Refiner’s Fire 1: Power

Last week we celebrated Pentecost Sunday, when the fire of the Holy Spirit descended upon the early church. This week we celebrate Trinity Sunday, and we confess God as three in one – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But it’s even harder to celebrate today than it was last Sunday because there’s a fire burning in America today, and it’s burning brighter and hotter now than it was a week ago.

It may be the fire of destruction, or it may be the refining fire of God, or maybe it’s both. I think God is calling us to repent, as individuals, as a society, and as a nation. I think God is calling us to turn away from our authoritarian ways and to turn toward a God-shaped life.

At the heart of God is loving relationship. Whatever else you can say about Trinity, that’s what three-in-oneness and one-in-threeness is all about. Our God is social. Our God is loving. And here’s the payoff. Genesis 1:26 says that we humans are made in God’s image.

That’s all humans, not just some – you and me and anybody you can name, including that nasty fellow down the road, and his gossipy wife, too. We’re all made in God’s image. That means we are made to be, like God, lovingly social. Sadly, because of sin, we are mostly hatefully anti-social. That is, mostly we love only those poor saps who are most similar to us, and we bask in the delusion that we are superior to everyone else.

Shaped like the Trinity, we’re all bent out of shape, and we need a savior to straighten us out. God sent us Jesus, and we had to kill him because he was so loving that he made the rest of us look so bad.

Not long before Jesus was murdered by the powers-that-be, he had a brief political discussion with some of his followers. He said:

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you. Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25-28 NRSV).

Over the centuries, Christians have basically ignored Jesus’ vision of power and followed the way of empire, the way of Christendom. Still, our best thinkers have agreed that there are two kinds of social systems. There is the human way, what Jesus called the way of the Gentiles, and there is God’s way. There is the way of domination, and there is the way of humility. There is the way of Empire, and there is the way of God’s Kingdom.

Theologian Bernard Loomer speaks of two conceptions of power. On the one hand is authoritarian power, on the other relational power – coercive power as opposed to persuasive power.

Loomer says it’s a paradox that coercive power is actually weaker than persuasive power. If it were strong, it wouldn’t have to use coercion, would it? That’s why racism and authoritarianism are always coercive. They are weak, so they have to rely on violence and terror to get their way.

If you have been following the national news this week, you may sense where I am going with this.

Our world has been in lockdown because of a pandemic for three long months now, and whether we admit it or not, we’re all anxious, uncertain, on edge. Several events have tipped us over the edge.

On February 23, a black man named Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in a suburban neighborhood in Georgia when he was gunned down by two white men.

On March 13, a black woman named Breonna Taylor was gunned down when plainclothes police broke into her Louisville apartment in the middle of the night.

On May 25, Memorial Day, in New York’s Central Park, a black birdwatcher named Christian Cooper got into an argument with a white woman who said she was going to call police and report that a black man was threatening her. Happily, he caught it all on video.

That same evening in Minneapolis, a black man named George Floyd bought a pack of cigarettes with a $20 bill that store employees suspected was fake. They called police, who arrested Floyd. He was apparently drunk; he may have resisted. What’s crystal clear is that one officer kept Floyd handcuffed face-down on the pavement with a knee on his throat for more than eight minutes. Floyd died on the scene.

We’ve all seen the video. It’s horrifying. Why didn’t anyone do something? Well, they did. They pleaded with the officer to let Floyd breathe. What more could they have done? Even white folks know better than to argue with a cop carrying a gun.

Call it the last straw, or a cauldron of despair boiling over. You can hold people down for only so long before the rage explodes. Maybe if the timing had been different, the explosion would not have been so large. On top of a pandemic and mass unemployment and great discontent in an election year when the incumbent president seems to grow more unhinged every day, we witness the murder of a black man by a white cop. It’s the perfect storm.

Protests erupt in many cities. Some protests turn into riots. And the backlash begins. In the minds of some, the bad overshadows the good. The actions of a few troublemakers taint the whole enterprise. But if you condemn all protesters for the actions of a few, you also must condemn all police officers for the actions of a few. You can’t have it both ways.

Some politicians want to have it both ways, of course. They blame the protesters, ignoring the injustice they’re protesting. They’re lowlifes and losers, Donald Trump says.

Everybody chatters about their rights. Let’s talk about rights for a minute. As an American, you have a fundamental right to peacefully gather and protest. Protests may be a nuisance to others. You have a right to be a nuisance.

You do not have a right to deface or destroy or loot anyone’s property. You do not have a right to act in ways that endanger others. You do not have a right to threaten or harm police.

Similarly, authorities are obligated to allow and even encourage peaceful protests. They also have the right to maintain order to protect people and property. They do not have a right to use intimidation or violence to infringe on anyone’s right to protest.

