Category Archives: sermons

Daniel and the Ghost

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Church at our house is a makeshift, dramatic affair aimed towards the active under 6 set. Today my young son asked to do the story of Daniel and the Ghost.

At first this seemed extra-biblical until
I remembered that there is a decidedly ghostly hand in the story of the hand writing on the wall.

We told it and then re-enacted it with maximum drama, but it was also a quiet reminder–

God, and God alone will weigh our lives. Don’t be found wanting by the one person in the universe whose scales are always just.

Rise

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Mark 9:9-10 (NIV)
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. [10] They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant.

The worst feeling in the world happens a million times a day for at least a year after you lose someone you love. You wake up thinking (for just a second…bad dream?). No. Death.

Death is a terrible darkness. It robs us of comfort and love and a person who cannot be substituted for anything else.

Gone is gone and there is a whiplash agony when a beloved is gone.

The conditions of human existence for the last 6000 years have ground each of us down in the maw of grief. None have escaped it’s power or devastation.

And yet, here is Jesus speaking of rising from the dead.

Not that I hadn’t happened a couple times…there were a couple old testament resurrections…but…

What did Jesus mean?

They did not understand the impossible yet. Do you?

I don’t, but Jesus’ resurrection spills light and hope and courage all over his followers. They believed in the impossible because Jesus was the impossible.

He’s got this.

Give Me Shelter

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Mark 9:5-6 (NIV)
Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” [6] (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)

I apologize. This is so not theological, but for years and years and years I have pictured brand new outhouses when I read this verse–no actual latrines, just the fresh sheds. They even have moon-shaped cut-outs.

I am positive that was not Peter’s aim. In fact, I suspect he was thinking of the shelters people built for the feast of tabernacles–three little mini-temples.

Oh, the inevitable allure of a church building project!

Three men who are known for their homeless wandering and Peter says–let’s build something!

God is building something, but it is not built, measured, or esteemed on human barometers of success–

It is built on the shelter of God’s heart. Nothing is sure but His love. But that love is shelter enough.

No bleach.

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Mark 9:1-4 (NIV)
And he said to them, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.” [2] After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. [3] His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. [4] And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

So…he predicts the visible glory of the kingdom of God right after laying out the plan for his death (ch. 8) and then 6 days later he takes his intimate companions to a mountain and–voila! He is changed.

I am struck by the description–his clothes were impossibly white. His physical presence was different–not the usual Jesus.

Most of us are either avoiding him or used to “the usual Jesus.”

Probably shouldn’t get too comfortable with either. I love Jesus, but I don’t make the intellectual mistake of assuming he is (to quote CS),

a tame lion.

He is not. He is holy. He is God. He is a little scary. How not a lot?

Only love.

The Man who would be King

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The Chinese character for king is three horizontal lines connected by a single vertical line. It has a story–

the man who would be king must be able to span heaven, earth, and the underworld.

Each horizontal line represents a location–heaven, earth, hell. The single vertical line is the King.

But there is more–the Chinese character for 10, a number of completion looks like a cross.. There is a perfect cross in the middle of the character for king.

Jesus is this king.

He takes on disfigurement on the Cross to save us, but his power is not in question–

the gates of hell shall not prevail against him.

He has vanquished death and restored our hope. What are we waiting for?

Transfiguration: our first glimpse of Home.

Part 1.5 of 2.

The character of the king

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Pastor Chuck Jacob preached a sermon recently on a particularly amazing portion of Isaiah 52 and 53. Much of Isaiah sees the future to the face of Jesus. And thanks to Handel, much of what Isaiah saw is put to soaring music as well as words of hope.

But. There is one small catch. Maybe two. First, Isaiah is thought to have been martyred for his prophecy, and second….

Jesus gives us hope by becoming our disfigurement. That is what Pastor Jacob describes–God made flesh and then made Calamity for us.

I often think about The Princess Bride Not only does Westley endure the unendurable in the quest for love, he then gives one of the most apt descriptions of disfigurement ever–

Wrong! Your ears you will keep and I will tell you why…so that…”Dear God, what is that thing?” will echo in your perfect ears. That is what “to the pain” means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.

Tough stuff for a romantic fable, but an efficient echo of redemptive agony–Jesus became disfigured and unrecognizable as the real embodiment of the sin, filth, violence, and casual cruelty of Man. We, if we dare to look, see him as a monster as he dies for us. We fail to recognize the monstrous signature of our own clawing sins.

He goes to hell disfigured. But what would be a dreadful, eternal quietus for us is the force of redemptive power–him for us, God poured out for me.

Part 1 of 2

Disfigured vs. Transfigured

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This story will seem disjunctive to you:

It is late in the season for chicks. We are at a friend’s farm. A very kind friend. A good listener. We are recovering from a great blow to the heart of the family

My young son finds an egg in the chicken coop. He cradles it gently in his hands and runs into the kitchen where several large goose eggs are incubating.

A month later little Biscuit is born. Hatched, if you will.

My son saved that one small feathered life from being scrambled. A small story.

I have been thinking about what it is we are and what we are becoming. None of us will stay in our eggs forever. We will break out to splendor or be cracked over a waiting pot.

Mark 9:2 (NIV)
After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them.

I am going to unspool this strange story tomorrow. But for tonight only this–are you being disfigured or transfigured by the small events of your life? Your secret fears? You abiding passions?

When Jesus is revealed in secret his splendor is unforgettable.

When you and I are exposed for our true and eternal selves, what will people see?

Splendor or the pot?

An Interventionist God

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Mark 9:1 (NIV)
And he said to them, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.”

I don’t often suffer from writer’s block. I am bossy enough to write about something. But I do suffer from faith block and I do suffer from what-is-the-point-malaise. This is a malady wherein you seriously doubt you are doing lasting good. it has a nasty kick–discouragement and grief, loneliness, spiritual myopia.

This pronouncement of Jesus’ is enigmatic. All the disciples would eventually taste death–some quite unpleasant. What did he mean?

The kingdom of God is Jesus. His power over hell is defining–AD versus BC defining. We all must see this power–this complete and perfect ability of Jesus, king of heaven, to rob hell and death of their eternal sting.

That is power indeed. All else falls in behind.

The Kingdom

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Mark 9:1 (NIV)
And he said to them, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.”

The Bible is a crazy story. I am not sure I would trust anyone who wasn’t willing to admit that.

But then I think history is a crazy story. Herodotus? Stalin? A kamikaze wind thwarting Genghis Khan? Give me a break!

I seems to me that Jesus (who is Truth) says some stuff that might have been a little confusing.

It also seems like he says stuff that is hard to hear.

This one seems confusing. Huh? Taste death? Kingdom of God?

But then when you think about what he is saying it is…oh! Of course!

He is the King. They are looking at the kingdom.

Look at the King.
Don’t miss the kingdom.

One Verse at a Time

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When you get to the hard stuff, slow down. And nothing feels harder than being told to die.

Jesus says he is going to be rejected by all legitimate authority and then he is going to die. Then he says, follow me.

Mark 8:34 (NIV)
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

I can think of few things I dislike more than denying myself and carrying my cross. But I gotta follow Jesus! I can’t imagine life without him. He is love made real.

Why would love made real tell me to trudge to my own death?

I used to think the picture of this verse was Jesus with his big ol’ real cross and his followers with their smaller crosses. Then I realized that when he tells us to take up our cross it is the back end of the Cross he carried to his death. He carried my cross up that hill. When he tells me to pick it up he is just telling me to participate as a pedestrian observer in a drama he played out for real and keeps.

Imagine my cross without him.