The Signpost Up Ahead

You don't have to go to any Twilight Zone to find a world where things are not the way they should be...

Lent 5b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Now is the judgment of this world, now is the ruler of this world to be driven out; and I, when I am lifted from the earth, will draw all people to myself.+

There is a 1960s TV show that has remained in reruns ever since. It’s not I Love Lucy, though I’m sure you would instantly recognize it from the music of the opening credits just as easily. Perhaps you know the opening text that the host recites as well as the music. “There is a land between mystery and imagination...” Do you remember? It ends, “There’s the signpost up ahead...” as the title comes shimmering into view, “The Twilight Zone.”

Strange things happen in the Twilight Zone; things in the Twilight Zone are not as they should be. But what I want to say to you today is that right here in this world things are not as they should be, either.

Things are not as they should be when people with mental illness wander the streets because hospitals have been shut down, and the small apartments they could afford to live in have been converted into condos for the one percent. Things are not as they should be where people have to live in cardboard boxes over sidewalk grates to get warm. Things are not as they should be where children go without food — not just in famine-stricken deserts or countries in the midst of war — but right here in this city, one of the wealthiest in the world. Things are not as they should be where the government cuts support for food for the poor because some think they might make a habit of eating. Things are not as they should be where corporations are treated like people, and people like commodities; where politicians of both parties sell their favors to the highest bidder, and are more interested in the next election than in doing the job they were elected for in the first place. Things are not as they should be where people are killed by those who are meant to protect their lives. Things are not as they should be where people are beheaded and burned alive, and raped and murdered and all in the name of religion.

No, my brothers and sisters, things are not as they should be right here amongst the swift and varied chances of this world of ours. You don’t have to go to any Twilight Zone to find a world where things are not as they should be. Things are not as they should be right here and now, and many of us are looking for a signpost up ahead to lead us to a better place.

Sometimes people will look backwards, back to that they like to think of as the “good old days.” But when we look to the past with a careful eye, we will find there’s nothing new in any of the problems we suffer today. Homelessness, hunger, violence, crime and crooked politicians, have been a part of human life almost from the beginning. This world of ours never has been what it should be — except maybe during that first afternoon, in those few precious hours in before Adam and Eve decided on an apple for dinner. Ever since God strolled by in the cool of that first human evening, and asked a terrible question, “Where are you?” — ever since, humanity has been a stranger in a strange land, where things are no longer as they should be. So there is nothing new in homelessness: Adam and Eve were the first homeless to walk the earth, when God kicked them out of Eden.

There is nothing new in hunger. When God led the people out of Egypt’s land, and through the Red Sea, were they grateful? No, they grumbled about the pickles they’d left behind, the delicacies of the Egyptian fleshpots. They complained, when God gave them bread from heaven, they grumbled and asked him, “Where’s the beef?” And so instead of leading them into a promised land, God kept that generation of ungrateful people marching in circles for forty years, until all the grumblers were dead.

There is nothing new in political deceit. Prophets tried and tried again through the history of those naughty sisters Israel and Judah, tried to warn the idolatrous rulers of the error of their ways. But did they listen? One or two, maybe, but the rest just tried to shut the prophets up — burning Jeremiah’s scroll and even tossing him down a well. There is nothing new in political corruption and cover ups — why, one ancient politician just tried to wash his hands of the whole sorry business; and you can find a picture from the photo op right over there in the First Station of the Cross: Pilate washing his hands: “It’s not about me!”

And, Lord knows, there is nothing new in violence. Jesus himself came into the world amidst violence and he left it amidst violence. After his birth, the boys of Bethlehem were massacred, as Herod tried to wipe out the rival child king, in one of the great crimes against humanity. And some thirty years later, we need look no further than to the cross itself to see the horror of human violence done upon another human being.

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But do that: look a week and a half ahead for a moment; look to Good Friday in your mind’s eye, look to the cross where the Savior hangs dying. Could it be that this is — after all — the signpost we’ve been looking for? I mentioned last week that the byway sign on the highway of our Lenten journey — on our “lighten up” Sunday in mid-Lent — pointed us towards Good Friday. The sign at the middle is the same as the sign at the end. The Good Friday cross stands as it has ever has, since that gloomy afternoon of pain and sorrow. Could it be that this is the signpost up ahead that shows us the way to the world where things are the way they should be? Could it be that this is the signpost up ahead that shows us the One who takes this world that God made, this world that started well but fell, and by the power of God begins to make it right? Could that be it?

