new earth. We do not hope to leave earth. We hope and pray for the redemption of this earth and for all things to be made new. For every tear to be wiped from every eye. For the glory of God to shine like the sun. Christianity is not an escapist religion. It’s not that we think we leave earth for heaven, it’s that God brings heaven to earth.

The image that Paul is using here is based on a royal entrance. In the Roman world if a king or general were to visit a city dignitaries would first leave the city to invite the king in. And there would be festivities. We actually get an example of such an entrance in Palm Sunday. Jesus is first met outside the city walls by the multitudes who lead him in with singing and rejoicing. Paul tells us it will be like that at the end when Jesus arrives in glory to set the world right. The archangels trumpet will herald his arrival, the dead in Christ will rise first and get in front of the line. Then the church militant will join them and meet Jesus in the air. The part that is implicit, but clear in the full context of Paul’s writings, is that Jesus will then come to earth in judgment. Because he must be all in all.

The key here is our hope in resurrection and in God making all things new. Our hope is not that we will fly away and abandon this earth. Our hope is that God will redeem this earth and make it new. God does not abandon the things he creates. He redeems them. God does not abandon us, God redeems us. And so too, we are not to abandon the world. But we are to be witnesses to the love and glory of God. Joyful, hopeful, loving witnesses. A people so full of scriptural holiness that we reform the nation and Church.

Social Holiness: The Prism of the Cross

Social Holiness: The Prism of the Cross

The Cross is the Ultimate Revelation of God

1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. Nov. 5th, 2023

C.S. Lewis said that we ought to read books from different eras because each era has its own blindness. That’s a piece of advice I’ve taken to heart. When I prepare for sermons I make sure to read commentaries not just from the last 50 years, but from hundreds of years ago. I don’t just read contemporary theology but works from the Church Fathers or the Reformers or from wildly different contexts. It’s hard to see beyond ones own blinders but also very rewarding. You also get a deeper sense of the blinders of past generations. I remember reading a book from 1907 on Christianity and politics, as one does, and there was a strange aside about the dysgenic consequences of medieval monasticism. You may wonder, what does dysgenic mean? It means the author feared monasticism decreased the quality of the racial stock. In other words, he was using the language of eugenics.

In case anyone isn’t familiar eugenics is the pseudoscience that says we can improve the quality of human beings through breeding. As one improves a dog say, or cattle, one can improve humans. Find a stud, have them breed. Find people with disabilities and keep them from breeding.

Eugenics was once taken very seriously as a science in the United States. In fact one of the centers of eugenic activism and thought was in Michigan. I don’t need to get into that sordid history. Ultimately the Nazis in Germany took eugenics to its logical conclusions and people saw it for what it is. What I really want to focus on is the way eugenics was preached. The American Eugenics Society once held a competition for sermons on the topic of eugenics. Luckily we have the submissions. I want to share a few quotes.

“The Bible is a book of eugenics. The opening chapters of Matthew and Luke are virtually chapters on eugenics. Christ was born of a family that represented a long process of religious and moral selection. He came from a stock of priestly and prophetic men; a stock of men that represented the highest product of religious and moral selection in the history of the world. “

“From Mount Sinai, God is thundering his commandment against bowing down to idols, a sort of worship which an unobserving man might say would do no harm, but which God knew would poison the bodies, minds and morals of not merely the generation that sinned, but of the generations to come. God is warning most solemnly that the iniquity of the fathers will run in the blood of the coming generations, and is pointing out that terrible law of heredity, so clearly established now by scientists, that blood will tell, that criminality, insanity, idiocy, tuberculosis, alcoholism, and other vices, whose strong corruption inhabits our germ-plasms, leap from parents to children, damning the offspring before it is even born.”

"But the fact is that long before a child is born the germ plasm which he will transmit and which will determine the heredity of his offspring has been set aside in little glands and can in no way be affected, except by gross chemical disturbances of the blood, as in alcholic [sic] poisoning, or the penetration of disease germs within these reproductive glands themselves. … The flippant may ask, "What responsibility have we for our neighbors' children?" But those who have apprehended the spirit of religion will reply, "we are one body in Christ Jesus. "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member is honored all the members rejoice with it." There is a sickness in our body, a faintness and a spread of disease. And we shall seek healing, redemption and salvation, till we behold the coming of the Community of God and its peace.”

These are all men of God, students of Scripture, going to their bibles and producing arguments as to why the disabled should not be allowed to reproduce. We find that morally abhorrent today. We may also think their biblical examples are total stretches. Do the genealogies of Jesus really exist to show us Jesus’ great racial line? Did God really say the sins of the fathers will be visited on the sons because of heredity? Does being one body in Christ Jesus really mean we have an obligation to keep disabled people from having children? But they clearly thought they were preaching the gospel. That the word of God, in their day, meant promoting eugenic theories. What are we to make of this?

This question is no mere academic or intellectual exercise. It’s not an idle matter. It ought to strike us as deeply relevant. Because people did not just turn to their bibles to justify eugenics. They turned to their bibles to justify slavery. They turned to their bibles to justify segregation. They turned to their bibles to justify genocide. All sorts of hellish justifications have been made from scripture. And let us not forget that when Satan sought to tempt Jesus he did so with the words of Scripture.

Paul tells us this morning that when the Church in Thessaloniki received the word of God they recognized that it was not a human word, but it is God’s word. And that God’s word is not idle but is at work within them. That word being the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen. The key to the Scriptures. That is where we must go.

The Gospel of Eugenics, the Gospel of Slavery, the Gospel of Genocide, does this reflect Christ crucified and risen? In all the sermons from the competition that I read, none of them reference the Cross. They cannot. Because they do not present a cruciform Gospel. It is, as Paul would say, another gospel. They may know the words of scripture, but they’ve lost the plot as the British would say. They don’t know the story.

The rule of thumb for Scripture is everything must go through the prism of the ultimate revelation of God, and that is Christ on his cross. Does this reflect the love shown to us in Christ? Does this reflect the gracious action of God in delivering us from sin? Does this reflect Christ’s self-emptying, Christ’s self-donation? Or are we twisting the words to feed another narrative? Do we use Christian like language, and give the words a different meaning? So grace is no longer grace, forgiveness no longer forgiveness, love no longer love.

We must continually challenge ourselves to see clearly, read rightly, and love one another as Christ loved us. This is why we cannot pursue holiness alone. We pursue holiness together in the life of the Church. This is why discipleship cannot be a solo endeavor. Why there is no holiness but social holiness. God brings us together that we would build one another up, and point each other to the Cross and empty tomb.

