You Will Be Free Indeed (John 8:31-38)

The Fourth of July is a day we set aside to celebrate our national freedom. We truly have much to be grateful for when it comes to personal liberties. But I wonder if when we celebrate our freedoms we are also mindful of our responsibilities as free citizens. In the story we are going to look at this week in John's gospel account we will see how Jesus confronted the Jews of his time with the same question. They celebrated their freedom as God's chosen people, but had become blind to their responsibilities. Join us this Sunday July 1, 2012 at 11:00AM at the Rock Presbyterian Church 6910-B Miramar Rd., San Diego, CA 92121 as we consider how Jesus reminds them, and us, of what it means to be "free indeed."

Don't forget we will have corporate prayer at 1015 in the second floor chapel where we can pray for our personal concerns and the needs of our congregation. All are welcome.

We are now on Facebook! Check out our new Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SDRockPresbyterianChurch.There are some pictures from last weeks outing at Mission Bay Park.

This Sunday at Mission Bay Park: Religion vs. Love

I think one of the things that makes it hard to be a professing Christian is that we hear so often of people who claimed to be Christians who do things that really bring dishonor to Christ. We hear about it in the news, and we see it in the people around us. There is a misunderstanding among Christians and non-Christians alike that being a follower of Jesus is about saying I'm a Christian and going through religious motions (like going to Church, and being *good*). In the gospels when Jesus confronts the religious leaders of his time it is always to expose this fallacy. Justification before God comes from the heart, not from religious observances, and is reflected in our relations with others.

The Apostle Paul found this same attitude among Jewish Christians in the Church at Rome he wrote to in his letter to the Romans. Jewish Christians were convinced that because of their strict religious observances they had an automatic "in" with God. But in this weeks reading Paul has different ideas. Join us this Sunday as we explore the place of religious observances in our walk with Jesus.

We will be meeting at Mission Bay Park this Sunday at 11:00 AM. We will have a devotional liturgy and a group discussion about this week's reading in Romans 2:16-29. After that there will be a delicious barbecue and games and fellowship. Bring a chair and outdoor attire and bring your Bible if you remember. Please email me for directions.

Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Romans 1:18-32 “Why Have You Forsaken Me?”

The world is broken. You may have heard the phrase “we live in a fallen world.” Sometimes when we hear this it is in the context of trying to explain why things don’t work out the way we would like them to, or to try to explain some kind of evil that we hear about that is hard to understand, and sometimes I think we even use it to explain away why we may have failed morally or ethically.

But this brokenness is real. We can see it if we look at the news. I personally try not to pay too much attention to the news because it really can be discouraging. And even so, not a day goes by when my soul is not assaulted with reports of some kind of horrific crime or injustice. Wars, violence, cruelty, hunger, poverty, disease, perversion…. The list goes on and on. As a Christian how can the knowledge of these things not break your heart? Some people would argue that the media only reports the unusual, and that there is a lot of good that happens that goes unnoticed because it is normal. I believe that this is absolutely true. But at the same time we have to acknowledge that those awful things we read and hear about are real. If God is a loving God, how can he allow such things to happen?

As we return to considering Paul’s letter to the Romans today we see that he begins his exposition of the Christian faith by considering just this problem. Understanding the Christian faith starts with the problem of sin. Let’s listen.

God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. ³² Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:18-32 NIV)

Yikes! This doesn’t sound very happy. This seems to be a pretty negative outlook on things. All this talk of sin and perversion and wrath and death. I thought this was supposed to be about “good news.” Just hang in there with me as we go through some of this difficult stuff, and I think by the time we get to the end we’ll have a glimpse of the good news.

The first thing Paul tells us here is that God has already given everyone all of the information they need to understand what they must do in order to live a moral life in right relationship with him. This doesn’t mean just to Christians but to everyone. Paul tells us that God has clearly shown the world “his eternal power and divine nature.” I think in one sense you can say that God reveals himself through the beauty and the majesty and the awesome power of nature and you would not be wrong in this. I think this is one of the reasons that primitive cultures almost always develop some kind of nature worship. It is curious I think that no culture ever developed an atheistic and non-spiritual view of the world before the advent of the Western scientific worldview.