Last Monday, we witnessed one of the most bizarre moments in American history.

Late Sunday night, when protests in Washington got way out of hand, Trump was hustled to safety in a bunker in the White House. He later explained that he was only “inspecting” the bunker – something every president does in the middle of the night, right?

He decided that the episode made him look weak, so he needed to make himself look strong. On Monday night, at a Rose Garden press conference, he proclaimed himself “an ally of all peaceful protesters” but claimed that protests in Washington were the work of domestic terrorists.

At that moment, National Guard troops were clearing a nearby peaceful protest in Lafayette Square using flash-bang shells, rubber bullets, and pepper or tear gas. It was still a half hour before curfew. The protesters had every right to be where they were, but they were forcibly removed so that Trump could parade over to a nearby church and pose for photos holding a Bible.

This atrocity brought quick and sharp reaction from mainstream Christians. It’s desecration, they said, blasphemy, idolatry. On the other hand, brown-nose evangelicals like Franklin Graham thought it was great.

Think about it: Peaceful protesters were cleared so that Trump could stage a photo op using a Bible as a prop. This is typical behavior for a reality TV celebrity. For him, everything is a prop for a photo op. Nothing is sacred, certainly not the Bible, or the Constitution, neither of which he appears to have ever read – or if he did, nothing stuck.

What happened to “Blessed are the poor in spirit”? What happened to “Blessed are the peacemakers”? What happened to “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”? What about “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake”? (Matthew 5:3-10)

Let’s circle back now to the two kind of social systems, the way of domination and the way of humility, and the two conceptions of power, coercive and persuasive. On the one hand is the way of the world and the way of empire. On the other hand is the way of Jesus and the way of God’s kingdom.

Trump’s way is the world’s way. It is not the Jesus way. Trump is obsessed with not looking weak. The Apostle Paul tells us, “God chose what the world considers weak to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27 CEB). If Christ is with me, Paul says, “when I’m weak, then I’m strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10 CEB).

Telling the nation’s governors that they’d better get tough, Trump says: “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time.” Sadly, the dominant conception of power in Trump’s head is domination. But that is the demonic way, not the way of God.

It’s true that many evangelicals are in love with domination and power. Writer Katherine Stewart calls it Authoritarian Christianity. It’s the worship of control, the worship of power. It’s not the worship of God. It’s far from the way of Jesus.

We are in a volatile moment in our country’s history, maybe in human history as well. This is a moral crisis. We need a moral revival. What we need, black pastor William Barber Jr. says, is a moral revolution.

Lafayette Square in Washington is only steps away from Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Thirty-one years ago Chinese authorities stormed Tiananmen Square to stop pro-democracy protests. Troops fired into the crowds, killing hundreds.

We think that can’t happen here. If National Guardsmen can brutally sweep peaceful protesters out of a park without provocation just so a politician who admires brutal dictators can stage a photo op with a Bible, why can’t it happen here?

Some people have noted that when Trump holds up that Bible in that photo op, it’s upside-down. No matter how he holds it, his understanding of humanity and power and God and goodness are upside-down.

We are a people in need today. We need leaders who will unify us, not divide us. We need leaders who seek not to dominate but to persuade; leaders who want to make peace, not war; leaders who stand with the oppressed, not the oppressor; leaders who are humble, not proud; leaders who thirst and hunger for righteousness; leaders who understand that real strength comes only from God.

We need leaders who can bring us together as a society to create real and lasting change so that the American dream can finally become a reality for all.

What I’ve said may have upset some of you. You’re messing with politics, preacher. Truly, I am. As I’ve said before, Christianity is inevitably political because it’s about our society, our polis, the Greek word behind the word “political.”

Christianity is political because it deals with the way we try to live together under the reign of Christ in a society that does not recognize Christ as king. But as political as my comments may be, they are not partisan. I don’t care what party Trump belongs to. I do care that his conception of power is demonic, not Christlike, and because he has such influence, the truth matters, and the truth must be told.

Some observers suggest that there are two viruses in our midst – the coronavirus and the virus of racism. I maintain that there are three viruses – coronavirus, racism, and authoritarianism. These three form an unholy trinity that mocks our three-in-one God.

Events have lit a fire in us. It may be both a destructive and a refining fire. I believe it’s the fire of God telling us that it’s time to get our act together. It’s time to turn away from our racist, power-mad, plague-prone ways, and turn toward a God-shaped life.

I hope you can say Amen to that.

This message was delivered to Edgerton United Methodist Church, live in an outdoor service, and online, June 7, 2020, Trinity Sunday.

Together Apart

“When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place.”

Well, isn’t that special? It sure seems special to us, who have not been all together in one place for 11 weeks now.

