A, Post-Pentecost 24 Proper 27 - Amos 5:18-24, 1 Thessalonians 4:13 "The Day Of The LORD"

Amos 5:18 (ESV) Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light,

Amos 5:24 (ESV) But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 (ESV) But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

Humanity has a fear of darkness that begins in childhood.  Many of us were scared of the dark when we were kids!  Turning off the light meant the light of our imaginations would come on, and we would imagine bad things coming to snatch us from the darkness, into the darkness. 

One of my worst dreams was of an unexplainable darkness of chaotic nothing that would wake me crying out for mum and dad.  I could not explain to them what it was I had dreamt.  How can a child explain chaotic nothing?  All I could do was seek comfort from mum and dad having felt the fear of this unexplainable experience.

Paul says to his congregation in Thessalonica, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13 ESV)

Here Paul talks about being asleep. This sleep is the sleep of death rather than the sleep set aside in every twenty-four-hour period that the human body needs for rejuvenation.  But like a loving parent, Paul does not want his hearers to fear this sleep of death, like a child who’s scared of the chaotic darkness, or the terrifying nothingness of death without the dawning light of God’s coming.

God our Father wants you and me to trust in the Good Friday suffering and Easter Sunday rising of Jesus Christ and the eternal rejuvenation given to us through His holy sacrifice.  At the cross the justice and wrath of God saw water and blood flow from Christ’s side after His sorrow and death.

Amos paints a graphic picture of the Day of the Lord as darkness rather than light. His warning confronts those who expect God’s coming to vindicate them while refusing His correction. As Christians, we hear this warning and turn to Good Friday, when Jesus bore the weight of the world’s woes and sin. The childhood nightmare helps us picture the terror of darkness, but Jesus’ suffering was no dream. He endured the darkness of the cross so that our hope might rest in Him rather than in ourselves.

In Amos, God is pictured as a Lion waiting to pounce on His prey.   We might accept the picture of God as a Lion who valiantly leads His people, but here the lion is God lying in wait to avenge the injustices of His people who have sought to keep God caged like a lion without hearing His Word and correcting their ways accordingly.

Amos is revealing the bleakness of Israel, who put their hope in what they did to justify themselves without returning to God.  Amos was sent to announce God’s justice to those who were using God and His ordained feasts and solemn assemblies to serve themselves. They were using sacrifices to justify themselves rather than using them repentantly so they could rest in His presence.  Amos also proclaimed God’s rejection of their songs and music that only offered lip service to God, without the proper desire to glorify Him through their song and musical praise.

The good things God had given Israel were being used to make them look good while keeping God caged. Amos’s lion image warns that God’s judgement cannot be contained by religious observance. His warning remains a wake-up call for Israel, Judah, and the denominations of Christendom today whenever we use God’s gifts to serve our own expectations of salvation through deeds of goodness. When we do, we are no different from God’s people of the Old Testament.  When we cage God faith falters because the Holy Spirit flees.  In the Spirit’s absence the grace of Jesus Christ intended for eternal salvation gets lost to idolatrous expectations that never win peace or rest with God.

The disturbing Word God gave through Amos was intended to wake the Israelites to the nightmare towards which they were heading. Their prosperity did not make their disobedience harmless or place them beyond God’s judgement. The fate of Israel and Judah gives this warning its seriousness, but we must not turn it into a rule that every dark period proves God has withdrawn. Nevertheless, we allow the Holy Spirit to test us in these times of darkness.  God wants each of us to allow Amos and the prophets to confront confidence in ourselves: if even God’s people cannot make themselves secure through prosperity or religious observance, where can we find a hope that will hold?

What, then, gives us hope when Amos’s warning exposes our sin? Not our ability to escape the darkness, and not the goodness of our religious deeds. Our hope rests in the Jesus who suffered on Good Friday and rose on Easter Sunday. The warning calls us away from self-justification; the promise turns us towards Christ. That is why we return to Paul’s words about grieving with hope. We’re reminded, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13 ESV)

God is a just God, and He seeks to justify us! But what happens when we turn our hopes away from His justification and righteousness towards some self-seeking justice or righteousness? Amos warns us that belonging to God’s people does not make self-justification safe. That warning calls us to examine our own trust; it does not give us grounds to treat the evils suffered by Jewish people as proof that God has abandoned them. God does not force belief, yet the hope proclaimed here is that He continues to call us away from trusting ourselves and towards Jesus Christ.

