Transfiguration: Glory Through the Cross (AUDIO)

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[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Transfiguration: Glory Through the Cross

[This message was shared during worship earlier today with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 9:28-36
There’s an old Paul Simon song called Learn How to Fall. The bridge contains these lyrics: 

Oh, and it's the same old storyEver since the world beganEverybody's got the runs for gloryNobody stop to scrutinize the planNobody stop to scrutinize the plan

Artists, I believe, receive inspiration from the Holy Spirit even when they don’t know it. And I believe that in these words and in the entire song from which they come, Paul Simon, who isn’t a Christian, is saying more than even he realizes.

The truth to which Simon points is this: All we human beings who, though made in God’s image, have inherited the condition of sin from our ancient grandparents, Adam and Eve, want “glory.” We want, in our sinful hearts, “to be like God” (Genesis 3:5). (This is a distortion of the true glory God has in mind for us as the only ones God created in His image [Genesis 1:26].)

But, again like Adam and Eve who grabbed hold of the fruit that God told them would bring them death, things like glory or transformation or righteousness or joy or life or any truly good thing cannot be grasped by human effort. All of these things--glory, transformation, righteousness, joy, life, or any “good and perfect gift”--come to us as gifts from God. They are to be received, not achieved. 

Whatever this world has to offer will die. Whatever God has to offer is eternal. 

God operates by a different plan from the ones offered by the world, the devil or our sinful selves. Today’s gospel lesson, Luke 9:28-36, containing Luke’s account of Jesus’ transfiguration, will allow us, again in Simon’s phrasing, to “stop and scrutinize the plan,” God’s plan.

Shortly before the incident recounted in the lesson, the apostle Peter confessed his faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, God’s anointed King, the One come to make the fallen world right. Peter said that Jesus was, “The Christ of God” (Luke 9:20). 

This was the right answer, but Jesus might have had good reason to doubt whether Peter understood exactly what that meant. 

The Old Testament repeatedly promised the Christ. But popular culture in first-century Judea envisioned the Christ as a triumphant warrior king who would enter Jerusalem, throw out the Romans, the latest in a long string of foreign overlords to have conquered God’s people, and let the Jews conquer and be prosperous and comfortable. This popular version of the Christ bears little resemblance to the real one prophesied in the Old Testament by the prophet Isaiah.

This version of the Christ or Messiah would demand no transformation, no surrender, and no faith of His followers. They could be just as selfish and heedless of the Word and the will of God as they’d always been. All that mattered was that their names were on the church membership rolls of First Church of Self-Righteousness and Entitlement.

All of this may be why Jesus said what He said after Peter had confessed Jesus as the Christ: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Luke 9:22) And then: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) 

Life with God in His eternal kingdom is a free gift to all who repent and trust in Christ. But if we are to receive the gift God wants to give to us, we must stop grasping for the prizes offered by this dying world.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus shows us the path to glory that we all seek, even if that’s not the word we might use for it. So, please take a look at our lesson, starting at verse 28: “About eight days after Jesus said this [that is, eight days after the words of Jesus we just talked about], he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.”

This is a remarkable moment. On top of a mountain, the kind of place where God had once interacted with Old Testament figures like Moses, the bringer of God’s law, and Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet, Jesus prays. 

When Moses encountered God on a mountaintop, you’ll recall, his face reflected the glory of God into whose presence he had come. 

But it’s different for Jesus here. Jesus once said of Himself: “I am the light of the world.Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12).” 

You see, on the mount of Transfiguration, Jesus isn’t reflecting the glory of God. Jesus also tells us, “The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me” (John 12:45) and “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). 

Jesus Himself is the source of the light. 

He glows in the radiance of Who He is: God the Son. 

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory,” the preacher in Hebrews says, “and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word... (John 1:3).” 

This is what Jesus wanted His three closest and most intimate disciples to understand, that though the way to His kingdom went through a cross, through the surrender of self and the crucifixion of our old sinful natures, as God, the Author of life, Jesus could offer new and everlasting life to those who would faithfully follow Him no matter what. 

When we’re going through tough stuff in our lives, this can be our comfort and hope. Christ is God and He is the One Who can lead us to life beyond the pain and challenge and death.

Verse 30: “Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.” 

Neither Moses nor Elijah had walked on the earth for centuries. But here they are, in Jesus’ reflected glory, talking with Jesus about his departure. 