How we would love to be gathered all together in one place, cheek by jowl, hugging and laughing, drinking coffee and munching breakfast sweets, singing and clapping and shouting and smiling and crying and carrying on in ways we might get away only with in church. How we would love to be able to do those things again!

One day – perhaps sooner than we think, most likely far later than we would want – we will be able to be all together again in once place. So the big question is this: When next we gather, will the Holy Spirit fall on us the way it did on this crowd of Jesus followers on that first Pentecost long ago?

Will the Spirit fall on us, and will we be enthusiastic witnesses to the world that Christ is risen, Christ is king and Christ reigns over all things and someday will return to wrap up his rescue mission and restore all things to their original goodness?

What will it look like for us to be a Spirit-filled church when we come back together in the shadow of this deadly virus?

Before we go there, let’s talk about Pentecost. I’ll be making 10 points, and because I can’t put them on a screen for you, I’ll number the subtitles so you can keep track.

1. Pentecost is an ancient holy day for both Jews and Christians.

Then as now, the day is known among Jews as Shavuot, or the Feast of Weeks. It comes on the 50th day after Passover. It’s called the Feast of Weeks because it comes seven weeks after Passover – a week of weeks, get it? Christians call it by its Greek name, Pentecost.

Shavuot celebrates completion of the grain harvest started at Passover. It’s also a celebration of the giving of the Torah, God’s instruction to Israel, at Mount Sinai. At the time of our story, it is the second most important religious celebration in Judaism, second only to Passover, and Jerusalem is crowded with pilgrims from around the world.

Pentecost is the earliest known Christian holiday. The Apostle Paul mentions it in his first letter to the church at Corinth (1 Cor 16.8). That was written only 20 years after the death of Jesus, so Christians must have celebrated Pentecost almost from the start.

2. Today, Pentecost is the least celebrated of Christian holy days.

That is partly because of its nature. We have seasons of preparation for both Christmas and Easter, our two other big holidays, but there is no time of preparation leading up to Pentecost. It just happens. One week, we are talking about the Ascension of Jesus, and the next week – bang! – hey, it’s Pentecost!

But, of course, that’s how it happened to the first followers of Jesus, too. Jesus told them that something big was coming, but it still came a surprise.

There’s another reason that we fail to celebrate Pentecost more fully. We lack a robust sense of what it’s all about. As much as we do or don’t talk about the Holy Spirit, the Spirit remains a mystery to many of us. Sometimes, when we talk about Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the Spirit might as well be a ghost.

3. Pentecost is the birthday of the church.

It’s often said that Pentecost celebrates the birth of the church. The book of Acts tells us that at 9 that morning, there are 120 followers of Jesus (Acts 1:15), and by nightfall, there are more than 3,000 (Acts 2:41). Talk about church growth!

All members of the church for the first several years are Jews, but a wave of persecution centered in Jerusalem forces believers to flee in all directions, and they take their faith with them. One of the early persecutors, Saul of Tarsus, flips sides. Known by the Greek form of his name, Paul, he becomes the premiere Christian apostle to non-Jews throughout the Roman Empire.

4. Pentecost is the promise of the ages.

The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost was dreamed of for centuries. Numbers 11 tells us that when Moses is old and tired, God’s Spirit burns in him so brightly that the fire threatens to burn him out, so God decides to divide some of the Spirit that rests on him among 70 elders of the people.

But God’s Spirit sort of slops over onto two others, too, named Eldad and Medad. Someone complains to Moses: “God’s Spirit has fallen on the wrong people!”

And Moses says, “I wish God’s Spirit would fall on all of God’s people.”

Later, other prophets are assured that it will happen. God promises Ezekiel that Israel will be renewed. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you,” God says (Ezekiel 36:26). God also tells Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (Joel 2:28).

John the Baptizer sees it coming, too. While dunking people in the Jordan River, he announces, “I baptize you with water, but the one coming after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matthew 3.11, Luke 3.16).

5. Pentecost is the promise of Jesus.

Jesus tells his disciples: “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5)

“I will not leave you orphaned,” he assures them (John 14:18). I will ask the Father and he will send you the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, your Helper, Counselor and Companion, who will remind you of everything I’ve told you and teach you everything (John 14:15-26).

6. Pentecost is the promise of the future.

The coming of the Spirit is a guarantee, Paul tells us. It’s like a deposit or down payment toward God’s promise. It’s an assurance that we belong to the Lord. It’s the seal of God that marks us forever as God’s own and not followers of Satan (2 Corinthians 5.5, Ephesians 1.13, Revelation 7:3, 14:9).

7. Pentecost is about overcoming barriers.

With the rush of a mighty wind and individual flames of fire, the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples in such a powerful way that language barriers fall. Somehow they can speak directly to those who are gathered for the Feast of Weeks from many nations around the world. No wonder everyone is amazed.