But there is more to God’s revelation of his nature than the warmth of the sunshine or the fury of the storm. It is that in every human being everywhere there is an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong. In different cultures we may see some slight differentiation in the details, but in the generality, and astonishingly so, there is a broad agreement on what is right and what is wrong. I found this argument about what is called the “Law of Nature” in C.S. Lewis’ classic book Mere Christianity:

There have been differences between … moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own… [What would] a totally different morality … mean[?] Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him.

You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.

But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you can say Jack Robinson. … [I]f there is no such thing as Right and Wrong … what is the difference between a fair [promise] and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?[1]

So this is what Paul is leading us to when he writes that God has made himself known to all humanity. In theological terms this is called the General Revelation. The General Revelation is God’s revelation of himself to all of creation. It essentially equips all people with enough knowledge so that they know how they ought to act in their relations with God, nature, and each other. People know what they ought to do. But this knowledge does not equip people with the ability to do it. So, in a sense, the General Revelation only gives people enough rope to hang themselves with.

Now before you go off thinking how unfair that is, we have to think about where this first became a problem. And that was in the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve. You guys all remember that story and I’m not going to go through the whole thing today but I want to point out that it is not about snakes and apples, and certainly not about fig leaves, it is about failing to recognize the sovereignty of God. It is about Adam and Eve failing to trust that God had already given them everything they needed to live in perfect relationship with himself, nature, and each other. Instead of being content with what they had, they gave in to a longing to have more. They became convinced that the forbidden fruit would give them more than God was giving them. By breaking God’s commandment and eating the fruit they put the created thing – the fruit – ahead of God’s provision – ahead of God himself.

In biblical terms we can think of the General Revelation as God placing Adam and Eve in the Garden with everything they needed and a direct relationship with him. God created the universe in shalom, an unbroken relationship of peace and well-being. God gave Adam and Eve everything they needed in every respect, but Adam and Eve wanted more, and they tried to get it by eating the fruit that God had forbidden. The sin wasn’t about eating apples, it was about denying that God is God and instead thinking they could get something from the fruit, that God had created, that they could not get from God. That’s why Paul writes:

²¹For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. (Romans 1:21-23)

It started with thinking that they could get more from the forbidden fruit than they could from God, and it went on from there to become full blown idol worship.

Ok, idol worship. Paul lived in a culture where worshipping idols was the norm. Idol worship was rampant in the pagan world, going back as far as we can remember. It was so common that God made it his number one concern to turn his people, the Israelites, away from the worship of idols. It is the first of the Ten Commandments. The great failure of the Israelites, the sin that led to their conquest and exile, was failure to end idol worship.

In the Greco-Roman world the worship of idols was very sophisticated and complex. There were idols for almost every human desire. Gods of war, peace, justice, fertility, abundance, wantonness, even “just in case” gods that covered anything that might have been overlooked by worshipping the other gods. (Acts 17:22-23) All of these gods were worshipped by revering statues of various forms. These are the idols Paul is referring to in today’s reading. All of these things amount to exchanging “the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”

And so we might say “yes but we don’t worship idols like that anymore.” And that’s pretty much a true statement. It isn’t all that common to find people who will prostrate themselves before a tiki god, although it does still happen. We find in some cultures right here in our midst the practice of bowing before idols or offering food to idols, etc. But we really have to consider idolatry in a more general sense to see how this applies to us.

An idol is anything we put our trust in other than God. Adam and Eve’s idol was the forbidden fruit. The ancient Israelites’ idols were Golden Calves and Asherah Poles and Ba’als and things like that. The Greeks’ and Romans’ idols were elaborate shrines and statues. Very few or none of us would think of worshipping things like this today.

But I think if we are honest with ourselves we have to admit that we too are idolaters. Even though we don’t bow down to statues, we do put our trust in other things ahead of God. We put our trust in money, in positions, in possessions, and in ideas. We all like to think of ourselves as having faith, but how much faith do we really have in God?

How many of us would give up a prosperous life in a sophisticated place to go into an unknown land based on only a vague promise? That’s what Abraham did. How many of us would give up a powerful position at court and risk a horrible death to remain true to God? That’s what Daniel did. How many of us would give up a successful business to follow an itinerant counter-cultural preacher? That’s what Peter and the other apostles did.