In the Greek in which Luke wrote about this incident, the word translated as departure is exodos, exodus. The Exodus is the event in Old Testament history in which God delivered His people from slavery in Egypt, took them through the wilderness, and into the promised land. 

Jesus was about to accomplish a new exodus, this one not just for the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, but for all who trusted, believed (and believe now) in Him. Jesus was going to endure the wilderness of suffering and death, then rise from the dead, so that He could meet us in our wildernesses and lead us into the presence of God, today in this imperfect wilderness and beyond the gates of death in the eternal promised land.

Verse 32: “Peter and his companions were very sleepy [just like they would later be in the garden of Gethsemane on the night of Jesus' betrayal and arrest], but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ (He did not know what he was saying.)”

Peter makes at least two mistakes here. 

First, despite the evidence before him--Jesus allowing the three disciples to see Him in the full glory of His deity, Peter equates Moses and Elijah with Jesus. He wants to erect three shelters or tabernacles to honor Jesus and the two Old Testament figures, as though each were on equal footing. 

Second, like the grasping world, Peter wants to capture God’s holiness, rather than be captured by it. Peter has yet to learn that human beings cannot be saved from sin and death by the things they do, or strive for, or control, but solely by surrendering faith in Jesus the Christ. 

Peter didn’t know what he was saying, but God still loved him and Jesus would not give up on him, just as God loves you and me and, as long as we have breath, Jesus will not give up on enveloping us and the rest of the human race in His kingdom of grace and love.

Verse 34: “While [Peter] was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A voice came from the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.’”

This is the same voice, that of God the Father, that told Jesus at His baptism: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased (Luke 3:22.)” At that time, the Father spoke to reassure the Son as He began His ministry. Now, at the Transfiguration, the Father speaks to encourage these three key leaders of Christ’s Church in the bleak days between Jesus’ death and resurrection, and later, in the remaining days of their lives. Even though Jesus would die, they would know that He was and is the Christ, and that they hadn’t been mistaken in following Him. 

Today, in the midst of both happiness and setbacks, we can live in that assurance, infinitely strengthened by the fact that after Jesus had taken the way of the cross, He rose from the dead, and that “the one who believes in [Jesus] will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in [Jesus] will never die (John 11:25-26).”

Verse 36: “When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.” 

There was no Moses, no Elijah. Religion may be about building shelters--or tabernacles--to dead saints. But faith in Jesus is about following and listening to a living Savior, about turning from death and sin and self-will, turning instead to Christ, our King. 

That Paul Simon song I mentioned earlier also has these lines: 

You got to learn how to fall Before you learn to fly

We’re all anxious to fly, high above the death and anxiety, the sin and the striving of this world. We want the resurrected life, the life of victory. 

But before we can fly, we must fall. 

We must lay aside all our pretenses of a righteousness born of our own goodness and see Jesus for Who He is: the Savior Who alone, amid all the competing voices, is the One to Whom we need to listen. 

Not money or security. 

Not tradition or change for the sake of change. 

Not fashion or habit. 

Not Buddha or Allah. 

Not sex or drugs. (Or rock and roll.) 

But Jesus. 

Only Jesus. 

In another place, Jesus calls Himself the good shepherd and His followers His sheep, and then says, the good shepherd’s “sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger (John 10:4-5).” 

Amid the din of voices screaming at us on TV and radio and social media, commercials, and political ads, may we keep listening for Jesus, through the wilderness and the cross, to the promised land and God’s glorious kingdom. 

May we always return to the One Who loves us more than we can either ask or imagine. 

May we always listen to Jesus. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church.]

Will I be a servant of God or a blob of Silly Putty?

Once again, I present how God recently spoke to me through His Word during Quiet Time today. The chapter of the Bible on which I focused was John 5.

Look: “I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:43-44) 

Jesus is the speaker. Earlier in the chapter, He reminds people that John the Baptist had testified as to His identity as Messiah. Later, He would assert that Moses had pointed to Him. Also, in the chapter, He speaks of Himself as the Son of God the Father, making Himself equal to God. But Jesus knows that these witnesses won't convince the crowd about Who He is. They’ve already made up their minds about Him. ("Don't confuse us with the facts!") 

Here, Jesus cuts to the reason for the crowds’ rejection of Him as God and Messiah: He comes to them in the name of the Father. 