At the least, this is a powerful metaphor for the way the good news of Jesus can speak to people from anywhere, whatever their language or national origin or cultural background. The gospel knows no barriers.

The barriers we have erected, to God and to one another, have to come down.

As a deadly virus continues to spread among us, we also are suffering in the wake of yet another murder of a black man by a white police officer. Regrettably, riots have erupted in several cities. As a nation, we must find a way to stop this vicious cycle of institutional violence and outraged response.

This has to be more than individual pledges to renounce racism. It has to be a social effort, something we engage in as a people. It would surely be the greatest national undertaking of our lifetime, something that would make ours the “greatest generation.”

It will take a powerful movement of the Spirit to make it happen. We pray for that today.

8. Pentecost is about the coming of the Holy Spirit.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,” Jesus tells his followers (Acts 1.8).

There’s a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and something like tongues of fire appear among them. The sound of wind is easy for us to understand. We live in Kansas, after all. But those tongues of fire are harder to imagine. Most efforts to illustrate them verge on the cartoonish.

When you look through a gallery of art portraying the event, as we did earlier, you may notice that the more stylized or abstract the depiction is, the more convincing it actually is, and the more woodenly literal the depiction, the less convincing it is.

We can’t quite imagine what it would have been like. Luke, who wasn’t there, can’t quite imagine it either, so his language is stilted and tentative. Maybe he couldn’t have done much better even if he had been there. It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m not sure how many thousand words it would take to produce a clear picture of this event. Maybe, like the speaking in different languages, it’s a wonder beyond explanation.

Something happened. We know that much. Something happened, and these 120 Jesus followers were not the same as they were before.

9. The Holy Spirit is alive and well in us.

The primary mission of the Holy Spirit is to make you more like Jesus, which is to say, more the person God created you to be. In this way, the Spirit works for the restoration of God’s good creation, one person at a time.

“Be filled with the Spirit,” Ephesians 5:18 tells us. How we demonstrate that we are depends a lot on which faith tradition we follow. Some stress outward signs, such as speaking in tongues. Others suggest that we look at the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5.

I think the most important sign of the Spirit, the true seal of the Spirit on our lives, is loving action. Without it, Paul tells us, everything we do is just random noise, like a noisy gong or a clashing cymbal (1 Corinthians 13.1).

Every act we make, every decision we make, is either loving or it is not. We can disagree on whether a certain action is the best loving choice, but love remains the gold standard that we use to evaluate everything.

10. We remain apart, but we are still together.

“We are one in the Spirit,” the song says.

That’s what keeps us connected as a church. I have tried to provide regular updates by email and postal service, plus an online presence every Sunday morning – hardly a full-fledged worship service, but at least some prayer time and a message – plus online communion and most recently Zoom Coffee, and occasional phone calls and notes or cards.

These efforts try to overcome the barriers of distance between us. But what really keeps us together is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Without that presence, nothing I or anyone else could do would keep us connected in the ways we need and want to be connected.

Because of the presence of the Holy Spirit, none of us is alone. Each of us is connected with all others, through the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Spirit works mysteriously. We know the Spirit is there when we are physically present to one another. We also have experienced the reality that the Spirit works when we are not physically present to one another – when we are present only digitally, through a computer or telephone link.

If the Spirit lives and works in us, we are one when separate as much as we are one when together. That won’t change when we come back together physically. But it does raise the question: How will we be different?

Things will not be the same as they once were. As it is said, too much water has flowed under the bridge. How will we have grown in the Spirit because of our experience of being apart? How can we share that with others? How can we say, “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us”?

This message was delivered online on Pentecost Sunday, May 31, 2020, for Edgerton United Methodist Church, from Acts 2:1-21.

Eternal Hope

For the last four weeks, we’ve been speaking of the hope we have for the future – hope that is not grounded in optimism or wishful thinking but in the steadfast love of God that has been most clearly revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

This is the last of our series of messages on hope. It’s not that we’ve run out of hope, but today we are speaking about the end of hope – that is, the purpose of hope. We’re talking about eternal hope, our hope for what happens after this life.

It’s especially appropriate that we should talk about this today. Today is Ascension Sunday, when we celebrate Jesus’ return to heaven. It’s also the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, when we remember those who have given their lives in service to our country, and when families often visit the graves of loved ones.

This is a time when we often think of what comes after death. This year our thinking is especially fraught with uncertainty because of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 90,000 Americans have died so far, and there’s no end in sight. We can’t live on the self-serving promises of those in power. We’ve got to live on real hope, and that comes only from God.

