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A sermon preached on November 25, 2007 based upon Colossians 1:11 – 20, entitled, “How Can It Be That Jesus of Nazareth is King of Kings?”

If truth be told, there isn’t a great deal we know for sure regarding the historical truth of this man named Jesus, whom the Church declares as king of kings. From the point of view of an academic historian, here is pretty much all we can say for sure:

That in an obscure part of the world, some 2000 years ago, at the age of about 30 a small town Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth began moving about the countryside, teaching and healing and gathering followers about him. His teachings emphasized compassion and forgiveness and care for the poor, and a God who was very close at hand and cared about these very things.

Jesus of Nazareth came in conflict with the religious and political authorities of his day because he stood up for the poor and the outcaste. After perhaps two years of this teaching and healing, this Jesus traveled to Jerusalem, the power center of Israel, where he was welcomed by the peasants as a king — as one they hoped would bring liberation to their oppressed lives. He confronted the political and religious authorities, particularly in regards to the practices that were routinely taking place in the temple that conspired against those who were poor in body and spirit.

In a matter of days, following a last supper with his followers, he was arrested as his followers fled. He offered no resistance to the soldiers who came to arrest him, and within a day he was executed in the extremely painful method commonly practiced by the Roman Empire in those days so as to make an example out of him for others who might also consider challenging the power system. He was nailed to a cross, where in a matter of hours he died. This is what we know.

What we also know is that soon after his death, the movement Jesus of Nazareth had started arose from the ashes of their fear and despair, and his followers began carrying out the work he had devoted himself to before his death, strangely with more enthusiasm and courage than ever before, declaring from the very outset their conviction that they had in fact seen him alive again, raised by God from the dead.

What we also know is that from the perspective of those who had known and loved this Jesus, their encounter with him had changed everything — everything they thought about themselves and life and God.

And immediately a process of reflection began regarding this man — who he was, and is, and what he means for our lives — a process that has continued even to the present age.

In the process, “doctrines” were put forth, theological formulas. These doctrines were helpful in discussing the meaning of what they had experienced, but invariably these doctrines became problems in themselves when people claimed these doctrines to be absolutely true rather than as imperfect expressions of an ultimately inexpressible truth.

This process of reflection engaged in by Christians is analogous to the process engaged in by scientists for centuries. There is the data that scientists observe in their experiments,
and then there is the process of reflection — the theorizing about the data — trying to make sense of the data.

For ages a theory may have been in place that seemed to work, that is, made a certain sense of the data. But eventually new data arises, and it is discovered that the theory needs to be revised, or maybe even completely demolished, in order to make room for a new theory that can encompass all the data.

For instance, when the data began to show that the earth wasn’t flat, or that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe, or that Newton’s theories, useful though they had been, were fundamentally at odds with the data being encountered in the 20th century physics lab, old theories had to be given up, and new theories embraced. Generally speaking there was always resistance to this reformulation, because people had grown attached to the old theories, and found it difficult to think in new ways.

Returning to the process of reflection on the meaning of Jesus… following Jesus’ death and the mystery that was his resurrection, the earliest affirmations of those first Christians regarding Jesus were quite simple. Basically two things: first, that Jesus had risen from the dead; that death had not held him. And second, that he is Lord, that is — he is the King to whom they were compelled to serve with their lives.

But as time passed, the reflections became more elaborate. He was, for instance, surely a human being, who like all the rest of us suffered the consequences of mortal life in this world. And yet, they were convinced he was in some sense unlike any other man — that God was uniquely with him in a manner hard to define, but which they nonetheless tried their best to define.

You can see this process of reflection at work in the writings of the four Gospel writers, who, like different scientists working in separate labs, each trying to make sense of similar data, develop theories that are similar, and yet at certain points in contradiction of one another.

Take this morning’s Gospel lesson, which tells Luke’s version of Jesus’ death upon the cross. Luke wrote his Gospel something like 50 years after Jesus’ death, so it includes 50 years of this process of reflection by the particular community of believers of which Luke was a part.