Social Holiness: Reaching Out

Social Holiness: Reaching Out

Be Perfect as Your Heavenly Father is Perfect

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. Oct. 29th, 2023

John Wesley is often quoted as saying, “the gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection.” This is often misunderstood. Some people take “social holiness” to be a more pious way of saying social justice. Certainly holiness and justice do not conflict. But John Wesley really means to emphasize the social, corporate, nature of our salvation. We are not made holy by ourselves. We are not saved by ourselves. God works in and through the Church. God saves us together.

Or, more to the point, holiness simply is a way of relating to each other and to God. There is no holiness but social holiness because holiness concerns our relationships.

One of the effects of sin is to make us selfish. We are selfish almost instinctually. St. Augustine of Hippo said we are full of a lust for domination and were curved in on ourselves. We wish to dominate and control ourselves and others, and we are self-seeking self-aggrandizing creatures. But, generally speaking, a creature that has curved in on itself is a creature that is dead. We can’t be self reliant, we simply have to reach out. Herbert McCabe, a Dominican theologian, put it beautifully when he said the dilemma of human life is that we know that if we truly love others we will get crucified for it, but if we don’t love others we will be dead already. He was just summarizing Augustine’s point, and by extension Paul’s as well. Sin leads to selfishness, control, pride, and a lust for domination.

Holiness reverses that. In holiness we are open to those we encounter. We are selfless in love. We imitate Jesus who cured all who would come to him, who taught all, who engaged all, who died for all. And we imitate our Father in heaven who makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike. “Be perfect,” Jesus tells us, “as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

There’s a beautiful story Dostoevsky tells in the Brothers Karamazov that illustrates what I mean. I know I’ve told this story before, but a good story is worth retelling. It’s a short parable about a very wicked woman who died in sin. The devils came and plunged her into the lake of Hell. But her Guardian Angel looked for one good deed that she might use to deliver the woman from the torment of hell. I think it’s important to remember that God is not out to damn anyone and makes every effort to save. The angel remembers that the woman once picked an onion and gave it to a beggar. She tells God this and God says, “You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.”

So the angel goes to the lake of fire and holds out the onion to her. The woman grabs the onion and the angel slowly draws her out of the lake. As soon as her ankles leave the flames the other sinners notice and leap for their salvation. They grip her ankles and form a chain hoping that they all might be taken out with her.

But she was a very wicked woman, so she began to kick them off. “I’m the one being pulled out! It’s my onion! Not yours!” She shouts.

And as soon as those words left her lips, the onion broke. So the angel wept and went away.

Her one good deed may have been used by God to deliver many. But instead of seeing the glory of God she grasped her own salvation in selfishness. And so the onion broke. That is sin. Sin is thinking about ourselves above others, our own glory of overs, being curved in on ourselves and seeking our own satiation at the expense of the suffering of others. Holiness is opening up to others, love in self-sacrifice. Mercy and forgiveness and joy at the glory of God.

We may be the wicked woman, but by God’s grace we may be made into the image of his Son.

This morning Paul talks about his own ministry in Thessaloniki. He says, “We might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

This is holiness, this is love. Paul lays aside his own rights for the sake of his sisters and brothers in Christ. He shares not only the Gospel, but his own self. He, as far as his earthly flesh can allow, empties himself the way Jesus did in taking the form of a slave and taking on human likeness. He imitates the very love of God. Because holiness is imitation of God in the Spirit.

There is no holiness but social holiness. Holiness simply is the reversal of sin, our opening up to others and reaching out in love. And this social holiness is the holiness of the saints.

Social Holiness: The Holiness of God

Social Holiness: The Holiness of God

Faith, Love, Hope in Christ

1 Thessalonians 1:10

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. Oct. 22nd, 2023

The story of the Methodist revival in England is remarkable. It all began with a small group of students at Oxford who would gather to read the scriptures, pray, and encourage one another in their walk with the Lord. They were so serious in their devotions that other students derisively called them the Holy Club. Later on they would derisively call them Methodists, because they were so methodical in their personal devotions. One of the leading figures of this group was John Wesley.

John Wesley would later take up a job as a missionary with his brother Charles, the famous hymn writer. The mission was an absolute disaster and nearly ended John’s career in ministry. But when he returned to England he joined with a group of Moravians, a sort of Lutheran pietist, and there famously felt his heart strangely warmed. It was this stuffy Oxford don, and failed missionary who would later join his old friend George Whitfield (perhaps the first celebrity, and an early member of the Holy Club back at Oxford) and preach out in the fields to the workers. Between the powerful preaching of George Whitfield, the beautiful hymns of Charles Wesley, and the preaching and organizational genius of John Wesley, the Methodist revival blew up in England and lasted well beyond John Wesley’s own long life.

When the revival was well underway John Wesley’s United Society gathered in Annual Conference to work through what they were to teach and how they were to teach it. At one point Wesley was asked, “What may we reasonably believe to be God's design in raising up the Preachers called Methodists?”

His answer would become Methodism’s mission statement for decades: “To reform the nation and, in particular, the Church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land.”

The engine and purpose of the Methodist revival was scriptural holiness. But what is scriptural holiness? Or, rather, what is holiness anyway? What does it mean to be holy? To seek holiness? To spread scriptural holiness over the land? There are no self-evident answers to these questions. Perhaps that explains some of the predicament Methodism finds itself in.

Over the next five Sundays we are going to cover Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians with an eye to his teaching on holiness. It is easy to pass over what Paul has to say about holiness because it pervades every letter of his. Holiness is the air Paul breathes. It ought to be the air we breathe as well.

Our reading this morning is from Paul’s thanksgiving at the beginning of the letter. He writes, “We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here we have our first description of holiness.

Holiness is faith, love, and hope in Jesus Christ. Holiness is faith, our allegiance to and belief in the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Holiness is love, our seeking the good for others as we would want it for ourselves. Our constant care and concern for others. Our service to the world. And holiness is hope, our dependence on God, our trust in his promises, our conviction that in the end he will make all things right. And all these things are given to us in Christ. When we share in faith, love, and hope, we grow in holiness and are made more like Jesus.

But this dangerously makes holiness out to be a mere moral quality. Maybe you’ve heard the term “holier than thou.” That’s a degradation of holiness. Anyone who uses their moral qualities as a way to one up someone else is not truly holy. That’s another way sin enters our lives.

