A Fearsome Savior: Sermon for Mark 4:33--5:20

Can you imagine what that day must have been like for the disciples? They'd spent the afternoon with the crowds, listening to Jesus teach in riddles. Their brains must have been fried, trying to follow all of his words, trying to tease out the meanings of each parable, trying to grasp what it meant for them personally and for the mission they were on. Jesus taught his stories right up to the edge of their ability to even handle it (Mark 4:33). Darkness is falling; they think it's time for bed – and that's when Jesus tells them they're going to be pulling an all-nighter this time, they're going to cross the lake (Mark 4:35). I don't imagine the disciples were thrilled with this news. But how do you argue with the Teacher? You don't, though I imagine at least one of them was grumbling inside.

So as the sun goes down, down toward the horizon and past it, they climb into their boat, all thirteen crowding into the same one – probably 27 feet long, 7.5 feet wide. But it's not the only boat in their party: some of the crowd, some who had yearned to get closer to Jesus, who had crowded around to get the in-depth scoop, are along for the trip, because they can't bear the thought of not seeing Jesus in the morning (Mark 4:36). I wonder how many hours things were peaceful, uneventful, even dull as they made their trip. I wonder what was the first sign of trouble: maybe the wind picked up a bit, maybe a few drops of rain splashed on the bridge of Andrew's nose, maybe a wave sloshed over the edge onto Matthew's shoes. But this was no little storm. It was a strong one, maybe with lightning rolling back and forth between black clouds, with wind whipping the water into a frenzy; and by the time Mark tells can even finish his sentence, it's already in full swing (Mark 4:37).

Was the storm visible on the horizon when they climbed into the boat? Did the disciples assume that it would miss them? Well, if they thought the kingdom mission would exempt them from seeing the storms, they were wrong. Here it is, crashing down upon them with everything that it's got, pounding them into the sea. They're shouting into the wind, and it's stealing their words and sending them flying. The water's filling the boat now – and I picture Thomas, the eternal pessimist (or realist, if you prefer), being the first to have the thought that this is the day they all die – and, knowing him, probably to disregard group morale by announcing so out loud. (You know the kind.) What a waste! Is this where the kingdom ends, with a few dozen skeletons on the lake bed, or bloated bodies bobbing in the sea? They've left house and home, friends and family, to devote themselves to what they've been convinced God is doing – and this is the thanks they get? Rained on. Is the kingdom going to get rained out before it really gets off the ground? Can even Jesus do anything about this – the healer of lepers, the dispeller of darkness – or will he drown too?

The disciples scramble around the boat. Where did Jesus go? Is Jesus still in here with us somewhere? Did he fall out? No, there he is – and what an anticlimax: while the disciples have been rowing, Jesus has nodded off on a little cushion in the back of the boat, and maybe you'd hear him snoring if the wind weren't so loud. Here the disciples are, panicking, frantic, adrenaline flooding their veins, their hearts pounding like each beat might be their last – and the Savior's gone to bed (Mark 4:38). Do you think they were thrilled? Where is God in this storm, this demonic whirlwind, this parody of God's fearsome presence (cf. Job 38:1)? Where is the power of the kingdom, the font of miracle after miracle after miracle? Where is our protector, our refuge and our trust? There – sleeping in the back of the boat.

As far as the disciples can see, when the storm gets rough, the God of their salvation is asleep on the job. And don't we sometimes feel the same way? Living this life, serving the kingdom, we run into our fair share of storms – some mild, some strong, and maybe even a Category-5 hurricane or two. The storms enter to disrupt our lives, to throw us into chaos, to derail our calling. They come to dissuade us from the abundant life that God plans for us, they come to challenge our kingdom ministry. They come to turn our peace into panic, they come to strike fear into our hearts and drown us in burdens we can't bear by ourselves.

I've faced my share of storms. You have too. Maybe you've gotten the call late into the night that there's been an accident, and you need to come quickly. Maybe you've watched the waves agitate as cancer slowly drains the life out of your father, your mother, your husband, your wife, your child. Maybe you've woken up employed one day and gone to bed without a job that night. Or woken up with a house one day and had nowhere to lay your head by the time the sun's gone down – lost to fire, to earthquake, to tornado, or to the bank. Maybe the wind keeps throwing bill after bill into your face, burying you until you gasp for air, fearing you'll drown. Maybe life's roughed you up, maybe your friends have deserted you and fight with you, maybe you've been harassed or vandalized or victimized, maybe everyone's against you and you worry that you'll lose what you've got and you've forgotten what happiness feels like. And you call out to God, and the storm gets worse, and you pray your heart out, and the waves hit your face and the floor jerks out from under your feet, and heaven is silent. For all you can tell, God must be asleep on the job. If you've ever felt like that – and I know I have – then you can sympathize with the disciples on that frightful night.

So the disciples frantically wake Jesus – I doubt it's with a respectful whisper in his ear, more likely they're yelling and screaming and maybe daring to shake him by the shoulders – and they shout at their teacher, asking if he even cares that they're about to be destroyed from the land of the living (Mark 4:38). Jesus stirs from his slumber, he sits up, probably stands up, and goes into action. What, I wonder, did the disciples expect Jesus to do? Did they imagine he'd grab a bucket and start tossing out water? Did they think he'd grab an oar and pitch in to get them to the other side? Or did they dare to think that maybe if he can make the blind see and the crippled walk, he isn't helpless in the face of all nature's fury?

Picture the scene: Wind messing up his hair, his robes drenched and waterlogged, the boat tossing and turning beneath him, he treats the storm like the demon it is: he rebukes it (cf. Mark 1:25), and his voice pierces the clouds as he demands of the Sea of Galilee, “Pipe down and put a sock in it!” – or, if you prefer the more traditional translation, “Peace! Be still!” Who goes around yelling at storms? Who goes around rebuking the elements, trying to put God's creation on a leash – and succeeds? That sounds like the God of the Exodus, the God who “rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; he led them through the depths as through a desert” (Psalm 106:9), the God who “saved them for his name's sake, to make his mighty power known” (Psalm 106:8).

And just like that, the wind grows soft, the boat stands upright, the waves lose their force and drop – and everything just stops. The clouds go find somewhere else to play. Brilliant starlight dots the darkness. The Sea of Galilee smiles, adopting a calm and cheery demeanor every bit as majestic and magnificent as the scowl of the demon storm (Mark 4:39). Coming on so suddenly, the quiet must have been almost eerie. When you get used to the chaos, the cacophany of howling wind and tempestuous waves, their absence is unsettling, heightening the otherworldliness of what's just happened, making your hair stand on end.

And there are the disciples in the boat, staring at Jesus – the man who tells the sea to jump, and it asks him how high; the man who could blow back the wind with the sound of his voice; the man who scolds a hurricane like it's a petulant toddler, and to instant effect (Mark 4:41). What kind of teacher have they been following? This is beyond the territory of anything they've known or dreamed. And how do you look that kind of power in the face when you've seen what he can do with just a couple of words? What goes through your head at this point, looking at the lips that just commanded the weather, the eyes that saw through the storm? What do you make of this Jesus, whose job description is really starting to look an awful lot like your Maker's?

What the disciples learned that day is that Jesus was in control the whole time. Chaos doesn't have the final word. The kingdom of God has the final word. In any storm, it may look like God's asleep on the job; it may seem like he's deserted you, abandoned you, but when the storm has served the purpose for which he permits it, he can disperse it with a word. See, for all his seeming absence, for all his evident silence, God is in control! And not just some abstract God, not some cosmic tyrant or divine butler, not some grand magician or heavenly therapist, but the God whose autobiography unfolded on earth as Jesus Christ. The God who saves when salvation's beyond hope, the God who scolds storms into silent submission. That is the God who is in control. That is the God of the gospel.

