Rejoice! It's Lent
Sermon
Mysterious Joy
Sermons for Lent and Easter
Rejoice! It's Lent. Sounds strange doesn't it? Joy and Lent just do not seem to go together. Lent is the somber season. In popular practice Lent possesses all the marks of a six-week funeral. The paraments are the deep purple of a dowager's dress. Hallelujahs are silenced within the service of the liturgy. Social celebrations are cancelled - or at least curtailed. Our attention is focused exclusively on the crucified body of a young man dying in agony on a criminal's cross. Our emotions are moved to tears by such words as suffering, sacrifice, passion, and death. All of this emphasis on the cross is intended to drive us to repentance and to acts of fasting.
This Lenten emphasis on the death and suffering of our Lord is not only a distortion of the biblical witness and the practice of the primitive church, it is also a destructive division of the theology of redemption. Originally the intent of Lent was to provide a period of meditation and contemplation in preparation for the Christian Pascha [Passover] which celebrated the crucifixion and the resurrection as one single redemptive event.
Today, however, we have torn asunder what God had originally joined together. Easter for most of us has been reduced to a single Sunday; whereas, the one day called "Good Friday" has been expanded and intensified into a forty-day deathwatch called "Lent." The number of days in the Lenten Season have grown like barnacles to the ship of the church as it moved through the history of liturgical observances.
Four facts confront us concerning Lent. First, our Lord did not establish it; the church did. Second, in the early church, before Holy Week, before Holy Thursday and Good Friday came into regular liturgical usage, the preparation for Easter was the Great Vigil. Two preceding day's of fasting and prayer were incumbent upon every Christian. These forty hours grew to become a forty-day observance. Third, as Lent grew in length, it changed from a practice of meditation and contemplation of both the crucifixion and the resurrection to a forty-day period of penitence and remorse related exclusively to our Lord's passion and death; thereby, it became simply an extension of the mood and character of Good Friday. Fourth, the resurrection was divorced from the crucifixion and a truncated theology of Lent was conceived and developed in the minds of Christians. The Lenten practices, which resulted from this truncated theology, were and are illegitimate.
In the light of all this, how should we observe Lent this year? What is our proper attitude in this holy season? In an attempt to find some directives, let us look at the First Lesson for today. Here, we find the prophet Joel standing at the doorway to Lent. Joel is one of the minor prophets. His book is only three chapters long. You could quickly thumb through the Bible and miss the book of Joel altogether. Although Joel is a little book, it is a giant in its grasp of the Old Testament concept of God's faithfulness in fulfilling his promises.
Joel begins his prophecy by describing a devastating plague of locusts. Then, he moves to a glorious promise of restoration. At the center of his message Joel cries out, "Repent," an appropriate word for Lent. But, just as we do not always understand the meaning of Lent, we frequently fail to understand the meaning of the word "repent."
When we hear the word "repent," we immediately conjure up visions of sackcloth and ashes, tear-stained faces of guilty sinners filled with remorse, sorrow and regret crying out in their misery for the mercy of God. Now, sorrow and regret are certainly a part of the process of repentance in the Bible; but, they are not the main elements in the process.
The basic thrust of the word "repent" is the call to God's chosen people to turn - to return to God. Like a drillmaster's shout, "About face!"; so, repentance is a sharp command given to turn and return to God. It is a call to turn our entire life in the direction of God. However, within the command itself, there is a reminder that the one, who gives the command, is a God who has never turned away from his people. Therefore, repentance is not a "put-down." In truth, it is an "up-lift." We are to repent not primarily because we have done something bad or wrong; but, because our God has done something very good and will do something even better in the future.
When one reads all three chapters of Joel, it is apparent that this prophet is not chiding or criticizing, nor is he condemning or even judging the people. Rather, his concern is to comfort the distress in the hearts of the people as they face the desolation of their land. A plague of locusts has devastated the land. Like an armed force of invaders with teeth as sharp as those of a lion, they have destroyed the grapevines, chewed up the fig trees and the olive trees. The fields are bare. The very ground mourns. Joel adds, "the joy of the people is gone."
