Mustard Seeds Beginnings…

I was asked to contribute a piece to my home church’s Lenten Devotional. I was assigned today’s lectionary readings which includes Mark 4:26-34 – the parables of the growing seed and the mustard seed. Here’s what I wrote:

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how…. It is like a grain of mustard seed…” – Mark 4:26-27, 31

In my ministry of starting a new church and starting a new ministry for Graduate students, I often reflect on the image of the mustard seed. The kingdom of God starts small. When we started The Upper Room Church, there were only 8 of us meeting in a living room. When I started Graduate Christian Fellowship, there were just 3 of us praying together in a classroom at Carnegie Mellon.

I used to think of those small groups as “mustard seed” beginnings of my ministry. I don’t anymore. I’ve come to realize that my ministry had even smaller, less noticeable beginnings. My ministry started in 2nd grade in a Sunday school classroom at Parkwood. I still remember the lesson: “We’re Jesus’ disciples, and Jesus’ disciples tell other people about God.” Easy enough. The next day, I went to school, sat down next to my deskmate, Joe, and started telling him about how God created him and me and everything else. That’s what I was supposed to do, after all. I was Jesus’ disciple.

 

I’ve lost touch with Joe, and I highly doubt he remembers our brief conversation about God more than 20 years ago. But I remember it as the first deliberate action I took as a follower of Jesus; a mustard seed beginning to a ministry of telling many more people about God. A mustard seed planted by my church family, fulfilling the promise they made at my baptism to raise me in the faith. Keep planting mustard seeds, Parkwood, you never know how those seeds will sprout and grow.

Some Thoughts on NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope

If you spent time in Christian circles as a teenager, you’ve probably been in this scenario: It’s the final night of the youth retreat. You’re tired from non-stop, sleepless antics with your friends. You’ve heard a speaker talk about how God loves you and about how you suck. You may have even heard about Jesus by this point. You enter the room, and the worship band is leading everyone in singing the latest top 40 song (You know, to show that they’re ‘relevant’). Then they sing some upbeat worship songs. Then some slower worship songs, to set the right mood. The final song ends. The worship leader whispers a prayer into the microphone that, if it were written out, would make no grammatical sense. He then whispers “Amen. You can have a seat.” Then comes the talk. The invitation to follow Jesus that 9 times out of 10 includes some variation of the question, “If you were to die on the way home from here, do you know where you’d be going?”

If you’ve ever been the victim of this kind of “ministry,” or if you still think the above is a legitimate, biblical evangelism model, I highly recommend you read NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. NT Wright is, for a few more weeks, at least, the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He’s one of the most prolific Christian writers today, and also one of the most respected. In fact, his work has gained such attention that he was invited to promote Surprised by Hope on the Colbert Report, which you can still view here. The interview actually provides a good, and humorous, introduction to the book.

Wright begins the book by calling into question the theology underlying most Christians’ view of the afterlife, and the gospel. The assumption of the evangelist in the scenario I described above, and the assumption of many Christians today, is that the gospel is all about getting to go to heaven when we die. Christian is “fire insurance,” if you will. Wright cites examples from classic literature, popular culture, hymns, and Christian books of era to show how widespread this belief is. The consequence of this theology is that many Christians today look at the problems of the earth – the war, the poverty, the injustice – with an escapist mentality. The world is going to hell, but if we’re Christians we’ll get to leave it. Death is then something not to despise, but to embrace as a “portal” to our true home.

Wright emphatically explains that this view of the afterlife is not the view of the Bible or the early Church. God’s ultimate plan is not to pull all Christians into heaven and let everything else burn. God’s plan is for resurrection. As Wright explains it, when we die, we do go to heaven, but life-after-death is not the final chapter. There is, in Wright’s words, “life after life after death.” Heaven is not the final home for the Christian, the new earth and new heavens are the final destination for the Christians. We will be raised. And this final act has begun already in the resurrection of Christ, and continues in Christians who have received the same Holy Spirit who has raised Christ from the dead.

In the final section of the book, Wright discusses the implications of this reality. Because they have received the Holy Spirit, and because the Holy Spirit is the one who will bring about the new creation, the Church is now called to be working to bring about that new creation. Doing an act of justice such as feeding the poor, creating something beautiful like a work of art, or proclaiming the gospel to someone else are all, in Wright’s words, “signposts of the kingdom.” In other words, when the Kingdom of God is fully consummated, when the new creation is here, we will look back and see how our acts of justice, evangelism and creativity actually moved the world forward to new creation.