As the disciples looked at this strange and suddenly unfamiliar Jesus, they must have waited with bated breath to see if he had any comment to make, any lesson to unveil to them. And they waited: what is Jesus going to say? All he says are two questions: “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40). Why all this panic, why all this uproar? Why did you let the storm get the best of you? Have you forgotten that there's another way? All this teaching about the kingdom, and don't you get it yet that no matter how wet things get, there's not a storm in heaven and earth to drown the kingdom seed? Don't you yet really believe you're the ambassadors of God's rule? Can't you see that even Jesus with his eyes closed is a living and active Savior? Don't you trust him yet?

Well, how do the disciples react to him? “They feared a great fear” (Mark 4:41) – as frightening as the storm was, there's something more imposing, more intimidating, about their own mentor, their very own best friend. Jesus is no tame teacher. He's our protector, but the disciples are coming to realize that he's not domesticated, not safe. “Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good. He is the king, I tell you!” Not safe, but oh so very good: a fearsome Savior, maybe, a live lion and no tame teddy bear, but a Savior who calls us to faith and to hope and to love that outlasts all things. The storm has passed; there's a great calm.

The boat reaches the other side of the lake – the hour before sunrise, as I picture it. They aren't in Kansas anymore. They've left what's today called Israel and entered what's today is the Kingdom of Jordan. Their boat's landed in the country of the Decapolis, near the town of Gadara in “the region of the Gerasenes” (Mark 5:1). All ten towns were mainly Gentile, settled by Greek colonists. It's a very pagan place, one that might've made the disciples wonder, “Why are we being taken here? What is Jesus up to?” And no sooner had Jesus stepped out of the boat than he and his soggy, tired followers had work to do. Out from the unclean cemetery emerges a wild man, possessed by unclean spirits of immense power and number, thriving on the negativity of death, celebrating madness (Mark 5:2). Here's this man, unrestrainable, a tomb-dweller, a zombie imitator extraordinaire. We've left the survival movie behind, and now we find ourselves written into a horror flick. Here before us is this man: he's the first century's Jason Vorhees, here's Freddy Krueger, here's Michael Myers, this is Dracula and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein's monster, this is the nameless ghoul who haunts the tombs, who treats every day like a dark Halloween. What do you do when the monster presents himself out of the mists before dawn? What is Jesus going to do?

Jesus sees through this apparent monster. Outwardly, he's fierce, unconquerable; he can't be tied down, can't be shackled, can't be chained (Mark 5:3-5). But inwardly he's more a prisoner than most. He's no warrior, fighting strong with sword and shield... or machete. He's not launching gleaming arrows from a citadel. He's himself a lost battlefield, annexed and occupied by Satan's strikeforce, a battalion from hell's gates. And for all his wildness, he's oddly familiar. He's the perfect image of a sadly common reality. Look around the streets, and you'll see plenty of people who build walls to hide their felt inner vulnerability. People who compensate for that inward sensation of weakness by being outwardly cold, aggressive, assertive, dominant over all and sundry.

You'll find them in our prisons; you'll find them in boardrooms; you'll find them in the church. To one degree or another, many of us have been in a place like this. How often do we pretend that the cure for our inner chaos is outward composure and control? How often do we let our past of being victimized compel us to overcompensate, to insist that in order to never be put in that place again, we'll seize the reins and become unchainable? The deeper our fears, the greater our thirst for liberation, the stronger our demand to set the terms for our future, to be accountable to nothing and no one. There's an adage out there: “Hurt people hurt people.” How often do we wield woundedness as a weapon? How often do we lash out in vain attempts to solve or soothe the painful baggage we carry around inside our hearts and minds? That's this man's story.

Jesus sees him for the truth of what he is – and he sees that this man isn't his enemy. Jesus did not come to wage war against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12). This man is a lost soul needing redemption, needing true freedom not from outward shackles but from inner occupation. Jesus is up against more than just one unclean spirit, he finds: “Legion is my name, for many are we” (Mark 5:9). But Jesus conquers the unconquerable, not just outside but on the inside. With one command – “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit” – Jesus has confronted hell's army, thousands and thousands of demons, with a one-liner – and Jesus won (Mark 5:8). It did not take a prolonged siege. It was an order, not an option. And so the man kneels, the man bows in worship and submission (Mark 5:6), the demons confess Jesus and beg for mercy, beg that this unexpected start of the kingdom won't mean their destruction ahead of the appointed hour (Mark 5:7). Jesus lets them take up residence in a herd of pigs, which get consumed in their destructive impulses, all two thousand of them (Mark 5:11-13). But as for that man, the one made in God's image, what's his story? Well, there he sits at Jesus' feet, the posture of a disciple, “clothed and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15) – neither of which he was before. He's been changed.

Talk about a message of hope! We all bear inner scars and traumas; we all have our share of pain. At times, the biggest storm isn't the one outside. The biggest storm can be the one on the inside, the storm or demon horde in our own soul. Maybe it isn't cancer that's afflicting us; maybe it's depression or anxiety, whether the clinical kind or the more ordinary type. Maybe on the inside, we feel crushed and abandoned, isolated in our own numbness. Maybe everything we see is filtered by a fog. And we might think, “If only I could be strong, no abuse would befall me. If only I could be successful, everyone would respect me. If I were feared, I wouldn't fear.” And so we make a Faustian bargain with the darkness, we overcompensate, we seize control and so end up losing control where it really matters most.

I've been there. I think I have some understanding of this man. There was a time in my life where I knew what it was like to hear voices. There was a time in my life where, when I'd shut my eyes, I'd see visions of hell. I can tell you what this man learned, what the disciples witnessed with their own eyes: The Jesus who scolds storms is the Jesus who expels legions. The Jesus who quiets the wind is the Jesus who quiets the discouraging voices in your own mind and heart. The Jesus who settles the waves is the Jesus who kicks demons to the curb. This Jesus is the Master of body and soul, of the physical and the spiritual, of heaven and earth and sea and all that in them is; and he's in control over the storms and over the spirits, bringing order and peace and wholeness to the world and to our worlds, to our souls. Like the storms of downpours and gales, so the storms of passions and sorrows will pass through. But Jesus can and will make them be still at the time of his choosing; he will make them pipe down and put a sock in it. And he invites us to just have faith in him, in his goodness and his power and his wisdom. No, he's not safe. But he is the sanity of God in a world gone wild, and he promises to clothe us in his righteousness and restore us to the only right mind we could have – the mind of Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:16). “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). That's a promise – you can bank on it!

When this man was healed, you'd think the townspeople would be thrilled. If they've got an ounce of humanity, they should be overjoyed that something good and wonderful has happened to a fellow countryman. Even if they're selfish, they should at least be glad that the scary monster is a monster no more. But they aren't thrilled, they aren't even a bit happy. They don't care about him. They'd written him off long ago, and his good turn of fortune is no delight in their eyes. They look at him, and what they see is the cost: the drowned pigs, the forgone revenue. The image of Caesar on metal outweighs the image of God making wind and dust a miracle on two legs. The God of the Exodus has come to their shore to set captives free – and “they were afraid” (Mark 5:15). Like the demons, like defective disciples, they respond to Jesus not with faith but with fear. They find in him only a fearsome menace, not a Lord mighty to save and not to slay. And like the demons, the people of the Decapolis are reduced to begging. They beg him to leave their neighborhood, to pack up salvation and take it somewhere else (Mark 5:17). The kingdom is a disruptive thing, a costly thing. And they don't want the kingdom. They would rather evict the Desire of All Nations.