Holiness is more than a mere moral quality, then. It is also the presence of God in our lives. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit amongst us in power. Paul also writes, “For we know, brothers and sisters, beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” The Church of Thessaloniki was not made a holy Church because of their moral perfection. Because they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. Because they made themselves better than other people. The Church of Thessaloniki was made a holy Church because the Holy Spirit dwelt among them in the word preached. They were made a holy Church because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in joy. A presence that was made palpable in their preaching and prayers and song. A presence that made itself known in power.

We must combine these two things then. What is holiness? It is God’s presence in our midst through the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit is present we are made more like God. And God builds us up in faith, love, and hope in Christ.

There is no holiness without the Holy Spirit who dwells in our midst. And the Holy Spirit imparts gifts, foremost the gifts of faith, love, and hope. This, ultimately, is scriptural holiness. This is the engine of revival, and the purpose of the Church. We are the community where God’s Holy Spirit might dwell. And we are the people who are called by God to be imitators of God in Christ. This is our high calling and purpose. But it is also the work of God in us. Because the whole Christian life, and our walk in holiness is, ultimately, sheer gift.

Kingdom: Faith

Kingdom: Faith

The Kingdom of God is Seen in the Eyes of Faith

Matthew 14:22-33

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. August 13th, 2023

I was recently reading a book about the Kingdom of God. It identified various spheres in our society that, in the books words, need to be “invaded” by God fearing Christians to take the nation back for Christ. In other words, building the Kingdom meant creating a nation by Christians and for Christians. And this required infiltrating many aspects of society. The authors explained how we need to have both the heart of a King and the heart of a servant. We need to exercise the authority and lordship of God by assuming positions of power, but we need to wield those positions as servants for the good of others. But, as Jesus sardonically says in Luke, the kings of the gentiles call themselves benefactors and rule over others.

What struck me reading the book was that in no case did it cover the manner in which Christ rules. “My Kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus says. Why? But because he rules not from a stately throne but from the Cross. If we miss this point, that God rules the nations from a tree, we will miss what it means to speak of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom might morph into our own grasp for power, however much we think we are helping others. When the Kingdom is come in Jesus’ sacrifice on behalf of the world.

Jesus is the personification of the Kingdom of God. In his ministry he brings mercy, peace, and healing. This is all what the prophets said the Kingdom would entail. And, as we heard this morning, he commands even the winds and seas. He would grant this to us as well. But the Kingdom is not a matter of power, of human glory, of wealth, or strength. The Kingdom is seen and grasped only in faith.

This morning we are told Jesus dismisses the crowds and sends the disciples away on a boat. He, himself, goes up to a mountain to pray. James, John, Peter, and Andrew are all fishermen, and knew the waters of the sea of galilee very well. But when the storm arises even they have difficulty and are blown far off course.

Early that morning, when Jesus had planned to meet up with them, they were far from land. But that did not stop Jesus, who walked out on the stormy waters to meet them. At first, the disciples are terrified believing they have seen a ghost. But Jesus called out to them, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Now Peter was the stubborn and impudent sort. So he cried out, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus replied, “come.” So Peter got out of the boat. There’s not a lot of description here, but I can’t imagine Peter jumped out. Can you? I think as boisterous and strong headed as he was he still put a toe out first to test the waters. Then laid down his right foot. Then, seeing the water miraculously held the weight of his foot, gingerly put the other foot out. Until, in joy, he realized he could walk.

But as he walked out on the water a strong wind came, and he was frightened. And fear and faith do not always mix. So he began to sink. Here, again, we’re not given many details. But I imagine the water gave way and he plunged. Peter would likely have been an adept swimmer, he lived on the water all his life. But even adept swimmers struggle with the current and in the waves. He cried out, “Lord! Save me!”

And just when he thought he might perish under the waves Jesus held out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” Jesus asked, “why did you doubt?” And then, at that moment, the storm stopped. And those in the boat began to worship saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.” Truly, to you belongs the Kingdom.

Peter saw wonders, but even then he had to respond to those wonders in faith. By the power of God Peter could walk on water with his Lord. But even then, only by the power of faith. Faith is confidence in God, trust in his word, strong belief in his presence, work, and mercy. The Kingdom can only be perceived by the eyes of faith.

The one who walked on water, healed the sick, raised the dead, is also the same who was brutally crucified. And yet, what seems like a defeat with fleshly eyes is a victory from the eyes of faith. Through the eyes of faith the Kingdom is witnessed not just in healing, but in suffering. Not just in plenty, but in poverty. Not just in fame, but in obscurity. By the eyes of faith we see the Kingdom in all its glory. By faith we participate in the work of the Kingdom. By faith we may even walk on water. If we would not let the winds of this age drive us to doubt.

Kingdom: Discovery

Kingdom: Discovery

The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of God

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. July 30th, 2023

The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of God. I sometimes hear people talk about the Kingdom as if it were our enterprise. In this case the Kingdom becomes a just social order, a moral social order, or a more robust Church. Sometimes I hear people talk about “building the Kingdom.” But nowhere in the Bible does it talk about the Kingdom that we are called to build. Rather, as we see this morning, the Kingdom is a matter of growth, of discovery. It is the little and imperceptible thing that turns out to be a source of great comfort and joy.

When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God he uses parables. A parable is a story or image, most often out of common life, that leads to some insight beyond the story. Parables can be puzzles, at times Jesus seems to use them precisely to confuse people. At other times parables are great teaching devices that put a point in a clear and memorable way. But other times, as in the case of these parables, they more function to help us see the Kingdom more clearly. If we grasp these parables then we can attune our sight to see the reign of God today.

First, Jesus tells us, the Kingdom is like a mustard seed. Though it is the “smallest of seeds” he says, it grows into the greatest of shrubs. Even into a tree. And even the birds of the air can come and take rest in its branches. The Kingdom, then, grows from the small, the imperceptible, the seemingly insignificant. The Kingdom does not come by grand gestures, but by the day to day. When I was hanging out with Catholic Workers they had a sign over the sink that said, “everyone wants a revolution but no one wants to do the dishes.” Everyone wants to sign a big check, but no one wants to hand a twenty or buy a lunch. Everyone wants to cure the sick, but no one wants to lend a helping hand. That is hyperbole, of course. As the whole parable is. But the Kingdom arrives on a short and narrow road. Not a freeway. God makes his grace known in the little acts. When you’re not seen, when you don’t have a clear end in mind, that’s when God works.

Second, Jesus says, the kingdom is like yeast a woman mixed in with flour. Until all was leavened. This parable is much like the first. You don’t see the yeast in the flour. But you see the result. You don’t see the Kingdom, but you see what it accomplishes. The imperceptible microbes make a big difference. The giving of alms, the little acts of renunciation, the little prayers, do much in the economy of God.