From the depths of despair Joel rises to the heights of joy. As his first words singe our ears with the fiery descriptions of desolation, his final words warm our hearts with a glorious hymn of promise and renewal. The day of the Lord is coming. What a day it will be! When the Lord comes, sickles will glisten in the sunlight as they cut the ripe wheat. Barns will bulge with abundant grain. Wine will flow from the mountains and milk from the hills. A fountain will spring forth in the middle of the house of the Lord and the people will feast and want no more.
Joel does not stop here with his prediction of material blessings. He goes on to the heights of spiritual ecstasy. When the Lord comes, he will pour out his Spirit on all flesh. Sons and
daughters will prophesy. Old men will dream dreams and young men will see visions.
It is true that Joel states that the people fast, weep, and mourn in their state of desolation and depression; but, this is not so much a demand of what the people are to do as it is a description of what the people are currently doing. Could people survive the terrible invasion of locusts and the devastating drought that Joel describes without mourning, weeping, and tearing their clothes in despair? Joel was a realist. He saw the devastation of the land and the distress of the people. But, Joel was, at the same time, a man of vision. He saw beyond the tragic circumstances of his times to the day when God would fulfill his promises, restore the land, and bless the people.
Repent. Come back to God. God is kind and full of mercy. God is patient with his people and he keeps his promises. God is always willing to forgive and not to punish his people. God gives and God takes away; but God in the end, returns all things to his people. This is the joy of Lent, the vision of victory in the midst of defeat - the vision of forgiveness in the murky swamps of guilt - the vision of hope in the bleakness of desolation and despair - the vision of life in the valley of the shadow of death.
This is why the early church saw the crucifixion and the resurrection as one single redemptive event. The cross, without the resurrection, is a battle fought and lost. The resurrection, without the cross, is a meaningless victory without a battle fought. But, the crucifixion, plus the resurrection, is the redemptive act of God that turns the tides of history from the direction of ultimate defeat and death to the direction of eternal victory and everlasting life.
Lent is a time to remember what God has done, is doing, and will do for us. Lent is a time to remember what our lives would be if our Lord had not lived and died for us. Our Lenten stance is that of a group of people standing on the shore at the dawning of a new day. Looking toward the sea, they watch the flames of a burning ship in the bay. By a miraculous act of salvation they have been rescued from that sinking ship of flames. They are safe on the shore. They are delivered from a fiery death. The burning ship reflected on their faces constantly reminds them of the fate that would have been theirs had they not been rescued. As they look toward the sea beyond the burning ship, the first rays of the rising sun race across the horizon. They witness the beginning of a new day.
So, we stand at the entrance of Lent. In our vision is the burning ship of flames sinking into the sea and behind it the brilliant light of the rising sun. Both share our attention. The burning ship is the symbol of Joel's devastated fields left by the plague of locusts. At the same time, the burning ship is the symbol of the cross - the destructive death which would have been our final fate if it had not been for Christ our Lord. The rising sun is the symbol of the promise of the prophet Joel - the message of God's renewal and restoration. The rising sun is also the symbol of the resurrection which assures us of the new life we have forever in Christ. All of these visions, these images, these realities blend together to present to us the theme of Lent - devastation and renewal - perplexity and promise - crucifixion and resurrection - defeat and victory - death and life - a burning ship and a rising sun. All of these are one event in the mysterious and marvelous redemptive activities of God.
Lent is not a time to regret our faults or to rehearse our failures as much as it is a time to renew our faith that God is at work creating a promising future out of the mess that we have made of his world and of our lives.
Lent is not a time when we are to practice shallow fasting - giving up things we can easily do without. Lent is not a time to fast as it is a time to fasten our faith more tightly to the hope-filled promises of God.
