Let’s face it, the Christian life is hard. Relationships take work. Christians forget. Sometimes it is tempting to go back to the days when God was not the center of our lives—to backslide. We all are faced with tremendous pressures to drift away from intimacy with Jesus and the community of
the church. However, the Lord invites us to pay attention, to move forward, to draw near, and to live lives of worship.
As we continue our Lenten journey seeking to draw near to the heart of God, I want to ponder the glory of Christ. One good definition of the word “glory” is, “the visible manifestation of the attributes of God.”
The Transfiguration is one of the very few instances where a human was allowed to actually see the glory of God. One is Moses on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 33-34), another is Elijah at Mount Carmel (1 Kings 19), and then there was Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9). They saw the full divinity of Jesus revealed, and it was staggering!
The full revelation of the glory of God gave Moses direction and determination, it gave Elijah courage and purpose, and it filled the disciples with all they would need to face the ordeal that Jesus knew was coming. Jesus knew that you can’t receive the full glory without first enduring the cross.
Our sin and shame keeps us from fully embracing the revelation of God’s glory, and it causes us rather to hide in fear. However, now that Christ’s work as our Great High Priest has been completed, we no longer have to hide from the glory of God. In 2 Corinthians 3, the Apostle Paul reflects on the way Moses could see the Lord face to face, but the rest of the Israelites could only see Moses’ reflecting the glory of the Lord from behind a veil. Paul says that through Christ, the veil is removed, and we can stand fully in the presence of the Living God.
In order to go from fear to the fullness of God’s glory, the action we need to take is to turn our faces to Him – repentance. We have to say along with Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, and John, “I want to see your glory!” Let’s seek Him with unveiled faces and repentant hearts.
Christ’s sermon in Luke chapter 6 is full of surprising statements that seemed to his listeners (and even to us!) to turn the world upside-down! He was tearing apart the assumption that there is a connection between material blessing and spiritual blessing. Just because someone is rich doesn’t mean they are spiritually blessed. In fact, Christ says it is the poor who have a claim in the Kingdom of God. That’s not to say that all poor people are saved and all rich people are lost. It just means there is no connection between economic status and spiritual status.
Paul’s and Silas’ missionary travels outlined in Acts 16 demonstrate that there is no single type of person who follows Christ. In just one city called Philippi, we see Lydia, a wealthy merchant, following Christ. Then, between Lydia’s house and the synagogue, Paul and Silas speak to and convert a slave girl, for which they get thrown in prison. Then, when God opens the doors of the prison, the jailer also is converted! Talk about three people from three very different walks of life, all brought into fellowship with Christ and each other through His saving grace! In the next chapter, when Paul and Silas have moved on to Thessalonica, they are described as “the men who have turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).
We need to be aware that following Christ will almost certainly change our lives drastically. We might change careers and income brackets, and most definitely our relationships will change – friends may become enemies and enemies will become friends.
But Jesus defines all this upheaval as blessing! “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets” (Luke 6:22-23).
So regardless of how your life is now, whether you are experiencing material blessing or hardship, remember that this life is only temporary. God is preparing to turn this world upside down, and material status will not mean anything in that day. Your responsibility now is to steward any material blessing in such a way that the Kingdom of God will flourish in spiritual blessing to all those around you. We are first and foremost citizens of God’s eternal kingdom, and we hold all the things of this earth loosely, in the hope of being used mightily for God’s eternal purposes.
Many times when reading the dramatic telling of this story of when Christ declared His identity in the synagogue at Nazareth, we skip straight from Christ’s speech to the crowd wanting to throw Him off the cliff! When we skip the middle dialogue of this story, we lose what is really happening, and we think that they wanted to throw Him off the cliff because of His declaration. However, that is not the case. When He first made His declaration, they accepted it. In fact, they “spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (Luke 4:22).
The problem arose when the people began to take a “What’s in it for us?” attitude toward the fact that the Messiah was a hometown boy. They began to expect that they were going to start seeing all the perks of the Messiah centering His miraculous ministry in Nazareth.
However, He perceived the thoughts of their hearts, and the self-centered view that they took of the Messiah, that He was only for them. So He told two Old Testament stories of the blessings of God being shared with people outside the nation of Israel. When they realized that He was saying, they got angry, and this is what caused them to reject Him.