Third, Jesus compares the Kingdom to a treasure hidden in a field. Someone finds the treasure, and hides it. And since he knows the treasure is worth more than all he owns, he joyfully sells all he has to buy that field. And wins the treasure. He also compares the Kingdom to a merchant in search of fine pearls. And when he finds an absolutely astonishing pearl he sells all he has to purchase it. Here the Kingdom isn’t something that is made, or built, or cultivated. It is something that is found. And the discovery is so overwhelming, so exciting, so joyous, that they run off to sell all that they have to buy it. Jesus tells us to seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. They put the treasure first, forsaking all they have, giving it all up, for the sake of the treasure. That is the Kingdom of God. Something more joyous, precious, and worthwhile than all things on this earth.

And, finally, he compares the Kingdom to a dragnet. This hearkens back to last Sunday. The Kingdom is like a net that drags in all sorts of fish. And the fish needed to be sorted at the end of the trip. So too with the Kingdom! God claims many people. God claims our whole selves. God is not very picky. But, in the end, all will be sorted out. Important here, I think, is that the Kingdom of God is shown to be the Kingdom of God.

So what is the Kingdom? It is God’s rule. It is the joy he brings. It is a life of peace. It is mercy and forgiveness, not just from God but also amongst one another. It is the bonds of charity that make us one. And it is not so much something we do, as much as something we find. Something more precious than the life we once knew. Something more precious than all the treasures of this world. And it is something that is at first imperceptible. But when it grows many may find comfort and rest. It is something that is here but yet awaits its full completion at the end of the age. But now we may find peace, comfort, and joy in the power of God in our midst.

Kingdom: Patience

Kingdom: Patience

God Calls Us to Patience

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. July 23rd, 2023

Pastor Phil, before he retired, left me a garden. I am not half the gardener he is, and I have not been nearly as attentive as I ought to be. The garden he left me was full of a variety of fruits, greens, root vegetables, and the like. Varieties that I did not know existed grew in that garden. And all I needed to do was water it. Year two rolled around and I let it lie fallow. Mainly because of my own laziness. Though I justified it to myself by saying the land needs a sabbath year.

But this year I’m taking it seriously. I’ve planted squash, tomatoes, peppers, onions, cabbage, things I’m certain I will put to use. And I’ve been diligent in watering it. But what I have underestimated, what I’m having difficulty dealing with, is the sheer amount of weeds that keep sprouting up. Weeds in the flower bed. Weeds among the rhubarb. Weeds in the onions. Weeds by the peppers. Weeds, weeds, and more weeds. I was generous enough to leave a patch of land for the weeds to grow and help the pollinators. But do you think the weeds appreciated that? No, they grow where they will.

In Jesus’ parable this morning, his parable about the Kingdom, the weeds don’t grow simply because they will. They grow because of sabotage. Jesus compares the Kingdom to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But one night, while his servants were sleeping, an enemy snuck in and sowed weeds among the wheat. Or, literally, he sowed weeds in the wheat. And left before anyone noticed. Over time the weeds that the enemy sowed grew up among the wheat. Perplexing and troubling the servants who knew all the seed they sowed was good.

The owner of that farm knew what was going on. “An enemy has done this,” he said. The servants asked if he wanted them to go and pluck the weeds. The sort of backbreaking labor I have been putting off for days and weeks. But the owner tells them no, because the weeds are so entwined with the good wheat that if they were to pull the weeds they would damage the good wheat too. But when harvest comes they will take it all and separate the good and the bad.

Matthew doesn’t explain all of Jesus’ parables, but we get an explanation here. The disciples ask Jesus to explain the ominous parable of the weeds. And he tells them the one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. We might imagine, given the similarity of the parables, that the seed of this parable is the same of seed from the parable of the sower. It is the seed of the word, the seed of the gospel, the seed of faith that grows in receptive hearts. The field is the world, the good seed is the children of the Kingdom. But the bad seeds are children of the evil one. And the reapers are angels. At the end of days, Jesus says, God will send his angels to harvest, separate the good from the bad. The bad will be burned. The good will go to everlasting life.

This parable reminds us of two things. The first is that we live in a mixed and messed up world. Good is constantly intertwined with bad. It can be hard to discern what is righteous and what is unrighteous. The line between child of God and child of the devil runs through our own hearts as well. Problems we experience in the Church are not new. The Church has always been mixed, always been encumbered by weeds, and has always been handicapped in her mission. If that mission were entirely the responsibility of her members.

But the second thing the parable reminds us of is more important. We don’t need Jesus to tell us that the good can be opaque, evil is all around us, and the Church has a mix of the two. That’s empirical. From the earliest Church we see false teaching, lies, immorality, greed, and so on. What’s important is what Jesus tells us to do about it. And that is be patient.

The workers of the farm are impatient. They want to solve this problem that plagues the crop. And so they ask if they can go out into the field and tear out the weeds. But the owner tells them if they do that they will tear up the good seed too, the two are so intertwined. We might wish for a pure Church. But then we’d have to remove ourselves as well. That line runs deep. And in this age the two, good and evil, cannot be so easily separated. So the owner tells them to be patient. Not lazy. But patient.

Wait. Wait for the end of the age. When all is harvested, when all is sorted, when we will be able to judge the good fruit from the bad, the bad seed from the good. Patience can be hard for us to hear, or hard for us to bear. But patience is a premiere Christian virtue. We can afford to be patient in the midst of trial and scandal because we put our hope in the one who is patient for our sake. Who desires that no one be condemned. Who has given us all the time in the world to spread good seed, and to know his grace.

The Kingdom of God, in this age, is a mixed kingdom. But it is also a kingdom of patience. A kingdom of patient people following a patient God. Relying on him to perfectly fulfill his promises at the end.

Kingdom: Wisdom

Kingdom: Wisdom

Jesus is the Wisdom of God

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. July 9th, 2023

It’s easy to pine over the legends of old. What would it have been like to see Martin Luther King Jr. preach? To watch the Lombardi Packers at Lambeau? Or see the Beatles live? We may have legends in our own time, sure. But they don’t reach that stature until they’re already gone, before they become whiffs of nostalgia.

If only the people of first century Palestine could appreciate the absolutely legendary individuals who walked among them! John the Baptist, who Jesus himself calls the greatest of men. A man who lived an absolutely angelic life in the wilderness. He devoted himself to prayer, to fasting, to preaching the word of the Lord. He managed to subsist on nothing but locusts and wild honey. He wore nothing more than camel’s hair. He preached powerful hellfire and brimstone and many came to hear him speak.

