B, Maundy Thursday - Exodus12:12-13, John 13:14–15, 34–35, 1 Corinthians 11:28-32 "Faith Judgement & Feet"

The feet of God walked through Egypt in Judgement.  It was to be the tenth time God would plague Pharoah and those with whom he took counsel.  This was a battle between God the Father and Ra, the sun god of Egypt, played out through their spokesmen Moses and Pharoah.

Each plague was an increase in demonstration of God’s power over Ra, in creation.  A sign not only for Pharoah, but a sign for all who witnessed the event, both Egyptian, Israelite and all who lived in the land.   

From undrinkable water in the Nile River, infestations of frogs, bugs, then flies, dead Egyptian livestock, then festering painful boils.  Devastating hail striking down man and beast, together with the crops of those who remained in their fields.  What was left in Egypt was then attacked by clouds of swarming locusts, inside and outside their homes.   Then darkness covered the land for three days, before the tenth and final plague, death of all first born.

The descendants of Abraham were called to faith in what they were witnessing.  Years after Abraham’s faithful listening was credited to him as righteousness, through faith, Moses having the opportunity to dwell in the spoils of Pharoah’s court, chose God and hardship rather than the pleasure of his position in Egypt. 

In Hebrews eleven we hear, “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter,  choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.  He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.  By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.  By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.”  (Hebrews 11:24–28 ESV)

These were days of faith.  The Law had not yet been given at Sinai.  Moses and Aaron were called to act in faith before Pharoah.  They announced what was to happen before God followed through with what he promised.  Pharoah and his help were called to believe too, but their hearts were hardened in unbelief, faithlessness!

These days of faith were told to be taught to future generations.  Not only were the plagues a display of almighty power to the Egyptian enemy, but they were signs to the Israelites, and a sign of their faith towards God, as they remembered the destroyer who passed through Egypt and gave them freedom at the first Passover.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD.  The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are.  And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.  (Exodus 12:12–13 ESV) 

Notice firstly, the Israelites would see the blood on doorways as a sign to them God had passed over them without death passing through their home.  Then secondly, what one logically might think should be first, God would see the blood posted in faith and faithfully pass over.

The Israelites were called to see first the blood on their houses, as a testimony to almighty God’s saving power.  Yet, as almighty as God is, he was discerning which houses had the blood of the lamb on the threshold of each dwelling.  Like tiptoeing through the tulips, he preserved the people who had blood on the doorposts, and those who didn’t he trod underfoot, like a person playing hopscotch from snail to snail up a damp footpath in the dark.  Israel saw this, after the fact, and was called to faith and to teach it.

The judgement God promised, proved to be faithful to the Israelites, but also true to his word for those who were faithless, or faithful to ways that were against his word of promise.

Prior to Jesus’ Passover when he becomes the Lamb of God, instituting a new covenant of God’s faithfulness, we find Jesus washing the disciple’s feet. 

Jesus says, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:14–15, 34–35 ESV) 

Here the Son of God, does not pass over his disciples, but serves them and washes their feet.  Unlike God the Father, who passes over Israel to crush Egypt underfoot, Jesus does the opposite.  In faith he cleanses the enemy from within, to save!  Whereas God the Father cleanses the enemy, from the Israelites, so they are without.

The disciples receive the washing as a sign from Jesus.  With full knowledge of what was to become of him he washes the feet of those who had no understanding, of what he was doing, nor what was about to happen.   Like the Israelites who remembered what God had done, the apostolic church now remembers Jesus body and blood, broken and spilt on the cross, given and shed in bread and wine for the forgiveness of sin.

There are great paradoxes between the first Passover and the Passover where Christ became the sacrificial lamb.  The first we’ve just heard.  God not only saves us from external oppression, but also frees us within from ourselves. 

The other great paradox is in the feet.  Jesus washes the feet of the disciples in love.  Then, in the same love for us, “he” is the one crushed by God.  It’s as if God tiptoes over us only to land on Jesus.  Jesus becomes the one crushed for our sin, as the enemy of God, out of pure love to make us God the Father’s children.

Jesus bridges the great divide between the uncleanness of humanity and the holiness of God within his very own body.  He is the Passover sacrificial lamb but also our great high priest, having been raised and glorified to the right hand of our Father in heaven.