Self-protectionism is a very natural human response. We experience the same phenomenon when a weekday ministry at our church begins to grow, and suddenly there are no good parking spots left, and someone has drunk all the coffee in the kitchen, and someone has used up all the toilet paper in the bathrooms. When blessings begin to spread and ministry begins to enlarge, it can become inconvenient for the in-crowd, and it takes an intentional effort to resist becoming insular, accept the inconveniences that come when ministry is enlarged, and rejoice in seeing the Kingdom of God grow.
When we get too narrow-minded and comfort-focused, we lose the heart of God, which is focused on the people of the world. Endure the discomfort and inconvenience, and rejoice when the outsiders become your brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus is not just our Messiah, but He is the Messiah for all!
In the season of Epiphany, we celebrate the glory of God in the revelation of the plan of salvation through his son, Jesus Christ. The Apostle John weaves a wedding theme throughout his writings to help us understand Jesus as a glorious bridegroom who delights in his bride the church. We first see a glimpse of his glory with Jesus’ first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.
Following John 2 and the very first miracle at the wedding in Cana, turn to John 3, where John the Baptist describes himself as a the “best man” who announces “Here comes the groom!” Then in John 4, Christ uses the Samaritan woman at the well’s series of failed marriages to demonstrate her need for the love of of the true groom, a love that will ultimately satisfy her deepest longings. In John 14, like a bridegroom, Jesus promises to come to claim his Church (bride) and take her back to live with him forever in the home that he has prepared for her with his father.
Finally, in the Book of Revelation, chapters 19 and 21, John envisions the wedding day as the Church, the beautifully adorned Bride of Christ, loved, purified, and perfected by him forever is married to her beloved savior and husband.
When it comes to weddings, timing matters, and the Bible assures us that Jesus is working out his perfect timing of his marriage to his bride. He promises abundant life, beyond all we can ask or imagine, just like he saved the best wine for last in his wedding miracle! He promises living water overflowing out of our souls. What a glorious bridegroom!
Our response in all this is to trust him, to give him our lives and believe in him as the one who will ultimately satisfy all the longings of our hearts and ultimately unite his church to himself in glorious consummation at the end of the ages.
People naturally love mysteries. We love the suspense of a story where all the pieces don’t come together until the very end. As we celebrate Epiphany, we celebrate the revelation of the way the pieces of God’s story suddenly come together in Christ. His mystery is revealed.
Way back in Genesis 12, God made His promise to Abraham to bless all the families on earth. Then there is a long period of suspense to see how exactly God will work this out. God’s people spent hundreds of years searching and wondering about the mystery of how God would fulfill this promise. Ephesians 3:5 says that the mystery wasn’t revealed to previous generations, but it was then finally revealed in Christ.
What is this profound mystery?
This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
Ephesians 3:6
God’s power is strong enough, His grace is amazing enough, to extend not only to one small group of chosen people, but to the entire planet. His love is deep enough that people aren’t excluded from His grace just because of the group of people they were born into, but the mystery of the gospel reveals that all people can receive God’s salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
Wherever the gospel is preached, anywhere in this world or even in the heavenly places (v. 10), the mighty power of God is able to save all those who believe. The kingdom of God is spreading through the entire globe – a cosmic shift is taking place through God and His Church!
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 2to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21
I love the approach of the Church to the season of Advent, as we compare the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” of the first Advent to the Almighty King whose second coming we anticipate. It requires some thoughtful perspective-taking.
Throughout the book of Job, Job learns that he just doesn’t understand the mighty and wonderful plans that God is working out through the devastating events that he sees happening in his own life. He learns to see things through a heavenly perspective. He says:
I know that you can do all things,
Job 42:2-3
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
Jesus also speaks about the signs of the end of the age from a heavenly perspective in Luke, chapter 21. The events he describes are apocalyptic, but he describes it as a time of “power and great glory” (verse 27). He reminds His hearers that even when we are surrounded by distress, perplexity, and devastation, Christ rules over it all, and He will hold the absolute victory.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
Luke 21:33
We have times and seasons in our lives that are distressing and uncomfortable. We can’t put our faith in people and institutions, but we can ALWAYS put our faith in Jesus Christ. His promises are absolutely certain and sure. Be careful to guard your heart and not turn to anything else but Him. Everything else WILL disappoint. Pray, hold your head high, and trust only in Him.
All of who we are is meant to be used as an offering to God. This is what stewardship is. As we continue to consider the Book of Nehemiah and how to apply it to the state of affairs in our day, we recognize that in today’s world, we are considering not so much repairing physical walls, but the absolute crumbling of our cultural standards and truths. How can we rebuild the walls of faith and righteousness in a modern context?