Does Jesus stay? Does Jesus force himself upon them? No. No, he doesn't. Jesus turns around, he wades out into the water, he climbs back into the boat beneath the soft light of dawn. Now there's one more act of begging: the ex-demoniac, the finally tamed wild man with control of his faculties now, wants what the demons feared: to leave this region, to be apostolic, to be on mission for the kingdom of God, even in strange and foreign lands, so long as he can be like the Twelve and be with Jesus (Mark 5:18; cf. Mark 3:14; 5:10). That's all he wants. Jesus tells him, “No, I have a better idea.” Jesus has another plan for him, another place he can be most effective: right there, right in his own neighborhood. Jesus sends him out to his own people to “tell them how much the Lord has done for you and what mercy he has shown you” (Mark 5:19). And that's exactly what the man does, preaching to the whole Decapolis, amazing everyone with news of Jesus and the kingdom (Mark 5:20). Years before the Damascus Road, years before Cornelius the centurion, this former host of Legion, plucked out of impurity and chaos, this man set free from demons, is the first missionary to the Gentiles – and he's a Gentile himself! He's the lingering witness to a kingdom that's open to all – no matter whether you're Jew or Greek or even if you've got a past that's packed full of demons. And all he's asked to do is to share what Jesus – the stiller of storms, the sanity of souls – has done out of mercy: “He saved them for his name's sake, to make his mighty power known,” to reveal the kingdom come (Psalm 106:8).

Maybe in these days, you're facing a storm. Maybe you're living with Legion. Maybe you're feeling swamped. Maybe you're breaking shackles and howling at anyone who comes near. But Jesus is the kingdom made flesh, Jesus is the salvation of God drawing close. Don't fear the storms, don't fear the demons, don't fear even fear itself. Trust Jesus. Ask him to pilot you. He wants to make more of you than fish food, more of you than a monster, more out of you than a battlefield or a capsized ship, more than a victim or a victimizer. He wants to make you a kingdom witness, if not out on the road, then right where you live, right in your backyard. No matter what you've done, no matter who you've been, Jesus offers a new start, he offers new dry clothes, he offers a new life and a new mind, he offers his mercies new each morning, to make his kingdom known in the abundant life he gives freely for you (John 10:10). When the storms come, when the voices call, when the tides of fear and grief and anger rise, plead to Jesus, beg mercy the God of peace, the God of great calm given in his time. He's not asleep on the job: “He who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps” (Psalm 121:4). He's the risen Son, he's the living Savior standing in your defense, telling your storms, “Peace, be still,” and your inner darkness, “Come out, you unclean spirit!” Of course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the Kingdom's King, I tell you.

Scattered Seed, Sharpened Sickle: A Harvest Home Sermon on Mark 4:1-34

Seed. Soil. Sickle. All everyday things for a farmer. But also the teaching tools of God-made-man: “Listen, a sower went to sow...” (Mark 4:3). When we left off with the Gospel of Mark a month ago, Jesus forced the disciples, the Pharisees, his family, the crowds to all take a stand and decide just who they think he is, why he acts the way he does. Is he out of his mind, or is he the sanity of God in a world gone mad (Mark 3:6-35)? Enough of the crowd didn't think he was deranged or depraved: when he again “began to teach beside the sea,” the crowd came to him in such numbers he had to get into a boat to spin his stories (Mark 4:1-2). This crowd had passed the first test. They were ready to hear something a bit more advanced now, and Jesus would speak their language – most Galileans were from farming villages and towns, so Jesus will preach in Agriculturese.

Jesus teaches the crowds in parables, in proverbs and riddles and analogies and stories, that both unveil the truth and force us to decide how badly we want to know. Will we come to him and sit next to the Twelve and learn how to understand, or will we let the story slip by us (Mark 4:10-12)? But these parables don't just convey ideas, as if they had one point and then let you move on. The longer parables especially are like houses: you walk inside, you check out all the rooms, you make yourself comfortable there, you view the world through each of the windows and learn to understand. That's what stories are for: to go live in for a while and learn there. Jesus and his kingdom news are “the word that redescribes the world” – interpret everything through him. And after this set of parables, harvest time is never the same, because everything farmers do now screams the kingdom. And I do think that Jesus has a few main points he wants us to know for sure.

First, the kingdom starts small. What does it look like when God reasserts his rightful claim over the earth, when God establishes his people again, when God sits on his throne and has things his way? You'd think it would be about a big display of power – striding right to the circles of biggest influence, bringing the kings and presidents and prime ministers of all the nations to heel. That's not what Jesus says, though. That isn't how God does things. That's how the kingdoms of this world do things. When God stakes his claim, he slips in under the radar. If you blink, if you aren't paying attention, you'll miss him.

Historically, it started with a popular carpenter-turned-traveling-teacher and his ragtag bunch of followers – mostly fishermen, peasants, other disreputable sorts – roaming the hills and villages and coastlines of the backwoods. Think: God could have picked all sorts of ways to stake his claim. He could have come to earth to be born in a palace, raised in purple robes and golden finery, negotiate with dignitaries and win the allegiance of all with bread and circuses. He could have come as a warrior commanding a dozen angel legions, sweeping the globe like Alexander the Great in mighty conquest, slicing down everything that stood in his path, until no one had the option of not hearing him out (cf. Matthew 26:53). He could have overwhelmed the earth as a vast cosmic presence, suffusing the very air we breathe with his undeniable glory.

But he didn't do that. God staked his claim to be king by showing up dressed as a slave (Philippians 2:7-8). The Gospels reveal a man who toiled under the boiling Middle Eastern sun, grew up in a small peasant village the other villages mocked, was run out of his own hometown, trained a crew of mostly average blue-collar types to be like him, refused to cater to the hot-headed crowds... and we're supposed to believe that this is the opening chord of the most majestic movement in the Creator's magnum opus? That this is how God stakes his claim to be Lord of all things at all times and places in all ways?

Yeah – that's exactly what Jesus says. The kingdom isn't like a meteorite that tumbles down from the sky and turns the world and its ways into a crater, reshaped by force and momentum into its own image. The kingdom isn't like a marauding army marching through the land. The kingdom isn't like a great golden idol, visible and obvious and full of instant splendor. The kingdom is like a seed – not just any seed, but a tiny one (Mark 4:30). Have you ever held a mustard seed in the palm of your hand? I have. It doesn't dwarf much except maybe a grain of sand. A mustard seed could roll along the back of a grain of rice. It's tiny! But a mustard seed becomes a great big mustard bush – the smallest seed you'd find in Galilee turns into something pretty impressive, “the greatest of all shrubs” (Mark 4:31-32).

Centuries before, Nebuchadnezzar dreamt that his mighty empire was like a tall tree in the middle of the whole earth, feeding all peoples, drawing all animals to take shelter in his shade, letting the birds of the air perch there, “and from it all living beings were fed” (Daniel 4:10-12). Ezekiel described Assyria the same way, as a tree that “towered high above all the trees of the field,” and “all the birds of the air made their nests in its boughs, … and in its shade all great nations lived” (Ezekiel 31:5-6). But God chopped Assyria down, “and all the peoples of the earth went away from its shade and left it” (Ezekiel 31:12), and the same happened in Nebuchadnezzar's dream: “Cut down the tree … Let the animals flee from under it, and the birds from its branches” (Daniel 4:14).

Starting big, aspiring to glory and dominion through mortal pride – that's a good way to end up as a log, as firewood. Starting out as a little seed, growing by God's tending, the kingdom of King Jesus becomes what Babylon and Assyria never were: “Under it every bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the LORD. I bring low the high tree; I make high the low tree” (Ezekiel 17:23-24). Turns out that God is a surprisingly big fan of humility – that's how he works, that's how he stakes his own claim: with a small seed, down in the cracks where no one of worldly importance sees – but in the end, with room enough for birds one and all (Mark 4:32).