What actually happened — what was actually said that horrid afternoon Jesus was nailed to a cross? We really can‘t know for sure. All we know for sure is that Jesus suffered a terribly painful death that included suffocation — that’s what crucifixion did to a person —
and so in the midst of trying to catch his breath, it seems unlikely he said much of anything.

Nonetheless, all four Gospel writers portray Jesus as having things to say, with each version quite different from the others, the one exception being a similarity found in Mark and Matthew’s versions.

I think it is fair to say that the words the Gospel writers place on Jesus’ lips express different threads of reflection on the meaning of this man’s life. From a faith perspective,
we believe that the holy spirit was actively involved in this process.

Luke alone tells us that Jesus said, “Father, Forgive them for they know not what they do.” Did he actually say this? Probably not. But Luke, recognizing that forgiveness
was at the very heart of Jesus’ life and ministry, puts these words on his lips in death.

Luke also portrays a conversation between two thieves who may or may not have been crucified with Jesus that day. One mocks Jesus, the other reaches out to Jesus, seeking mercy. Did this conversation actually take place? Again, probably not, since crucified people gasping for breath are not likely to engage in complex conversations.

Luke has a profound point to make — that in the experience of the Christian community,
every human being is confronted with a decision: whether to admire, to honor, to seek to emulate the life this man lived, or to reject it, and that this decision is tied up with the very meaning of our own life and death.

There follows a brief conversation initiated by the thief who honors Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus responds, “This day you will be with me in paradise.” Again, this conversation, found only in Luke’s Gospel, probably didn’t actually take place. Luke, pondering Jesus at the moment of death, places words in his mouth that are consistent with what he clearly expressed elsewhere: that there is a good and gracious life beyond this one for those who, like this thief, are open to this wondrous gift offered by a merciful God.

Throughout the brief scene of his death, much is made of what we might call the “irony of Jesus’ Kingship.” There is a plaque above him declaring Jesus to be the “King of the Jews.” And yet his kingdom is mostly mocked by those present: “How can this man be a king? He’s hanging on a cross!” But from Luke’s perspective, he is indeed the king of kings, even though he is acknowledged as such at this moment only by the one, repentant thief.

The epistle lesson, taken from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, is also written several decades after Jesus death and resurrection, and displays an even more elaborate reflection
on the meaning of this Jesus. Paul makes grand, sweeping statements: that Jesus has rescued us from the power of darkness, that it is through him that all things were made, that he is the very image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation — the center in which all things hold together, in whom the very fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
To some, this might seem like quite a leap to make regarding the simple wandering preacher known as Jesus of Nazareth who lived 2000 years ago in an obscure part of the planet.

Underneath all of these grand, theological formulas is the underlying experience and conviction of Paul and the others in that early Christian community that in Jesus the very key to the meaning of life can be found.

Everyone of us is confronted with a fundamental question: for what purpose were human beings born? Or more personally, why am I alive? What does my life mean? The experience of the Christian community leads us to declare that in this mysterious man Jesus, a reliable answer has been found.

There is a peculiar way in which a kind of intersection has occurred in recent decades between the process of Christian theology on the one hand, and the process of reflection going on in the realm of Physics and Cosmology, on the other.

Scientists have pondered the data that tells them that in the very first moment of that so-called “big bang” out of which the universe as we know it burst into existence, everything was in place that was required for the eventual evolution (billions of years down the road)
of the sort of remarkable complexity that we refer to as human life or human consciousness. Theoretically, the laws of the universe could have been established in an infinite number of other ways, but as far as the scientists can see, none of these other ways would have allowed for the eventual creation of anything resembling human life.

What’s it all mean? This, of course, is debated endlessly in scientific circles, and generally speaking, scientists are very reluctant to say it “means” anything at all; that it just is, and that such speculation is beyond the realm of science.

But there is at least the suggestion in all this of a purpose behind everything; that creation has been moving towards something through all these billions of years — that from the beginning, creation has been aiming at some kind of goal involving the unique possibilities brought into existence with human consciousness.

