Tag: Christ

Sermon Extra: The Scoreboard Never Reads “Enough”

This past weekend at Zion, we kicked off a new series called “Keeping Score.”

Scorekeeping is one of those ingrained, nearly involuntary habits of modern life. We calculate the dollars in our bank accounts, the hours we spend at work, and even the steps we take using our Apple watches. Some of the math is helpful. It can help us discern where we are and decide where we want go next.

But numbers make cruel masters.

When we demand that these scores not only inform us, but define us—to tell us whether we are winning, worthy, ahead, or enough—we become slaves to the scores we keep.

Keep score in your marriage—what she said, what he forgot, how many times you swallowed your pride and apologized first—and you aren’t merely keeping a record. You’re tallying reasons for resentment. Keep score of other people’s successes—their promotions, vacations, children, homes, or happiness—and you can turn their joy into kindling for your envy.

So, what if we stopped? What if we cleared the scoreboards that keep us trapped in resentment, envy, guilt, and exhaustion? What if we kept score no more?

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On Pet Rocks

Credit: Al Freni / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images

During the Christmas season of 1975, the gift to get was a pet rock. Marketed as “genuine” and “pedigreed,” and sold at $4 a rock, this fad made its originator, Gary Dahl, a millionaire. The fad didn’t last, though, because even though pet rocks are very low maintenance, they don’t do what other real pets do. They won’t purr when you pet them like a cat. They won’t follow you around the house like a dog.

But what if one did?

The apostle Paul summarizes Israel’s journeys through the wilderness when writing to the Corinthians:

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:1-3)

Wait, a rock followed Israel through the wilderness?

Paul is alluding to two stories that serve as bookends for Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness. In Exodus 17, at the beginning of the Israelites’ journey, Moses strikes a rock at Horeb and water pours out of it for the people to drink. Then, in Numbers 20, Moses also strikes a rock, though God had commanded Moses to speak to the rock this time, and water again pours out.

Paul picks up on these two stories and surmises that there must have been one water-filled rock following Israel around through the wilderness. But the real key comes in his identification of that rock: “the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:3). Israel’s rock was much more than just a pet. It was a person – the same person who said:

Let anyone who is thirsty come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. (John 7:37-38)

Jesus, Paul declares, followed Israel through the wilderness – providing for them, caring for them, and ultimately, being gracious to them.

When we experience our own wilderness moments – when our souls feel dry and our lives feel difficult – we can rest assured that we have a Rock who follows us into even the driest and most treacherous moments of our lives to water our parched souls and comfort us by His presence.

Our Rock is Christ.

Cleansing and Telling

Credit: Christ Healing the Leper (1534) / Wikimedia

As Matthew 8 opens, a leper comes to Jesus, desperate for healing from his chronic, and ultimately terminal, ailment:

When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed Him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before Jesus and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” He said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” (Matthew 8:1-4)

Jesus’ words to this man upon his healing are puzzling: “See to it that you don’t tell anyone” (Matthew 8:4). What? Why? The story opens with “large crowds” (Matthew 8:1) following Jesus. It’s not as if this healing was done in secret, so it’s not as if this man could have kept this healing a secret. Why would this leper not tell anyone about a healing that everyone had just seen?

The key comes not in who Jesus tells this man not to tell, but in who Jesus tells this man to tell: “Go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them” (Matthew 8:4). The priests were the ones responsible, according to Leviticus 14, for ceremonially cleansing someone who had been cured of a skin disease. The process involved an examination, the sprinkling of blood, a guilt offering, and a sin offering. Jesus instructs the leper to go to the priest and go through the rigmarole of the cleansing ritual, but not so that he may be cleansed. For he already has been. Jesus has already ordered the leper’s skin to “be clean” (Matthew 8:3)! Instead, the leper is to do this “as a testimony to them” (Matthew 8:4) – a testimony that the One who can fully cleanse the unclean has come. Sadly, we know that the priests – along with many other Jewish religious leaders – did not receive this man’s testimony, but instead were offended by Jesus and “plotted how they might kill Jesus” (Matthew 12:14).