If, Jesus says, someone comes to them in their own name--in other words, in their own interests, brazenly seeking glory and adulation for themselves, the crowd is all ears, eyes, and open pocketbooks. People love (at least for a season) self-promoters, be they rock stars, athletes, politicians, or would-be saviors.

I suspect that there are several reasons we human beings are prone to, paraphrasing Paul Simon, throw another hero up the pop chart. 

One is that we all want to be like God. That was the seminal temptation that sucked Adam and Eve into sin. It's our seminal temptation. When we see a shiny new “star” of one kind or another, thumbing their noses at niceties and being boorishly self-absorbed, we’re prone to applause. In them, we see someone “getting away with” what we secretly wish we could get away with. (Of course, the shininess wears out and soon we tire of the spoiled and entitled "hero" and we go searching for the next shiny new self-glorifying star.)

The other reason is that a self-glorifying would-be god is more tangible and more susceptible to our control than self-emptying God. God’s greatest feat was dying on a cross, then being raised from the dead, not for Himself, but for undeserving people. We can become heirs to His saving action when we acknowledge how undeserving we are, turn from sin (all of it rooted in our stubborn desire to be like God), and trust not in themselves--or their “goodness,” or their accomplishments, or their star power--but in the God revealed in Christ alone.

The person who comes to us in their own name can be controlled by us. The success of their self-glorifying schtick is entirely dependent on our going along with it. The abusive husband, whether the abuse is physical, emotional, sexual, or otherwise, inflating himself at the expense of a wife, will be deflated if the wife leaves. The arrogant politician can get away with their arrogance only so long as his/her constituents put up with it. People can’t set themselves up as godlets without our permission.

Jesus came into the world to honor God and to save us. Despite the power that He manifested, because He didn’t act selfishly, the world saw Him as weak, contemptible, worthy of scorn, worthy of death. His selflessness actually threatened those who had power or wanted power. (That would include the entire human race.)

The crowd--me, Jesus says, is willing to live off of the glory that others give to us (to me). Jesus lived (and died and rose) to glorify His Father. Big difference in orientation there. 

Jesus, of course, achieved more than anyone else in human history. He opened the way of salvation to all who believe in Him. Through Him, eternal life invades this dead world through all who trust in Him. (God's life enters my dead frame through Jesus!) None of the world’s self-glorifying godlets can offer that. Their achievements and the adulation of adoring worshipers are finite. What Jesus achieved is eternal.

Listen: God, I wonder what my life would look like if I quit concerning myself with what I want and stopped bothering with others’ opinions of me? Like others, I pretend that neither of these things concern me. But you that that’s a lie.

You could have as easily had me in mind when you said of ancient Israel in Isaiah 29:13: “...this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips (this Mark says all the right things to me and about Me), while their hearts are far from me (his heart is far from me), and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men…” And while you’re talking about religious commandments imposed on people that have little or nothing to do with You, I don’t think it’s eisegesis to say that “commandments taught by men” include our codes for getting ahead by getting along, being the uber-confident self-worshiper who commands allegiance, even when it's all dressed up as being religious and decent. 

Subconsciously, I suspect that I make a little bargain with the world (I may even tell myself that I make it with you): I will be what people want me to be so that they’ll like me, accept me, not find me objectionable, even, in a way, worship me. (Like Adam and Eve, I'd sort of like to "be like God," not in the self-serving sense. But you know, in the Creator of the universe, everyone bow down to me sense. It's embarrassing to see in writing. Yet, I know that at some level it's true. I wonder if I'm rare among the together, loving, devoted Christians I know?) 

It must be true that if you’re all about you and want everybody else to be all about you, becoming a pliant piece of Silly Putty is the way to go. "I'll be whatever other people want me to be if they'll love me." This is not what Jesus meant by losing ourselves to find ourselves. He meant to no longer be concerned about oneself, only about the glory of God and the good of our neighbor. It's when we commit ourselves to that "shalom lifestyle" that we find our true selves, loosed from self-consciousness or self-worship. (One of the first things to happen to humans after falling into sin was the paralysis of self-consciousness. They hid themselves from God because they were naked. "Who told you that you were naked," God asks. 

As Silly Putty godlets, receiving worship because we're looking our for ourselves, we become like the apocryphal French general Robert Kennedy mentioned in the foreword to the memorial edition of his brother’s book, Profiles in Courage. “There go my people,” the general said. “I must follow them so that I may lead them.” 

You can't lead when you seek others' adulation. You can't serve either. That's why true leadership and true servanthood are the same thing. 