Time and again, Jesus proves his word true. The kingdom latches onto our lives in a lot of mustard-seed ways. When we're all out of food, when we don't know what tomorrow holds, the Spirit pokes us in the heart 'til we give our last two pennies like the poor widow at the temple, somehow finding faith that God will give us tomorrow's bread when tomorrow comes. That's a mustard seed. When we fall and cry out to Jesus to lift us back up, when we get a fresh start, when we put in the effort to earn that white chip for being twenty-four hours sober and have to take it one day at a time, and by miracle and discipline the next day sees another day's victory – that's a mustard seed. When we swallow our pride and go out of our way to apologize to someone we wronged ten, twenty, thirty years ago – that's a mustard seed. When we show just one soul lost in darkness that Christ is the Light their world needs – that's a mustard seed. And from that mustard seed, from that small beginning, is where God time and time again grows the stuff of his kingdom. Hidden in that, in what Jesus meek and lowly is up to, is the seed for what Caesars of every age could only dream of.

Second, the kingdom grows in secret. “God moves in a mysterious way / his wonders to perform,” and none so mysterious as how the kingdom works, how God uses small things despised by the worldly wise to achieve more than could ever be thought. God bursts onto the human scene in what the invincible Romans would've seen as a Third World mud puddle, and how on earth – how even in heaven – does God get worldwide rule out of that? How does the strength of God get magnified in the weakness of mortal obscurity? How does the glory of God sneak around under humility's cloak and ignite a thousand fires? It's like seed poured far and wide, buried under the dirt. Nobody's watching it, nobody's measuring it. God makes it work: “First the stalk, then the head, then the full grain” (Mark 4:28). How does it sprout, how does it grow? Even the farmhands don't know how (Mark 4:27). That's what God taking charge is like. We don't see it, we don't understand it; his ways are higher than ours, craftier than ours (Isaiah 55:9). But there in our smallness, in our weakness, God's work takes root and germinates beneath the surface when we aren't even looking.

Third, the kingdom calls us to take a good, hard look at where we stand and what our hearts are like. That's what Jesus means by telling us his headline story, what Jesus treats as Intro to Parables 101 (Mark 4:13). He knew, the crowd knew, we know that most of the people listening to him were not ready to take up their cross and follow him into the jaws of death and live with self-denial and purpose along the way (Mark 8:34). They might like Jesus, they might have a fondness for him, but to stake this world and the next on him, to risk torture and shame for his sake, to prioritize him over everything else – that's a tall order, and our appetites are often so small, so scattered. Why isn't the kingdom changing everyone, if it's here? What gives?

Jesus explains with a story. Feast your ears on this, he says – picture Jesus the Farmer, leading his chosen farmhands out into his field, bulging pouches at their waists, full of the truth of God, full of the good news of the kingdom (Mark 4:14). He could keep his pouches buckled and bolted shut, could grab the plow and pull it through the field. But he doesn't – partly because that was the Baptist's job. He could scrutinize each patch and stick the seed in the ground, grain by grain, kernel by kernel, careful to dole it out like it's a limited edition. But he doesn't. He could stand in the middle of the best ground and toss it there. But he doesn't. Instead, he roams through the whole field, tossing out seed like no worldly-sane farmer ever would. He tosses it east, west, north, south; he tosses it here, he tosses it there, he tosses it without a worry where it'll land. He's irresponsible, or would be if rationing were the rule of the game. Jesus is too kind to stingily ration out his words of grace while today's still called today.

So why doesn't the seed sprout everywhere? Why doesn't the kingdom show up in everyone's life the same way? The problem isn't the seed. The problem is the soil. Some people, Jesus says, just have no room for the news he's bringing. It isn't that it doesn't hit their ears; it's that it doesn't lodge itself in what's between their ears before it sails out the other side. It's like seed that falls on the path, the dense dirt packed tight by continual footsteps. It's hard. If it were a hotel, the sign would be, “No vacancy,” “No admittance.” The door is locked. The bell rings, no one answers. The gospel is a package left on the doorstep in a bad neighborhood. If you leave seed out on the path, you won't have time to plow; the birds will come and peck away the seeds, and what good does that do for that patch of ground (Mark 4:4)? None.

That was true of a lot of people in Jesus' day. Pharisees came and heard him teach, we know that. They came to spy on him, to keep tabs on him, to trip him up. Some days, every public word Jesus said was heard by a Pharisee. Imagine getting to spend a whole day listening to each syllable from Jesus' lips! But it does no good unless we're receptive. Otherwise, it's in one ear and out the other. Satan snatches the seed away, shields his barren prize from the risk of penetration. It's the curse of being hard of heart, being unbending, unyielding to what God has to say. It wasn't just the Pharisees, either. I'm sure there were plenty of Galilean farmers who muttered to themselves that they just couldn't be bothered to walk a mile to hear yet another teacher propound his nuggets of wisdom when there's work to be done and it's such a nice day out. And there may have been those in the crowd who came, who heard, who appreciated, and who went back to their lives as if it was all just a nice day's outing.

It's true today, too. To the modern American mind, “religion” at its most tolerable is a hobby you might have, just like sports or stamp-collecting: maybe you're into it, maybe you're not. Or else it's a disposition: some people are hard-wired to be “religious,” most aren't, just like some are hard-wired to be really outgoing but others aren't. That's the modern American way of saying, “Hi, I'm packed-down soil; there's no room in me for a seed; I'd rather not see anything grow here and disrupt what I'm all about.” I'm sure you know people who just have no time, no interest, for the gospel, no thirst for anything higher or deeper than working their 9-to-5 and enjoying their diversions. I'm sure you also know people who like to come to church, to hear a pretty message, and who then go back to their lives unchanged – again, like a nice day's outing once a week. I fear that's an easy trap – the trap of dense dirt, and just as dull as dirt in the end.

Sometimes, we're the packed-down soil – maybe not toward the gospel as a whole, but toward a word from God that we just don't like or just don't care to take seriously. I'm not immune. There have been times in my life where I've known what God was calling me to do, and I let that word go in one ear and out the other. I hardened myself to it, and I let the devil snatch it from the stony surface of my heart – in retrospect, much to my hurt (Mark 4:15). I wouldn't be surprised if you've been in those same shoes once or twice. We're prone to pick and choose; we're prone to resent what the kingdom means in practice – that God is boss, and we aren't; that he knows what's best, even if we don't want it. Sometimes, we read in the Bible or hear in a sermon what God says about marriage, or generosity, or forgiveness, or the image of God in every human from womb to tomb, or defending the poor and the socially marginalized – and we just don't like it. We hear the word, we decide we don't want that part, and we harden ourselves. But frequency of a sin is no excuse for rationalizing it. Don't be packed-down when God has something to tell you. And don't think of church as a hobby or a preference or a nice day's outing.

Some people are like packed-down soil. Others are like rocky soil: they have room for the message of God's kingdom on their terms of ease and comfort (Mark 4:5). When everything's cheery, they're the perfect image of what the kingdom looks like! Or so you'd think. They burn bright from the very start; they shoot up and stand tall before most get off the ground. In fair weather, they're model believers who “receive the word with joy” (Mark 4:16). But only in fair weather. And not all weather is fair. They're addicted to prosperity, attached to ease. Their problem is that they aren't deep; they're rocky and shallow, warm and nurturing on the surface but only the surface. When the going gets tough, they get desiccated, dried out: “When trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away” (Mark 4:17). See, without roots, there's no gathering moisture. And without a reserve of moisture to carry us through the dry times, there's scorching in our future.

That's the story of a lot of people in the crowds Jesus was addressing. So long as Jesus gives them free bread and fish, so long as they get their three square meals a day and don't stub their toes, they're ecstatic about Jesus. He's the best, he's the champ, he's the king! But what about when Jesus doesn't multiply the loaves? What about when we don't just stub our toes, but find them dangling above the dirt with nails in our hands and feet like his? It's one thing to follow Jesus when he's handing out gifts quicker than Oprah. It's another thing to follow Jesus when he's treading the Way of Sorrows with bleeding, cross-bearing back as the mobs spit and jeer.