Lent is a time to stand with the prophet Joel in the wastelands, left by the locusts, and to see ripe grain filling the fields. Lent is a time to stand on the shore and look beyond the sinking ship of flames and see the rising sun. Lent is a time to stand before the cross and to see it as the coronation throne of Christ our king.
Lent is a time to turn to the Bible - a time to study God's word and commune with him in prayer. Lent is a time to lift up the cross - not as a pious whip to inflict self-punishment upon ourselves, or as a gavel of judgment to condemn the wrongdoings of others. Rather, Lent is a time for us to lift high the cross - lift it high enough to permit the first rays of Easter morn to reflect upon its surface so that the cross might become a beacon of light for all the hopeless, desolate, and despairing people of our world. Lent is a time of renewal and of the restoration of our faith in the redemptive activities of God in history.
Late one evening, a pastor was in the pulpit practicing his Lenten sermon. In the back of the darkened church sat his small son. The sight of his father talking so seriously to a church filled with empty pews struck the little boy as being very funny - he laughed. Hearing this laughter, the father went to his son and gently said, "Don't you know that we don't laugh in church during Lent?"
"Why?" asked the boy.
"Because lent is a time when we remember that Jesus died for us," responded the father.
"Is Jesus dead?" inquired the son.
"No," answered the father, "Jesus died, but he didn't stay dead. He rose from the grave and is living in you and me right now."
The little boy thought for a moment, and then he said, "I think - I think it must have been - the Jesus alive in me that made me laugh."
Because Jesus lives in us, we face Lent with joy in our hearts. Not the hilarious kind of joy where we shout out "Hallelujah!" - not even the spontaneous and innocent joy expressed in the laughter of a little child - rather, the joy of Lent is the quiet, mature joy that comes from meditation and contemplation of what God has done for us. This kind of joy will open up our callous hearts and prepare us to really appreciate that morning - like no other morning - when a tomb stood empty in a garden and our Lord was released to conquer all powers and to exercise all authorities as he inhabits our world and us. Forever!
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
The First Sunday In Lent
Names, Not Numbers
What comes to your mind when you hear the name "Moses"? Do you think of Chariton Heston standing on a rock with his hair and his beard and his robe blowing in the wind, while at the same time, beneath his feet the Red Sea churns and rolls back as mighty walls of waves forming a path for the fleeing Israelites? Perhaps you imagine Moses as a white-haired man standing on the jagged cliffs of a mountain and holding in his sinewy arms the two stone tablets of the law.
It is doubtful that any of you imagine Moses as a preacher; nevertheless, that is the picture of Moses which is presented in our First Lesson for today. The text is from the Book of Deuteronomy, which many early scholars considered to be a sermon spoken by Moses to the people of Israel. Deuteronomy has thirty-four chapters with each averaging 500 words. Taking into consideration the fact that the average person speaks 120 words a minute, this would mean that the sermon Moses preached lasted about three hours. That makes the Book of Deuteronomy one of the longest sermons in recorded history. However, more recent scholars have said that the Book of Deuteronomy is a collection of three sermons - which would cut the length of each down to one hour. Still, that would be lengthy by our standards today.
Our text for today comes from the second sermon in that series. The Israelites are poised in anticipation of crossing the Jordan River in hopes of taking possession of the Promised Land. As they stand on this threshold of a new life with all its opportunities and dangers, the message of this particular sermon is "Remember." Moses exhorts the people to remember the gracious acts of God. Particularly, he insists that they never forget the exodus from Egypt. Also, he admonishes the people to remember the forty years spent in the wilderness. He urges the people to hold firm to their covenant with God, when they are confronted by the pagan religious practices, which he knows to be prevalent in the land of Canaan.
This is an emotionally-charged sermon in that God has forbidden Moses to enter the Promised Land with his people. Like a pastor preaching his or her farewell sermon to a congregation, Moses appeals to his people to remember all that he has said to them in the past.