It is at the heart of our faith to affirm, Yes, it is! The cross is the signpost where the world turns around and the new creation begins, as the world begins to become what it is meant to be. This is no easy transformation. It took the sacrifice of Christ once offered for the sake of the whole world. For that world to be set right, for that world to turn the corner and become what it should have been all along, the world itself would have to perish. Just as a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies and is reborn in the fruit it bears, so this earth would have to suffer judgment. We are still living in the last days of that judgment, the birth pangs of the new world as the old world dies and is reborn. And let me tell you, it doesn’t want to die; it’s a hard death before rebirth comes — as hard as the death of the cross. Jesus told us, “Now is the judgment of this world, now the ruler of this world will be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

He, the homeless one with no place to lay his head, is the signpost up ahead that points the way from homelessness. He leads us to an eternal home with many mansions; but he also teaches us to open our doors to welcome the stranger and the refugee. He challenges us to work and pray and give so that all of God’s children may have decent homes in which to live, in God’s world where things are the way they should be.

Jesus, who fasted in the wilderness, who thirsted on the cross, is the signpost up ahead that leads away from hunger. Not only does he give us his Body and Blood, as spiritual food and drink, but he gives us every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God to nourish us as can no earthly food. And he challenges us to share our abundance — for abundant it is even when we think it isn’t, even when all we’ve got is five loaves and two fish — he challenges us to share our rations with those who have less, or nothing at all, so that all may be filled, in God’s world where things are the way they should be.

Jesus, whom the rulers of this world connived to defeat, to find guilty before a crooked court, this Jesus is the signpost up ahead that points the way to justice. He engraves the new covenant on our hearts, the new covenant that asks that we do justice, love righteousness, and walk humbly with our God, following in the way of the cross into God’s world where things are the way they should be.

Jesus, the one born amidst violence and dying amidst violence — he is the signpost up ahead that transforms violence into peace, by taking the very instrument of violence, the cross, and fooling everyone — including our ancient enemy Satan — as he turns that instrument of death into the instrument of peace and life. This was the reason he came to us, this was the hour for which he was born, this was the judgment of the world, the casting out and the casting down of the ruler of this world; this was the hour when Jesus was glorified, lifted up, to draw the whole world to himself, so that it might become at last God’s world of peace where things are the way they should be.

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Good Friday is just a little over a week away. Keep your eyes on the old rugged cross. It is the signpost that leads the way to life everlasting in the kingdom of God, but also to more abundant life here and now, as each of us disciples of Christ takes up our own cross, day by day, to share what seems to be small and weak and little, but which the grace of God can magnify. Keep your eyes on that cross in the midst of homelessness and hunger and injustice and violence — but also, put our hands to work, right here, right now, to help to make it right. Keep your eyes on that cross and God will give you strength to endure and to do your part in turning those wrongs around, to do your part in the redemption of this world. Keep your eyes on that cross, the instrument of death that is become for us the means of life; keep your eyes on the signpost up ahead, glad to suffer shame and loss, if shamed we must be, but willing to lose all for the one thing of worth: the inestimable love of God; revealed to us in and through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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Lift High the Cross

The cross he bore is life and health -- to us -- though shame and death to him.

Lent 4b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Today we reach the midpoint of our Lenten journey. It marks a turning point and a resting place. I’m sure we’ve all seen the signs on the turnpikes or superhighways alerting us to the service area coming up, or those spots that are set aside for the long-distance truckers to pull off the road when they find themselves getting drowsy. We are also familiar with the sign announcing a scenic view — a spot off the road set aside for people to pull over and appreciate the countryside, the lake, or the mountain view. All of these special spots are indicated by a sign of some kind.

One of the signs that marks this Sunday as special is the color code — we switch from purple to rose for this Fourth Sunday in Lent. We might think of it as the color of a rosy sunset, before we plunge into the deeper evening darkness of the last half of the Lenten season leading up to the terrible events we commemorate on Good Friday, when the sky grows dark and the Son of God breathes his last.