Too often, we want the gospel to be an avenue to prosperity and popularity, to sophistication and success. We want it to mean all the benefits – better health, bigger bank accounts, exciting friends and that nice warm feeling like life served us up a big pitcher of lemonade. But Jesus didn't tell people to come and take up their Ferraris and drive after him. Jesus promised us unpopularity. “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you don't belong to the world, but I've chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19). “All who will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12). Don't be surprised when following Jesus is the hard road. And don't be surprised when things don't work out like you planned – when tragedy strikes, when everything falls short, when you feel a target on your back. The question is, when that time comes, when the sun is hot and high in the sky, have we let the kingdom get its roots deep into us or not (Mark 4:6)? If we haven't, if following Jesus is just part of our uppermost layers but doesn't stretch down to the heart of who we are, if we aren't immersed in what he says and in living relationship with him, then what God's done in us won't outlast the easy season. If it doesn't go deep, it won't endure. And remember: the sun's hardship provides the energy to help the crop grow, if it has roots with withstand the heat. God's work in us will grow precisely because of the hardship, unless we let it wither away instead.

Some people are like packed-down dirt. Some are like rocky soil, shallow and impenetrable to the root if not the seed. And others are like thorn-infested soil (Mark 4:7). The problem isn't that they don't want to make room for Jesus. And the problem isn't that the message can't lay down roots. The problem is that the kingdom message doesn't get them all to itself. There are plenty of plants, plenty of attachments we can cultivate as our priorities. Jesus compares them to thorns and thistles (Mark 4:18). The kingdom gets in, God does his work, but it gets strangled and crowded out by competitors – first and foremost among which are “the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things” (Mark 4:19). There's a peril in hardship, but there's also a peril in plenty: “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food I need, or I shall be full and deny you and say, 'Who is the LORD?'” (Proverbs 30:7-8).

And isn't that the truth? Surely some in the crowd then were followers like this: they'd like to walk with Jesus, they're enthused for his message, but it isn't the hard times that get them, it's the good times. Today, this may be a predominant sector of the church in America. We call ourselves Christian, we're steeled and ready for hardship; the romance of the martyr, the large brushstrokes of heroism, have an appeal to us; but what's really a challenge isn't to die for him but to daily live for him, especially amidst a world of temptations and distractions. We're a distracted culture. When the gospel presents itself as a stark matter of life and death, we can see with clarity. But what about when the temptation is subtle and pleasant? What about when the gospel is one neon sign among so many? When the going gets not-so-tough, we get scatterbrained.

The devil's got many tactics, and a lot of them look like this: “You don't have to choose! You can love Jesus and that TV in the store window. You can follow Jesus and keep your job,” and so on. The thing is, it isn't just about laying an outward claim to loving and following Jesus – the thorny soil does that. But thorny soil is always a fan of Jesus-plus: Jesus-plus-wealth, Jesus-plus-comfort. Instead of letting Jesus be our world, we fit Jesus into our world, letting him rent an apartment in the city of us. It seems possible, because it lets us keep Jesus – or so we think. But the kingdom is about fruitfulness, about growth; and all those cares of the world, all the lure of upper- or middle-class wealth, can choke what God wants to do in us, if we don't scrutinize ourselves, if we don't diligently uproot anything that threatens to compete with God's kingdom. There's no kingdom productivity without kingdom exclusivity – no reaping the rewards of God raising and cultivating us unless we let him and him alone claim all of us. But if we stay soft to receive Jesus' message, if we let his kingdom get deep within us to withstand the rough times, if we rip off other loyalties and have a laser-like focus on his kingdom – then all that's left is to be like the good soil, where the kingdom can grow and grow and grow (Mark 4:8).

Fourth, the kingdom is fruitful in the end. After its small start, after its mysterious growth, after dealing with soil quality, the kingdom wins. This isn't a big crazy gamble, betting all we've got on a creation-wide lottery, constantly fretting whether we've backed the loser in the big scheme of things. The kingdom ends up as a vast tree with room for all, guaranteed (Mark 4:32). The kingdom yields good grain and a harvest that's thirty, sixty, a hundred times the seed sown – more than enough to make up for any that fell on packed-down, rocky, or thorny soil (Mark 4:20). In fact, the value of the soil is determined by one and only one factor: in the end, how fruitful is it? It isn't a question of whether the kingdom will be fruitful – it will. God's claim to be king isn't staked in vain. The question is whether our lives will contribute to the total crop yield, and by how much. The question is what we let the kingdom do with us.

Fifth, the kingdom calls us to listen and understand the message. Jesus says it outright: “Pay attention to what you hear” (Mark 4:24), and if you can reach up to the side of your head and feel an ear there, use it (Mark 4:23)! The point isn't to let the kingdom pass us by. It's also not to seal the kingdom up like a ship in a bottle. Who gets a lamp and turns it on, just to cover it up so you can't see it shine (Mark 4:21)? If you go to the trouble to get a lamp, you want to see it brighten the whole room. It isn't for hiding; it's for unhiding. It isn't to keep a secret; it's to make things known (Mark 4:22). God is staking his claim as king – king of you, king of me, king of Jerusalem and Rome and America, king of all heaven and earth and sea and all that in them is. And he's doing it by making himself known in Jesus. Jesus is the secret of the kingdom. Jesus is God in action: starting small, working mysteriously, spreading the message, bearing praiseworthy fruit through his extended body, the church. Jesus is the kingdom's open mystery: hidden only to those who won't approach him, who won't get close, who won't devote their minds and hearts to exploring his unfathomable depths (Mark 4:11). To all who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the kingdom is open right now, while there's still time, if we'll just come to Jesus and learn: the more we learn, the more we're ready to hear, and that's all that matters (Mark 4:24-25).

And so there's one call above all: be ready, be ripe. As soon as enough grain is ripe, that's the appointed time for harvest, that's when the sickle comes out (Mark 4:29). In most other Jewish teaching from that time, whenever someone told a story about the harvest, the main point was judgment: harvest is the time when everything bad is destroyed, harvest is all about judgment. And Jesus doesn't reject that point. He clearly teaches about judgment day. But Jesus puts the emphasis somewhere new. Jesus stresses that harvest is a time of joy, because harvest is a time to finally enjoy the fruit that all that long history of sowing, sprouting, growing was for.

So many people think that Christians only have faith in Jesus because they want to avoid hell. That's only a start, at best – we trust Jesus, we follow Jesus, because we've fallen in love and want to be fruitful for him. When the day of harvest comes, we want to put a big grin on his face as he sees how our lives have come to full fruition. That's what it's all about: being ready for the harvest, yearning to be a reason for heaven and earth to thirty, sixty, a hundred times more celebrate that Great Harvest Home of God eternally in his kingdom. May we live now the lives of fruitfulness that say we're wholly on-board with God's claim to kingship as Jesus lives it out. “Lord of harvest, grant that we / wholesome grain and pure may be.”

Many Tribes, One Table: Sermon for World Communion Sunday

Have you ever thought about just how blessed we are to have John 17? In revealing this chapter, the Holy Spirit gives us a treasure of unparalleled value. We get to eavesdrop on the prayer life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as he lifts up his chosen band of followers to the Father. What does it sound like when God the Son prays to God the Father? It doesn't have to be a mystery! It's right here. Here we can see prayer echoing through the halls of eternity. And what, above all, does Jesus request, not just for his first apostles but explicitly for all those whose hearts beat in time with the message the apostles bring? For all of us – each and every one of us – Jesus' first and foremost prayer is that we may be one, anchored in the oneness of the Father and the Son (John 17:20-21). Jesus shares the truth, he spreads his glory over us like a holy shroud, so that we can be one just like Father and Son are one (John 17:22), and so the world can know who and what we're all about (John 17:23). It's an incredible chapter.