And there was also Jesus. A man who could cast out demons, cure the sick, raise the dead. A man who confounded pharisees and scribes. Who comforted the downtrodden, the tax collector, and sinner. Who proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom of God.

Yet we hear this morning from Jesus himself neither of them were appreciated in their time. “For John came neither eating nor drinking,” Jesus says, "and they say, 'He has a demon.’” John was a little too strict, a little too otherworldly. People swarmed to hear him speak, but he was also a subject of gossip. No man could live that way, we might imagine them saying. He must be possessed. We know Herod Antipas himself feared him, he had him arrested because he told Herod not to marry his brother’s wife. But he kept him around because, entranced by his weirdness, he liked to listen to him. But he didn’t want to follow him.

Jesus, too, we learn became a subject of mockery and opposition. “the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” No one knows what they want! If John is too strict and otherworldly, Jesus is too debauched. Where John fasts, Jesus does not fast. Where John stays in the wilderness, Jesus finds his home among tax collectors and sinners. That is to say, among the wrong sort of people. The sort of people who run afoul of the Law, the sort of people who are not like us upstanding citizens with all the right opinions.

God blessed that generation with two of the greatest men of all time. And both were rejected for two opposite reasons. “Yet,” Jesus says, “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

Everyone seeks wisdom. Wisdom is the sort of knowledge that leads to good and right action. We all want wisdom because we all want to live well. We want to be happy. We want to do good for ourselves and others. And because we are made free wisdom doesn’t come to us by instinct. We need to learn wisdom. Unlike many things we learn in life, how to read, how to do math, the history of our nation, wisdom cannot be taught in a classroom or by a text book. Wisdom can be hard to find. We can easily be led astray. We can be given bad directions and go down the wrong roads. And yet we only have one life to live, only a lifetime to learn wisdom and make use of it for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our world.

What makes John and Jesus so unpalatable is the wisdom they present is peculiar and counterintuitive. It is peculiar and counterintuitive because it is not human wisdom, but God’s wisdom. Jesus says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” This is the wisdom hidden from the intelligent and wise. This is the wisdom that is so off-putting at times, and difficult to understand. That wisdom is Jesus himself.

"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The Bible speaks of the Covenant as a yoke Jews put on themselves. Jesus, too, begs us to put on a yoke. To put on his yoke. To learn his wisdom. To bear his burden. To follow him in his suffering, in his meekness, in his forgiveness, in his peacefulness. To know his wisdom. A wisdom vindicated by his resurrection, and his deeds of power.

The wisdom of Christ makes no sense in the world as it is. The meek do not inherit this earth. Peacemakers are not always appreciated in their time. Those who weep do not always laugh. Sometimes things do not turn out alright in the end. But Jesus came proclaiming a Kingdom. A Kingdom where he is Lord. A Kingdom where the world is turned upside down. And when we see things in light of this Kingdom, and we discipline ourselves to see the rule of God in our midst, the wisdom of Christ comes into focus. And we understand, truly, how it is that the way of the cross leads to life and peace.

The next few Sundays we will be focusing on different parables and teachings Jesus gives about the Kingdom of God. And we will see how when we understand the Kingdom we understand the wisdom of Christ. We will see how the yoke of Christ’s wisdom, when we put it upon ourselves, proves to be less burdensome than we might imagine. Instead, we find, it is easier than the so called wisdom of the world. It lighter that the demands of this world. Because the wisdom Christ is, alone, leads to eternal life.

Justified: Gotta Serve Somebody

Justified: Gotta Serve Somebody

God Gives Life

Romans 6:12-23

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. July 2nd, 2023

One of the best things about moving to the Thumb is the lack of mosquitos. I don’t know if it’s because there’s less standing water, or if the wind blows them all away but I can sit out in my backyard without a care in the world. When I was in the UP the parsonage was, unfortunately, behind a swamp where the local pond emptied out into. The wind blew the mosquitos out of the swamp and into my backyard. They would swarm like gnats if I sat out there for too long. And there’s only so much bug spray can do for you.

My body would get eaten up by the mosquitos and black flies each summer, no matter how much I did to stay away. And I knew what I’m supposed to do with mosquito bites. You’re supposed to ignore them and the itching goes away. Or, if it’s really bad, you can put camomile lotion on the bite. What you’re absolutely not supposed to do, however, is scratch. The more you scratch the more the bite itches. The more the bite itches, the more you scratch. And it becomes a vicious cycle until finally you scratch too hard and begin to bleed. Though, hopefully, once it gets that far it stops itching.

I know better, but I do it anyway. Isn’t that the condition of Sin? When Paul talks about Sin he means more than acts we commit. We can distinguish between sin with a little s and Sin with a capital S. With a little s we mean discrete acts. A lie we tell, the act of theft, or what have you. But we do not commit little s sins simply because we want to. We commit little s sins because of the power of capital S Sin. Sin with a capital S is a slavedriver. A bad boss. A furious foreman. Sin with the capital S commandeers us. Uses our members as its weapons. Forces us to do what we would prefer not to do. Takes the things we do and twists them to hurt ourselves and others.

I used the example of scratching an itch for relief even though I know scratching that itch comes with consequences. But there are other itches Sin commands us to scratch. The little s sins. We know we shouldn’t tell tales but we do it anyway. We know we shouldn’t lust but we lust anyway. We know we shouldn’t be vengeful but we are vengeful anyway. We know we shouldn’t be envious but we show envy anyway. This is all evidence of being held captive by a power stronger than we are. Paul diagnoses that power as Sin, in league with another power called Death.

We might like to imagine that we are free when we engage in sin. That obedience to God is what’s constraining our wills. When we sin we do what we really want. The fun stuff. When we are holy we are doing what we don’t want. Eating our vegetables. But that is not the picture Paul gives us this morning. The picture we are given is of two Lords. Sin and God. And we gotta serve somebody.

Paul writes, “For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.” There are two ways. We can serve Sin, we can serve the Lord. But we will never serve ourselves. Sin claims we are free, but we actually grow sin addicted. We find ourselves bound by the things that hurt and harm. God tells us to be obedient, but what we come to find in obedience is life and happiness.

For as Paul famously says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Sin is the taskmaster that makes us earn death. But God doesn’t ask us to earn anything. God doesn’t require our work. God only asks for our faith. God accepts the ungodly. God forgives the sinner. And God gives to us his life.