In faith, Moses led the people of God out of bondage, and through Moses the Israelites received the Law, the ten commandments.  Jesus fulfilled the Law, but in faith led us out of bondage through his sacrificial death.

We faithfully continue in the holiness of Jesus Christ, by meeting with him in his divine service to us.  Our holiness depends on receiving it from Jesus in faith.  The Holy Spirit wills us into God’s presence to hear the word of God and receive the sacrament of Jesus’ body and blood. 

The holiness of Jesus’ body and blood is holy, by the perfection of his life in the flesh, coupled together with his perfect sacrifice at the cross for humanity’s sin.  A priestly offering of himself as the lamb, perfect flesh defiled on the cross as cursed, cleanness of life for the uncleanness of death.

As true functional Christians, we have a Holy Spirited desire to receive God’s gifts.  We could be a solitary Christian on a deserted island, but the moment we get off the island, we would not remain in isolation from Christendom. 

So, coming to church is not so much about what we do, but rather, about what God does to us through bringing us to church and being with us as he divinely serves us.  Paul centres our honouring of God in his work, in how we receive Jesus, in the sacrament.

He says, “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.  That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.  But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.  But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.”  (1 Corinthians 11:28–32 ESV) 

Church is a gathering of the faithful in Christ, not in ourselves!  When we place faith in what we do, we desecrate the most holy body and blood of Jesus Christ.  The weakness, illness, and death Paul speaks of here is, primarily, but not limited to, one’s spiritual health.  When those who gather as church focuses on the self, one becomes estranged from the power of God, then the substance of coming to church becomes lacking.  One finds ill gain in coming and eventually cuts themselves off from God.  Then, one has begun to die a spiritual death!

However, those who truly judge themselves, see the cross and their place on it, seeing in themselves sin, therefore, a sinful being! 

Yet, in the great paradox that is Jesus Christ, those who judge themselves as sinners who sin, don’t glorify themselves in it, but faithfully find themselves rushing into God’s presence to have Jesus faithfully take their sin on himself. 

Faithful Jesus, the Lamb of God, has offered himself on your behalf, and now Jesus the Son of God, and King of Creation, faithfully intercedes for you before God the Father in the heavenly congregation. 

Such is a believer’s faith in Jesus’ faithfulness, worked by the Holy Spirit, when one discerns Jesus’ body and blood, receiving it for the forgiveness of sins along with the hearing of God’s word, as God divinely serves his children for their growth in faith.

Now that we have received Christ for our forgiveness, he has washed and cleansed us.  We continue his washing and cleansing work of forgiving others; this is loving as God has loved us.  God gave Pharoah ten chances to believe, but we give other’s what God gives us in Jesus, forgiveness seventy-seven times.  We forgive and intercede for others as Jesus does for us. 

We forgive and live only by receiving the energy to do so, by being forgiven and fed in the holy sight of Jesus Christ.  This happens when we gather in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  You are being made one with Jesus’ death and resurrection, having been baptised into Jesus’ holiness, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Let us pray.  Heavenly Father, help us to walk with feet of judgement.  Judging ourselves in a way so our feet turn and return to your holy divine service of us.  Judging ourselves in a way that allows our enemies to confess their sins to us.  Judging ourselves in a way that allows us to forgive them as we have been forgiven.  Grant us the Holy Spirit to faithfully wash their feet with the holiness of Jesus Christ, just as he has cleansed and washed us in the holiness of his body and blood.  Amen.

A, Post-Pentecost 7 Proper 10 - Psalm 119:105–112 "God's Word Walking"

Psalm 119:105–112 (ESV) Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.  I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules.  I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word!  Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O LORD, and teach me your rules.  I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law.  The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts.  Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.  I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end.

God’s Word was a lamp to Isaac and Rebekah.  Through them God was to give what he promised to Abraham. 

Last week we heard Isaac was comforted by his marriage to Rebekah after the death of his mother, Sarah.  Rebekah is of the same family as Isaac.  Her grandfather is Nahor, making Abraham her great uncle.  Isaac and her father Bethuel were first cousins.

God had led the servant of Abraham to Rebekah, and the family knew God was at the centre of this event.  Laban, her brother, and Bethuel, her father, agree, saying, “The thing has come from the LORD; we cannot speak to you bad or good.  Behold, Rebekah is before you; take her and go, and let her be the wife of your master’s son, as the LORD has spoken.”  (Genesis 24:50–51 ESV)

Rebekah, against the will of her mother and brother, agrees to go immediately to her husband-to-be and not wait the ten days her family requested, since she also knew God was at the centre of the marital union.