Nehemiah 3:1 says that the high priest and his brothers “rose up” to rebuild the Sheep Gate. I like that terminology. Just like the priests of that time “rose up” and got their hands dirty to accomplish God’s work, we also need to rise up and commit ourselves to God’s work in our day. This month’s Election Day was a great example of the power of people rising up to commit themselves to accomplishing something they are passionate about. Each vote counts.
Verses 1 and 2 go on to show that each group of people was assigned a specific portion of the wall they were responsible for. They weren’t worried about the overwhelming task of rebuilding the entire wall. They were each concerned only with their own assignment, trusting that the group working next to them would take care of their own responsibility. This is a great lesson for the Church of God. We don’t need to be worried or overwhelmed about the enormity of the entire task, and we don’t need to be micromanaging everyone around us. We need to focus on our own assignment and trust everyone else to accomplish theirs.
Then verse 5 goes on to shame one group of nobles who “would not stoop to serve their Lord.” How shameful to be named in the Bible this way! We need to be humble and not consider ourselves above any task in the work of God. Instead, we need to be like our Lord Himself, who stooped to wash the feet of His disciples, and then even gave His own life for us.
There is no task too large or too small to matter in the work of God. You are called to faithfully steward your talents and abilities to serve in whatever way you can. Every job is critically important in the mission of the Church. You are not responsible for the entire work, just for your own assigned responsibility. Just like with the people of Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s day, we will see mighty works accomplished when we all rise up and faithfully fulfill our responsibilities, both large and small.
Stewardship of Responsibility – Sermon by the Rev. Charlie Holt from The Church of St John the Divine on Vimeo.
As we begin a series of sermons on the book of Nehemiah, we want to draw some parallels between the situation of Nehemiah building the walls of the city of Jerusalem and our own situations as we are building the kingdom of God. First, Nehemiah was not an important or influential person in life – he was a cupbearer to the king (Neh. 1:11). This means he was considered to be disposable, since his life was less valuable than the king’s, and everyone would rather he be poisoned rather than the king. However, he still saw himself as a leader with the power to make a difference. Second, he was a man of depth. He cared deeply about what was going on with the people of Jerusalem, even though it didn’t affect him directly in his life in the palace. He didn’t skim over their problems, and he allowed his heart to be impacted (verses 2-4). Third, he trusted the power of God more than any earthly power. When he found his heart affected by the serious issues he learned about, he took them straight to God to find wisdom on how to help (verses 5-11). Fourth, he took personal responsibility. He didn’t pawn it off on anyone else or say, “It’s not my problem.” He was prepared to risk his own self to use whatever influence he had to help his brothers, but he trusted himself in the hands of God and was willing to do whatever it takes. When it comes to our work in building the kingdom of God, we need to be like Nehemiah in these four areas, and we can trust the results to our faithful God.
Listen to the full sermon:
Stewardship of Influence – Sermon by the Rev. Charlie Holt from The Church of St John the Divine on Vimeo.
Paul uses the second half of chapter 4 of his letter to the Ephesians to remind them of what it looks and feels like to be separated from God. Can you see any evidence in our culture today of people whose thinking is futile, whose minds are darkened, and whose hearts are hardened? I sure can. This is clear evidence of separation from God. On the other hand, if you are actually in a relationship with the living God, there should be clear and visible evidence that your thinking, emotions, and behavior have been transformed. Our lives are designed to be a mirror, reflecting the glory and goodness of God. However, in order for a mirror to reflect the light, it has to be facing the light. Turn the mirror away from the light, and it reflects only darkness. In the same way, if we turn ourselves away from Christ, we cannot reflect His glory.
Therefore, even the small things in life matter, because they can turn us ever so slightly away from looking full at God, and our reflections of Him start to dim. Pay close attention to the smallest things that might be deceiving you and distracting you. Do not let your heart become hardened… in your marriages, your family relationships, your friendships, your church communities.
The good news is that you do not have to do this alone. God has given us His Spirit to keep our hearts soft, our minds vigilant, and our thinking true. He allows us to be restored not only to God, but also to one another, that we may flourish not only as individuals but as the people of God. We are beloved children of God, and we are meant to be imitators of Him. He wants to see us flourish, full of His grace and His love and His presence.
Christ Aligned and Spirit Attuned – Sermon by the Rev. Charlie Holt from The Church of St John the Divine on Vimeo.