Human life, of course, encompasses a wide range of possibilities. Has creation been aiming since the beginning of time in the direction of a creature that could, say, “shop till you drop“, or make war on those who see things differently, or harbor old grudges, or veg out in front of the television set? Somehow it just doesn’t seem as though these were the sorts of things that creation has been aiming for since the big bang.

In this context, Paul’s leap of exalted language about the meaning of Jesus of Nazareth
might just help bridge the gap here. Referring to Jesus, Paul calls him

“the firstborn of all creation;
for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created,
things visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers–
all things have been created through him and for him.
He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

In other words, in the appearance of this Jesus of Nazareth, a quality of life was manifest upon this earth for the first time that all creation had been moving towards from the very beginning.

So here we are two thousand years after his appearance, sitting in worship on stewardship Sunday, confronted with the rather mundane decision regarding how much money each of us will pledge to support our church’s life.

It is in such mundane decisions that our life finds its destiny. To throw our lot with the thief on the cross who reaches out to Jesus and his kingdom of light, or to turn away, like that other thief, and wrap ourselves up in the darkness.

He has risen, and he is the king.

A sermon preached on November 18, 2007 based upon Isaiah 65:17 – 25, entitled, “All Shall Be Well.“

The words of the prophecy we heard from the end of the book of Isaiah come after a long period of despair for the people of Israel. Many of them have been living in exile, singing sad, homesick songs by the rivers of Babylon. Nearly 50 years earlier the armies of Babylonia had invaded Jerusalem, crushing the city, ravaging vineyards and homes, and taking thousands of prisoners, forcing them to leave their homeland behind and live as captives in a faraway land.

The prophecy alludes to the heartbreak of life:

The sound of weeping, the cry of distress,
Infants dying after but a few days of life,
Adults cut down in the very midst of life.

Houses built with great anticipation of their becoming a home,
never to be allowed to actually live in them.

Vineyards planted anticipating the sweet, succulence of the grapes,
never to be allowed to taste the sweetness — the vineyards over by
others.

Laboring in vain,
Raising “children for calamity.”

Hurt and destruction everywhere.

Time and again recently I have heard people say that for them the highlight of our worship service is when the little children come forward. What is it about children that touch our hearts so? Is it not that they are the ones who have not been hardened to all this, who expect goodness and love, and are surprised when they find something other than goodness and love. Their hearts, like their skin, are soft.

We all start out this way, but in the course of our life, we begin to harden inside. We discover what it is to hurt — we learn, as our parents tell us, time and again, “Life isn’t fair.“ We learn the lesson well. And something begins to close down inside us. Eden is left once more.

To some extent this seems inevitable, even necessary. Without some inner hardening, we wouldn’t survive in this world, where so routinely the wolves devour the lambs.

But oh, how we long for Eden, and watching the faces of the children we catch for a moment a glimpse of the lost paradise.

But alas, it seems, we cannot go there ourselves, and must settle for a few vicarious moments of experiencing that place of innocent joy through the eyes of the children. We bear the burden of knowing the so-called real world, the one that soon enough these children will also know all too well. Violence and grief, betrayal and greed, cruelty and hurt.

It is into such a context as this that the prophet has the audacity to speak a powerful word of hope.

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.

Don’t look back, says the Lord. There is no need to long for Eden, or even for our lost childhood. No need for nostalgia. The best is yet to come.

Julian Norwich was a nun who lived in the beginning of the 14th century, became deathly sick at the age of 30, at which point she had a series of visions that explored the sufferings of Christ, but concluded with Christ saying,

“…All shall be well, and all shall be well,
and all manner of thing shall be well.”

That in the end, the little child has it right after all, and we must turn and become like little children to receive the kingdom of God.

I offer these words to you as a breath prayer, as you go about this often broken world: “All shall be well.”

The story that forms us as the church tells us that the second to last word is one of death, of violence seeming to win, of a man full of love and hope being nailed to a cross, like a common criminal. It is the second to last word and we take it seriously in the church, for we know it tells us much about life in this world.