But what points us towards Good Friday is the very sign we are reminded of today: and that is the cross itself. Jesus tells the crowds that just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so too the Son of Man will be lifted up. To fill in the background we are treated today to the passage from the Book of Numbers. This passage that gives us the backstory about this serpent that Moses lifts up. The wandering Israelites become inpatient, and complain about the quality of the food that God has provided (notice how foolishly ungrateful and inconsistent they are when they say there is no food — and we hate this food!). God punishes them by sending poisonous serpents to bite them, and when Moses intercedes, God instructs him to make a bronze replica of a poisonous serpent and set it on a pole. And when anyone who has been bitten by one of the real serpents looks at this bronze replica they will be healed and live.

Jesus applies this incident to himself — he promises that the Son of Man will be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him will be saved and have eternal life. He is referring, of course, to the cross upon which he will offer the supreme sacrifice of himself for the sake of the whole world. Why? Because, as probably the most quoted verse of Scripture puts it, “because God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.” This is what Jesus came for, this is what Jesus was born for, and this is why he will die — not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. The world has rejected God’s gifts and been stung by the poisonous serpent of ingratitude, and it is only by looking upon the Son of God, given for us as the greatest gift, that we can be healed. And the sign that marks this gift, this saving gift for the good of the whole world, is the cross.

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Sometimes a sign indicates ownership or possession. Along many a country road you will see signs on the trees saying, “no trespassing.” And you might well wonder, what are they so worried about out here in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes the sign of ownership or possession is symbolic and consists in planting a flag — why, there’s even a flag up on the moon; and I can guarantee you there will probably be no more trespassers there than there are in most of those remote country woods.

The sign of the cross fulfills a similar function — especially when we use it in baptism. Every time I baptize a child, I also mark their forehead with holy oil, making the sign of the cross and saying, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” I like to think that when I make that same sign of the cross on people’s foreheads on Ash Wednesday that I am dusting for God’s fingerprint — the cross is already there and those ashes only make it show up so that it can be seen: truly a sign that tells you something about the one who bears it. It tells us who we belong to — the one who bought us with his own precious blood; the one who gave us life by his death, who healed us by his wounds.

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As the old hymn says, “The cross he bore is life and health” — to us — “though shame and death to him.” We were worse than just snake-bitten — and I can tell you from personal experience, a lot worse than cat-bitten! — we were, as Paul told the Ephesians, dead through our trespasses. We had not just pouted and frowned and complained about the food. We were Gentile sinners — by nature children of wrath, as Saint Paul puts it. We were not just occasional lawbreakers but renegades and outlaws, without any hope of salvation or even all that much interest in it.

Yet God, “who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” And this is all by grace, all by a free gift from God to us; not because of anything we did or anything we deserved, but just because God loved us, so loved us that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. And God set up the sign for all who choose to turn towards it to see and behold — — that Good Friday two millennia ago when the Son of Man was lifted from the earth, so that any and all people could behold him in his sorrow and his glory.

Signs do many things. I’m old enough to remember the signs for the fallout shelters when everyone was worried an atomic war might break out any day. There are signs that tell you to stop and there are signs that tell you to yield. There are signs that tell you where to get a good deal on a used car, and there are signs that warn you not to drink the water in the pond because it is deadly poison. A sign can save your life.

The cross is such a sign. It is a shelter from the stormy blast, whether that blast is an atomic bomb or a frigid wind. It is a sign that tells you to stop — to stop your foolishness and look and listen and see and hear that the train is bearing down on you and will wreck you if you don’t get off the tracks. It is a sign that tells you to yield to the one to whom all obedience is due. It is a sign that points you to the best deal you will ever get in your life — salvation for free, without a price to be paid by you because someone else has paid it for you, with his own shame and death.

It is the cross, upon which the Son of Man was lifted up. May we who bear his name as Christians never fear to bear that cross, and trust in it, as the emblem and sign of our redemption and salvation. Lift high the Cross, my friends, lift it high, every day of your life, every way that you can — for in doing so you may call others to this banner, where they too may find shelter, peace, and life.+

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A Fair Exchange

God gives it all and wants it all back.