Recently, I met a young man who told me that he could no longer be a Christian because he can’t love a God who would let his father die. I responded with sympathy and compassion as best I could. If I could replay that conversation, though, in light of Wright’s book, I would ask the young man, “What makes you think God wanted your father to die?” The message of the gospel Wright articulates is that God doesn’t want this man’s father, or anyone else, to be dead. Death is God’s enemy. God’s desire, and promise, is that this young man and his father will be raised together. And that resurrected life together will be greater than either of the could imagine.

Surprised by Hope is a gift to the Church. It articulates the gospel in a way that makes it not only good news, but better news than what most of us have heard.

And… I’m back!

After a long hiatus from blogging, I”m going to try to begin posting again regularly. Since I’m taking time off from both of my jobs for the next two weeks, I should have some time to “jump start” writing some new material, so check back soon.

In the meantime, I”ve updated the page of book recommendations, adding NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope and John V Taylor’s The Go-Between God. I also plan on posting fuller reviews and reflections on both books in the next few days.

Overcoming Liturgical Wimpiness: A Lenten Reflection

Last weekend, I and some others were chatting with a new friend who happened to be Muslim. It came up that the Christian Church is currently in the season of Lent, and my new friend had never heard of it before. I and the other Christians in the room began to explain Lent as a season of prayer and fasting. We quickly made the analogy comparing Lent with Ramadan. The purpose of Lent became more clear to him, but he also began to ask questions. The conversation went something like this:

“So how long is Lent? A week?”

“No, it’s 4o days, not counting Sundays.”

“Christians fast for forty days?”

“Well… no. Some give up meat. Some will fast just on certain days. Some give up other things.”

“In Ramadan, we don’t eat at all during the day, and only eat after sundown. So in Lent, Christians just give up something?”

“Well… some Christians. Some don’t do anything.”

“Oh…”

By the end of the conversation. Lent was a thoroughly unimpressive season compared to Ramadan.

I admit that it’s probably not good to compare the two seasons too closely. They’re two different seasons, practiced by two different faiths, and have two different purposes behind them. But the practice of fasting, at least in theory, remains a common element.

Why is it that as Christians, we’re particularly bad at living into the meaning, purpose, and practices of Lent, or any other of our seasons and feast days? I’ve lived in Squirrel Hill now for nearly two years. The neighborhood is forty percent Jewish; there’s a synagogue practically on every block. Judaism is to this neighborhood what Presbyterianism is to the rest of Pittsburgh. In my time here, I’ve been struck by how visibly and noticeably my Jewish neighbors live into their seasons and holy days. Families wear costumes on Purim, light menorahs during Hanukkah, and build booths in their backyards at Sukkot. With Passover approaching, the bread aisle at the local Giant Eagle has been replaced with matzoh crackers and other Passover items. If you somehow lost track of the day of the week in Squirrel Hill, you can always tell if it’s Friday evening or Saturday morning; Jewish families will be heading to Shabbat services.

These are just a few of the more visible practices, and the practices of my Jewish neighbors is just one example. People who live in predominantly Muslim or Hindu areas, no doubt, have similar observations.

Why do Christians seem to be so much more  laxidasical in their observance of seasons and holy days? As our Western context becomes more and more pluralistic, our observance of our seasons and feasts may be one of our most opportune forms of witness.

We need to overcome our liturgical wimpiness. How many of us actually practice some form of fasting during Lent (or Advent, our other penitential season)? How many of us will celebrate Christmastide for a full 12 days, or Eastertide for a full 50 days? How many will take time to remember Christ’s crucifixion between noon and 3:00 on Good Friday? How many Christians will even notice that it’s the feast day of the Ascension on May 13 this year? And what about some of the less commercialized (and consequently lesser known) feast days, like Epiphany, the Baptism of the Lord, Transfiguration, All Saints Day, and countless saints days?

With all of these days, there are particular traditions that Christians in the past (and some in the present) have practiced as a way of remembering what God has done, and proclaiming it to the world around them. It’s time, I think, for the Church to reclaim this piece of its heritage.