However, the immediacy of the union, did not result in the immediacy of conception after the marriage.  So, Isaac petitions God on behalf of his wife and is granted his request.  One might query why God would allow this to occur because he was the orchestrator of the marriage, and since he also had promised Abraham, he was to be the father of many nations.

Nevertheless, just as his mother and father before him struggled with barrenness.   Just as they were granted Isaac through God’s Word of promise.  And as Isaac lived in remembrance of God testing his father, Abraham, with the near sacrifice of his life.  Isaac was embedded with similar faith, which was only made deeper by the patience, suffering, and the calling on of God in prayer. 

The barrenness was no accident, but rather was a test to continually rely upon God.  In Psalm one hundred and nineteen we hear, “I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word!”  (Psalm 119:107 ESV)  Like the Psalmist, Isaac trusted God enough to cry out to him, to fulfil the promise made to his father Abraham. 

Here God gives us a clear example that we glorify him when we trust him and seek his blessing in our hardship.  When we’re tempted not to bother God with our daily needs, we hear in this Psalm the opposite, as God actually gives us his Word to cry out to him.  Isaac glorifies God when he prays to him and so too does Rebekah.

Rebekah besieged with pain, struggling to understand, prays,  “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” (Genesis 25:22 ESV)  She feared for her life, thinking the war within her womb was going to kill her, she asks God if this is just and right that she is experiencing such turmoil within.

Have you ever lamented and prayed, “What on earth is going on?”  Especially when things are tough!

Such are times of testing when patience is put under pressure, and pleasure is replaced by pain and suffering.  Isn’t it extraordinary how time seems to stand still when one suffers?  What is it that God is seeking us to learn about ourselves, and him, at times like these?

“And the LORD said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.’” (Genesis 25:23 ESV)

She gets her answer from God.  Sometimes it seems to us God does not answer our prayers.  In an age of instant gratification, perhaps our expectation is too immediate, or we are looking in the wrong place for the answer.  Not every answer can be found on Google!  Nor is our time always the right time for us to understand God’s answer with appropriate learning.  God answers every query of him, in his time, which is always the right time!

The Psalmist says, “I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law.”  (Psalm 119:109 ESV)  The Psalmist knows his life, but he also knows God’s Word.  Throughout Psalm one hundred and nineteen there is a repetition of words with which the Psalmist glorifies God.  Not just any words, but words that are synonymous with God’s Word!

Laws, precepts, commandments, rules, testimonies, steadfast love, salvation, statutes, and promise are all alternative expressions for God’s Word.  When we have ears to hear his Word, this is the place God answers prayer. 

The two boys are born with difficulty, both pushing to get into the limelight, so it seems.  One is a heel grabber, and he grows into a quiet sneaky heel of a man, and the other, the older, is boisterous and brash.  He has little respect for his heritage, treats it with contempt, and sells it for a bowl of stew.

What has become of God’s promise to Abraham.  It seems Abraham’s grandsons are far from the ideal through whom God would work his will.  The Psalmist says, “The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts.  Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.”  (Psalm 119:110–111 ESV)

Yet these two seem as if they would not have much joy in God’s Word, or for the heritage they had in it.  Jacob would live his life as a deceiver and fraudster and Esau having been deceived would not receive Isaac’s blessing.  It seems Jacob was the wicked one and the one to lay a snare for his father and brother, and Esau would become a nation that strayed far from the precepts of God.

Yet these are the generations of Isaac through whom God worked.  It might surprise us that God would work his will through people who seemed to be less interested in God and his Word, and more interested in their own schemes and desires.

We’ve all seen people like this and thought, “I’m glad I’m not like them!”  Yet, a serious look at Psalm one hundred and nineteen and we soon realise, in God’s eyes, we’re not all that different to Jacob and Esau.  Even in our lucid moments when we seek the Lord as did Isaac and Rebekah, they are just that, “moments”! 

We seek to use many other lamps for our feet other than the Word of God.  If we swore an oath of promise to God, we would eventually break it!  After we are afflicted, rarely will we return to make a freewill offering, and once the pain is gone, we forget to praise God! 