Make me more than Silly Putty, Lord. Instead of looking out for me or for the most comfortable and least troubling pathway through life, help me to seek to glorify You. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit so that I can lift You--not me--before the world.

Respond: Lord, today, show me how I can glorify You only. Help me to refrain from those behaviors in which I look out for me. In Jesus’ name.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Something So Right by Paul Simon

Something So Right (Live) by Paul Simon

Sometimes even our most elaborately connstructed walls of protection are susceptible to an unsuspected attack of love.

Did Brian Wilson "hear" 'Good Vibrations' from his musical memories before he played it?

Musicians are often asked where their original music comes from. What's their inspiration? How does a song start?

I've heard Paul Simon say that he starts playing and he simply decides to go one way instead of another.

Billy Joel claims that there's no muse. He just plays until he hears something he likes.

Other musicians seem more instinctive about it. I've heard Paul McCartney say that while there are a few little tricks he's learned over the years, mostly he doesn't understand how a song comes to be and he's content to leave it that way. In a Rolling Stone interview I read with him in the early seventies, he called himself "a primitive." And to maintain that status, he has steadfastly refused to learn to read music.

Many musicians claim to "hear" the songs they write in their heads before they've played or written down a note. Brian Wilson, the creative force and frequent lead singer of the Beach Boys, falls into this category.

In an article for The Guardian from Britain, where Wilson is revered in ways that seem to surpass the respect in which he's held in America, Victoria Williamson, a psychologist who specializes in a frield called "musical memory," who is a fellow for music at the University of Sheffield, seeks to understand and analyze what Wilson "heard" when he composed songs like God Only Knows or Good Vibrations. While loving the music, Williamson suggests that there may be a natural, rather than supernatural, explanation for it: musical memory.

According to Williamson:

...Brian Wilson had music going through his head almost continuously. Of course, many of us are able to activate a musical memory when required – for instance, if I asked you whether the third note in Happy Birthday was higher or lower than the fourth, you would probably be able to summon up the tune – but to have it playing constantly like that is rare: one survey we did suggests that less than 5% of people experience it.

What music was going through Brian’s mind? We don’t know. It may have been re-runs of old 1940s and 50s songs, or it may have been fragments of all sorts of different tunes. But it’s possible to theorise that, if someone experiences this constant musical background, they might become more adept at playing around with those sounds – hearing links between them and thinking about how they fit together.

Some have better musical memories than others, Williams suggests. They have more raw material to play around with, recast, re-imagine, set off into different tunes and combinations. For the 5% who have music playing in their heads constantly, the possibilities appear to be infinite, even though everyone who composes is ultimately dealing with just seven notes. (That's more confining writing haiku poetry, which gives you three lines in a pattern of five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables.)

Williamson, who points to research being done on the subject, says that one scene in a recent movie about the Beach Boys, Love & Mercy, shows just talents like Wilson use their musical memory to invent something new:

At one point one of his musicians says “Hey Brian, I think you might have screwed up here. You’ve got Lyle playing in D and the rest of us are in A major.” “Yeah that’s right,” he replies. “How does that work? Two bass lines and two different keys?” she asks, to which Brian replies: “It works in my head”. That’s because he can already hear it. It’s the same way that Beethoven could lose his hearing but still be able to compose his ninth symphony. And the same way a conductor such as Arturo Toscanini would be able to scan two hours of music in a minute and be able to reassure a bassoonist in his orchestra that the broken key on their instrument wouldn’t matter as that particular note didn’t appear in the performance. 

To which the only appropriate response, I suppose, is wow. Read the whole thing.

Where Real Pain and Real Pleasure Lead Us

"A heart that is broken is a heart that is open" (U2, Cedarwoode Road)

"One day you're waiting for the sky to fall,
"The next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all" (Bruce Cockburn, Lovers in a Dangerous Time)

Through lots of my years, I've sought to live a placid life. I don't suppose that's so different from most people. We all want, in the words of another song, this one Paul McCartney's Too Much Rain, "a happy and peaceful life."

But I realize that much of the placid life I sought was actually a lifeless life.

I tried to avoid confrontation, often when it would have been best to take it on, because I didn't want upleasantness.

I held most people at arm's length, despite a surface friendliness, because, after all, I could be moving on and goodbyes to those you really care about hurt. Besides, some people turn on you and cause you pain.