The Gospel According to Your Facebook Profile

A couple weeks ago I started reading the book The Hopeful Skeptic by Nick Fiedler. I’m planning on posting a review of the book once I finish it up. For now, though, I want to point out something that makes this book unique from anything else I’ve read. This is the first theology/Christian life book I’ve ever read in which the author uses his Facebook profile religious views as the starting point for a whole book.

A couple years ago, Nick changed his “religion” in his Facebook profile from “Christian” to “hopeful skeptic.” Reading about this got me to thinking about how many people choose to enter something unique on the religion line in their profile, as opposed to choosing from one of Facebook’s preset, institutional options. I did a quick scan of 25 random Facebook friends (and by ‘random’, I mean the first 25 people to either show up on my news feed or comment on my status requesting help with this). Here are the ‘religions’ I saw listed:

“Pastafarian; Former Voodoohist”

“I’ve been relentlessly pursued and mercifully forgiven by the great Lover of souls, Jesus Christ. “

“Evangelical Liberal Charismatic Catholic Christian”

“On the path…”

“Pro-Jesus”

“yes. thank you. http://www.huronhills.org”

“anything in isolation cannot be God.”

“see the Nicene Creed.”

“and He said, Follow Me.”

“Yes.”

Among the more traditional choices…

“Christian” Was listed by 6 people.

“Christian – Presbyterian” was listed by 3 people.

“Christian – Reformed – Presbyterian” was listed by 1 person.

“Agnostic” was listed by 1 person.

“Deist” was listed by 1 person.

3 people had nothing listed.

Why do people choose to insert their own, unique title for their religion? I have to admit, when Facebook first added the religion to profiles, I opted not to list myself as “Presbyterian” or “Christian.” I decided to write in “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Honestly, I have no recollection as to why I thought it would be better to do that. I can think of a few reasons now, for Christians at least, but am also doubtful any of them are really satisfied by a Facebook profile.

Some people, it seems, have an evangelical motivation. We’re supposed to be witnesses for Christ and proclaim the gospel. We need to make the most of every opportunity. If Facebook is going to ask us about our religion, we’re going to make our answer count. So, if we put something unique and unexpected, people will take notice. I think the intention here is good enough, but there are also so many problems with this. For starters, it assumes that people actually take the time to read our profiles. My guess is most don’t, and of those who do, none of them are going to your profile asking “What must I do to be saved?”.

For others, there seems to be a fear of being misunderstood. Calling ourselves “Presbyterian” or any other denominational affiliation makes us look too institutional. The  term “Christian” carries too many negative connotations with which we don’t want to be associated. So, we’ll enter something unique that our friends won’t be able to misconstrue. Again, one of the false assumptions behind this fear is that people actually read our profiles, and even fewer care whether we’re “Christian” or a “Follower of Christ.” Even fewer will be scandalized by reading that we’re “Presbyterian” or “Episcopalian.”

I think even more problematic is the fear many of us have of being associated with other Christians of a different breed. Saying that we’re “Christian” may in fact  associate us with the Pat Robertsons of our time, or some of the great injustices committed by Christians throughout history. But, we also can’t write our own faith’s prior history, or choose who our brothers and sisters in Christ are. Perhaps we’re called to own up to that history and reputation, and proclaim it with a spirit of humility and confession.

On top of that, maybe Christians listing their religion as Christian will be more effective evangelically. Let’s face it, a bunch of unique religion preferences is pretty poor branding and p.r. Maybe it’s time the Christian community on Facebook took a more united front in their religious Facebook preference.

Then again, I doubt anyone would notice…

Opportunities for Giving to and Praying for Haiti

I want to take a moment to highlight two opportunities to participate in providing relief for those in Haiti:

First, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is considered one of the finest, and most financially responsible, relief organizations in America. You can give directly to their relief efforts by clicking here.

Second, there are some great prayer resources available. InterVarsity’s sister movement in Haiti - Groupe Biblique de Ecoles et Universités d’Haïti (GBEUH) – is posting updates to their website regularly. To give financially to the student ministry in Haiti, click here. Also, World Vision’s ACT:S network has prayer vigil materials available here.

Two Urbana Videos You Should Watch

I finally figured out how to post videos from Urbana directly to my blog. (Yes, I’m a bit technologically challenge.)

I could easily post 20 Urbana videos that I thought were helpful, but that would just be overwhelming. You can check out all of the Urbana videos and talks here. Here are the two talks from Urbana that had the largest impact on me:

Oscar Muriu on Money and Power

Oscar Muriu is the pastor of Nairobi Chapel in Kenya. Oscar’s talk at Urbana was prophetic. To say I enjoyed this talk would be a lie. Being freshly convicted of ways in which I”m failing to be Christ-like is simply not enjoyable. I think ever every Christian in the West, especially pastors and missionaries, need to hear Oscar’s words. What I took from this talk was the conviction to think of the incarnation less in terms of similarity and more in terms of humility. Oscar points out that the significance of Christ’s incarnation is in the giving up of his status and privilege, and calls the Church to the same attitude.

Sunder Krisnan on Prayer

What I took from Sunder’s talk is that I pray like a wimp. The example’s he gives of praying out of time spent in Scripture is both inspiring and challenging.

Looking back: My Top 10 Posts of the Past Year

For those of you unfamiliar with WordPress, it has a feature for its users called “blog stats.” Basically, it just tells you how many hits your blog gets, and how people find your blog (links clicked and search terms). A part of the feature I like to look at a lot is the “Top Posts and Pages” section. It basically just tells you which of your blog posts are receiving the most traffic. Since it’s the start of a new year, I thought it would be fun to see which of my posts received the most hits in the past year. So, without any further adieu  here are my top 10 posts of 2009.

10: Reflections on Praying the Rosary (Kind Of…)

I wrote this post this past summer after spending a week praying the rosary daily… kind of. As I mentioned then, I substituted the “Hail Mary…”s for the Jesus Prayer. I’m really glad I wrote this post, because the experience of praying the rosary was one of the most significant spiritual experiences for me in 2009, and it’s good to be able to go back and read what I found helpful. I also just recently had a friend tell me that he had read this post and found it helpful too, so much so that he now uses prayer beads on a regular basis. Being told that served as a good reminder that our own spiritual practices can serve to bless others as well.

9: Prayer: How Specific Should Our Prayers Be?

This was a post I wrote in September as a part of a series of posts on prayer. I wrote it in a time when I was convicted that I needed to pray to God with more specific requests. What I find most interesting about rereading this post now is that this conviction was God beginning a work in me that he’s continued through the year. Most recently at Urbana in hear the talk by Sunder Krishnan.

8: An Optimistic Skepticism: My Take On the Manhattan Declaration

This post was written late in 2009 – in December. But it got a ton of hits when I first posted it, mostly from friends/followers on Facebook and Twitter clicking the link in my status update. It hasn’t been long since I wrote this post, but I’m still skeptical about this document and have not signed it, and have less and less desire to do so. Frankly, signing a declaration like this just seems wimpy. The writers of the document begin by claiming a great heritage of faithful saints who acted radically and counter-culturally in the past. Ironically, they chose not to mention in that heritage Christians who met in councils and drafted and signed documents…

7: The Witness of Tipping

I wrote this post back in November, but I can’t remember clearly what motivated me to write it. I think I just had a random conversation with someone about the subject. At any rate, this post didn’t receive to many hits at first, but then about a month later a food service blog that gets a lot of traffic published a post on tipping, and mine was listed as a “related post.” The most significant thing about this post is that a comment from my friend Lindsay made on it inspired me to write another post that just happens to be #6 on the list…

6: The Gospel According to the Joneses: Christianity and the Middle Class

This post has the distinction of also be the post the generated the most comments on my blog this year, especially if you include the comments posted on the feed in my Facebook profile. I’m also personally proud of the title of this post. I personally think it would make a great book title, and the topic is certainly provocative enough to generate a book on the subject. At any rate, the comments that the post generated made me realize that I probably wrote this way too quickly, as the comments pointed out some stuff I hadn’t thought of. But that’s the beauty of the blogosphere.

5: Lifting Hands in Worship

I posted this back in October while reading from Patrick Henry Reardon’s, Christ in the Psalms. It actually has no original content; it’s just a quote from Reardon that I found helpful. It keeps getting a lot of hits, though, through search engines. Apparently a lot of people want to know why Christians lift their hands!

4: How Presbyterian Should Presbyterian Campus Ministry Be?

I wrote this post as a part of Presbyterian “Bloggers Unite” day that our Moderator, Bruce Reyes-Chow put together, which is probably why it received so many hits. The assigned topic for the day was Presbyterian College Ministry, a somewhat difficult topic for me because I’ve never participated in such a ministry in college, and don’t think that denominational-emphasis is helpful in college ministry.

3: The Homosexuality Debate: Are We Completely Missing the Point?

I wrote this post over a year and a half ago in June of 2008, but it continues to get a lot of hits, mainly through search engines. I wrote it around the time of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly, and still firmly believe what I wrote then. Our denomination won’t come to any united conclusions about homosexuality (or abortion, or any other controversial issue) until we first come to united conclusions on biblical authority and theological method.

2: Worship Styles: What Dance is the Church Teaching?

I wrote this back in June after having two great worship experiences in two settings I’m not used to: a conservative Reformed church that sings only Psalms acapella, and a Roman Catholic church. This post also generated a lot of comments, but I think it also disappoints a lot of people who read it. The reason it’s gotten so many hits is because search engines list it as a result when people search for things like “dancing in worship.” Unfortunately, this post has nothing to say about that, and only uses dance as an analogy.

1: The Lord is a Warrior

I wrote this post back in the summer of 2008, but it still received more hits in 2009 than anything that I actually posted this year. In fact, in 2009 alone it received nearly 4,000 hits, which is huge for my measly blog that probably averages no more that 25 hits a day. The post is just a brief reflection I had while reading the story of Samson in Judges, but that has nothing to do with why it’s received so many hits. The only reason this post is so popular is that I included a picture of the WWF wrestler The Ultimate Warrior. And now if you do an image search for The Ultimate Warrior, my this blog post is one of the first results you’ll find. You’d be surprised how many people look for pictures of him.

Incarnational Mission: Thoughts on Urbana Days 1&2

Love does not reach from afar. It demands incarnation.

- Ruth Padilla

Jesus specializes in surprising people once they truly seek him.

- Ramez Atallah

Much of the first two days of Urbana has been spent thinking and talking about the incarnation of Christ and its implication for Christian mission. We’ve focused our times in Scripture (both through the expository teaching of Ramez Atallah and manuscript study) in John 1. Here are some thoughts I’ve had from today:

It seems to me that there’s a tension between being incarnational ourselves as missional Christians and allowing Jesus to be incarnational, and that tension should be there. I think this is what Ramez was talking about when he referred to the incarnation as ‘means, message, and model.’ On the one hand, we are called to be incarnational. As Greg Jao interviewed OMF’s new director Patrick Fung, he mentioned the examples of missionaries like Hudson Taylor dressing as the people dressed, speaking their language, and seeking to live in solidarity with the people. Likewise, the quote above from Ruth Padilla points out that Christian love cannot be expressed from a distance. Christian love must go beyond sending money to other side of the world with no personal connection. It must go beyond short term mission vacations. Love must be expressed through long-term relationships marked by submission and solidarity.

At the same time, there are limits to how incarnational a Chrisitan can be. If I were to be a missionary to China, I as a white male can only be so incarnational. I could learn and speak Chinese, eat Chinese food, understand Chinese history and culture, and so on. But at the end of the day, I’ll still be a White male and take with me my own cultural heritage and ethnic identity. Unlike the Son of God, who became a Jewish male, I can’t become a Chinese male or female. This is, I think, where the other end of the tension comes into play.

The incarnation of Christ does not only provides a model for mission, but also implies a goal for mission. The incarnation means that it is ultimately not the missionary whom the unbeliever needs to encounter in their culture, but rather Christ. We saw this in the second half of John 1. After Andrew becomes convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, he doesn’t merely try to convince Peter of the same, but instead invites Peter to come and see Jesus for himself (John 1:42). The quote above from Ramez, and the stories he told, served as a good reminder that Jesus still desires to encounter people today and reveal himself to them. Richard Allen Farmer also touched on this in his seminar are missional worship. Inviting our friends to worship is a form of evangelism; we’re inviting them to come and encounter Jesus for themselves.

There’s a sense in which taking the incarnation seriously means getting out of the way. Just as his first followers did, Christ calls us simply to invite those we know to “come and see” for themselves.

My First Christmas Eve Sermon: Peace Begins With Christ

Merry Second Day of Christmas! Two nights ago, I preached my first Christmas Eve sermon. The title is Peace Begins With Christ. The Texts are Isaiah 9:2-7 and Luke 2:1-20. The text is below, though when I preached it I added a paragraph or two spontaneously, and those aren’t included here. Soon, though, the audio recording will be posted on the audio page of our church website – www.pghupperroom.com.

Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

It was Christmas Eve in 1914. World War 1 had begun that year when Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. That Christmas Eve, British troops and German troops were stationed on opposing sides along the Western Front. Between the two sides was a “no man’s land” that was littered with dead bodies from both sides. The Pope, Benedict XV, had been pleading with national leaders for a truce, at least for Christmas. The British commanders were unwilling to stop the war, though. But that Christmas Eve along the Western Front something happened.

The exact order of things are different depending on which historian you hear from and which diaries and letters those historians read. But things went something like this. The German troops began to celebrate Christmas Eve by decorating the trees around them with candles. The British saw the Germans’ Christmas trees, and the British began to sing Christmas carols. The Germans heard, and began singing carols back. Eventually each side sang Silent Night to the other. And the Christmas Eve celebrations led to a cease-fire.

The two sides began to shout Christmas greetings to one another, and eventually the cease-fire escalated to an all-out truce between the two sides. Some of the German troops traveled half-way into the “no-man’s-land” between the two sides, and some of the British troops went out to meet them, and the groups exchanged Christmas gifts with one another of military insignia, chocolates, cigarettes, and whatever else they had on them. The truce continued into Christmas day.  Groups of British soldiers met with groups of German soldiers for games of soccer. German soldiers helped British troops recover and bury their fallen comrades, and British troops did the same for the Germans. Along some parts of the Western Front, the “Great Christmas Truce of 1914” (as it’s now known) lasted past New Years Day.

There’s something about Christmas that increases our desire for peace. The carols we sing, the candlelight…. the ambiance invokes a longing for peace. Christmas songs on the radio express this longing for peace. Even beyond the traditional Christmas carols that make it on the radio, you can also hear John Lennon and Yoko Ono singing “War is Over if you want it.” You can hear Bing Crosby singing a duet version of Little Drummer Boy with David Bowie, in which David sings “Peace on earth, can it be.” Even the completely banal song “Here Comes Santa Claus” includes the lines “Peace on earth will come to all, If we just follow the light, So let’s give thanks to the Lord above ‘Cause Santa Claus comes tonight.” (What Santa Claus coming down ‘Santa Claus Lane’ and giving toys to children has to do w/ peace on earth I’m not entirely certain…)

This desire for peace goes back to the first Christmas. We just read the story of the angels coming to the shepherds. The angels conclude their announcement to the shepherds by singing “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

And the longing for peace goes back to the prophecy we just read from Isaiah. The Messiah will be called, among other titles, “Prince of Peace.” And, “of the increase of his government and of his peace there will be no end.”

At the time when Isaiah first gave this prophecy, there was a longing for peace among the Jews. The condition that Isaiah uses at the beginning of this passage was an apt description – “People walking in darkness”; “People dwelling in the shadow of death.” (The phrase of “shadow of death” – it’s the same that appears in Psalm 23 – is a phrase that in Hebrew means “deep darkness.” It’s the kind of darkness that’s so pitch black you can’t even see your hand in front of you. You can’t see where you are, and you don’t know which direction to take your next step.)

That’s the situation Judah was in, they didn’t know what to do next. They were surrounded by stronger nations, the strongest of them was Assyria. So, they decided it was in their best interest to work a treaty w/ Assyria, so they formed a covenant with the Assyrians. The problem was that the Assyrians demanded that the covenant include the Jews accepting the idols that Assyrians worshipped. So the Jews were left with a choice, relative safety through a political allegiance, or faithfulness to YHWH.

The situation led them into captivity and oppression. The situation left them asking questions like, “Is our God truly Sovereign over history if the godless nations are stronger than God’s nation? What is the role of God’s people in the world? Does divine judgment mean divine rejection? What does it mean to trust God? Are the Assyrian idols stronger than God and therefore superior to him?”

We know this darkness. We know this longing for peace. We’re still in a world plagued by war that leads to a cynicism that peace could ever exist. Yesterday, I was sitting in Te Cafe writing this sermon, and WYEP was on, and the DJ played the John Lennon song I just mentioned. After the song, the DJ said, “That was John Lennon and Yoko Ono with ‘War is Over’… or… at least we wish.”

In our personal lives we experience a sense of darkness and uncertainty. In my own life this past year, I’ve been coming to terms with my singleness, and not knowing where a r/ship will come from or if it will come. Others in our community are preparing for marriage, and (if they’re honest) have no idea what to expect. Others are preparing to become parents for the first time. Others are facing career decisions. Some of us may be facing financial hardship. All of these things can lead us to a sense of darkness and uncertainty that leaves us longing for a sense of personal peace.

And into this darkness, a light shines. Into this context of confusion and longing for peace, God shows up. Isaiah says that God has given the people joy. And the source of joy is peace. Isaiah describes yokes being destroyed. The Assyrians had a cruel practice of placing heavy yokes on their vassals and captives for no other purpose than to humiliate them. Isaiah says that the Messiah brings an end to such oppression. He describes an end of war, as soldiers burn and destroy even their boots and battle garments, let alone their weapons. That’s how complete this peace is. It’s not merely a “cease-fire” or a stop to violence, it’s the military essentially saying, “Well, that’s it” and destroying their uniforms.

It’s this end of oppression and beginning of peace that’s the heart of the Christian gospel. Christ redeems us from that which burdens us; whether it be personal sin or emptiness or social injustices.  Christ longs for us to experience the grace of forgiveness and redemption.

Chris and I meet weekly to pray together and to intentionally share with one another what God is doing in our lives. In those times together, there have been times when each of us has confessed sins to the other. And what I appreciate about confessing to Chris (and what I try to do when he confesses to me) is that the first words out of his mouth are almost always, “You’re forgiven.” That’s an experience of grace and of freedom from any guilt I feel, and I wouldn’t have that experience if I didn’t confess.

This is why in every one of our worship services here at Upper Room we take time for confession of our sin. When we come into God’s presence in worship, God longs for our encounter w/ Him to be an experience of grace, and to open ourselves up to the possibility of grace, we have to make our sin and guilt known.

And these personal experiences of grace are what will lead to the type of peace described in this passage from Isaiah. Personal experiences of redemption lead to justice. Imagine what would happen if Joseph Kony of the LRA – the group that’s kidnapping children in central Africa and turning them into mercenaries – imagine if Joseph Kony encountered Jesus and was driven to confession that led to an experience of grace. Imagine the peace that could come. (This doesn’t mean that knowing Jesus immediately solves all of our problems. Remember that the Germans and Brits at war in World War 1 were both predominantly Christian nations. But, the great truce of 1914 probably also would not have been possible if one or both sides was not Christian…)

This is the heart of the gospel. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, gives us peace through the forgiveness of our sins and peace from oppression.

Then, in this passage, and in the story of Christmas, there is this great paradox. This passage says that God is among his people, that his people are going to rejoice at his coming because he’s going to bring peace and salvation from oppression, it describes the coming of a great king who will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. That his government/dominion will have no end to it’s increasing. And what’s at the center of this:

A Child is born. In something has vulnerable and helpless as a baby, Isaiah sees the guarantee of God’s sovereignty and God’s might.

This is a strange king. First off it says that the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. That’s uncommon. Usually if a government is increasing it means that there is no peace. In our world, “peace” usually means that no governments are increasing. Usually, if your saving people from oppression, your exercising violence on the oppressor.

God, though, is going to end oppression, increase his dominion and bring peace, by coming into the world as a baby.

And this, is the great lesson we learn from Christ. This is the light we’re given in the darkness – the darkness of our own personal uncertainties and the darkness we experience as a people longing for peace in a world of violence. The light for our path that God gives us in our darkness is the way of humbling ourselves and giving ourselves away.

There’s no greater example of someone giving themself away than the Son of God leaving his throne and coming as a baby, and eventually dying a criminal’s death.

Yet this is the way that leads to peace. Christ coming as a baby brought a stop to gunfire in 1914. The way to peace for us is giving ourselves away in humbleness.

Amen.