SJF • Lent 2b • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?+

God often goes to extremes to make a point. But when we read the Bible or hear a Scripture passage in church on Sunday morning, we often miss just how extreme God is, because we know the end of the story. We know that after Christ is betrayed, tried, tortured and crucified — that he will be raised from the dead. We know the happy ending, so we don’t experience this whole story as quite so suspenseful.

In order to get the full impact of the Scripture, put yourself for a moment in the shoes of the Big Fisherman, Peter, so put off by the whole idea, when Jesus says he is going to Jerusalem and will suffer and die there that Peter doesn’t even hear the part about being raised. He is not afraid to rebuke his own Lord; he isn’t about to let him put himself in danger, no siree!

This Gospel carries an almost unbearable message. Not only does Jesus prophesy his own death, but he says that any who choose to follow him must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. Does the misery of Jesus so crave company that he wants the disciples to be crucified too? Does he want us to be crucified?

The answer, of course, is No. What Jesus is doing to the disciples, and to us, is daring them and us to risk what we love most — those “dearest idols” we sang about in the hymn. Jesus challenges them — and us — to weigh our most precious possessions

against our hope and faith in God. Jesus is defying us to put our money where their mouth is.

We are not quite so dramatically challenged as the disciples were, at least not usually. But there are still places in the world where being a Christian can bring you into serious danger and even death. All you have to do is listen to the news reports of churches burned with worshipers inside, of Christians being beheaded, children kidnapped and murdered. Extremists acting in the name of Islam, from Isis to Boko Haram, will maim, torture and kill anyone who stands up for Jesus against their ferocious and intolerant zeal.

For most of us, in what we like to think of as a more civilized country, we do not usually face attacks for being Christian. But I’m sure the people in London and Paris thought the same, when they were attacked and killed on the streets of their own cities. Most of us, we hope, in our everyday lives will not face such lethal threats or assaults.

But we will find challenges in having to choose between what we know in our hearts God wants for us, and what we feel in our bones we’ve just got to have for ourselves. Maybe it’s the new car; or the new PlayStation or XBox, or that shiny new Blu-Ray player.

Or maybe it’s something less physical? We know God wants us to be faithful in our relationships; to treat others as we know we would ourselves be treated — but then there are those temptations to cheat; and the wandering eye can lead you astray. We know God wants us to be loving parents; but then sometimes the kids are such a chore, such a pain in the you know what — it’s easier to send them out to spend time on their own, to send them out into the streets rather than to spend time with them. We know God wants us to be honest; but it’s so tempting to pad the expense account, or fail to report that little under-the-table cash that comes in on form 1040 that comes around this time of year.

What does God ask of us? Our deaths? No. Not really; does he? No, I think God asks for something simpler, and maybe, like many simple things, harder in the long run. God does not ask for our deaths, but our lives. God asks us for our love — love for him and for each other. It seems simple; but like many simple things it’s hard, really hard. Because we all experience the forces pulling us the other way: possessions, relationships, and the four P’s: position, power, prominence and pride.

Saint Paul knew all about it. He knew from personal experience how these things work in our lives, pulling us away from God. Remember how he said, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do...” Paul knew how hard it was; he knew the downside; he knew the temptation, he knew about the powerlessness in the face of temptation: the wretchedness of knowing what is right but not being able to do it. But Paul also knew the upside! He knew that even if he couldn’t fight it on his own, God could. God could empty him of his sin, and fill him right back up to the brim with grace.

Paul knew that God could raise him up, even if it was God knocked him down in the first place. (Sometimes God puts those he loves through the wringer. Who did he love more than his Son?) And yet Paul laid it out in black and white: Jesus “was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.” “Handed over to death” — not just the cross, which is bad enough — but death upon it: that slow, painful death of hanging, nailed to a tree, for a tired, painful afternoon. Think of that: to die that way, hanging there, bleeding to death and suffocating — not an easy death. And God didn’t do any kind of last minute rescue on Jesus, as had happened with Isaac, when God stopped Abraham’s hand and let him spare Isaac’s life. He was the one promised in God’s covenant, the promise that Abraham would be the father of many nations, and Sarah would be the mother. Now, as you know, the only child this aged couple had was Isaac — yet God challenged Abraham to give up that child of the promise, testing his faithfulness, offering him up to death; testing him, but then rescuing Isaac at the last minute, and stopping Abraham’s hand — and that proved how faithful Abraham was: because he was willing to risk the promise.