We stray from God’s Word and set snares for others.  How many of us look to God’s Old and New Testimonies as their heritage and seek to pass this inheritance onto their families.  Our hearts seem far from hearing and abiding with God’s Word for a moment, let alone till the end!

Despite this reality, we have a greater reality.  The Word made flesh, Jesus Christ!  He is the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, fulfilled!

Jesus is the “I” in the Psalms, fulfilling all God’s commandments, precepts, laws, rules, testimonies, and  statutes.  Jesus takes all these words of God and lives them with love for God the Father in his flesh, without spot or blemish.  Jesus is God’s Word, going out from his mouth and returning to him.  It does what he intends it to do, through his Son, Jesus Christ.

At the cross two paths meet.  These are the paths of failure and forgiveness.   In Jesus Christ, the victim and the perpetrator are crossed! r In Jesus Christ, the law breaker and the law keeper are crossed! r In Jesus Christ, the innocent and the guilty are crossed! r In Jesus Christ, the righteous and the self-righteous are crossed. r And in Jesus Christ, the right and the wrong are crossed! r

At the cross, knowledge of good and evil is exchanged for a knowledge of Jesus Christ, the only goodness good enough to be holy in every moment of time!

The Holy Spirit lit up the path for Jesus to walk the way of the cross; to walk in all holiness, but to walk carrying the full curse of humanity.

Jesus now walks with you; you do not walk alone as he walked!  You walk in the Holy Spirit who illuminates the filth of your feet; but shows you the feet of Jesus who carries you.  You hear the failures of your promises, but you hear the eternal faithfulness and forgiveness of his Word.  You feel the severity of your afflictions, but you see your condition washed in the flow of his blood from his side.  From the cross into the eternal font of baptismal faith.  You learn his rules, and he delights in your freewill offerings of sins confessed. 

Jesus holds your life in his hand, and he does not forget to give you life by the Holy Spirit.  He breaks the snares you set and frees you from those in which you are caught.  He carries you his eternal way, and he does not stray. 

Jesus’ heritage is forever!  It’s the only true way!  He has fulfilled the testimonies of the Law.  With joy in the Holy Spirit, you know the Ten Commandments are good and perfect in Jesus Christ.  You can allow the Holy Spirit to incline your heart to live in God’s presence!   You can perform the works, with which God’s forgiveness wills you to confess, to the end.    

Jesus is the steadfast love, salvation, and promise of God the Father to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he is the promise of God the Father to you and me too!  Amen!

A, Post-Pentecost 2 Proper 5 - Genesis 12:1–3, Romans 4:13,18-25 "Dead Promise"

Romans 4: 13,18–25 (ESV) For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.  In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.”  He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.  No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,  fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.  That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.”  But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone,  but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord,  who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. 

Retirement awaits!  You are in the years of your life when you are beginning to take things easy.  Perhaps this is the case because your body is not what it used to be; it’s wearing out!  Or, you are just backing off the gas, enjoying the fruits of the years you worked.

You are comfortable, it’s time to enjoy the twilight of your life.  Your life ahead promises to be one of relaxation and retirement amongst known people – family and friends!

You had plans earlier in life, to do great things.  Perhaps to be a trendsetter.  But now having done what you’ve done, you are just content to be.  The energy you had in your younger days has long since passed!

But God has other plans for you.  In your latter years he makes a promise to you, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1–3 ESV)

You say to God, “What do you mean?  I’m already blessed in my retirement!”  You’ve heard plenty of promises before, many of them broken.  How would you feel getting a command and promise like this? 

To leave the comfort of what you know, the security, the known faces, those you can trust in a community you know!  To enter the discomfort of changing your medical carers, those who know you, your doctor, pharmacist, hairdresser, those at the shop who know what you order, the shops you know where you can get exactly the item you want.  Entering the uncertainty of what you do not know after leaving the blessings of what you do know, does not seem like it would be a blessing.

For Abram to leave his land, his inheritance, from his father, Terah’s house, and known people was a sure sentence of death.  Abram was seventy-five years old when he left his family, having heard the promise of God.  Why would he go?

Let’s look at the promise God makes and to whom it is made.  It appears the only descendant of Abram would be his nephew Lot.  Lot’s father, Haran, had died, so Lot is taken into Abram’s family.  Abram’s wife, Sarai, could not have children.  But despite this he leaves his homeland and inheritance to follow the promise of God.  For all intentions and purposes, Abram is literally a genetic and patriarchal, dead end.