I would even avoid things of great beauty for the grief I projected they would someday bring me when they were no longer there. ("You're gonna make me lonesome when you go," Dylan sang in his 1974 song.)

What I have come to realize--what I am still coming to realize--is that while a person may achieve a stale, lifeless placidity by staying away from the pains and pleasures of human existence, there is less of life, less of love, and less of God in a life of avoidance.

In his book, The Screwtape Letters, a work of fiction that purports to be the correspondence of a senior tempter with a junior tempter, C.S. Lewis has his evil protagonist advise his charge to keep his patient--the human being the junior tempter is trying to dislodge from relationship with God--from experiencing any real pain or real pleasure.

Real pleasure only comes from God.

It's God Who created the gift of sex, for example. It can bring authentic pleasure to men and women committed to one another and respectful of one another: physical pleasure, emotional pleasure, a sense of being loved and accepted no matter what the rest of the world may think or say.

It's God Who created the gifts of food and taste. It's a wonderful pleasure to bite into an apple and taste its sweet tang, feel the crunch of of the fruit in your teeth. And it's good for us.

But pleasures like these can be marred by misuse or overuse or abuse.

Sex can be seen as an end in itself that doesn't bring the whole package of pleasure God intended it to bring.

Food can be candied and processed and perverted and overeaten, an object that results not in pleasure but dullness, addiction, and obesity.

Lewis' devil concedes that only God can create real pleasure and that hell has found no way to replicate it in its pure form.

Real pain, on the other hand, comes from really living in the depths of life.

There are some who manufacture faux pain in order to call attention to themselves or to invest their lives with drama that makes them feel as though they're living. ("Suffering was the only thing that made me feel I was alive," Carly Simon sang in Haven't Got Time for the Pain.)

We live surrounded by such people: drama queens and drama kings. They parcel out gossip to make themselves seem important. They're people who are, if not in the center of some drama, real or imagined, in the know about it.

They crow about the offenses, real and imagined, perpetrated against them on Facebook, at the water cooler, in the packed dockets of courts, and in church fellowship halls.

But contact with real pain, a real consequence of this world's enslavement to sin, death, and darkness, is very different than contact with fake pain: The news that we've had a major heart attack, when we receive a diagnosis of cancer, when a loved one dies, when a friend deserts us, being physically abused, being persecuted. Those are occasions of real pain.

Real pleasure and real pain can have the same effect on us though, says Lewis. They can bring us back to reality, out of our dream worlds, away from our selfish attempts to insulate ourselves from reality, to deny our mortality, our finitude, and our need for the God Who made us and Who came to our world to save us from sin, death, and darkness and to give us the life with Him for which we were made.

In Psalm 8, King David sings: "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens." Pleasure in looking at the skies, which are only part of God's creation, led David to the truth that this amazing universe has a creator and He is to be praised. (I find myself looking at and taking pictures of the skies all the time these days.)

Then, David, considering God's goodness, is led later in the psalm to wonder: "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?"

Real pleasure often leads people to praise, even those who may not consider themselves especially religious. In his 1971 song, Duncan, Paul Simon has the lead character sing, "I was playing my guitar/Lying underneath the stars/Just thanking the Lord/For my fingers."

Praise, I believe, in fact, is the truest, most real thing that human beings can ever engage in because through it, we acknowledge the fundamental truth of the universe: God is God and I'm not and that's good.

Real pain too, will lead us into the precincts of real truth--and the author of truth, the One Who is truth Himself. This, as we've mentioned here many times before, was the experience of a first century Christian named Paul. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about the many wonderful things God had shown him. But, he said, to keep him from getting too full of himself for being so blessed, God had allowed an unidentified thorn in the flesh to remain in his life. Paul asked for its removal three times. But God had told him no, "My grace is sufficient." "I'm all you need," God is telling Paul. "Your real pain will pass one day. But I love and am with you now. That's enough. Life with me is all there is of reality, now through the fog of pain and death, but one day in eternity, in its fullness and beauty and peace."

So long as we live in this world, we will be susceptible to real pain and real pleasure. We can't pretend they're not there. But I'm convinced that it's only in the midst of them that we can become either grateful enough or desperate enough to know God and experience His presence in our lives. Real pleasure and real pain break us open to His grace and love, if we will open the door from our sides. The risen Jesus says in Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."

Real pleasure and pain usher me into reality and truth, the place where I can most clearly see and know God.