This morning I want to talk about several dimensions of our eternal hope and also dispel some common illusions, misconceptions and downright lies about that hope. Most of these distortions come from what I call pop religion. In times of uncertainty, these untruths are trumpeted especially loudly by fundamentalists and evangelicals.

You’ve probably heard a lot of speculation about whether we are living in “the last days.”

In one sense, we most certainly are. First-century Jews commonly spoke of two ages: this age and the age to come, the present evil age and the last days. (Galatians 1:4, Ephesians 1:21) The hinge between them is the coming of the Messiah.

God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets, the book of Hebrews says, “but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). At Pentecost, which we’ll celebrate next Sunday, the Apostle Peter quotes the prophet Joel as saying: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people” (Acts 2:17 CEB).

So, yes, we’ve been living in the last days since the time of Jesus.

But those aren’t the last days that most people worry about. What they’re wondering is, are we living in the “last days” before the end of the world? The answer to that question is, no, not very likely. In the King James version of the Bible, Jesus and others do speak about “the end of the world.” But that is a serious mistranslation. In all cases, they’re not talking about the end of the world but the end of the age – the end of the present age and the beginning of the coming age.

God does not intend to destroy this world, but to renew it. That’s how the book of Revelation ends, with the renewal of heaven and earth and God bringing heaven down to earth. “Look!” God says. “I’m making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5 CEB)

Still others wonder, are these the last days before the Second Coming of Christ? About that we cannot know, nor are we meant to know. A lot of people have made a lot of money speculating about the timing of the Second Coming, and it’s nothing but speculation. In times of crisis such as we are living in today, some people may find comfort in such speculation. Some also find comfort in kooky conspiracy theories. I wouldn’t put much stock in any of it.

Next question: Is God using the coronavirus to punish us for our sins? No. That’s not the way God works. The Bible speaks frequently of the “wrath” of God, but it always comes down to God allowing us to suffer the consequences of our own stupidity. If God were to punish us for our sins, how could any of us survive?

(And, hey, incidentally, didn’t Jesus take care of that for us on the cross? Just asking.)

God is not in the punishing business, but a lot of people are, and they would like to think that their penchant for cruelty is a godly thing, except that it’s not. They dishonor God when they make God out to be the monster they see in the mirror every day.

Psalm 7 says, “God has deadly weapons in store for those who won’t change; he gets his flaming arrows ready!” But they turn out to be metaphorical arrows, not real ones. The Psalm goes on: “See how the wicked hatch evil… They make a pit, dig it all out, and then fall right into the hole they’ve made! The trouble they cause comes back on their own heads” (Psalm 7:13-16). In other words, as Galatians 6:7 says, they reap what they sow.

But let’s not ignore those flaming arrows. They may be metaphors, but we need to take them seriously. Notice who they are for. They are for those who won’t change, for those who won’t repent. Again, understand that the arrows are not punishment. They are warnings that you need to change your ways. They are encouragement to change. In other words, God uses “flaming arrows” to motivate us to turn our lives around and start living right.

Hold that thought as we turn back to the book of Revelation. Understand that the popular understanding of it is quite twisted. Revelation is not a blueprint for the end of time. It is not a pack of Tarot cards, or a Quija board, or a crystal ball that peers into the future. It is a testament of hope to seven churches in Asia Minor near the close of the first century.

Only one of the churches has faced persecution for their faith in Christ, but fear of persecution is beginning to gnaw at all of them. The message that John of Patmos brings to these churches is simple: Endure, he says. Tough times may be ahead. Stay faithful, and you will inherit the best that God has to offer.

Revelation is full of truly bizarre imagery and awful accounts of environmental catastrophe and millions of deaths. But imagery is all it is. These are symbols, not literal descriptions. Whenever you take a symbol literally, you always get it wrong. Revelation is not predicting catastrophe. But it is warning us that awful things will happen if we don’t change our ways.

Those Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not predictions of the future. They’re descriptions of human history: war, slaughter, famine, death. As Jesus said: You’ll hear about wars and rumors or wars, but don’t be alarmed. These things happen all the time. They’re not signs of the end. (Mark 13:7 and parallels).

I invite you to carefully read three chapters of Revelation, chapters 8 and 9 and 16. These describe John’s visions of the seven trumpet calls and the seven bowls of the wrath of God. Read them, and then consider what you have heard will happen to us if we do not reverse the course of global warming. Now convince me that Revelation and scientists are not issuing a similar warning.

Now consider how the coronavirus outbreak fits into what you’ve just read. Revelation doesn’t “predict” this plague. It does suggest that plagues like it are the inevitable result of human irresponsibility.

Oh, we don’t have to worry, some say. We’ll be raptured away before all that happens. No, we won’t. Christians will not be secretly whisked away in the night so we won’t have to endure “the great tribulation.” Believers as well as unbelievers will endure it, because “the great tribulation” is human history itself.