But there was no rescue for Jesus, for God’s own Son. There was no army of angels to fly in and knock down the Romans, there was no one to deliver him from the cross. Instead there was that painful death, then after the death prying at the nails — think about that: pulling nails out of someone’s flesh to take him down from the cross, the clumsy lowering down to the ground, and the waiting, weeping mother raising a cry to split the heavens.

And yet, Paul assures us that even if this is how God treated his own son for our sake will he not do more for us, now that the cost has been paid? Yes, Jesus died. But Paul also assures us that he was raised from the dead — why? For us; for our justification. And with Jesus on our side, the risen Jesus who lives for ever, with him on our side who — or what— can keep us from God? That is Paul’s good news, that is his Gospel.

Yes, we suffer temptations; yes, we have desires we can’t control; yes, we fall and we fail. But the grace of God can restore us, can lift us back up again, can raise us up, even as he raised up Christ — “who was handed over to death for our trespasses and yet was raised for our justification.” God took an old man and woman, childless and comfortless, and made of them a multitude of nations, the parents of kings of peoples. God took the lifeless body of his own Son and worked upon it in the silence of the tomb, bringing life from the dead. And so too God will work on us, dead in our sins, or dead in the grave. Gaining the whole world will profit us nothing if we lose eternal life. But if we risk our lives — our lives in the here and now, and lose them for the sake of the gospel, not ashamed to name Jesus as Lord and savior, he will indeed save us, and raise us up on the last day. Nothing can stop the power of God at work in Christ, and in us, through him.

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Though we will never likely face death for our Lord, we will undergo those prosaic trials, those day-to-day temptations, but even — especially in them because that is what is before us — we can call upon the same faith and hope that raised the hearts of Abraham and Paul. That faith included several basic truths of which we sometimes lose sight.

First, everything we are, everything we have comes from God. When God asks for something back, he is only asking us to return something we have received from him. We say “All things come of thee, O God, and of thine own have we given thee” perhaps so often we forget how true it is! All things come from God and it is out of that we give back. And what a radical statement it is! Everything belongs to God! You, the clothes you are wearing now, your car, your Blu-Ray, even your Xbox, your shoes! Everything belongs to God.

Second, God doesn’t ask for everything back right now. He lets you keep the car, he lets you keep the XBox, keep the Blu-Ray. You can keep your shoes on. God doesn’t take it all back — until we die, and as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. But in the meantime God accepts the part that we offer, even though God could ask for it all right now. Right now, the earth could open up and swallow this church and we’d all be dead and buried. That hasn’t happened in 150-some years; let’s hope it doesn’t happen in another 150! God could do that, right now. But God doesn’t. Instead God asks us to offer something, some part of what we have been given. What God wants is for our hearts to be free so that if we were asked to give everything we would be willing to give it; so that at the end, when in fact it all will fall away and we pass into death, we will be ready to let it all go — returning everything to God, including our selves, our souls and bodies as a reasonable and holy sacrifice given completely to him. What a wonderful feeling that will be, if we’ve learned in the meantime how to let go. This is like training wheels, my friends: learning to let go of part of things as we live, so that at the end, when we die, we will be ready to let go of all of it.

Remember those words from the hymn we sang at the Gospel: “The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be: help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.” When we put something else on God’s throne, we have lost sight of God. When we treasure anything more than God, well: he told us where you treasure is, there your heart will be also. And so God asks us for something back, some part of our treasure, just to show that we can let go, and give up, for him — for him, the one who gave us everything.

That is how God lets us see where our hearts are. For if we treasure anything more than God, the pain when we let go of it will let us know. Just as pain is the body’s way of letting us know something is wrong, so too that pinch, that regret when we let go of what we offer lets us know our heart-strings are still tied to it and we haven’t yet learned how to “let go and let God.” God wants us to be free, my friends, free from everything, even everything that he gave us, including our lives. And if we can learn to give up those somethings in the here and now, we will be ready to give up everything when the time comes for us to do so, at the end of our lives.

Everything belongs to God; and God wants it all, but in the mean time we honor God with what we give, when we offer the portion of our gift here at the altar, giving thanks to Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom we know, one day, we shall have to render a full account.+

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