That's because neither real pleasure nor real pain leave me feeling that I am in control.

And that's good, because, despite my efforts to create a false placidity, I never was in control in the first place.

Understanding Revelation, Part 4 (Revelation 21:1-6)

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church earlier today.]

Revelation 21:1-6
Have you ever noticed how much we like new things? We buy a car and for the first few weeks after we drive it off the lot, we savor that “new car smell.” We pick the first strawberries of the season and can’t wait to clean them, layer on the sugar, and put them on top of freshly-baked shortcake. And when friends share our enthusiasms, we might invite them to drop by to see our new flat screen TV, our new computer, our new game system. 

Advertisers know all about our love for new things. TV commercials are often filled with phrases like, “new and improved.” They know that will get our attention. And politicians know how much we love new things, too: Woodrow Wilson campaigned to bring what he called the New Freedom; Franklin Roosevelt had the New Deal; John Kennedy had the New Frontier; Richard Nixon touted the New Federalism; and Bill Clinton talked about the New Covenant.

I think that one of the reasons we so love new things is that, after a time, we become aware of the flaws of the old things. New things grow old. Fuel pumps and transmissions go out on the new car or it gets dinged on the grocery store parking lot and the car isn’t new anymore. We pick the last strawberries of the season, forget all about them, and they go bad before we even think about eating them; we’ve grown tired of them. Presidents’ new programs go well until they run into things like Congress, interest groups, unforeseen circumstances, and sometimes, their own faults.

The result is that after awhile, as much as we want things to be new, we grow skeptical, even cynical about claims that anything can truly be new or improved. That’s why the Who sang, “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.” It’s why Paul Simon sang, “Everything put together, sooner or later, falls apart.”

Maybe the biggest reason we like new things so much is that, deep in our hearts, we know that this world is not as it was meant to be. We know that we ourselves don’t live as we were meant to live. When we’re honest, I think, we even grow frustrated with ourselves, we tire of our old resentments, our old unfairness to others, our old failure to love—maybe even to love God--as we want to. We want to be “new and improved” people.

That yearning on our part is understandable. We were made in the image of God. Death, decay, our sin, growing old: None of these things were part of God’s original plan for you and me. God made us for an everlasting fellowship with Him. God made us to stand upright in His presence, with no need to hide from God, as the first human beings tried to do, after they had disobeyed God the first time. God made us to walk in what the Bible calls “newness of life.” The Bible says that God “has put eternity in [our] hearts.” But, you and I are born into a world alienated from God, all of us born with a predisposition to go our own ways, to sin. It’s our inheritance and we start spending that inheritance the moment we’re born; no one is more self-centered than a baby and if their parents don’t “hop to” at the first cry, a lot more crying is apt to follow! Even newborns need to be made new.

As our lives go on, we become more and more aware of our desire for what the Bible calls “a new thing.” But because we, as we grow older, are as self-driven as babies—though maybe a little more polite about it—we go "lookin’ for love [newness, life, hope, a sense of wholeness, happiness] in all the wrong places.”

Marriages hit snags and instead of recommitting themselves to doing the hard work of loving one another till death parts them, husbands and wives give up or take up with someone else or a string of someone elses.

People become frustrated with their lives or become bored by lives that seem to offer them little opportunity and, anxious for something new, dive deeply into things like alcohol, food, personal pleasure, money heroin, or oxycontin.

Preachers aren’t immune from looking for newness and eternity in bogus places, either. I once heard about a respected older pastor who told a bunch of younger ones who were wrestling with discouragement, “There’s nothing wrong with you that can’t be made right with a new suit and a new book.” I like books, but there’s only one book that can make us new!

Look! There is something is wrong in our lives, something that evidences itself in the lives of every one of us. We long for the newness of life that can only come from the perfect, sinless creator of the world, from God. The holes in our souls can only be filled by God, not by the junk with which we try to fill them. We can only be made new by God!

That’s why the words in our lesson from Revelation for this morning are worth our attention. Listen to them again:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."

The lesson presents a vision revealed to a man called John the Evangelist, literally, John the Sharer of Good News. John, at this point, some time between 81 and 96AD, was living in an exile imposed on him by the Roman Empire. John had gotten into trouble because of his beliefs.