It goes without saying that everyone is looking for happiness. Sin promises happiness, but all we are doing is scratching an itch so hard we open a wound. God promises happiness as well. It is happiness founded in obedience. It is happiness given as a matter of grace. God promises happiness to all who have faith, to all who cling to Christ and the work he has done. And God’s promises are always fulfilled.

Justified: No Dominion

Justified: No Dominion

God Brings Us From the Sphere of Death to Life

Romans 6:1b-11

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. June 25th, 2023

Paul’s teaching on justification is radical. He says that God regards as righteous not those who follow the Mosaic Law, but those who have faith in Jesus Christ. We are not regarded as in the right by God because we have remained faithful to the covenant given to the patriarchs and Moses, but because God has done a new thing in Jesus outside of that covenant. By the death and resurrection of Jesus, by his blood and by his life, we may know salvation.

What makes this so radical is that it takes the work of salvation out of our hands. We do not stay in grace by doing the “works of the Law.” We stay in grace by clinging in faith to Jesus. Salvation is not a matter of what we do. Salvation is a matter of what God has done. This is what Paul means to emphasize.

But Paul’s emphasis on the priority of God’s action in our salvation can lead to misinterpretation. John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, was very worried about how Paul’s teaching on justification might be misinterpreted. He worried that people might hear that we are justified by faith alone and think good and evil do not matter. That it doesn’t matter what you do at all. You can lie, cheat, and steal and none of that has any effect on your salvation. This is what is called antinomianism. The idea that morality doesn’t matter, good and evil doesn’t matter, rules don’t matter. If that’s what Paul is getting at it certainly puts him at odds with the rest of scripture!

But in our reading this morning Paul wants to take this misinterpretation of his teaching head on. He asks, rhetorically, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” That is, if as I said last week God justifies the ungodly. And if it is precisely the ungodly who are justified and no one else. Shouldn’t we keep on in sin so that we receive grace upon grace? If God is this cosmic mark handing out grace to everyone who comes begging, shouldn’t we just remain in sin and keep getting the handouts?

Paul’s response is emphatic, “by no means!” But his reasoning is interesting, “How can we who died to sin go on living in it?”

Some people misunderstand justification by putting it in isolation from the rest of the Christian life and thinking that it is simply a matter of God’s declaration and nothing more. That God looks on us miserable sinners and says “you’re a saint.” Like I might look at a pomeranian and say “that’s a wolf” or a box turtle and say “that’s a dragon.” In other words, God is lying or pretending. You see this sometimes with people who think of salvation in terms of being “once saved always saved.” They can tell you the day, hour, or minute they accepted Jesus Christ as savior and Lord. They said the prayer. They gave their life over. But then turned around and lived about the same way as they did before. But they said the prayer! They’re reckoned as righteous in the sight of God!

Paul says that we can’t do that because we who have died to sin can’t go on living in it. Justification is not simply a matter of having our sins forgiven. It is not simply a matter of God regarding us as righteous even though we aren’t. It is a matter of being incorporated into the divine life. Of being regarded as children of God. That means being taken out of one sphere into another. We are ripped out of the domain of death, and we are brought into the Kingdom of God. And this is done through our incorporation into Jesus’ death so we may know his resurrection.

“Do you not know,” Paul writes, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Baptism literally means “immersion” or “dipping.” The earliest baptisms were all done by dipping people under water and bringing them back up. The symbol is not that of being cleansed, but of being killed. Of plunging your old self under the waters so you can be raised as the new self. In fact, the earliest baptismal liturgies we have that are intact include rites where the baptisands strip naked, are oiled up like gladiators, descend into the waters, rise, and are clothed with white linens. It signifies that they died and were born again. Took off the old self and put on Christ.

How can we turn to the old ways when our old self has died? How can we continue in Sin when God has plucked us out of death’s domain? For whoever has died is freed from sin.” Paul writes, “But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.”

This world is dominated by three spiritual powers. Flesh, Sin, and Death. The Flesh is the evil inclination within us. Sin is the cosmic force that enlivens the flesh so that we do not do what we want to do, but do instead what we don’t want to do. And Death is where all this leads. The destruction of creation, the destruction of our lives. But in the fullness of time God sent his son, Jesus, to deliver us from the Flesh, Sin, and Death. To beat the devil. And restore the divine life within us, to deliver us to the Kingdom of God. When we are justified, that is begun in our lives.

Justification is the moment when we are drawn out of the world of Death and brought into the Kingdom of God. It takes time to grow in the love of God, to overcome the power of the Flesh within us. We call that Sanctification. It is also a work of God in our lives. But that’s for another time. The important thing here is that justification is God’s mighty act of deliverance. That we may die in Christ, so we might die no more.

Justified: Offense

Justified: Offense

The Gospel Brings Scandal

Romans 5:1-8

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. June 18th, 2023

The Gospel is offensive. It is offensive on multiple levels. Today in our reading from Romans Paul points out two ways that the Gospel is offensive. It is offensive because it centers on a moment of shame. And it is offensive because it is grossly unfair. By the world’s standards it is eminently unjust.

In the first case, the Gospel is offensive because of where we put our hope. We do not put our hope in a great military victory. We do not put our hope in some profound mystical experience or in some grand ideology or powerful argument. We put our hope, instead, in the execution of an itinerant jewish preacher. Our hope is in the nail marks of his hands and feet. We rejoice at the hole that was stabbed in his side. We marvel at the water and blood that flowed out. It is not in his earthly victory that we boast, but instead in his whippings, his nakedness, his shame.

Paul says in another passage that “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” We can produce no great sign. The evidence of his resurrection remains an empty tomb and the witness of his followers. We also can produce no great wisdom. At least, not the sort of worldly wisdom that leads to winning friends and influencing people. What we have is the cross, a stumbling block and foolishness. That is a scandal. Telling proud people to put their hope in that is offensive.

There’s an old story about a missionary who went to preach Christ crucified to the saxon tribes in modern day Germany. The chief of the tribe was so infuriated by the injustice that was being perpetrated on an innocent man that he loudly announced, “If I was there this man would not have died!” It’s easy to have that indignation for the injustice of it all. It’s a lot harder to be told that it is only by the shedding of innocent blood that you can be saved. That if you were there you should stay your sword, as the disciples did. Peter was prepared to fight to the death until Jesus told him to put his sword away. Then he denied him three times.

But that is not the only offense of the Gospel. The second offense is still greater than the first. It is so offensive that I am, perhaps, burying the lede. Paul writes, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Jesus says in another place that he came “not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus lays down his life, the most precious thing he could give, for the sake of his enemies. For the sake of the ungodly. For the sake of sinners. More to the point, Paul tells us, “to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.”