Who Jesus tells this leper to tell and not tell can be instructive for us, for we can all be tempted to talk about our faith in Jesus only with the crowds – with people who are predisposed to be impressed with our message. But sometimes, Jesus invites us instead to turn our attention to the skeptical and even the hostile and share our faith with them “as a testimony to them” (Matthew 8:4). This is difficult and frightening. But it is also very needed. For even the skeptical and hostile need cleansing – cleansing from guilt, shame, and sin. Who is Jesus inviting you to share your faith with today? You can’t coerce someone else’s faith. But you can share your own.

Remember, Jesus did not just come for the people who were friendly to Him. He came for everyone – even His enemies. May we share the message of that One with everyone.

Freedom and Limits

Credit: Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull (1819)

Happy 246th birthday, America.

On this date in 1776, these United States were formed when the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. At the heart of the Declaration was a yearning to be free:

That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

Freedom is the bedrock of the American experiment. But freedom is also funny. Freedom is a precious gift – one that I believe ought to be granted to all people everywhere – and yet, freedom also works best when it is given limits. If you don’t believe me, ask Adam and Eve.

God gave history’s first couple tremendous freedom:

“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden.” (Genesis 2:16)

But on their freedom, He also placed a limit:

“But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:17)

When Adam and Eve transgressed this limit, rather than gaining freedom, they lost freedom, for they became slaves to sin and cursed by death.

In order to be freed from this slavery and curse, a perfectly free God placed limits on Himself as He became incarnate in Christ. As the French Catholic philosopher Emmanuel Falque explains in The Metamorphosis of Finitude:

What makes Christianity is not solely the extraordinary in Christ’s revelation of His glory … It is also and indeed primarily the sharing by the Word incarnate of our most ordinary human condition independent of sin (that is, human finitude and the humanization of the divine).

The phrase “human finitude” is one of the most ponderous mysteries of our faith. In Christ, the infinite became finite. The perfectly free limited Himself for you and for me. And yet, in the apostle Paul’s telling, this finitude and limitedness becomes the basis for true freedom – our freedom:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. (Galatians 5:1)

As we rightfully celebrate our freedoms today, let us remember that our national freedom was won by men and women who willingly gave up their freedoms as they served and sacrificed for this nation. There would be no land of the free if we were not also the home of the brave. And, as we live out of our freedom in Christ, let us also remember that our eternal freedom was won by a man who willingly gave up His freedom as He served us and sacrificed His life for us on a cross.

The Sword That Brought Life

Credit: Fra Angelico, c. 1440

Jesus’ use – or non-use, as the case may be – of swords is puzzling. Shortly before His arrest, Jesus confers with His disciples and instructs them to carry a sword:

“If you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in Me. Yes, what is written about Me is reaching its fulfillment.”The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.” “That’s enough!” He replied. (Luke 22:36-38)

The disciples are ready to go with swords just in case Jesus is attacked by His enemies. And just verses later, Jesus does face an unjust arrest at the hands of His adversaries, and one of His disciples brandishes his sword to defend his master. But Jesus does not seem all that pleased that this disciple is wielding the very weapon He just asked him to bring:

When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And He touched the man’s ear and healed him. (Luke 22:49-51)

What is going on? Why did Jesus ask His disciples to bring weapons if He didn’t intend His disciples to use them?

Jesus’ given reason for asking His disciples to bring swords is interesting. He quotes Isaiah 53:12:

It is written: “And He was numbered with the transgressors.” (Luke 22:37)

Then, Jesus explains that this ancient prophecy applies to Him:

I tell you that this must be fulfilled in Me. Yes, what is written about Me is reaching its fulfillment. (Luke 22:37)

Jesus’ disciples bringing swords to His arrest would have been of no small interest to the Roman government. They would have suspected Jesus of attempting to lead an insurrection, the penalty for which was death. He would have been considered to be a transgressor by the Roman government, just like Isaiah said He would be.

When Jesus asks His disciples to carry a sword, then, He, in one way, almost seems to be planting a weapon that will number Him among transgressors and lead Him to a cross. Thus, Jesus carries a weapon not so He can destroy His enemies, but so that He can die for them – and for the world. For even though Jesus will not pick up a sword, He will be pierced by one:

One of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. (John 19:34)

A sword did its job – but not in the way anyone expected. Swords usually bring about death. The sword that pierced Jesus ultimately brought forth life. And that’s good news – for because Jesus got the sword, we receive salvation.