As for the so-called Rapture, it’s a cruel hoax, an escapist fantasy, a monstrous misrepresentation of truth. Try to find the Rapture in Revelation. Keep looking. Take all the time you need. People have been looking for it since John Nelson Darby invented it in 1830, and they still haven’t found it in there. Because it’s not there.

When Jesus returns to earth, his arrival will not be a secret. There won’t be anybody “left behind” wondering what just happened. Jesus says his return will be like a flash of lightning that lights up the sky (Luke 17:14). It will be a day so bright that it will be remembered forever.

Some people call the Rapture our “blessed hope,” and that is a breathlessly ridiculous claim. The notion of a “blessed hope” comes from the letter to Titus. It says, “we wait for the blessed hope and the glorious appearance of our great God and savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

It doesn’t say that we wait for the secret arrival of our great God and Savior. We wait for his glorious appearance. We wait for his glorious epiphany. That’s the word that’s used in Titus: epiphany.

That’s what the book of Revelation points to – the glorious epiphany of Christ. But there’s more. What is the end of our hope – that is, what is the purpose of our hope? What, ultimately, are we waiting for?

Sure, we all want to go to heaven when we die. Heaven is where God is. And wherever that is now, Revelation tells us that God intends to bring heaven down to earth. So heaven is not our final destination. Our final destination, the Apostle Paul assures us, is bodily resurrection in a renewed earth.

We could spend a long time working out the implications of that. It’s a mind-boggling assertion. But finally we believe, as 1 Peter 1:3 assures us, that we “have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

It’s not about going to heaven. It’s not just about getting to be with loved ones again. It’s about living with God and loved ones – and maybe a few folks we never really got along with in this life – in a new life that is so wonderful and so much beyond the limits of our imagination that we might as well stop trying to imagine it and just trust God that it will be good.

That’s the end of our hope. That’s the blessed hope that gives spring to our steps and meaning to our lives. We have lived lives of significance. We have loved greatly. We have had successes and failures, but we’ve also had one great accomplishment, and that is that we have shared God’s grace with others. We have let God’s love shine through us. We have been beacons of hope to others. That accomplishment is truly something worth hoping for!

Amen.

This message was delivered online on May 24, 2020, to Edgerton United Methodist Church in Edgerton, Kansas. It’s the 7th Sunday of Easter, and the text is Acts 1:6-9.

Weird Times

We are living in weird times.

A lot of nonsense is getting thrown around, mostly for political purposes. When lives are at stake, you’d think the politicos would dial back the baloney, but no.

Trump is hot to get back to business, whatever the cost.

The Centers for Disease Control offered new guidelines for reopening, but the White House stopped release of the report because the rules were so strict. But no state has met the much looser guidelines set earlier by the White House.

So now we have states reopening, each under its own guidelines. This may please defenders of state’s rights, but I doubt that the virus cares about state lines. Oh, I’m not in Kansas anymore? Guess I’ll have to mutate.

* * * *

Trump’s allies are pushing the narrative that more deaths are an economic necessity. That’s right, Grandma can die for her country. Helping the U.S. to “get back to business” makes her a patriot (and maybe helps get Trump re-elected, too).

* * * *

It’s a false choice between public health and the economy, columnist Maureen Dowd says, because they are the same thing.

Unemployment nationwide is near Depression levels. Nearly one out of every four workers can’t work right now. Probably many of those jobs are gone forever. Recover will be slow and sporadic. There will not be a “new normal” for a long time.

I especially feel for those who are afraid for their safety if they go back to their jobs but face firing if they don’t. Take all the precautions you want, you still may bring it back to the house and infect your family.

* * * *

A popular false comparison is with traffic deaths. We tolerate 39,000 traffic deaths a year, so what’s all the fuss about 70,000 or so deaths from the coronavirus? Use some elementary math. That’s 39,000 traffic deaths in a year compared with 70,000 deaths in two months. That works out to 234,000 deaths a year. There is no comparison. And who says 39,000 traffic deaths a year is OK?

And, oh yeah, some folks think we’ll reach that 234,000 figure long before a year is past.

* * * *

Some fun stuff:

When it was obvious that Kansas Gov Laura Kelly had gotten a haircut, one state legislator demanded to know the license number of the hair stylist who had violated the state shutdown order. The stylist was unlicensed. Kelly’s husband cut her hair. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” she said.

* * * *

A retired farmer from Troy, Kansas, made national news when he sent an N95 protective mask to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for use by a front-line worker in that state’s battle with the coronavirus. Turns out that Dennis Ruhnke was two credits shy of a degree from Kansas State University when he had to drop out in 1971 to run the family farm, so K-State gave him an honorary diploma. Nice.