How many of us when we think about that kind of faith, the faith that is willing to give up everything for Jesus, the scary faith we talked about a couple weeks ago that puts trust in a story that doesn’t make sense, when we hear about that faith we also hear that other voice that says, “That’s just crazy. You can’t do that. You’ll never make any money as a musician, or an artist, or whatever. You can’t go off and be a missionary. How will you make a living? How will you support your family? Or, you can’t risk your standing to witness to Jesus. Everyone will turn their back on you. You’ll be left all alone while everyone else is having fun.” And when we follow that voice, and I think we all do, aren’t we putting “common sense” ahead of trust in God? Aren’t we making “common sense” our idol?

So this is why what Paul is writing to the Romans applies to us. We are in the same boat as these pagans Paul is writing about in these verses. Really I think the point of all this is that this is the inevitable result of the fall that was brought about as the consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve. You might say that it is unfair that we are being punished for the sin of these people who lived so long ago, but in reality we are being punished for our own sins. When we consider the rest of today’s reading we see Paul describing the depravity of life without God. He gives us lists of sins (as he does in other letters), like sexual sins and

every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity… envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice…. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. (Romans 1:29-31 NIV)

I don’t want to depress you but I guarantee you that if you picked up today’s newspaper you would easily be able to find reports about every one of these things and probably many times over. Paul tells us this is the result of putting our trust in other things ahead of trust in God. It is the result of the sin of Adam and Eve.

Now I know some of you are thinking, “Well that just doesn’t fit me. I’m not that bad. In fact, I’m pretty good. I read the Bible and I pray and I’m honest and I obey my mother and father etc.” And trust me I know that we all do our best and we’re not as depraved as we could be, as the people Paul describes here are. But the point is that no matter how hard we try we’re still going to fall short of God’s mark. We’re still going to do things we know we shouldn’t. We’re still going to screw things up. We’re still going to fail. And, I think, we all have to admit that we are going to put other things ahead of God. Let me give you a way you can figure this out on your own.

We know we are all called to love. Jesus tells us that the way we can be identified with him is by love and he commands us to love in John Chapter 13 ^“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35 NIV) What does that look like? You’re probably familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 that is the so-called “love chapter.” Let’s look at how love is described there:

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. (1 Cor. 13:4-8 NIV)

Now let’s replace that word love with our own names: Keith is patient, Keith is kind, does not envy, does not boast… well, most of the time. I’m pretty good with not dishonoring others, have to pray not to be self-seeking. I do in fact find myself angry at times, especially on the freeway…. Here’s where it gets hard, Keith always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, never fails. I hate to say it my brothers and sisters but I have failed this test. How did you do?

Paul’s point here is that because of the brokenness of the world we will all fail the test.

Here’s the part we don’t want to hear, but we have to hear it or there will be no hope for us. How does Paul begin this part of the letter? He writes “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people…” (Romans 1:18 NIV) The wrath of God. The wrath of God is what Adam and Eve received as the consequence of their disobedience. The wrath of God is what all of creation experienced as a result of that fall. The wrath of God is what we all deserve as a consequence of our own idolatry. What does that wrath look like?

We are conditioned to think of wrath in human terms. We think of it as unrestrained anger and violence. Sometimes we think of the biblical stories like Sodom and Gomorrah where we see God raining down fire and brimstone from heaven. And we sometimes wonder I think how a God of love can give himself over to wrath like that. But Paul is giving the Romans and us a very different picture of wrath. Let’s look at verse 24, “Therefore God gave them over.…” Verse 26, “Because of this, God gave them over.…” Verse 28, “Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over....” What does this mean “God gave them over?”

What it really means is that the sin is the punishment. God doesn’t have to throw rocks at us to punish us; the very fact that we turn or backs on him and put our trust in other things that have to fail us is already punishment. And God’s wrath is that he allows it. Another one of the quotes I like from C.S. Lewis goes like this:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.

God’s wrath against sinful humanity is that he allows what we have chosen. He allows us to turn our backs on him and pursue our own foolish plans. When Adam and Eve sinned they broke the love relationship between humans and God, God’s wrath was that he allowed it. Whenever humans choose something ahead of God and they break the love relationship between man and God, God’s wrath is that he allows it. The death of this love relationship is the death that Paul refers to in verse 32, “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death.” It is not a physical death, it is the death of being disconnected from God, the source of life, by our own choice. And it is in this state that all of us find ourselves in.