The theme of the message of Moses is "Remember;" but more, "Remember who you are." They are the children of a loving Father God. They began as "nobody;" now, they are transformed into "somebody." The father of their heritage was a "wandering Aramean" - a nobody - a refugee without a homeland - a pilgrim who wandered on the wilderness road. They entered into Egypt with nothing. They lived in Egypt as slaves. Now, they are about to possess a rich new land, to build a great nation, and to establish a royal lineage of mighty kings. Why? Is it because they are wise, or strong and brave, or faithful? No. Rather, it was because God had claimed them and had called them. He had chosen them to be his people - his beloved children.
This is the focal point of our text, and it is also the focal point of the Book of Deuteronomy. In fact, it is the focal point of the whole of both the Old and the New Testament as well. We are loved by God. Unworthy, as the Israelites were unworthy, God still loves and gives himself to us. We are his chosen children. We have value because of who we are; but more, we have value because of whose we are. We are the children of God.
This was important to Israel. Again and again, Israel had survived destruction and persecution. As a people, they had known defeat and desolation. In every instance or situation, when all seemed lost, the Israelites remembered by whom and to whom they were chosen. They were "somebody." Their lives had significance, stability, and stamina because they were the called, the chosen, the children of God.
The fathers of modern psychology, Freud, Adler, and Jung, are recognized students of human nature. Their combined message to us is that to be truly human we need three things - significance, security, and love. For Israel, and for us, the ultimate source of our significance and security is to be realized in the covenant of God's love for us.
The tragedy is that Israel, and we as Christians, forget who we are and to whom we belong. We are tempted by our contemporary culture to turn away from the true God - only to worship false gods who demean our significance, offer little security, and show no love.
Lent calls us to renew our lives by remembering who we are and whose we are. For without this constant reminder, we are so easily tempted to follow every new fad that promises us significance, security, and love.
Today, the hunger for significance, security, and love tempt us to become status seekers. We think we can attain status by our conquest and control of material things. We are what we possess. The more riches of this world that we can grab hold of and claim for ourselves, the better will be our status in society.
We watch the TV program Life Styles of the Rich and Famous. Our idea of heaven becomes a Park Avenue apartment and a house on the Riviera with a yacht anchored in the harbor. Our Bible becomes the Wall Street Journal. Our church is a health spa where we go, not to save our souls, but to beautify our bodies. Our creed is the unholy trinity of competition, ambition, and social clout.
The real tragedy is that, in a status-seeking world of commercialism, we are important only because we are consumers. We are not persons; we are purchasers. When we can no longer purchase, we perish.
A woman once asked her friends, "Why do you live in this broken-down neighborhood, when I know you have the means to live in a better one?" The friends answered in chorus, "You've heard of keeping up with the Joneses haven't you? Well, in this neighborhood, we are the Joneses."
Most of us desire to be the Joneses - to drive the most expensive cars - to live in the biggest house on the block - to dress in the most fashionable fad - to have a second house on the lake, or at the ocean, or in the mountains.
However, such a search for status is a poor substitute for true significance, security, and love. For when we face the situation honestly, we know that having status does not mean that people admire and love us as much as they envy what we possess. What is even worse, the things we own begin to take over, and soon it is our possessions that own us. We become locked into a rat-race to keep inflating our material life style. Luxuries become necessities. Gadgets become our gods. We spend more than we make, and we buy more than we need. As Oscar Wilde said of us, "Americans know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
The effort to achieve and to maintain status is ultimately self-defeating. It leads only to a lack of identity. We do not know who we are. All we know is what we earn and how much we possess. The Internal Revenue Service becomes our contemporary Satan who threatens to stick his pointed tail into our budgets and bank accounts - and audits us, and in the end takes all the profits out of our lives.
When we falter and fail to pay our bills, we discover that the gods which we worship have about as much compassion as a computer. We are not persons; we are a series of holes punched in a card. One smart fellow asked a computer if there was a God. The computer's answer came back, "There is now!" In a computer age, we are not names on the rolls of God's Book of Life; we are numbers on Social Security cards registered in Washington, D.C.