* * * *

Some observers note that media vibe has changed. At first, there were many stories about hoarding and ripoffs. That changed to stories about people helping one another. Don’t think the hoarding and ripoffs have stopped, though.

* * * *

The Kansas City Star had a story the other day about why people do or don’t wear face masks. Some of it, inevitably, is political. Trump won’t wear one, why should I?

Prairie Village is considering making it mandatory to wear masks in public. “It is not enough to strongly encourage people to wear masks,” one city councilman says, “because, as we have already seen, there are too many people who either are not self-aware or not considerate of other people and other people’s concerns and needs, or who just outright will do anything if they’re told not to do it.”

My masks protects you from my germs, but it doesn’t do much to protect me from your germs. So if you don’t wear a mask, you’re exposing me to risk. It’s all about personal freedom, I’m told. I guess that explains why rapists don’t bother to wear condoms.

“My health, my choice,” says the protest sign. But what about my health? Apparently you have rights only if you carry a sign.

“Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” That quote has been variously attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., John Stuart Mill and Abraham Lincoln. Whoever said it, or didn’t, has it right. Your right to spread germs ends where my nose begins.

* * * *

What are the limits of personal freedom? Some people seem to think there are no limits, especially when it comes to guns. It is believed by some that the Constitution gives you the right to take a gun anywhere you want anytime and sling it around anyway you like.

About a dozen men with high-power weapons and flags marched through downtown Raleigh, N.C., the other day. (OK, one was not bearing a gun but a large pipe wrench.) I’m not sure whether the point was to intimidate people or just show off. Wow, that’s some pipe wrench you got there, dude.

When an armed mob invaded the Michigan capitol building recently, there was no doubt why they were there. They were there to intimidate. They were there to extort while armed. That is not legal in most places. They got away with it.

* * * *

Many of the workers at meat-packing plans have come down with coronavirus, and some racists are blaming the home life of workers rather than unsafe working conditions at the meat factories. Many of the workers are immigrants, don’t you know. They must have carried the virus with them from China, via Mexico or wherever they came from.

There is a sickness here so deep that you wonder if it can ever be cured. I think the only vaccine for it is the love of Christ.

There is a sickness spreading across this land that has nothing to do with the coronavirus. God spare us this plague.

Making It Real

In this series of messages, we continue to talk about hope. Two weeks ago, I urged you to choose hope as an attitude of life. Last Sunday I urged you to be a carrier of hope to others. Today, I want to look at your role in making hope a living reality.

Before we go there, I want to explain again that I have borrowed the theme and broad outline for these messages from the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, which kindly offered them to other churches right after Easter. I doubt that many of you have been comparing my messages with the ones Adam Hamilton has been delivering, but if you have, you may have noticed at least two things.

First, I’m a week behind Adam. That’s because I already had something else planned for the week Adam began the series. Second, our messages are very different. That’s because we are very different pastors addressing very different churches. At the same time, of course, our messages are quite similar, not only because we’re using the same rough outline, but more importantly because we’re preaching the same essential message: the hope we have in Jesus Christ.

I mention that primarily because I want to start off with something Adam said last Sunday that I found to be strikingly true.

He said that for his first message, he searched the Psalms for words of hope. For his second message, he searched the Old Testament prophets for words of hope. For his third message, he wanted to focus on the gospels, so he searched Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for words of hope.

Do you know how many passages he found? In the King James Version, he found one mention of the word “hope” in the gospels. One.

In other translations, he found two or three mentions, but none of these passages offered hope in themselves; they were simply passing references to hope.

You may wonder, how can that be? How can the gospels appear so little concerned with hope? When you think about it, you know why, of course. The gospels don’t have to talk about hope because they are focused on Jesus.

Jesus is hope. Jesus is the embodiment of hope. Jesus is the incarnation of hope. Jesus is hope brought to us up close and personal – nose to nose, if you will, despite our current concerns for social distancing.

Hope comes from God, and Jesus says that if you’ve seen him you’ve seen the Father (John 14:9), so hope comes from Jesus. Reading the gospels, you won’t hear Jesus talk about it, but he provides hope wherever he goes.

First, he announces the coming of God’s kingdom to change the world. “Here it comes!” he says (Matthew 4:17 CEB). Then, he shows what the coming of the kingdom means. People approach him seeking new lives, and he gives them hope. He cures them of diseases. He forgives their sins. He casts out demons that have misshapen them physically and mentally.

He gives all who come to him a renewed sense of worth. He treats everyone as a valuable human being. Whatever bad decision or bad break or adversity or calamity has befallen them, he assures them that God loves them, and he gives them a new confidence that things will go better for them. He gives them hope.