But the final word isn’t the cross, it is the resurrection. The tomb is empty. Jesus is alive. And so in the end, “All shall be well.”

This past week I took my monthly turn of leading worship at the local nursing home. I read to the old folks there extended portions from the book I read to you last week, “90 Minutes in Heaven,” describing the vision Don Piper received when his heart stopped beating for an extended period of time after a car crash. The old folks loved it. You should have seen their faces.

Not always, but often enough, you will see the same light filled face on old people as they are nearing death as you see on little children, so recently born.

I heard a wise preacher once say, pay attention to the moments that move you to tears, for God is trying to say something to you. As children we often cried, but most of us, especially us men, find it hard to cry. It is that hardening of which I spoke.

I have noticed that sometimes I will be moved to tears watching a movie; in the darkness I lose myself in the story.

And yet I have noticed something about the place where my tears show up. For instance, watching It’s a Wonderful Life, I do not cry as George Bailey is driven to the point of planning his own suicide on Christmas Eve — the injustice of Mr. Potter, the local robber Baron. I am prepared for this.

The tears come when the sin of this world is redeemed by unexpected grace — by the unanticipated acts of kindness expressed by the whole community chipping in to save George and the bank.

It is in this scene that I become like a little child again.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is so powerful because it tells the truth about the second to last word, which is that often life isn’t fair, and the Mr. Potters too often win, and goodness often gets a swift kick to the groin.

But the movie goes on to witness to the final word, that in the end, All will be well, that in the end, Jesus wins, and we are to hang onto this truth.

This is what the church is all about — the church that Ruth and Russ have bound themselves to this day as we have received them into membership.

All of us will have our George Bailey moments, when we are tempted to believe that the second to last word is the final word.

But together we are the Body of Christ, and so together, we will remind one another of the final word. All shall be well. And so we persevere until that day our faces do shine like the sun.

A sermon preached on November 11, 2007 based upon Luke 20:27 – 40, on the occasion of the reception of new members, entitled, “Meeting in Heaven.”

The story recounted in this morning’s Gospel reading is recorded in three Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), which makes it likely that the passage contains actual words spoken by Jesus. This story is unique in so far as it is the only passage in which Jesus speaks directly about the nature of what we call the “after life”, or life after death. Which in turn begs the question, why didn’t Jesus talk more often about what life beyond death would be like, given the natural curiosity I think we all feel?

I think the answer is found in the fact that our human language and our human concepts are simply too small to contain the mysteries of what is to come. The apostle Paul describes in passing in 2 Corinthians 12 some kind of out of body experience he once had, in which he was “caught up in the Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” (12:4) The great medieval theologian Thomas Acquinas, author of thousands of pages of brilliant theology, had an experience some kind of powerfully mystical experience towards the end of his life in which he encountered God directly, and afterwards he refused to write anymore, saying all his words were “just so much straw.”

The “Sadducees” referred to in this morning’s Gospel lesson were wealthy, established people in the community. They are not oppressed. For them, life in this world was good, and they felt no need to imagine another world beyond this one. The goodness of this world was enough. For the Sadducees, the notion of a life beyond this life seemed ludicrous. And so they attempt to show how foolish the concept is with what is essentially a trick question. In the life to come, they ask, whose wife will the woman be who has had seven husbands? They are too small minded — too literal minded — and Jesus says as much. They are like both modern day religious fundamentalists on the one hand, and modern militant atheists on the other.

And yet the question does touch something that I think most of us wonder about when we ponder the mystery of what lies beyond death, which is, will we be with our loved ones again? Will wives be with husbands once more, will our parents be there, and all others we have loved? Do these relationships continue into eternity?

Jesus‘ answer to the Sadducees seems to imply that, Yes, we will be with our loved ones beyond death. And yet, the relationships will be transformed — it will not be merely a continuance of what we knew here on earth. The institution of marriage, for instance, is a provision given to us in this world that becomes, in some sense, unnecessary in the world to come.