The people of Israel are still God’s people. He warned them through His prophets like Amos, and He sent His own Son to be the new Israel and in exchange offered His righteousness and sacrifice.  God still holds out hope for the nation of Israel, but as for all humanity, Jesus is the only hope.

He is your only hope too.  Just as God sought to inform Israel with His Word of Law and promise of a Messiah, God seeks to inform you through His Word of Law and Gospel, having sent our Saviour. 

It was once said that those who didn’t read the newspapers were uninformed and those who did read the papers were misinformed.  Today there are many uninformed people as well as many misinformed.  Social media, broadcast media, hearsay and gossip misinform many with the ideas and beliefs of the misinformed masses.  Misinformed people are also uninformed when it comes to the realities of God.

It’s easy to be caught up in the mania of the masses who have no hope, especially as the light of God’s life in the world is lost to the darkness of our human expectations, worries, and doubts.  But not for you!  You are encouraged by God’s Word of Law and Gospel.  The truth of God’s Word in the Old Testament is fulfilled in its promises of salvation and its warnings if one ignores its truth. 

You have the truth of God’s New Testament Word, which is the fulfilment of what was said through the Law and the Prophets. You can trust its promises of salvation and take its warnings seriously. The contrast is not between people who have heard information and people who have heard none, but between trusting God’s Word and placing your trust in the mob’s misinformation. God calls us to be informed by His Word so that our hope rests in Christ.

You’re called to hear Amos’s warning about the darkness of the Day of the Lord and to trust Jesus, who entered the darkness of the cross for us. Good Friday went dark from midday to three o’clock. Amos declares, “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24 ESV) The flow of blood and water from Jesus’ side calls you and me to repentance.

We must not use worship to hide injustice or serve ourselves. Jesus is the Just One and Justifier. In holy-baptismal-repentance we receive His grace, and the Holy Spirit keeps our lamps burning through wilfully resting in the reception of God’s Word. Resting in Christ’s righteousness does not excuse self-serving lives; rather, it calls us to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us away from them and return to resting in Christ.

God the Father rested on the seventh day of creation. Jesus rested in the tomb on the Sabbath, the seventh day, so the angel of death could pass over you.  Now the Holy Spirit continues this “Passover work” to arrest you, so you stop, stand and remain in God’s rest in these dark times.

Our times can feel nightmarish. Like frightened children, we may struggle against the fear of darkness, while wishful thinking and misinformation around us offer no lasting comfort in the face of death. But being informed by God’s grace does not mean that we never feel afraid or that we do not grieve. Paul’s encouragement is that we need to grieve as those who have hope. When fear comes, we return to Christ’s suffering and rising, so we can encourage one another with God’s Word of hope.

In our newly formed denomination, our hope must rest in Christ, not in the fact that we have formed a new church body. To stand in Him is to abide in Christ and be informed by His Word, not to claim that our institution is beyond failure or correction. Let us hear and heed the warning given to Israel and Judah rather than turn in on ourselves. As God’s people, we are called to encourage one another and bring others into the peace and rest of God.

May we encourage each other with the Word of God and inform the masses that through the Day of the Lord—the dark day of the cross—that Friday is a very Good Friday for those who are baptised and believe in what God gives in Holy Baptism.  Amen.

Sermon Summary

Beginning with childhood fear of darkness, you are encouraged to explore the fear of death and Paul’s encouragement to grieve with hope. Amos’s warning about the Day of the Lord challenges confidence in prosperity, religious observance and our own goodness. Worship must not become a way to hide injustice or justify ourselves.

Our hope rests in Jesus Christ, who entered the darkness of the cross on Good Friday and rose on Easter Sunday. God’s Word, of Law and Gospel, calls us away from self-justification and towards His grace. Through Holy Baptism, and the Holy Spirit’s work that leads to repentance, we are called to rest in Christ’s righteousness. This hope does not remove grief or fear but sustains us through them and leads us to encourage one another. A new denomination is not our security: Christ is.