Justification is only given to the ungodly. God’s grace is given precisely to those who, according to worldly standards, do not deserve it.

This greatly offends our sense of justice. In his book The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis has an episode where a soul on his way to heaven discovers that the guide sent to bring him across the field and into the Kingdom is a murderer who used to work for him. How could the murderer end up in heaven and he is stuck outside? He never hurt anyone. All he wants is his rights. He’s simply better than the man who has come to fetch him. The former murderer tries to explain to him the nature of grace, how everything has changed. But to no avail. The man refuses to enter the Kingdom because he wants his rights.

Could a murderer make it into the Kingdom on a last minute prayer? Isn’t that what happens at the cross? “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” The man we call a thief tells Jesus. But mere thieves don’t get sentenced to crucifixion. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replies, “this day you will be with me in paradise.” Even in his suffering on the cross Jesus justifies the ungodly.

It’s not a matter of our rights, or our virtues, or our propriety. God, it seems, does not care much about that. It’s about Jesus. His work. His love. And on account of Jesus we may be justified. On account of Jesus we may be transformed. On account of Jesus we may be saved.

And in our salvation, when the love of God has been so fully poured into our hearts that we truly love God and our neighbor with our all we will not look upon the ungodly about us with disgust or horror. Instead we will rejoice. Rejoice at the power and love of God to deliver even that person. Rejoice that God could save me, even me, the chief of sinners. Rejoice at the absolute grandeur and glory of God that is bigger than our sense of fairness, justice, or propriety. The power of God to save.

Justified: Death to Life

Justified: Death to Life

God Brings Us from Death to Life

Romans 4:13-25

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. June 11th, 2023

Year after year polls show the fastest growing religious demographic is not Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism, or even atheism. It is “none.” These nones are something of a mystery. What does it mean to put down your religion as simply “none”? Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the spiritual life. Many of these “nones” are likely “spiritual but not religious.” That is, they believe in the divine (otherwise they could have simply identified as atheist), but they don’t trust any given organized religion. They want to make their own path, follow their own way, satisfy their own spiritual needs.

There are many teachers and teachings on offer for the spiritual but not religious today. Most of them have been on Oprah. One can acquire crystals or do magic. Or one can practice the law of attraction and manifest one’s desires. There are apps for guided meditation and mindfulness. One of the fitness apps on my phone even has a tab devoted to “tracking my mindfulness” which I’m sure would make a number of buddhist monks laugh. Buddhist mindfulness is about self-denial, but American mindfulness has become about wellness.

It is also no wonder why people would distrust organized religion today, between terrorist bombings, abuse cases, and political division. We shouldn’t be surprised someone would be fed up. So why not be like Harry Potter and awaken your own power or connection to the universe? Why not take the first step on your own heroes journey in actualizing your true self.

I don’t mean to make an apologia for the Church, but I want to contrast the justifying grace of Jesus Christ with the quest for self-actualization or the fulfillment of spiritual need. It is easy to confuse grace with the fulfillment of spiritual need, or the life of discipleship with the quest for self-actualization. But for all the similarities there are stark differences.

In the gospel reading this morning we see two miracles. Their stories sandwiched together. A leader of the synagogue comes up to Jesus, kneels before him, and begs him to save his daughter. She has just died, but he knows, he just knows, that Jesus can raise her from the dead. On the way to the leader’s house a woman who has been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve long years recognizes him and touches the hem of his garment. She knows if only she touches him even for a second she will be healed. Jesus stops. Turns to her. And says, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”

After all that commotion he makes it to the house of the synagogue leader. There are flute players and a crowd making a commotion. It’s like a funeral in there. He tells them all to “go away” because “the girl is not dead but sleeping.” They laugh at him, thinking he’s telling a joke. It doesn’t take a doctor to tell if someone is dead. And everyone knows the dead are not merely asleep. Everyone knows the dead do not wake up.

But the crowd dutifully obeys Jesus’ command. When they walk out the door Jesus grabs the girl by the hand.

And she gets up.

Sometimes we might imagine that the account of the hemorrhaging is closest to our experience of the justifying grace of God. By justifying grace of God I mean the work of God to forgive us our sins and regard us as his child. We might imagine that while we are in our sins we are like the woman enduring a hemorrhage for twelve long years. We are weak, degraded, ostracized, regarded as unclean. But if we reach out to Jesus, then he has the power to heal. If we do our part, God will do his part. If we reach out in faith, then power simply has to come out of Jesus. And we are made well.

In this sense justification would be like meeting some spiritual need. There is some lack within us, something trying to bud. And we are sick with hunger until we find that something. We are incomplete until we are satisfied.

But Paul tells us, “the wages of sin is death.” We are not the hemorrhaging woman when we are enslaved by sin. It is not that we are sick and in need of a healer. Or hungry and in need of food. It is that we are dead and in need of resurrection. We are the little girl lying dead on the bed. Dead to all but God. To God we are asleep. Because God brings the dead back to life. God can do this because God is creator. He, in the words of Paul, “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Even death itself cannot overcome his power.

Justifying grace includes nothing of our own work. It cannot as long as we are dead. We do not reach out to God, but God reaches out to us. Calling us from death to life. Restoring us. Giving us the faith that saves.

Paul says Abraham also experienced this resurrecting power of God when he reckoned Abraham’s faith as righteousness. God made a promise to Abraham, that he would be the father of many nations. But Abraham grew old. And he saw that his body was as good as dead, and his wife Sarah’s womb was barren. Yet he did not lose faith in the promise of God. And this faith in the promise of God was “reckoned to him as righteousness.”

Paul says none of this is recorded for mere historical value. But it is written for us. That we would see in the example of Abraham the power of faith to bring life to what is dead, the power of God to bring to existence what does not exist, the resurrecting and justifying power of God.

Paul writes, “It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”

This is not self-actualization. And this is not the fulfillment of a spiritual need. It is God’s actualization of us. Taking us from death to life. And it is God’s encounter with us that fills us with faith, giving us something we were never looking for. Something we never knew we needed. So much of modern spirituality tells us what we can do, what we can seek, what quest we might go on. But again and again the Bible says we are so limited by what we see and what we can know. And what God has to offer is so much more than that. Infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, Paul says in Ephesians.