Now you’re probably thinking, “Hold on a minute there pastor I thought you said this eangelion of yours was supposed to be good news. This doesn’t sound like very good news. You build up our hopes by telling us about Christ’s victory over sin, corruption, and death, and now you just got through sending us all to hell. What gives?” Well I don’t blame you for that. There doesn’t seem to be very much good news in today’s scripture. And if this was the end of it you would this would be very bad news. But it isn’t. The good news is there. God is not in the business of sending people to Hell. God is in the business of rescuing people from Hell. Let me show it to you.

Do you guys remember the story of Jesus’ crucifixion? There was a part where he cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46 NIV) You probably know that he was calling to mind Psalm 22, which predicts the suffering of the Messiah, and thus he was identifying his work on the cross with the work of the Messiah. But what was that cry about? It had to be more than a Bible lesson. What was the agony Jesus was feeling on the cross that he cried aloud to the Father about? It was that the Father had turned his back on him. He had “given him over,” not for his sins, but for ours.

Jesus death on the cross was the death that Paul writes about in verse 32. It was the death that is the consequence of putting other things ahead of God. It was not just or even primarily a physical death; it was the death of Jesus’ love relationship with the Father, which was like the love relationship between God and Adam and Eve in the Garden. It was the death that ended the shalom Jesus had experienced in relationship with the Trinity throughout eternity. It was that most agonizing death that is the consequence of sin. And the “good news” is that Jesus suffered that penalty not for his own sin but for ours. He did it for the sins of all humanity, and for all of our personal sins. He died for all of the sins we have ever committed, and for all of the sins we ever will commit. The price has been paid in full, once and for all, by Jesus on the cross.

Think of it like this. You are in the execution chamber and you are about to be put to death for crimes that you committed. You’re there because of your own actions and you know it. You deserve what you’re about to get, and you know it. Then suddenly out of the blue someone shows up and takes off your restraints and opens the door and tells you you’re off the hook, that the price has been paid. You’re free! And you walk out of the execution chamber a free person. Imagine the elation you would feel. That, my friends, would be good news. And that is the good news. Jesus paid it all.

Let us pray.

[A] Dear heavenly father we adore you for your greatness and goodness. We stand in awe of your great mercy and love that caused you to send your own son to suffer for our sins.

[C] We freely admit and confess that we do not deserve your mercy. We freely admit and confess that we have broken our covenant with you, that we have put our trust in other things ahead of trust in you, that we have failed to live up to your commandment to love, that we have failed to see you in our brothers and sisters.

[T] We thank you for your amazing grace. We thank you for the gift of your son Jesus. We thank you for the beauty and bounty of the earth. We thank you for the love relationships we are able to enjoy. We thank you for our freedom to come together and worship you without fear. We thank you that we can speak your name in public without fear and that you give us the opportunity to share in Jesus’ mission of restoring the earth.

[S] We pray that you will send your Holy Spirit to fill this congregation with your shalom. We pray that we will be filled with your Spirit to accomplish the tasks you have set before us in shining your love to our brothers and sisters, especially to those who do not yet know you. We pray that you would meet each person here today at the place of their greatest need. We pray for those who may be suffering from physical sickness, from anxieties about work and school and finances, from broken relationships, that you would touch us all and fill us with the assurance that you are in the midst of all of our trials and that we can accomplish all things through you. We pray for those we love who are far from us and who we miss that you might return them safely to us. We pray for our broken world that you would send your angels to cover the earth with your peace. We pray that you will bring about and end to war and violence and disease and poverty and that you would use us as your instruments to accomplish your purposes. We pray that you will send Jesus to us quickly. And we pray all of these things in the name of your beloved son and our savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

---

[1] Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity: A Revised and Enlarged Edition, with a New Introduction, of the Three Books The Case For Christianity, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality. Revised & Enlarged ed. New York: Macmillan Pub Co, 1952.