Reflection Questions

1. Reflecting on one’s childhood fear of darkness. When fear or grief comes today, where do you seek comfort? What might it mean to grieve with hope rather than without it?
2. Amos challenges trust in prosperity and religious observance. Where might we use worship or good deeds to justify ourselves rather than receive God’s correction?
3. How does Jesus’ suffering on Good Friday and rising on Easter Sunday reshape the way you face death and uncertainty?
4. You’re called to rest in Christ through God’s Word, Holy Baptism, repentance and God’s forgiveness. What might that resting look like in your daily life, and how might it lead you away from self-serving habits?
5. What voices shape your fears and expectations? How could you make space to hear God’s Word amid misinformation, worry and doubt?
6. How can our congregation place its confidence in Christ rather than its institution?
7. What practical step could you take this week to encourage someone with God’s Word of hope? 

C, Palm Passion Sunday - Philippians 2:5-11 "The Tree of Victory"

On the tree of the cross Jesus gave salvation to all, so that, where death began, there life might be restored, and that the enemy, who by a tree once overcame, might by a tree be overcome.

From time to time you may have heard these words in the divine service, especially in Lent and Holy Week. 

This line of liturgy brings together a number of key themes and Scriptures in the story of salvation.  Tree, cross, salvation, death, life, restoration, enemy, to overcome, to be overcome.  But tying them all together is the picture of the tree.

The tree that overcame was the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  The tree that overcomes is the tree of the cross.  The tree of knowledge of good and evil is a tree of death.  The tree of the cross is also the tree of death. 

But the cross is a tree of life too!  At the cross life is present as well.  The cross is the place of salvation and restoration; it’s the place where good meets evil and overcomes evil.  And so at Easter the cross used in the Good Friday service is often covered in flowers and colour on Easter Sunday.  

But behind the cross, the cross of Good Friday, the cross of Easter, the cross veiled in black, and the cross covered in flowers, is the reality of good and evil.

Today when we leave church and become absorbed once again in our lives, we may not think about the church service, or the cross, or the themes of restoration and salvation.  However, every one of us weighs up in his or her conscience what is good and what is evil.  It’s what we humans naturally do, every day.   

We gather information around us and make decisions on what is right and wrong.  We learn and live, storing knowledge to make judgements.  Is it good, or is it bad?  Are they doing the right thing or the wrong thing?  Am I good or bad?  When I am overcome by good and evil, what can I do to overcome good and evil?

It’s no different for people in the bible too.  They decided what was good and bad, or good and evil too.  And it’s in these biblical accounts where good and evil is considered we might gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and our relation to the cross.

Let’s look at the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  They were deceived by the snake to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  God had given them every other tree in the garden but their desire was kindled in the tree of knowledge of good and evil; it looked good to eye and desirable for gaining insight.  Notice how the evil part of the tree was forgotten.  Not only was evil forgotten but also everything else that had been given to them, including the tree of life.

They turned their backs on life and chose knowledge.  They chose to be like God judging what was good and what was evil. They lost their holy innocence as creatures created in the image of God. Or put simply, they chose pleasure over peace, and this peace was a life where God served them with the garden and his holy presence.  In their pleasure they chose to ignore the love of God, agape or servanthood, and replaced it with a love turned in on the self.  First given as a temptation they became driven by desire, eros and potency.  And from that time we have found knowledge of good and evil makes us powerful like God. 

But our knowledge of good and evil is not used in loving servanthood as God uses it, but rather for loving ourselves in all manner of pleasures.  And like an itch that feels good scratched until our skin is rubbed raw, broken and infected, our pleasures have unleased suffering and sickness from this original sin in the Garden of Eden.  This is what happens when humanity replaces the great “I AM” of God the Father with the “I am” of our self inflated egos.

Fast forward over a couple thousand years of good and evil interpretation under Old Testament Law!

The Law was designed to cleanse God’s chosen people so once again they could look to God’s goodness and servanthood. But time and time again the Jews practised the Law to justify themselves using God’s Word to gratify their pleasures.