He does not solve all their problems, but he solves the main problem that is blocking them from receiving God’s hope. They have to take it from there. The hope he gives can be realized only if the person fully invests in it, as when he gives sight to someone who is blind or the ability to walk to someone whose legs just won’t work. What are they going to do with their sight? Where are they going to walk? It’s up to each of them how they realize their hope.

Hope frees us to believe that better days are ahead, but it also demands that we live into that hope, that we grasp the ramifications of it and seize the moment and live it out to the fullest.

Hope is empowering. It gives us energy and stamina. But it has to be engaged. It has to be used. You’ve got to grab onto the power that hope gives you and use that power to make things better.

I invite you to look again at the opening sentence of Psalm 40. Most translations of it say, “I waited patiently for the Lord.” But the Common English Bible says, “I put all my hope in the Lord.” There’s one key word in there that you can translate as hoping or waiting because hoping and waiting are related in Hebrew, and we know that hope always involves waiting.

But it has to be more than mere waiting. It has to be active waiting. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, was disturbed by the trend he saw in his time toward quietism. Quietism is the thought that we should just sit patiently and wait for God to act and do nothing to help make our hope a reality. Let God do it all, quietists say.

One problem with quietism is that so often your hope dies with you without ever being realized. You waited and you waited, and it never happened. You kept hoping, but that’s all you ever did. You never got out of your rocker to help make it happen, and it died with you.

But true Christian hope is always proleptic. “Proleptic” is one of those five-dollar academic words I thought I’d never use in polite conversation, but here I am using it. To speak proleptically is to speak of the future as if it were already here. To hope is to live proleptically. To hope is to live so confidently it’s as if your hope has already come true. It’s acting as if the better future that you anticipate is already here, and living into that as much as you can, praising God for it, even though it’s not yet fully here.

Hope is an active verb. It’s not sitting in your rocker watching the cobwebs gather. It’s actively anticipating and working toward the better future you hope for. If you don’t live in anticipation of a better future, I can almost guarantee you that it will never happen.

To live hopefully is to seize hope and run with it. God gives us hope, so let’s run with it.

Well, that’s easy for me to say, isn’t it? Sheltering in place is darn inconvenient, but the biggest harm I’ve suffered in recent weeks is that I really need a haircut. But I haven’t lost income. I haven’t lost a loved one to the virus. I haven’t suffered.

Still, I know that the reality of hope isn’t just “pie in the sky” stuff. It is as real as we make it. Some people think that we’re not being faithful to God when we hope for material things that we need but lack. I don’t think that’s the case at all. When you hope for the things you need, what you’re doing is giving yourself to God’s keeping.

It’s understandable that you feel nervous when you don’t know how you’ll feed your family in the next week; and you don’t know how you can afford to repair the car you need to get to work; and you don’t know when you’ll be able to go back to work; if it’s safe to go back; if there’s still a job for you; if your employer doesn’t go broke; if so many other things that are out of your control, leaving you feeling powerless and, yes, on the verge of hopeless.

We all know what Jesus says. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Your heavenly father knows your needs. So seek first God’s kingdom, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6.31-33).

It’s not automatic. God is not a cosmic vending machine dispensing goodies to the faithful. When you’re at the end of your rope and there’s nothing more you can do, that’s when you most need to hope in the Lord. There’s no other place you can go, no one else you can turn to.

And that’s when you discover, as the Apostle Paul says, that God’s power is made perfect in your weakness, and Christ’s power comes to you most directly when you recognize and accept your own powerlessness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Whatever your financial situation at the moment, scripture advises us not to place hope in our finances, which are always uncertain. Instead, we should hope in God, who richly provides all we need for enjoyment (1 Timothy 6:17 CEB).

Our ultimate hope is that the God who made the world has come into the world to set things right and to heal our brokenness. From that hope springs another hope – that not only does history have a direction set by God, but each of our lives has a direction set by God.

Martin Luther King Jr. said that “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” We also believe that though the arc of our lives may be hard to see, especially in hard times, the trend of events does bend toward our good, and that God is with us even when we cannot sense God’s presence – maybe especially when we cannot sense God’s presence.

Or as Paul says, in his letter to the church at Rome: “God works in all things for the good of those who love him and have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Even in this pandemic, which has turned so many lives upside down, God is working for our good so that we who are called according to his purpose will continue to live according to his purpose and by our lives and our love draw others to him.

So we continue to hope in the Lord, waiting for our hope to be realized, working to make it a reality, sharing our faith and our hope day by day.

Next Sunday we’ll talk more about how to give hope some feet. We’ll conclude this series the week after by talking about what hope we have for the end of things – not the “end” as in the termination of things but as in what end God is pursuing, God’s purpose for all things.

Amen.

A message delivered online May 10, 2020, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, for Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas.