B, Post Pentecost 4 Proper 6 - 2 Corinthians 5:6–17 "A Godly Home"

2 Corinthians 5:6–10 (ESV)  So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord,  for we walk by faith, not by sight.  Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.  So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.  For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

Paul writes to the Corinthians, as he does to all whom he writes, to call the congregation into faithfulness to Jesus Christ, who is the faithful King of Kings!

While he is with them, he is meek, but in his absence his letters are far from gentle.  In his letters to the Corinthians, he calls them to repentance; to turn away from the comforts of their pleasures to the comforts of Christ. He calls them to take good courage from his guidance even though what he says to them does cause them internal suffering and hurt.

He says, “For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while.  As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.  For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us.  For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”  (2 Corinthians 7:8–10 ESV)

Paul prepares the Corinthians for the resurrection of the dead.  He goes to great lengths to unpack this in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter fifteen, as some in the congregation claim there is no resurrection, which left unchallenged by Paul would have pushed the Corinthians back into a worldly grief that produces eternal death.

Today in the reading from Second Corinthians chapter five,  Paul calls for courage to walk by faith and not sight, to please the Lord while we are in our bodily home, as we wait to be home with the Lord.

He sobers them, and you and me, with a reminder that on our way to being home with the Lord, “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”  (2 Corinthians 5:10 ESV)

In saying this Paul affirms what Jesus himself says, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.  Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.”  (Matthew 25:31–33 ESV)

While Jesus dwelt amongst his apostles, he teaches them to preach this.  We hear Peter speak of Jesus’ judgement to the Gentiles, saying, “he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.”  (Acts 10:42 ESV)

Paul says to the Corinthians, and to you and me, after you leave your bodily home, you will receive your due for what you’ve practised, whether good or evil.  A little further on in the text he says something quite strange at its first hearing, “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.”  (2 Corinthians 5:13 ESV)

Here Paul is using the same home language as he first used with the Corinthians, “Home in the Lord or at home in the body”.  When they are beside themselves Paul and other’s whose work is to teach, are at home with the Lord, and seek the hearer to have a Godly home too.  If Paul and other teachers are in their right minds, they suffer in the home of their bodies, to make homes for the hearers with the Lord.

Paul and those who are called to proclaim the truth of the resurrection of Christ and his judgement are led by the Holy Spirit, having been sent by Jesus Christ to guide all disciples of Christ, now that the old self is dead.

We hear, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;  and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:14–15,17 ESV)

Now that you are a new creation, you’re called to examine yourself.  You are invited to look at what germinates within you, to see what kind of home you desire for yourself and what kind of home you proclaim to others, with your thoughts, with your words, and with your actions.

Psalm ninety-two also talks of seeds sprouting and trees growing.  In it the psalmist compares a stupid man as sprouting grass, here one moment, but doomed to destruction, versus the righteous person, like cedars and palms planted in the courts of the Lord, whose evergreen life still bears fruit in its old age.

The psalmist uses the picture of cedars and palms because of their longevity and their fruit, but he also uses them because the cedars are the biggest trees living on the highest mountains of the Middle East.  The palms are date palms, a tree that gives life in the desert, with a fruit that’s the sugar of the Middle East, a tree of life in a desolate place. 

But the psalmist uses the image of the cedar and the palm for the righteous, because those who came into God’s presence to sabbath in the temple, were surrounded by the cedars of Lebanon that built and lined the temple.  The walls of the temple were carved with palms, so that those who came into God’s house came into his sabbath rest on the seventh day.  A re-creation of the garden of Eden, with trees of life.  They came to make a Godly home with the God who seeks to dwell with his people.

As we are at home in our bodies, God seeks to cause Godly grief within you and me.  Those who don’t carry Godly grief put trust in their bodily home and fail to recognise the body is a temporary failing dwelling.  God seeks to sustain you through death to finally reveal the new creation, you’ve hopefully allowed God to work.

At the resurrection our seed of either good or evil will receive its reward.  What will the resurrection reveal about the type of seed that’s germinated within you?