And there are a lot of groups out there twist what's going on in this chapter, trying to make it seem like Jesus is less than what the church has always honored him as. Many out there deny, in different ways, the biblical doctrine of the Trinity, our age-old witness that the actions of Father, Son, and Spirit actually expose the inner life of God. Our Jehovah's Witness friends, for instance, say that Jesus is only talking about a “oneness of purpose” that we can achieve with God and his first-created Son; they say the Father and Son are just “one in agreement, purpose, and organization”; they say that the Christian view would imply that we should all “become part of the Trinity” (Let God Be True [1952], p. 104; Reasoning from the Scriptures [1985], p. 424). With all due respect, they get Christianity so backwards. And our Mormon friends say basically the same thing. For them as well, the oneness of Father and Son here is just “oneness of purpose” (LeGrand Richards, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, p. 22). And one of their earlier leaders said that Jesus was only talking about a “unity of purpose and operation,” and said that the Christian view implied that believers would have to “lose their individuality and become one person” in order to be one as God is (James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith, pp. 36-37). They get Christianity backwards too.

Neither group has it right on this passage. What's going on in John 17 is so much more exciting than what they're saying! The ancient Jews were totally convinced that there was only one God – and they were exactly right. And they realized, this beautiful truth isn't just something to learn in theology class at the synagogue and then go about daily life out in the field; it's relevant to the way we worship. If there's only one God, they said, then there's only one Law. If there's only one God, there's only one temple. If there's only one God, then the people of God are supposed to live as one community. One old Jewish book says, “We are all one named people, who have received one Law from One” (2 Baruch 48:24).

So as Jesus is teaching, he puts his own twist on it: We need to live as one people, because the Father and Son are one God. Living as one church – that's the only way we can be a living witness of the Trinity; that's the only way that “the world may know” that the Father sent Jesus and loves us just as much as his well-beloved and only-begotten Son (John 17:23). What Jesus is saying means that the Father and Son are one God, and the same love that comes from their oneness should bind us into one people, one church indivisible.

And that's something that was near and dear to Paul's heart also. In Paul's day, people kept wanting to take differences in the church and magnify them into divisions. They wanted one church for Jews and another for Gentiles, for instance. Paul said no: “In Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28). In the new creation Jesus makes, “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11).

In other words, no statistic, no demographic, no label comes in front of Jesus and the oneness he gives to his people. But the church can't be limited or concentrated in just one category. Even in a time when the church was mostly Jewish, or later on mostly Gentile, Paul knew that they were equally the church, equally belonging to Jesus, and they desperately needed to realize that, not just in theory, but to live it out in practice. Jesus has “made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall” (Ephesians 2:14), creating “one great fellowship of love / throughout the whole wide earth.”

Today is World Communion Sunday. And we have to realize that God has not just called Americans. In America, we aren't the be-all and end-all of what it means to be Christian. We don't own the title of Christianity; we don't define it. The American church has had and does have a role to play, but it's not the leading role in the story of the church over its thousands of years. The center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted elsewhere, away from its long-time residence in Western Europe and toward the heart of Africa. America is not the center of the church world, not the pinnacle of Christian life!

Close your eyes for a moment; think of your mental image of the typical Christian. What does he or she look like? Where is he or she from? Well, in reality, the typical Christian today is not American, not middle-class, not white. The typical Christian today would be more likely found in Brazil or Nigeria or China – all places where the church grows by leaps and bounds. As the president of my seminary wrote, now “the heartlands of Christianity are located in Africa, Latin America, and Asia” (Timothy Tennent, Theology in the Context of World Christianity, p. 272), not here where we call home. And I'm thankful that the seminary I went to really, actually lived it: I frequently had more professors from Africa and Asia than from America, and my world religions class was full of Nigerians, Indians, Koreans, Sudanese, and Singaporeans; we had ex-Muslims, ex-Buddhists, even one who was both. I was so blessed to hear their voices – to hear the questions relevant to people ministering among Hindus, to learn evangelism on the streets of a Muslim-majority slum in Kenya. Christianity is not just for Americans.

When the Bible says God gathers his great multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9), he doesn't just mean Pennsylvanians and Texans! Already, we're beginning to see that the church in other nations is sending out more missionaries than we do – even sending missionaries to America. We're the mission field! Even fifteen years ago, Brazil and Mexico together had more Christians than the whole United States. So we have to stop thinking about the church in American terms, have to stop defining it by American agendas, have to stop picturing the church as monolithic, as less diverse than the United Nations. The church is the real United Nations in Jesus Christ, who shed his blood not to write the United States Constitution but to “ransom for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). We here are not the majority in the kingdom of God. We may well be outnumbered by Rwandans, by Iraqis, by Koreans, by Ukrainians, by Egyptians. The church has thrived in many nations throughout the centuries. The unity of the church is global – “elect from every nation, yet one over all the earth.”

The unity of the church is also eucharistic. The way Christians have always shown their unity was by eating together as equals at the same table. To prove they recognized each other as validly Christian, congregations used to send each other small portions of their communion bread as a way of saying, “You are in communion with us, you are in fellowship with us, we recognize you.” Communion was meant to point to the fact that all of us in every nation, from every background, of every status, are equals in the eyes of Christ and to one another. We here in America don't have a monopoly on the gospel; we don't have a monopoly on the Lord's Supper; we don't have prettier chairs at the one table.

That's why, when Paul heard that rich Corinthian Christians were hogging all the food and pushing the poor aside at the Lord's Supper, he righteously blew a gasket and said they “show contempt for the church of God” and “eat and drink judgment against themselves” (1 Corinthians 11:22, 29). That's why Paul was so angry with Peter when he stopped eating with non-Jewish Christians at Antioch (Galatians 2:11-14). Nothing should divide communion between faithful believers in the same one God, the same one Lord, who share the same one Spirit and “partake one holy food.” You know, we have records of communion prayers throughout the centuries. Perhaps the earliest one we have, maybe dating from just decades after the time of the apostles or even earlier, is this prayer over the communion elements:

We thank you, our Father, for the life and knowledge that you made known to us through Jesus your Servant. To you be the glory forever! Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills and was gathered together and became one, so let your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom; for yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever. (Didache 9.4)

That was the communion prayer of the early church. The bread came from all over – you never know which hills, which fields grew that wheat – and yet it all became one loaf. So the church comes from all over, from all the hills and all the tribes in the whole world, but we're meant to be one church without division. Paul wrote, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). At this past year's National Conference, Randy Sizemore reminded us that, while some people think we should care for the church here before we care for the church way over there, that's like saying we should care for our left arm before we care for our right arm: “We are a global church, a global community,” he said. Yes, there are differences: we don't all get the same shade of skin, we don't all come from the same place, we are not a clone army. But these differences are actually a witness to what God has done. Embrace them. Young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Palestinian and Israeli, American and Ugandan and Filipino – all one church, all gifted to equip the whole church to be built up to the full stature of Christ's maturity. We can't afford to “eat and drink without discerning the body” (1 Corinthians 11:29) – not just part of the body, not just the American arm, but we have to discern the whole body spread through all nations and stretched through all centuries since that first Easter morning.

We're about to come to the Lord's table now. But it isn't just the people in this sanctuary. To the left of the altar rail, picture the line extending vastly to the east, with Liberian believers kneeling at the altar rail in their churches, and our brothers and sisters from India doing the very same. To the right, imagine the altar rail stretching to the distant west, across the Pacific Ocean. Imagine our friends, our brothers and sisters in the Japanese church, also kneeling to receive the same bread, the same cup. Picture Jordanian believers, Russians, Vietnamese, Nepalese, Iranians, Indonesians, all with their flags somewhere in the background like ours but fading into the distance. It matters that we're from every nation, but those flags don't define us, they don't divide us, they don't make any of us better Christians than the other or any more loved and cherished by the Father. We bring them to Christ as we cast our crowns before his throne.

Imagine sitting down for a meal with all of our brothers and sisters from every tribe. Imagine the language barrier broken by the Spirit, learning from their wisdom and faithfulness and experience and sharing with them what we have as well. In other words, imagine worldwide communion. Imagine a feast that makes the world say we point to something bigger than all of us. Imagine a feast that looks like the Trinity – Father, Son, and Spirit, one eternal God. Let's live for Jesus' prayer, having Jesus living in us through his body and his blood, to carry the power of God into our lives all around this globe. Let's live so that the world knows that the Father sent the Son and that they, as one God, love us enough to feed us at such great cost (John 3:16; 17:23). Let's all come now from many tribes to the one table, for one bread and one cup.