When we are asked to identify ourselves at a store in a mall or at the supermarket, the cashiers do not ask us what our name is; they just mumble, "Let me see your driver's license, please." And the stinging insult, in most cases, is that the cashiers never even look at our pictures. They just automatically copy down the numbers from our driver's license and mark the check, "OK."
A census taker went up to a house and knocked on the door. A mother came to the door. "How many children do you have?" the man asked the woman. "Well," she answered, "there is Steven and Kevin, Mary and Lois." At this point the census taker interrupted her impatiently, "The number, not the names, please." "But," said the mother, "my children do not have numbers; they have names."
Our names, yours and mine, are what give us significance, our security, and reflect the fact that we are loved. When our parents held us in their arms as the words of the baptismal rite were spoken and the water touched our heads, God laid his claim on us. By sign, symbol, and sacrament God claimed us - each and every one of us as his child - his chosen child. At that moment in time, significance, security, and love were ours. We became a member of the family of the faithful - sealed and securely fastened by "bloodties" to God because of the death and the resurrection of his son, our savior.
Moses stood by the river Jordan and faced the Promised Land. He said to the freed slaves of Egypt, "Remember who you are, and whose you are. You are the children of the mighty God." And, so they were. They had been baptized by the parted waters of the Red Sea. They had been confirmed through a wilderness experience. God had called, and claimed, and chosen them to be his children. So, today we stand at the First Sunday in Lent, and both the Old and the New Testaments cry out to us, "Remember! Remember you are the called and the chosen children of God."
Two men were discussing their Christian faith. One of them said to the other, "What exactly does the gospel mean to you?" The other man thought for a while. Then, as if ignoring the question, he called his dog, "Come here, Lucky." The dog came. "Bark." The dog barked. "Now sit." The dog sat. "Now, lie down." The dog obediently settled down on the floor beside his master.
The man turned to his friend, "Well, as you can see for yourself, this is a good old dog. He is faithful, obedient, and affectionate. I'm fond of this old dog. I guess you could say that I love Lucky as much as any person can love a pet. But, look out there in the kitchen. There is my baby girl Susan. She is just about a year old. She wakes me up at all hours of the night demanding attention. She is not obedient. She throws her food all over the floor - and me. She will smile at anyone who picks her up and cuddles her."
"Faithful, obedient Old Lucky I'm fond of. You might say that I love him - but not like I love Susan. I love Susan so deeply that I would give my life for her; because, she is an extension of myself. Susan is my child - in her is my reason for living, my hope, my ultimate happiness. She gives my life significance, security, and love."
As Christians, we are not like "Old Lucky" - faithful, obedient, and affectionate. Rather, we are like Susan. We are someone's child. We are not God's pet; we are God's child. He loves us so much that he was willing to die for us.
Lent is a time of renewal - the renewal of our significance and the renewal of our security. Lent is a time to remember who we are and whose we are. Lent is a time to remember that the ultimate value of our life is not the "cash" that we possess but the cross and the crucified Christ we confess. He suffered and died that our lives might possess not worldly status, but rather eternal significance. He gave his life that we might be secure from the demeaning slavery of death. He rose from the grave that God's love might live in us. Therefore, this Lenten season, remember and rejoice. Remember the reliable, redeeming love of God for us. Rejoice. This, and this alone, gives true significance and security to our lives.
Genesis 15:1-2, 17-18
The Second Sunday In Lent
A Covenant Sealed By a Sacrifice
Our First Lesson today contains a bizarre and even a weird story. It sounds like an eerie tale of the occult rather than an account from Holy Scripture. God asked Abraham to bring him a cow, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abraham obeyed. He brought the animals before the Lord and slaughtered them. He cut each animal in half and laid the pieces in two neat rows.
Vultures hovered and circled over the slain beasts. Abraham flung his arms in a wild frenzy driving the birds of prey away. Exhausted from his vigil, Abraham fell into a deep sleep. The sun slowly settled beneath the horizon and a dreadfully dense darkness covered the land. Then, out of nowhere, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch floated from the darkness. For a moment these two objects lingered and vacillated; then, the smoking pot and the flaming torch leisurely, but deliberately, passed between and among the carcasses of the animals that covered the ground. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the smoking pot and the flaming torch disappeared as if swallowed up by a demon of the darkness.