We might be surprised that what we perceive as being good, might just be what God deems as evil.  Whereas the good God looks for, are the very deeds, we tend to overlook and avoid most of the time.

Here again God works for Godly grief that leads to repentance!   In fact, humility leading to repentance is one of the great goods that God seeks, glorifying God’s work of creation, Jesus’ work of redemption, and the Holy Spirit’s work of leading us to drown the human spirit, the old self, in daily repentance.   

Follow Jesus alone!  He is the way, the truth, and the life!   The good, God seeks, are works of faith in him, and what he is doing.  Godly grief leads to a Godly home!  But bodily glory leads to worldly and bodily grief, and eternal death. 

Finally, the pictures of the mustard seed, and the man broadcasting seeds of grain, as parables of the kingdom of heaven, are pictures of God planting humanity and Jesus Christ.

The sickle will be put into God’s crop, and the good seed will be sieved from the bad.  Jesus became the smallest of seeds for humanity and was buried in the ground in death.  Our seed is made good only by this Mustard Seed.  In his resurrection this Mustard Seed has germinated and grown larger than the cedars of Lebanon, and his fruit is sweeter than the sweetest of dates.  In his resurrection, Jesus is the new glorious temple for our new creation in which to rest and tabernacle, with God our Father!

Don’t try to convince God of your goodness, using the tree of your knowledge of good and evil.  It didn’t work for Adam and Eve, and it won’t work for you either!

Those who wish to receive a Godly home on judgement day, will do well to allow the Holy Spirit to make their home in this Mustard Tree, to rest and remain in these branches of Jesus Christ, the Tree of Life!  Amen.

Heavenly Father, you have sent us Jesus Christ, who has constructed and gives us his way with the timbers of the tree of the cross, who is the Tree of Truth on that cross, and the Tree of Life, from whom the Holy Spirit descends to gather us into his branches and helps us bear our cross.  Heavenly Father, give us good courage to trust our home is in the shade of your eternal love.  Amen. 

B, Lent 2 - Mark 8:31-38 "The Contrary Christ Cycle"

Mark 8:31–38 (ESV) And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.  And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.  But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”  And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.  For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?  For what can a man give in return for his soul?  For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

The cycle of life in which we exist requires death to occur.  From the moment we are born, cells in our bodies are dying and new ones are being created.  The cycle of life before the fall, was not one of dying while living, life then death.  Rather, it was life and renewal of life, around the tree of life.  After the fall we lost access to the tree of life and death became the norm. 

Although we now exist in a realm of death, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we now have access to the tree of life, and live in the hope of our resurrection.  Yet in the meantime, we exist with the reality of death.  We call this existence, life, but it is really one of dying.

Most think this life is as good as it gets!  Putting aside suffering, most chase mirages of pleasure while waiting for the inevitable evil of dying.

Jesus’ life on earth, was an existence of death before life.  In fact, he is the only human born into the necessity of dying.  All other life on this earth was not created to die.  It was created to live and continue living in the renewal of the tree of life.

Any person with a knowledge of biological science knows life is meant to continue in renewal.  Scientists know this, and many have spent their lifetime searching for the secret of life, but to no avail.   All have gone the way of death searching for this mysterious elixir for the renewal of ongoing life.

Scientists, knowing life should keep continuing, have no answers to why it would ever stop.  They can only examine the existence of what we know.  That is an existence after the fall into sin.  And from this standpoint, philosophers and other great thinkers join them to determine what is good and evil in this existence.

Life then death, pain and a bit of pleasure, then a deadly oblivion or extinction.  It’s not much of an existence to look forward to!  It’s an existence that says, “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we will die”.

Jesus came teaching the contrary.  He came teaching death leads to life.  That our existence now, is death, and the one to come, is life! 

Instead of making the most of life before death, he was bringing life to our existence of death, he was making the most of his death for true life to occur.

Jesus is the tree of life, giving life on the tree of death, the cross.  Jesus taught that he, the Christ, the Son of Man, was going to serve humanity by being rejected by those who were God’s representatives and be killed by them, yet after three days rise again to life.

Peter, having confessed Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, was intent on a life of glory now, rather than a life lived under the cross.  He seeks to rebuke Jesus, but Jesus rebukes Satan within Peter, saying “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Mark 8:33 ESV)

Within Peter, Satan had blinded him to an understanding and knowledge of humanity, rather than a knowledge of God.  This is the default knowledge in which all of humanity exists, after the fall, having turned its back on God.  

After Jesus harshly rebukes Peter, he again teaches Peter and the other disciples.  But now he also teaches them with the crowd that had gathered!  Jesus teaches a paradox, contrary to humanity’s expectation of life then death. 

He says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.  For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?  For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:34–37 ESV)

Do you come after Jesus?   If I am to come after Jesus, let me deny myself, take up my cross and follow him! 

But how do I do this?  How do I deny myself and carry my cross?

This is not a human work!  If we could deny ourselves and take up our cross, God would never have had to send the Holy Spirit.  Indeed, he would not have needed to send his Son Jesus Christ, if just one person could have been faithful to God, as was Jesus Christ, incarnate in flesh, to die for the life of the world.

Today we celebrate Harvest Thanksgiving.  We thank God for what we have.  For the most part we continue the Pharisaic practice of giving thanks for our food when we sit down for a meal.  In our practice we invite Jesus to be our guest. 

We say, “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, and let this food to us be blessed.” And to this we say, “Amen.”  But the prayer can continue, “Blessed be God who is our bread, may the world be clothed and fed.  Amen.”

Some might believe our prayer is a kind of gate, that on concluding the prayer we open the gate and start eating.  But the Holy Spirit gathers us in prayer in Jesus Christ to be our guest.  And as the addition to the payer says, it is God who truly is our bread that blesses, us, all we produce, all we have, all we eat, and all we share.  Unfortunately, as with Peter and all of us, what spoils our trust in this, “are the things of man”, encouraged by the father of death, the devil himself! 

But the Holy Spirit, fights the deathly human spirit within each of us!  He plants Christ in us, so we take up our cross, deny ourselves and follow him.  With Christ planted within, we no longer live to die, denying others in favour of ourselves.  But rather, we die to live, denying ourselves so the Holy Spirit might use us to serve, as Jesus served!

In the same way you can plant a seed in the ground, and it sprouts and grows, Jesus is the seed planted in you!   His “death and life” cycle is planted in you, conquering the former “life and death” cycle.  This new Christ cycle is the death and resurrection cycle of God’s Holy Seed, promised to Adam and Eve just after the fall in the garden of Eden.  The promise still exists!  The Spirit wills you to be grafted into the cross!

Just as a watered seed has all the life it needs within to germinate, faith germinates in us, with water and the Word of God.   The Holy Spirit enlightens us with God’s Word, sinking the roots of faith even deeper into the eternal powers of God’s Word.  This increases the death to life cycle of the cross even more!

Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  (John 12:24–25 ESV)

Jesus is the Seed of Life, planted in you.  All life comes from God, a wonderful thing for us dying to live, with all that God provides for us on the way to eternal life.  Even greater is our Lord Jesus Christ who lived to die,  dying to produce the fruit of eternal life within you.   

But there is still another twist!  Now that Jesus has reversed the life then death cycle to a death then life cycle, he gives us true life here on earth now, even as we wait for death then eternal life to be unfolded before our eyes. 

He says, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” (Mark 9:1 ESV)

Some saw a brief glimpse of the kingdom of God in the Transfiguration.  Judas and perhaps some in the crowd did taste death before Jesus’ resurrection. 

But, with the eyes of faith, see and know that the kingdom of God has come with power.   This cycle has begun in your baptism.  Baptised into death at the cross, dying to live in eternal life!  In the midst of death, we are in life, life eternal, right now, because we follow our Lord Jesus Christ!  Amen.