On the Holy Hill

Last week, as we gathered together, the darkness of our sin just made the light of God's grace in Jesus Christ shine all the brighter. We learned that the gospel isn't a crutch; the gospel is the power of resurrection. Jesus stepped into our bankruptcy, our barrenness, and made a dead desert bloom with life! And that calls for gratitude and service. See, we're “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). All these incredible blessings – we can't even imagine how great they really are. We have no idea just how much we owe. When we really consider God's grace, what should we do? So “should we sin because we aren't under law but under grace? By no means” (Romans 6:15)! Not a snowball's chance down under! Being free from the law doesn't mean lawlessness; it means obedience to love. Being free from the law means gratitude that leaps and soars before the law can even open its mouth to bark an order to hop. “Teach [us], Lord, on earth to show, / by [our] love, how much [we] owe” – but what does that look like?

The Hebrew singers asked the question a different way. They thought about what questions a priest should ask at the gates of the temple, God's house, up on Mount Zion, the holy hill, to symbolize meeting with God on his turf on his terms. “Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place?” (Psalm 24:3). “O LORD, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?” (Psalm 15:1). In the new covenant, though Jesus Christ we've all “come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” filled with “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Hebrews 12:22-23). The psalmists want to know, who gets to live there? Or in other words, what kind of person would God pick for a roommate?

In the three psalms we read, I count eight general requirements, eight things that God is looking for us to do with the grace he's given us. First of all, he calls for purity of hearts, eyes, and hands. From their heart, God's roommates must speak the truth (Psalm 15:2). Even standing on the hill needs “pure hearts” (Psalm 24:4). Jesus himself said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Christ's earthly half-brother James, the first leader of the Jerusalem church, observed that conflicts within the church come from “your cravings that are at war within you,” arising from covetousness for some desired thing – maybe wielding power over others, maybe maintaining the power or respect we already have, and when we don't get these things, we “engage in disputes and conflicts” (James 4:1-2). But we'd have all we really need if we'd just anchor our desires on God instead of ourselves, if we'd just quell those inner cravings: “You ask and don't receive because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures” (James 4:3). The solution is to “purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8). The opposite of being double-minded, being filled with these warring cravings, is a pure heart. A pure heart isn't divided in its commitment; a pure heart isn't chasing after one shiny thing after another. A pure heart is settled on God so sweetly that we don't need to covet, because everything else pales next to the Maker of heaven and earth. And how can we get that purer heart? Because Jesus Christ is “a great priest over the house of God,” and by abandoning our coveted yearnings and cravings at the foot of the cross, he takes our hearts and makes them “sprinkled clean from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:21-22).

And with a pure heart, then it isn't as hard to have pure eyes: “I will not set before my eyes anything that is base” (Psalm 101:3), prays the psalmist, much like Job “made a covenant with [his] eyes” not to look lustfully at someone or something that didn't belong to him (Job 31:1). In our media-saturated world, we're constantly bombarded with visual stimuli; we're awash in temptations, in images of things that are base. The first thing we think of is defiling our eyes with an all-too-lingering glance at images designed to stimulate the desires meant to lead to fulfillment in marriage. And let me tell you, even in seminary, I met plenty of future pastors and church leaders – men and women alike – who all struggled a great deal with living up to the psalmist's pledge. But there are plenty of other base things we can set before our eyes. Christians across the world are astonished at how enthusiastically Americans love to watch images of simulated violence, for example. And I wonder if some of the commercial attitudes we see all around us – relentless greed, a consumerist mindset – well, those are pretty base themselves. Why do we continue to willingly set consumerism – advertisement, advertisement, advertisement – always before our eyes?

Pure heart, pure eyes... and then the psalmist asks us to have “clean hands” (Psalm 24:4). In David's victory song, when he was rescued from Saul's hot pursuit, David said that God had “rewarded me” in accordance with “the cleanness of my hands in his sight” (Psalm 18:20, 24). Along with the double-minded purifying their hearts, James calls on sinners to cleanse their hands (James 4:8), to not dirty them in sinful actions. To what use do we put our hands, our bodies? Are they serving obedience to God, or are they stirring the muck of sin? God isn't looking for a roommate who tracks mud all over the carpet, who leaves grimy fingerprints on the curtains and countertops. God's looking for people with good spiritual hygiene, from the heart all the way to the hands. That's an answer to grace.

Second, the psalmists describe people “who walk blamelessly, and do what is right” (Psalm 15:2), those who are willing to seriously “study the way that is blameless” (Psalm 101:2). More than just having hands and feet that aren't bathed in the sewers, God wants us to be actively engaged in doing good. It isn't enough to just withdraw from the world. God sends us into the world (John 17:18). It isn't enough to talk the talk; “let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action” (1 John 3:18). We have to walk the walk. Clean hands are meant for honest labor. God “loves righteous deeds” (Psalm 11:7). “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works,” James said (James 2:18). So “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and to good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24). We encourage one another.

And what's more, the psalmists speak of people who “do not lift up their souls to what is false” (Psalm 24:4). Three other times, the psalms talk about lifting up our souls, and to whom are we supposed to lift them up? “To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul; O my God, in you I trust” (Psalm 25:1-2). Lifting up our soul to someone or something means to anchor our trust there, look for our safety and protection there. “Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul” (Psalm 143:8). Lifting up our soul to someone or something means to accept practical instruction, to open ourselves to be conformed to him, her, or it. “Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul” (Psalm 86:4). Lifting up our soul to someone or something means looking there for a source of gladness. Seeking safety, seeking wisdom, seeking gladness – that's the story of the human race. Just about everything in history could probably be boiled down to one of those three things. And the sad story is, we'll look just about anywhere for them – we'll lift up our souls to any caller we find on the street – except the relentless God who made our souls in the first place. Constantly we lift up our souls to what is false. But the psalms tell us thrice over to lift up our souls only to the God of Truth. God's looking for people ready to lift up our souls to him, and only him, as a living sacrifice, as a holy offering (Romans 12:1) – seeking safety, wisdom, and joy in God, and not in any of our self-made idols – you know, our flags, our passports, our pensions, our media, our celebrities, our entertainments, our freedoms, our power to choose our own path – our idols.

Third, the psalmists advocate integrity and honesty: “I will walk with integrity of heart within my house” (Psalm 101:2). Integrity of heart means to be all of who you are, all of the time – to not put on one mask in church, a different mask at home, yet another mask at work or at school. Integrity was a defining characteristic of Job: God himself said that, in spite of all Satan's attacks, Job “still persists in his integrity” (Job 2:3), which is what exasperated Job's own wife, who wanted him to die and get it over with (Job 2:9). In spite of it all, Job refused to bend, refused to turn, refused to give lip-service to what he didn't believe: “Far be it from me to say that you are right; until I die, I will not put away my integrity from me” (Job 27:5). So God held Job up as an example because Job was the same person in public and in private, the same person in prosperity and under pressure. Job had a transparent chest: you could see his heart as plainly as if he wore it on the outside. He gave everyone a clear look at the view of him that God saw, because Job lived with honesty and integrity, maintaining his balance and his posture. “Better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be crooked in one's ways even though rich” (Proverbs 28:6). That's what Job was committed to; that's what these psalmists say that God is looking for.