The host of the television show, Hard Quiz, eliminates the lowest scoring contestant, saying to them, “if you get the question wrong, you’re dead to me”, and when they get it wrong are thrown out with the abrupt command, “Out!”

But the promise of God is not to cast out this man, Abram, who was as good as dead,  even though he appeared to be a dead promise.

Just as surprising, Abram also responds to this promise made by God.  Why would he go?  He had everything to lose, since there did not seem to be much going his way!  Why not stay put and preserve what little blessing he had?  There was obviously something greater compelling him to go.

Abram responded to God’s promise some three hundred years after God confused humanity and dispersed them across the world with various languages.  Abram is the archetypal “needle in the haystack”.  He is one of many in the generations after humanity left Babel to fill the earth.  Yet he was a needle as good as dead, with a wife whose baby bearing capacity was also dead.  To be blunt, they were blunt needles, living, dead ends!

All worldly hope in them was dead.  As one would hope to have children, receive an inheritance, and pass it on to offspring, all expectation had died.  But God calls them to a new hope that seems even more hopeless in the eyes of the world, having been called away from the only security they had left, their inheritance and home.

Paul says of Abraham (Abram), “In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.”  He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s (Sarai’s) womb.  No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,  fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.  That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4: 13,18–25 ESV)

We hear plenty of dead promises from people and politicians and they make us laugh with sarcasm.  So many promises we hear these days are “dead to us” as soon as we hear them.  We’re sceptical, and our hope, at best, is a doubtful hope, with an expectation to be let down.  How do you feel when promises are made that you expect will be broken?

In the Gospel reading today, we hear, “when Jesus came to the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion,  he said, ‘Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him.”  (Matthew 9:23–24 ESV)

We too may laugh in disbelief, or with a hope that the world possesses.  But God’s promises are built on things that are dead to the hope of the world.  Sarai also laughed when God promised to make Abram a father.  But together Sarah and Abraham laughed with joy at the birth of Isaac, God’s promise of life given to a husband and wife, as good as dead!

Our faith is built on the death of Jesus Christ.  It looked for all intentions and purposes, a dead promise!   However, he became nothing to make our nothingness something.  He, who did not know sin and death, became sin and death, to give us salvation and life.  Dead to God we were made something through Jesus’ death.

Jesus did not sacrifice like a priest sacrificing an animal under the Law, but through his mercy and steadfast love became the sacrifice for sin, that makes us something.  He does this when, like Abram ,we are as good as dead, or should be dead to God.

Jesus says, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:13 ESV) 

A righteous person might make a sacrifice, but a sinner cannot even enter God’s presence to make a sacrifice, they are dead to him.  Someone dead can only be made alive by a love that becomes the sacrifice.  You have received the mercy of God’s sacrifice on the cross.  You have been made alive by the Holy Spirit in the steadfast loving mercy of Jesus Christ.  

The Holy Spirit leads you to step out in faith!  It may not be something as geographically displacing as Abram’s call, or as life changing as leaving family.  It may be seemingly something small in your life, but something that God is calling you to, that will make you as good as dead in the eyes of those around you.  But when the world says, “you’re dead to me”, this will be the Holy Spirit’s affirmation that you're alive in Jesus Christ. 

Like Abram, why would you go?  Why would you follow Jesus Christ?  Or more to the point, “why wouldn’t you?”  Especially if the Holy Spirit is moving you in God’s Word, to do the works of faith that glorify God.  To pass on the steadfast love and mercy, to sinners who like you need to be made something by the blood of Jesus!

When the Holy Spirit works, in, through, and with, the Word of God, he moves with steadfast love and mercy, bringing sinners to the knowledge and blessing of God the Father in Jesus Christ.  He brings what should be dead to God, to life!  The Spirit enlivens the will of God within, to the glory of God.

These works are not sacrifices done with a hope of getting something.  But rather the Holy Spirit enables us to do works of mercy and steadfast love, passing on the blessing of faith, just as Abraham was a blessing to many other nations as the father of faith.  Through us the Holy Spirit will encourage the hope of God over the hope of the world, which really is hopelessness!

If Jesus died for your sin, and was raised so you too are raised, making what was nothing before God something, why wouldn’t you want to follow him in faith, and share this blessing as well?  Amen.