Now, this spooky scenario, as baffling as it may be to us, was not so baffling to Abraham. Rather, he saw this curious ceremony as a familiar ritual of covenant-making - a common spiritual experience of the divine presence. The smoking fire pot and the flaming torch were symbols that God was personally present. God was passing between and among the sacrificial animals to seal a covenant between himself and Abraham.
Before Abraham had slain the animals, the Lord came to him and said, "Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." Then, God made a promise to him that, even though he and his wife, Sarah, had been childless all through their long married life, a son would be born to them. Abraham would become the father of a mighty nation, and through him all the nations on earth would be blessed.
All the stories we read from the beginning of the Bible - the Garden of Eden, the slaying of Abel by Cain, Noah and the flood, the Tower of Babel - all of these stories are but a prologue to the profound moment when God confronted Abraham and called him to leave his native country for a new homeland: and, with the call came the promise: "I will make you a great nation and I will bless you ... and by you all the families of the earth will be blessed." This divine promise of blessing runs like a golden thread through the woven tapestry of myth and legend, poetry and history which form the content of the Old and the New Testaments.
The God who had fashioned the heavens and the earth now narrows his creative concern until it concentrates upon the solitary figure of Abraham, the father of the people whom Yahweh chose for a special task in his overall plan for history. Coming almost immediately after the tragic story of the Tower of Babel, Abraham's call is like a burst of light that illumines the whole landscape of the biblical story. In contrast to the ambitious builders at Babel who aspired to make a name for themselves, God promises that he will make Abraham's name great. The people of Babel attempted to penetrate heaven and to touch God; Abraham knelt down in obedience and was touched by God. Abraham's greatness was not in himself, but in the God who had called and chosen him.
It is important for us to note that here we are not only dealing with a biography of a man named Abraham; he is more than an individual. Abraham is a personification of all the people whom God calls and chooses to be his children. As God established a covenant of promised blessings with Abraham, God also establishes a covenant with us. Abraham is truly our father-in-the-faith. We are heirs of Abraham; and, as heirs, we share with him God's promise that we will be his people and he will be our God. We are joined together with God in one inseparable union - one family bonded together in love. God, and God alone, seals this covenant-promise with a sacrifice.
The word "sacrifice" has negative overtones for most of us. Oh, we speak about the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, particularly, in this Lenten Season. We stress in our stewardship drives that we should sacrifice our time, our talents, and our income for the church, for missions, and for social services. We sacrifice for our children. We feed them, clothe them, and send them to college. Most of our experience with sacrifice is associated with suffering and the giving up of something that we cherish and desire for ourselves. Sacrifice is conceived of as a loss incurred without an expected return. However, in the Bible, sacrifice is associated with a gift gladly given. It is an offering which creates a special communion and an in-dissolvable union with our God. In the Bible, sacrifice is a means of releasing life in order that a greater life may be given to us. The focus is not on the loss, but the focus is on what is gained by the act of sacrifice.
The offering of a sacrifice was never thought of as an act of presenting the dead carcass of an animal to God; rather, the act of sacrifice was the releasing of the animal's potent life and the offering of that life to God. This "life" was conceived to be resident in the blood. The fact that the animal died was incidental. The important thing was that "life was in the blood." What was offered to God was not dead flesh but the blood of the animal which was filled with life. The body of the animal died, but its life lived on in the blood. It was this living blood of life - this "life in the blood" - that was offered to the Lord.
Broadly speaking, there are four basic types of sacrifice in the Bible. First, there is human sacrifice. There is little direct evidence of this in Scripture. The story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to God is a familiar and classic example. However, it was well known that in Canaan, as well as throughout the ancient world, human sacrifice was a common practice. The intervention of God in the Abraham and Isaac story, where God provided a ram for the sacrifice instead of Abraham's son, ended human sacrifices in the common worship practices of the Hebrew religion.
Secondly, there is animal sacrifice. It played an essential role in the religion of Israel, and it dominated the worship of the temple. However, the pre-exilic prophets - Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah - condemned these sacrifices, and they strongly declared that animal sacrifices, even offered with the best of intentions, are less acceptable to God than the offering of a pure heart and a holy life.
This brings us to the third type of sacrifice - the bloodless sacrifice of a pure and an obedient life lived for the Lord. Paul powerfully presented this type of sacrifice when he wrote to the Christians at Rome. He appealed to the people that they should present their bodies as "a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God." This, for Paul, is the true act of spiritual worship.
The fourth type of sacrifice is unique to the Bible. It is the divine sacrifice. The whole process of sacrifice is radically reversed. Instead of the people offering sacrifices to God, it is God who offers the sacrifice of himself to his people and for his people. This is prophetically implied in our text for this morning. In the visable signs of the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch, God himself is present, and he passes between the pieces of the slain animals; thereby, he offers the sacrifice of his holy presence and, at the same time, he seals his covenant-promise of blessings and love to Abraham and to us.
The most significant sacrifice that God offers to us is on Calvary. It is so significant that it ends the mandatory rite of blood-sacrifice in the biblical history of the church. God becomes incarnate, and he willingly goes to the cross where he sheds his life-giving blood for us.
The role that sacrifices have played in the history of the Bible and, in particular, the essential element of biblical sacrifice - namely, "the life is in the blood," is essential for our understanding of the crucifixion of our Lord. Christ died. True. But, what is so often overlooked is the profoundly important fact that he shed his blood for us. His life was not taken from him on the cross: his life was released on the cross. His life was released from the limitation of his body that it might flow into our bodies; thereby, this makes us one with him and, at the same time, seals for us God's promise of life - an abundant life of blessings for us as his children.
Every time we come to the communion table, we drink the life-giving blood of our Lord. We participate in the greatest and the final blood-sacrifice of all biblical history - the sacrifice of God himself - for us! Rejoice, because the blood of God flowing within us gives us eternal life.
Our librarian at Southern Seminary has a precocious preschooler. He attended Sunday church school and listened intently as his teacher described in detail the death of Jesus. She told her students how the Roman soldiers drove nails into the wrists of Jesus and how his blood spilled out on the ground.
The next day Charlie was playing in the backyard, and he snagged his finger on a broken tree limb. Charlie watched in horror as the blood began to flow from his wound. Charlie panicked. He ran to his father, "Daddy, Daddy that tree tore a hole in me and all my blood is running out. I'm going to die like Jesus."
Dr. Fritz took his son's hand and carefully dressed the wound on the cut finger. Then, holding his son's hand in his, he said, "Charlie, many times in your life, things are going to hurt you and cut you. You might bleed, but you will not die. Because Jesus died for you, you will never have to fear death for you will always be alive in him."
How true. Because God seals his covenant of love with the death of his son, Jesus Christ, we may bleed; but, we will never have to fear death. In the Bible, death is understood as the act of being separated from God. For Abraham and for us God sealed his covenant-promise that he would never leave us or forsake us. On the cross, God shed his blood as the final sacrifice that assures us that nothing can separate us from his love. A covenant is sealed by a sacrifice. This seal can never be broken because it bears the indelible blood of God himself. It is the royal insignia of the cross, which testifies to the fact that we are one with God. The blood of Christ flows in our bodies and enlivens our lives with eternity. We may bleed, but we will never fear death. Rejoice! Death is dead.
This Lenten emphasis on the death and suffering of our Lord is not only a distortion of the biblical witness and the practice of the primitive church, it is also a destructive division of the theology of redemption. Originally the intent of Lent was to provide a period of meditation and contemplation in preparation for the Christian Pascha [Passover] which celebrated the crucifixion and the resurrection as one single redemptive event.