There's a link between integrity and honesty there. Living in God's presence means having nothing to do with lying or with slander. After all, what does Revelation say? “As for … all liars, their place will be in the lake that...” – well, it's not where you'd want to go for a swim (Revelation 21:8). A lifestyle of lying isn't the narrow path that leads to the narrow gate into the kingdom. What's left are people who “do not slander with their tongue” (Psalm 15:3), people who “do not swear deceitfully” (Psalm 24:4) – “one who secretly slanders a neighbor, I will destroy,” David prayed, and “no one who practices deceit shall remain in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue in my presence” (Psalm 101:5-7). The opposite of that is someone who “speaks truth from the heart” (Psalm 15:2), someone who really cares about what's true and not just what's practical or useful or convenient or confirms what we'd already like to believe. This isn't a person who parrots whatever hoaxes come along through the tubes, but someone who does due diligence before shooting his mouth off, someone who thinks carefully before she spreads the latest gossip. God's looking to live with people who don't hem and haw when challenges come to our faith.

Fourth, the psalmists identify God's roommates as people who are men (and women) of their word – people whose commitments are more important to them than their own fleeting happiness. This kind of person will “stand by their oath even to their hurt” (Psalm 15:4). In other words, even when circumstances change, even when the pressure is on, they'll do what they said they would do. That's not to say they'll keep a promise it would be evil to keep, but they'll keep a promise it will cost them to keep. But compare that to today's world. What do you think when you hear the word “promise” preceded by the word “campaign”? “Campaign promise” – it's a joke; it's a stock description of empty words that mean nothing. Or just consider that, in twenty-first-century America, the holiest oaths you make with the words “I do” can be gotten out of more easily than just about any other contract. God doesn't tell us that keeping our promises will be easy. He warns us that it could very well hurt, could very well cost us. That's why, before we make them, we should “count the cost” (Luke 14:28). But God is looking for people who keep their promises even when it hurts them.

Fifth, the psalmists describe God's roommates on the holy hill as people who are kind and neighborly. They “do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors” (Psalm 15:3). Hurting people isn't on their agenda. When people trust them, they honor that trust. When the hotshot lawyer asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” – Where do I draw the line, when can I start reproaching instead of loving – Jesus tells the story of a Samaritan who acted neighborly by risking his life, not to mention his bank account, to save someone who probably would've spat on the ground at his feet had he been conscious and in a place to do so (Luke 10:25-37). The Samaritan was neighborly even at cost, so he must be a neighbor: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

God tells us not to “hate in your heart anyone of your kin” – and all humans are kin – but God also tells to “reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself” (Leviticus 19:17). He says that in the very same breath as, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Reprove a neighbor, but don't reproach a neighbor. What's the difference? I had to really dig into that to figure out what exactly is going on here. The word for 'reprove' means to correct and convince our neighbors of the right way to go – not the way we like the most, not the way we think is socially acceptable, not a more efficient way, but the way God approves as opposed to actions God doesn't. That's 'reproving' our neighbor. But the word for 'reproach' means to scorn, disdain, or hold up to shame. Right here, God's word cuts through all our constant wrestling over what it means to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). It must be possible to correct a neighbor, to persuade a neighbor, without disdaining a neighbor. And yet in modern America, the church has a popular reputation for being quickest to disdain its neighbors. Maybe they're right. Maybe we, just like everyone else, has forgotten that it's possible to reprove without reproaching. In order to avoid reproaching, we don't have to stop reproving. But it isn't just possible; it's what God insists on.

Sixth, the psalmists say that God's roommate needs to be someone generous. God's looking for people who “do not lend money at interest and do not take a bribe against the innocent” (Psalm 15:5). Paul tells us that, with however much we have, we should be “rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for [ourselves] the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that [we] may take hold of the life that is really life” (1 Timothy 6:18-19). Proverbs says that “those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor” (Proverbs 22:9). And the psalmists stress that “the righteous are generous and keep on giving” (Psalm 37:21) and praise “those who deal generously and lend, who conduct their affairs with justice” (Psalm 112:5). And, of course, we've talked before about John the Baptist's words: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise” (Luke 3:11). Relative to how much we have, how much God has given us, we have to admit we're not nearly as generous as we could be. We certainly aren't generous compared to how much we owe. But if we open our hearts to what God has done, the Spirit will move us to be cheerful givers as wisdom dictates.

Seventh, the psalmists require God's roommate to be humble: “A haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not tolerate” (Psalm 101:5). Proverbs tells us that “haughty eyes and a proud heart – the lamp of the wicked – are sin” (Proverbs 21:4). Haughty eyes – eyes looking scornfully down on others – and an arrogant or proud heart are defining characteristics throughout the words of the prophets of empires like Assyria and Babylon, mighty nations like Moab and Tyre. For heaven's sake, don't be like Babylon! (That goes for myself as much as anyone else.) Instead, we should “seek humility” (Zephaniah 2:3), so that we can live “with all humility and gentleness” (Ephesians 4:2). “Humility goes before honor” (Proverbs 15:33; 18:12). “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12). “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3) – not in terms of having low self-esteem, but in terms of esteeming others as God esteems them; not in terms of thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. God isn't looking to live with people who are all about themselves, who make themselves the measure of all things.

And eighth, the psalmists insist that they're describing a person who lives in solidarity with God's loyal people. They “honor those who fear the LORD” (Psalm 15:4). “I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. Perverseness of heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil. … I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, so that they may live with me; whoever walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me” (Psalm 101:3-6). This kind of person shows respect and honor to those who are following God; they're pleased to see anyone live well and faithfully.

When I read these psalms, I couldn't help but think about some of the civil servants and private citizens in this nation who resolved to “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) in the face of new and sometimes disturbing legal situations that would require them to do what they cannot in good conscience do as servants of God. And I thought also of all the Christians I know, friends of mine, who have been every bit as nasty and scornful toward them as any Roman with a lion on a leash. We can disagree with how a believer might choose to take a stand; we can say we'd do things differently in the circumstances; but God calls us to honor those who sincerely follow him in loving him and loving our neighbor, not to throw them under the bus.

At the same time, though, when I read these psalms, I couldn't help but think about Christians around the world, who face forms of persecution that far outstrip the comparatively mild maltreatment of practicing believers here in this country. I couldn't help but think of the many Christians fleeing their homelands as refugees, languishing in camps or living in perpetual fear of those who wield the bloody sword to extort and terrorize – our brothers and sisters who know exactly what Jesus meant when he said that “the hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so, they are offering worship to God” (John 16:2). And I couldn't help but think of all the American Christians who dismiss our suffering brothers and sisters, confessors and the kin of martyrs, as somehow being not “our own,” as somehow a lesser priority than the problems we already have within our national borders. That's not the attitude the psalmists ask us about. “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith” (Galatians 6:10).

Purity, devotion, integrity, honesty, fidelity, kindness, neighborliness, generosity, humility, and solidarity with the poor and with God's people – it's a tall order! In fact, it's a Christ-sized order, isn't it? Is that what we have to do in order to earn a room on God's holy hill? Well, who could do that? Thankfully, no, that's not what it's about. No, it isn't about earning anything. 'Earning', by and large, is a word foreign to the gospel, by and large. It's about answering grace. It's about looking at what God has done for us and in us, and opening ourselves more and more to his life-changing power. It's about letting him melt us down and mold us until we reflect Jesus more and more.

These are the good works we were created in Christ Jesus to do, the ones that “God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). We are not saved by them. We are not saved by our purity; we are not saved by our honesty; we are not saved by our kindness or by generosity or by solidarity with the poor – we are not saved by them. We were saved for them. Let's not spend our days wasting away the grace God has given us, pining for a shortcut to the pearly gates. When God invited us all to his tent, invited us to celebrate redemption with him forever, he had a dress code in mind; Jesus himself told a parable of a guest evicted from the party for not being diligent in getting ready for the occasion (Matthew 22:11-13). But Jesus also will dress us in his righteousness; and though the clothes are large, if we let him, he will grow us into his full stature. Though we struggle with our imperfections and with the residue of sin, let's open ourselves to what grace wants to do in us. It's the least we can do, considering how much we owe. “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:57). Amen.