Taken – Blessed – Broken – Given (Luke 9:10-17)

Does anybody here know about or remember a TV show from the 1960s called “The Addams Family?” It was a sitcom about a suburban family that lived a normal suburban lifestyle except that they lived in a creepy mansion that looked like a haunted house and each member of the family was supposed to be one of the kinds of monsters that were common in monster movies of that era. It was really a spoof on that genre of movies. Actually I was never a big fan of this program but when I was preparing this sermon I remembered one of the characters whose name was “Thing.” I found this picture on Google that shows what Thing looked like. Thing was just a hand in a box. In different episodes of the show Thing could be seen doing things like adjusting the radio or the TV set or tapping people on the shoulder, but obviously there was this limitation that because it was just a hand in a box the things that it could do were limited to whatever it could reach. And so except for its gag effect, it was essentially useless.

This week I want to focus on a passage in Luke that shows the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand. I am going to relate the passage to the Lord’s Supper we just celebrated. You might wonder what feeding the five thousand has to do with communion. You may wonder even more what it has to do with Thing. But before I’m done here today I think you will see its relevance.

¹⁰ When the apostles returned, they reported to Jesus what they had done. Then he took them with him and they withdrew by themselves to a town called Bethsaida, ¹¹ but the crowds learned about it and followed him. He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing.

¹² Late in the afternoon the Twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here.”

¹³ He replied, “You give them something to eat.”

They answered, “We have only five loaves of bread and two fish—unless we go and buy food for all this crowd.” ¹⁴ (About five thousand men were there.)

But he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” ¹⁵ The disciples did so, and everyone sat down. ¹⁶ Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to distribute to the people. ¹⁷ They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. (Luke 9:10-17 NIV)

The passage we are looking at this morning begins with the apostles returning and reporting what they had done. Earlier in the chapter we are told Jesus had given the Twelve “power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” (Luke 9:1-2 NIV) When they came back he took them away to a remote place to rest, but the crowds followed them and so instead of being able to have their little retreat Jesus spent his time ministering to the people who came to him: teaching and healing.

At the end of the day the apostles urged Jesus to send the people away so that they could get something to eat, and Jesus challenged them by telling them “You give them something to eat.” Those of you who were here last week hopefully remember me talking about what faith is and how difficult faith can be, because it requires that we trust in something that our rational minds tell us is impossible. I think all of us have trouble with faith, but we shouldn’t be discouraged about it because the gospels tell us that those people who lived with Jesus and watched his miracles also had trouble believing, just like we see in this story. Luke records the incident in a more elegant way but you can just imagine the apostles’ reaction. “What? Are you kidding? We don’t have enough food to feed five thousand people! And we don’t have enough money to buy that much food either!” You can imagine that the apostles must have though Jesus was crazy.

But Jesus tells them to take what they have, have faith, and perform a miracle. I want us to notice here that Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples to give to the people. There is a lot more to this story than Jesus performing a miracle. Jesus is revealing the pattern for his and our ministry in the world.

Let’s look a little bit further ahead in Luke and look at where he writes about the Last Supper. There he writes about Jesus, “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19 NIV) Here we see Jesus taking the bread, blessing it, breaking it, and giving it. And this becomes the model for the Lord’s Supper that has been celebrated at Jesus commandment throughout the history of the Church and which we just celebrated. I’m going to take up a theme introduced by Henri Nouwen in his book Life of the Beloved and consider what it means to be taken, blessed, broken, and given.

At the Last Supper Jesus says “This is my body….” What can this mean? We can think about this in a number of ways but we can consider in at least one way by looking at Jesus’ life and ministry in the gospel story. Jesus himself was taken by God, blessed, broken, and given. So Jesus is comparing himself to the bread that gives life to the people.

Let’s look a little closer at this. To take something is to choose something. Something that is taken is something that is chosen. In the gospel story we know that Jesus is called the Christ or the Messiah. That means the “Chosen One.” There are literally dozens of places in the Old Testament where God promises through his prophets to send a Chosen One to restore God’s Kingdom of righteousness and justice on the earth. Here is one where we see a direct reference in the New Testament. Earlier in Luke’s gospel, where he records the beginning of Jesus ministry, he tells this story:

¹⁶ [Jesus] went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the  oppressed free, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. ²¹ He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-21 NIV)

In this scripture at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry he identifies himself as the promised Messiah – the anointed or Chosen One predicted in scripture – by proclaiming that he is the one promised by the prophet Isaiah. He also reveals here the nature of his mission, beginning with “to proclaim the good news to the poor…” Jesus was chosen.

When Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan we see his anointing by the Holy Spirit and the blessing of the Father. Luke writes, “²¹ When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened ²² and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’” (Luke 3:21-22 NIV) Jesus was blessed.

In the gospel according to Matthew we read about the brokenness Jesus had to experience in order to bring us healing, “Why have you forsaken me?” Jesus cries out from the cross, quoting Psalm 22, and signifying the most desolate state that any human can experience: being abandoned by God. This broken relationship with God is the death that is the consequence of sin. But Jesus didn’t sin. Instead, he experienced this brokenness for us, so that we do not have to pay the price of our own rebellion. Jesus was broken.

Finally we see the consequence of the gospel story in the end of Matthew where Jesus tells his disciples “^{19 ‘}go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Mt. 28:19-20 NIV) Jesus gives himself to the world through those of us who are in him to restore the creation and establish the Kingdom of God’s eternal peace. Jesus was given to the world.

Taken – blessed – broken – given.

When we practice the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper like we did today we are reenacting the life of Jesus so that we can remember who we are in Christ. We do it because Christ commanded it. He tells his disciples “do this in remembrance of me.” (Lk. 22:19 NIV) One of the things we believe as Presbyterians about the Lord’s Supper is that it is an actual encounter with Christ. We meet Christ in and are blessed by partaking of the sacrament. There isn’t anything magical about the ritual or the words or the elements – the bread and the wine. Instead it is a remembrance of a condition that already exists – that we are in fact blessed by Jesus and he is with us right now.

When we partake of the sacrament we acknowledge the reality that because of our identification with Jesus’ death on the cross we are united with him in his glorified life. Being united with Christ means being united with his earthly life, death, resurrection, and ongoing mission. That is why Jesus tells his disciples “go and make disciples of all nations.” And that means that we too are chosen, blessed, broken, and given.

When we think about the idea of being chosen we tend to look at things the way the world looks at things. Certainly when we think about Jesus as the Chosen One we are thinking in exclusive terms. Jesus was the Chosen One; by his very nature no one else could do what he did to bring about the restoration of the broken relationship. We all too are chosen by the Father. But we must not think about our chosen-ness in the same way we think of Jesus being chosen as savior, or even the way we choose as human beings.

In economics there is a concept called “opportunity costs.” Opportunity costs essentially represent all of the things we must give up in order to make a choice. Today when you chose to come to church, at the same time you gave up the opportunity to do a whole universe of other things. Because you are here, you cannot be physically anywhere else right now. You can’t be at the beach, or shopping, or watching TV. By choosing to come to church you automatically rejected literally thousands of other things.

We think that is what it is like to be chosen, too. If we choose one person to be president, we reject everyone else. If one team is chosen by their performance to be the champions, every other team is rejected. So we think that if anyone else is chosen for anything and we are not, we are rejected. This feeling leads to isolation and competition, envy and loneliness.

But God does not choose the way we do. When God chooses to love you with the love of a parent for an only child, which he does do, he does not reject anyone else. Because God is so great, he can love each of us with that great exclusive love. And when we realize how blessed we are in his love, we too can begin to see the chosen-ness in our brothers and sisters. As we are more and more conformed to the likeness of Christ, we begin to see others as he sees us, and we lose our sense of isolation and loneliness. Instead of seeing others with envy, as people we have to compete with for attention and blessing, we begin to see them as like us, chosen and loved by the Father. And so we are drawn to them in love rather than separated from them by rivalry.

Each of us is also broken. The life of the Christian is the process of moving away from the life of sin and temptation more and more toward identification in Christ. We have already discussed how being a member of the church means being a member of the body of Christ. Being a member of the church is not like being a member of a club or a political party, it is like being a member of a body. It is like the relationship of the hand and the body. The hand cannot live by itself. Even if it could, it would have no purpose. And the body, although it can live without the hand, is crippled without it. The hand needs the body, and the body needs the hand. We need the church, and the church needs us. This is what it looks like to be separated from the body.