This is what sets the justifying work of Christ apart from all the spirituality of the world. In one case, we are the seeker. We are the heroes of the drama. But here, Christ is the seeker. He is the hero of the drama. He bravely strips himself for the battle and goes to the cross. He contends with sin. He descends into the bowels of the grave. He is victorious. And we are delivered. He would share this victory with us. Raising us from the death of sin, to eternal life.

Alien Life: Pentecost

Alien Life: Pentecost

God’s Spirit is Given to the Church

Acts 2:1-21; Numbers 11:24-30

Rev. Tim Callow

Preached Sun. May 28th, 2023

When Jesus left his disciples he gave them a promise. “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” And so the disciples waited for that promised Holy Spirit so they could fulfill the commission Jesus had given them to be his witnesses through the whole earth.

The morning of Pentecost was no different than this morning. The disciples were gathered in one place, as we are gathered here in this beautiful sanctuary. And those who were gathered in that room were ordinary men and women. Fishermen, tax collectors, activists, peasants, Jesus’ mother. Not the sort you would expect to turn the world upside down. Not the sort you’d expect to throw the whole city of Jerusalem into a rumpus.

But everything changed that ordinary Pentecost morning. Because we are told a sound came from heaven, a sound like a mighty wind, and filled the whole house these ordinary men and women were staying. And there appeared tongues as of fire, resting on each of their heads. They were filled with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is not something you can contain. When you’re filled with the Spirit you must speak. When the Spirit rests you cannot stay put. And so the disciples left the house and began to prophesy.

Jesus told them that the Spirit would come upon them and they would witness to the end of the earth. And on that morning they witnessed to people from all over the known world. Jews of every nation. But also gentiles as well. They witnessed to them about the things that had taken place in Jerusalem that year. How Jesus was condemned, crucified, and rose from the dead by the power of God. How salvation is found in his name. How we must repent and believe this good news, these glad tidings, this gospel.

And the people of Jerusalem wondered how they could speak in the tongues of every nation, and were amazed at their conviction. They wondered if they must be drunk. So Peter, who once denied Jesus three times, instead filled with the Holy Spirit lets them know no one is drunk, rather the words of the Prophet Joel have been fulfilled. The last days are upon us, and the Spirit of God has been poured out on all flesh.

We are inheritors of this story, and the Spirit that fell upon the disciples that Pentecostal morning is the same Spirit that enlivens and empowers the Church today. We live under the same sky. We have been brought under the same baptismal waters. We follow the same Lord. And we are part of the same Church. As the Spirit broke upon the disciples out of the blue, so too the Spirit works today. Empowering ordinary women and men to witness to Christ, and be his hands and feet in a world of suffering.

Let us have confidence in the Spirit, and let us have confidence in what God has done in us and for us in our baptisms. The Spirit flows where he will, and is the gift given to the whole Church. He is the presence of God in our midst. Directing us to Christ, that we may direct others to Christ.

We may think of ourselves as ordinary. We may think we lack talent, or knowledge, or like Moses we may complain that we are slow of tongue. We may, at times, like Peter shirk away from discussions of faith. We may, like Jeremiah protest that we are too young. Or like Isaiah protest that we have unclean lips. But God only ever chooses ordinary people. God only ever chooses people like us. And every baptism is the enactment of God’s claim over someone’s life, to make them part of his story, and deputizing them to his Holy work.

Ministry is not limited to those with the certifications. God never calls professionals in the Bible. God doesn’t wait until anyone is ready. Ministry is the work of the Church. We are all called to mission, and we all receive that same Spirit of Peter, Paul, and James.

The greatest gift God gives is the gift of himself. And that is a gift offered free of price to all of us. When Moses called the Seventy elders and gave them a portion of his Spirit they prophesied. But two of them remained in the camp and they, too, prophesied. When Joshua got word of it he was horrified, and jealous of Moses’ honor told Moses to make them stop. But Moses knew better than that. The Spirit is not something to be jealously guarded. It’s not our possession. It’s not our work. But, rather, God in our midst. And the Spirit flows where it will. Moses did not condemn the prophesying elders in the camp but instead said, “Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”

In the age of the Church that wish of Moses’ is fulfilled. Let us never lose sight of the tremendous privilege we have been given. What an astonishing gift. And, with that, the work to which we have been set out. To witness. To worship. To love.

Why I Read

What lies between the strange statement, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the equally strange cry of longing, Even so, come, Lord Jesus! What is there behind all this, that labors for our expression?

It is a dangerous question. We might do better not to come too near this burning bush. For we are sure to betray what is — behind us! The Bible gives to every man and to every era such answers to their questions as they deserve. We shall always find in it as much as we seek and no more: high and divine content if it is high and divine content we seek; transitory and “historical” content, if it is transitory and “historical” content we seek — nothing whatever, if it is nothing whatever we seek. The hungry are satisfied by it, and to the satisfied it is surfeiting before they have opened it. The question, What is within the Bible? has a mortifying way of converting itself into the opposing question, Well, what are you looking for, and who are you, pray, who make bold to look? - Karl Barth, “The Strange New World Within the Bible”

I always begin a new TV series or a new fiction book, or a new video game with trepidation. It’s not that I fear it will be bad, but I fear that whatever I seek to consume will only consume me. The book will not let me put it down, the video game will not let me turn it off, the TV series will demand my attention until the run time is over. And, when all is done, my mind will remain trapped in the fictional worlds I visited. Like Alan Parrish I will not be able to leave. Or, if I do manage to escape the strange characters, creatures, and settings of that fictional world will run free. Everything that I see becoming colored by what I saw or read, everything a reminder of the time I spent.

But there are few more engrossing works of literature than the Bible. If there were any book to get lost in, any book to eat you and your whole world up, it is this one. When I pick up my Bible I am transported to Ur where Abram hears the call of a strange God calling him to a strange land. I sit with David and his mighty men as they camp in the wilderness, on the run from the manic King Saul. I watch in horror as the forests devour the armies of Israel. I weep with the elderly King David as he cries, “Oh, my son Absalom! Oh, my son! My son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! Oh, Absalom, my son! My son!”

I walk the paths of Galilee along with Jesus and watch as he heals the blind and lame. I am confounded and enraptured by his parables. I flee with the disciples when he is captured. I shout “crucify him!” with the crowds. I sit in despair at the foot of his cross. I am enraptured by his resurrection.

The Bible is meant to eat us up. Its details are meant to be memorable, its silences are meant to grab hold of us. The Bible seeks to grasp our imagination. That we would understand ourselves to be part of that same story.

The more I read, the more I understand. The more I see. Not just the work of God in the story. But I see the story playing out in my life and in our world. That is why I return again and again and again.