So when the time was right God sends his Son in the greatest act of servanthood agape love.  A gift was given to the world.  The tree of life was replanted in the midst of humanity in the manger.  Some saw it as good but others saw it as bad. 

The Tree of Life is grafted into a human; eternal servanthood was born in flesh by the power of God’s Word.  Born into a world where knowledge meant power and pleasure, they measured Jesus by what pleased and by how the praise of them was affected. So some worshiped God when they encountered him, and some tried to kill him.  Some saw it as opportunity to use him to serve them and their pleasures and some in their knowledge just didn’t care to know him. 

However, this one born of the flesh did not succumb to using his knowledge of good and evil against them.  He put off the desire to be “like God”, even though he was God.  Instead he let himself be creaturely in the way they were originally created to be — like you and I were meant to be. 

He took the Law and followed it, yet his piety was not glorifying himself but God the Father. In doing so he showed the goodness of the Pharisees, the pious ones, to be evil.  And those who were deemed the undesirable ones, the ones afflicted with evil, he poured out love and coved with his holiness. 

The characters around Jesus were defined by his life among them.   There were many but let’s just take two — Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot. These two polarize Jesus Christ from all others at the cross — the Sanhedrin, the soldiers, Pilate, the other disciples, the two criminals on their crosses and the fickle mob.

Peter used his knowledge of good and evil to rebuke Jesus, demanding it ridiculous he would even think of going to a cross, and at Jesus’ trial confessed he would never deny Jesus.  And Judas’ knowledge of good and evil leads him to hand Jesus to the Jews, and then not trust Jesus would forgive him for what he had done.  It appears the two are extremes but both Peter and Judas are the same by putting themselves in the place of God as the knowers of good and evil.

So fast forward yet again, to now, some two thousand years after knowledge of good and evil was nailed to the tree.  We see the only good is the goodness of God in Jesus Christ sacrificed for my evil, your evil, your bad, my bad.   And from it we victoriously now live in the risen life of Jesus’ victory.

Philippians 2:1–11 (ESV) So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,  complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,  so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

One should expect we live lives of servanthood because of the life Jesus won for us.  But still we struggle to stop eating the apples of good and evil, knowingly nailing each other to the tree and plucking ourselves from the tree on which Jesus died for you and me.

You see even if we seek to move others to Jesus through our desire we once again stand under the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Like Peter what we see as good in ourselves in reality is not, because we put our trust in what we can do rather than on what God has done through the servanthood of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Our desire, our ideologies seek to win out over the servanthood of God the Son.

Or like Judas, our knowledge of good and evil leaves us empty handed, giving up the servanthood of Jesus.  And like Judas we walk away from the death of Jesus, cutting ourselves off from the graciousness of God, and begin committing our lives to a slow painful spiritual suicide.

These are humanity’s stories, these are our stories too.  You and I find ourselves back at the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  It’s a tough tree to poison.  But here’s the problem; while we look to our own good to kill it we actually make it grow all the more. 

Just like those of the Old Testament Law, we of the New Testament Gospel, still take what God has done and use it to justify our knowledge of good and evil.  In other words we use God’s Word as our justification for pleasure.  But this pleasure thinly disguises a whole heap of pain. This is humanity’s story and it’s yours and mine too.

So in our days of trials and tribulation, busy yourself in looking to God.  When you find yourself looking within for the answers, pray to our Father for the Holy Spirit to lead you out of yourself and into the Word of God to Jesus!  Test yourself by seeing where the glory goes in your understanding of the Word of God and the works you do as a result.  And pray that the Holy Spirit will lead you to the love of God in Jesus Christ.

You will find the old tree of knowledge of good and evil will keep popping up, but when it does know that the tree of life has been replanted in you.  In other words the servanthood of Jesus lives in you; he serves you!  You have been baptised so you are free to look out of yourself to the tree of life and live in in the promise God has given you in the tree of victory.

On the tree of the cross Jesus gave salvation to you, so that, where death began, there your life might be restored, and the enemy, who by a tree once overcame, might by a tree be overcome.

Amen.

Good Friday Church Lights

I turned the Good Friday Lights back on last night.

Light always adds mood!

Something I learnt from my TV cameraman days!

Click here to see more pics!