Sometimes the process of realizing we are broken looks really dramatic. Sometimes it’s like being diagnosed with an incurable disease, or getting into serious legal or financial trouble, or losing a job, or having one of these things happen to someone we love. We suddenly find ourselves in very scary place where we feel our only hope is in divine intervention. So we turn to God. At the end of our own resources, we are left with nothing to rely on but God’s mercy, so we choose Him where before we might not have. It’s not without reason that there is the saying there are no atheists in foxholes.

But sometimes the process of realizing we are broken doesn’t look so dramatic. Sometimes it’s just the slow but steady progress toward living a more Spirit-filled life. Sometimes it doesn’t seem extreme at all. But in either case it actually is a profound experience because we are giving up our own lives of apart-ness in order to be grafted into the life of Christ. Paul writes of it in his letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20 NIV) Becoming a member of the body I think might be something like a surgery that re-attaches a severed limb. Sometimes it’s done with anesthesia and sometimes not but the pain is always there. Life without Christ is loneliness. Live in Christ is wholeness. Because we all have to make that painful journey from isolation to communion, we all share the experience of broken-ness that Jesus lived on the cross.

Rather than being a curse, in Jesus this broken-ness becomes a blessing. Without Jesus’ suffering we could not be free. And, like Jesus, we are called to share our broken-ness with our fellows in order to bring about healing. Notice in the miracle Jesus performed of feeding the five thousand he called his disciples to be his coworkers. Whatever miracle happened when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes occurred by some supernatural power that only Jesus possessed. But Jesus was gracious enough to allow his followers to participate in the miracle by distributing the food to the people. So in this case it wasn’t just the food that was given, it was the disciples. Jesus chose his disciples, blessed them, broke them of their pride and wrong ideas, and gave them to the people.

And we too, if we are his disciples, are also chosen, blessed, broken, and given. Every time we participate in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we remember that each one of us is chosen by God as his beloved daughter or son. We remember that we are loved in a way that a parent loves an only child. We remember that we are blessed or found approved by God through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. We remember that we are broken because we have to share in Jesus’ suffering on the cross. We have to give up our natural identity in order to be grafted into the body. We find the joy of life in communion with the whole church, the whole Body of Christ.

But let us always remember that the body doesn’t exist just to exist. We are all called to use our gifts to build up the Body of Christ; to make it whole and healthy. But that whole and healthy body exists to do the work of Christ in the world. The church is Christ in the world. So let us let this celebration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper serve to remind us that we, like the bread, like the disciples in the story, like Jesus, are chosen, blessed, and broken to be given to the world. And let us allow ourselves to be given in the same way Jesus was given: to live lives that reflect his righteousness and justice and mercy and compassion and concern for our brothers and sisters. To live lives that reflect the self-sacrificing love of Jesus in our homes, at work, at school, and in our communities; to every one we meet. Let us do this this week, and every week.

Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, you are a great God. Your mercy and love are beyond our comprehension. We confess that we have failed to reflect your nature in the things that we do. We have failed to recognize you in our brothers and sisters, and we have relied on human means and resources rather than casting all of our cares upon you. We thank you that in your great mercy you have sent your son Jesus to make us friends with you again, so that when you see us you do not see our failures but his righteousness. We thank you for the sacrifice you made to restore us to your friendship. We thank you for the freedom to come together to worship you without fear. We thank you for the beauty of the earth that we so often take for granted. We thank you that you allow us to be members of your family. We pray that you will send your Spirit to fill us with your peace. We pray for those of us gathered here today who may be suffering from fear and anxiety for ourselves or our loved ones, who may be suffering from financial stress, or who may be suffering from some form of sickness or dis-ease. We pray that you will assure us in the knowledge that we are not alone, that you meet us at the point of our greatest weakness and need. We pray that you will give us eyes to see the world with the same compassion and love you see it with. We pray that we may be instruments of your peace in the world. We pray that you will send your angels to cover the earth with your peace. We pray that Jesus will come quickly. We pray that we will remember by our participation in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper that we, like the bread, like Jesus, are chosen, blessed, broken, and given to the world. And we pray all of these things in the name of your son Jesus. Amen.