A man named Don Piper wrote a book entitled “90 Minutes in Heaven.” Don is a Baptist minister who, several years back was in a horrible head-on collision with a huge truck while driving his car in the rain on an icy bridge. The EMTs who arrived on the scene originally concluded that Don was dead, and he was left unattended to while they waited for the arrival of the coroner. During this time Don had a glorious vision, which was for him so strange and yet personal that it took him several years before he felt right about trying to put it into words and share it with others. I want to read now to you extensive portions of his words from the second and third chapters of his book:

Simultaneous with my last recollection of seeing the bridge and the rain, a light enveloped me, with a brilliance beyond earthly comprehension of description… In my next moment of awareness, I was standing in heaven. Joy pulsated through me as I looked around, and at that moment I became aware of a large crowd of people. They stood in front of a brilliant, ornate gate. I have no idea how far away they were; such things as distance didn’t matter. As the crowd rushed toward me, I didn’t see Jesus, but I did see people I had known. As they surged toward me, I knew instantly that all of them had died during my lifetime. Their presence seemed absolutely natural.

Then, just as suddenly as I had arrived at the gates of heaven, I left them.

Don Piper returned to his body and proceeded on a long, very difficult journey, with extreme pain and enormous frustration. It was a journey that was not immune from many temptations to despair, despite the wonders he had seen in his vision. And as I said before, it took him quite some time to even attempt to describe what he saw to others.

In contrast to the family Don Piper describes with their enormous and happy reunions, I come from quite a different sort of family. I have only one first cousin, whom I haven’t seen in forty years. My parents were divorced when I was 12, and the members of my original family are spread out with a good deal of distance between us. There are a range of motivations that led me into the ministry, but one of those motivations I know was the hope that within the church I would find the kind of extended family I had largely missed out on in my biological family, and here in Parsippany, that is indeed what I have found.

Fourteen years ago I came with Sarah to the altar of God; accompanying Sarah was her six year old daughter named Kate, and accompanying me was my six year old son named Andrew. We made covenantal vows to one another, and these vows included our children. Two years later God added Bobby to the equation, and over the years we have sought to learn the lessons of what it means to truly be a family, hanging in their together in good times and bad, practicing, and I mean, practicing the art of love. I expect to see Sarah, Kate, Andrew and Bobby in heaven one day, but I also hope to see you there as well.

This morning we held another ceremony of covenant before the altar of God. Bill, Deana, Beverly, Bob, Jim, Rita, Russ and Ruth, made vows to this congregation, and we made vows to them. We made a soul connection this morning. We declared our intent to live together in whatever time we have left on this earth in such a manner that when we find ourselves making that final journey from earth to heaven, whoever died first will be a part of that celestial welcoming committee that receives us on the far side.

I have written a number of eulogies in my time, and something I have noticed is that almost always, in the remembrance of the one who has died, it is primarily the good stuff that gets remembered. In the fragile tenderness of getting ready for the funeral, it is the good times and the good qualities that enter into our consciousness.

Now, given that we are all a mixture of good and bad, virtue and vice, it might seem that there is something distorted about this manner of remembering — the fact that the person eulogized generally ends up sounding like a saint. But I believe there is a truth in this kind of selective remembering.

We are on a journey of becoming. Words are inadequate to fully describe the nature of the becoming. Jesus spoke in this passage of becoming “like angels”, but what exactly an angel is like — well, that’s a mystery for sure. We could say it is a journey to become like Christ, and that is true, for the journey we are on involves learning how to embody the same love that was within Jesus. But in this journey we will, in the end, still be our unique, distinct personalities, not just little would-be Jesus imitators. When we get to heaven, the “us” that arrives will be the very best of what we were on earth; the stuff that blocked the best stuff will be left behind.

And so I think in our earthly remembrances of newly departed loved ones, we are already sensing the great becoming which happens in small ways in the course of our journey on this earth, and then, I believe, in an absolute sense in the moment of our death, when everything that is not of love falls away, and we become transparent to the light that shines from God’s eternal love.

“When we’ve been there, ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun,
we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we first begun.”