• He believed that God had come to the earth and that His Name was Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth.
• John believed that because of God’s desire to give us new lives, Jesus died on a cross, willingly taking the punishment for sin that we deserve, a perfect sacrifice made for all of us. 
• John also believed Jesus, not the Roman emperor of his day, was the ultimate authority and Lord of the world. 
• John believed that all who turn away from their sin and entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ have eternal newness of life. 
• And John believed that Jesus rose from the dead as a sign that His promises to those who believe in Him are on solid ground. 

In those days, John's beliefs were seen as unpatriotic, threatening, and seditious.

Today, I suppose, most people would see such beliefs as unexceptional. Or silly. Or meaningless. Or, because he insisted as Jesus taught, that Jesus is the only way to God, even bigoted. But for those of us who agree with all that John believed and have experienced the living love and power of Jesus Christ, the beliefs John confessed are the most important truths that any of us can ever know. God offers us, as a free gift, the newness of life for which we all yearn. But God doesn’t force it on us. God respects our capacity to say no to Him. Yet with every fiber of God’s infinite being, God wants us to say yes to Jesus, yes to newness of life.

The vision that the risen Jesus gave to John was of a new heaven and a new earth, a place inhabited for all eternity by believers in Jesus, drawn from all the peoples of the old earth.

But God even gives tastes of the newness that comes to those who turn from sin and believe in Him in this world. He comes and frees us from our sins so that we can experience newness of life here and now.

Pastor Jim Cymbala tells the true story of a couple who came up to him after worship at his New York City church. They were moved by worship and asked him to bless their relationship. Before he did that, he said, he wanted to know a bit more about them. They explained that they had been seeing each other for two years. Cymbala asked, “Are you living together?” The woman blinked hard and the man stepped back. “Yes,” she said. “You’re putting me in a bind,” Cymbala explained to them. “You’re asking me to bless what God has expressed a strong opinion about.”

Sexual intimacy, God says, is for marriage alone. Those who have sexual relations outside of marriage are stealing a gift that God intended as a sign and seal of love between husbands and wives who have committed themselves, before God and the world, to one another.

Cymbala suggested that the man move to another place in order to avoid temptation. The couple reluctantly agreed. Over the period of the next several months, they received counseling. They learned more about God and God’s will for their lives. They wanted their relationship to be blessed by God. They repented for their sins and committed themselves to living in the newness of life that comes from Jesus.

Several months later, at the end of a midweek worship, Cymbala told the large congregation that something special was coming. The organist began the opening notes of the wedding march and this couple, committed now to coming to Jesus in total submission to Him, confident that he gives new hope and fresh starts to those who seek to do things God’s way, was married. Cymbala says that their occasional sobs of joy could be heard by all in that cavernous sanctuary.

The only bumper sticker I think that I would ever put on my car says simply, “Christians aren’t perfect; just forgiven.” And as long as we live amid the old heaven and the old earth, we’ll need to come to God in the Name of Jesus to seek forgiveness. I do it every day, many times a day. I call my frequent prayers of confession, “midcourse corrections.” And I need them because the old sinful Mark is still around causing trouble, prone to throwing me off course all the time!

But, no matter how many times we fall, God is willing to pick us up again. In Jesus Christ, we are made new, forever new, forever with God, forever living more of the life for which God made us.

If that’s a gift you want, it’s a very simple thing to claim. Tell God that you want to turn from all the false trails to newness, that you want to repudiate all your sins, that you want to be made truly new, and then let the outreached arms of Jesus save you to live a better life today and a life with God for eternity.

Surrender to Jesus and He will make you forever new! Amen!

[Thanks to Pastor Brian Stoffregen for suggesting this general approach to the text, to Pastor Heath Pukallus for his inspiring sermon, and to all those who prayed for me yesterday when I felt that my first go at the text this week was inadequate.]

U2: Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel

The verse melody of White as Snow on U2's newest LP is Veni, Emmanuel, to which the Advent hymn Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel is sung. It's a beautiful melody.

I like it when hymns get used like this. I loved it when, back in 1973, Paul Simon used Herzlich Tut Mich Verlangen, the melody of the Lenten hymn, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, for his American Tune.

I don't like it so much when advertisers use hymn melodies to drum up business, as when Odd Lots sang a jingle to the tune of Silent Night this past December. Tacky.

[The singer is Bryan Duncan]

Listen here. (More information here.)

I also like it when a pop song is turned into a sacred one. For example, take a listen to this great song by Pete Townsend.



Then, listen to how Audio Adrenaline turned it into a love song from God to you and all people.