Today, however, we have torn asunder what God had originally joined together. Easter for most of us has been reduced to a single Sunday; whereas, the one day called "Good Friday" has been expanded and intensified into a forty-day deathwatch called "Lent." The number of days in the Lenten Season have grown like barnacles to the ship of the church as it moved through the history of liturgical observances.
Four facts confront us concerning Lent. First, our Lord did not establish it; the church did. Second, in the early church, before Holy Week, before Holy Thursday and Good Friday came into regular liturgical usage, the preparation for Easter was the Great Vigil. Two preceding day's of fasting and prayer were incumbent upon every Christian. These forty hours grew to become a forty-day observance. Third, as Lent grew in length, it changed from a practice of meditation and contemplation of both the crucifixion and the resurrection to a forty-day period of penitence and remorse related exclusively to our Lord's passion and death; thereby, it became simply an extension of the mood and character of Good Friday. Fourth, the resurrection was divorced from the crucifixion and a truncated theology of Lent was conceived and developed in the minds of Christians. The Lenten practices, which resulted from this truncated theology, were and are illegitimate.
In the light of all this, how should we observe Lent this year? What is our proper attitude in this holy season? In an attempt to find some directives, let us look at the First Lesson for today. Here, we find the prophet Joel standing at the doorway to Lent. Joel is one of the minor prophets. His book is only three chapters long. You could quickly thumb through the Bible and miss the book of Joel altogether. Although Joel is a little book, it is a giant in its grasp of the Old Testament concept of God's faithfulness in fulfilling his promises.
Joel begins his prophecy by describing a devastating plague of locusts. Then, he moves to a glorious promise of restoration. At the center of his message Joel cries out, "Repent," an appropriate word for Lent. But, just as we do not always understand the meaning of Lent, we frequently fail to understand the meaning of the word "repent."
When we hear the word "repent," we immediately conjure up visions of sackcloth and ashes, tear-stained faces of guilty sinners filled with remorse, sorrow and regret crying out in their misery for the mercy of God. Now, sorrow and regret are certainly a part of the process of repentance in the Bible; but, they are not the main elements in the process.
The basic thrust of the word "repent" is the call to God's chosen people to turn - to return to God. Like a drillmaster's shout, "About face!"; so, repentance is a sharp command given to turn and return to God. It is a call to turn our entire life in the direction of God. However, within the command itself, there is a reminder that the one, who gives the command, is a God who has never turned away from his people. Therefore, repentance is not a "put-down." In truth, it is an "up-lift." We are to repent not primarily because we have done something bad or wrong; but, because our God has done something very good and will do something even better in the future.
When one reads all three chapters of Joel, it is apparent that this prophet is not chiding or criticizing, nor is he condemning or even judging the people. Rather, his concern is to comfort the distress in the hearts of the people as they face the desolation of their land. A plague of locusts has devastated the land. Like an armed force of invaders with teeth as sharp as those of a lion, they have destroyed the grapevines, chewed up the fig trees and the olive trees. The fields are bare. The very ground mourns. Joel adds, "the joy of the people is gone."
From the depths of despair Joel rises to the heights of joy. As his first words singe our ears with the fiery descriptions of desolation, his final words warm our hearts with a glorious hymn of promise and renewal. The day of the Lord is coming. What a day it will be! When the Lord comes, sickles will glisten in the sunlight as they cut the ripe wheat. Barns will bulge with abundant grain. Wine will flow from the mountains and milk from the hills. A fountain will spring forth in the middle of the house of the Lord and the people will feast and want no more.
Joel does not stop here with his prediction of material blessings. He goes on to the heights of spiritual ecstasy. When the Lord comes, he will pour out his Spirit on all flesh. Sons and
daughters will prophesy. Old men will dream dreams and young men will see visions.
It is true that Joel states that the people fast, weep, and mourn in their state of desolation and depression; but, this is not so much a demand of what the people are to do as it is a description of what the people are currently doing. Could people survive the terrible invasion of locusts and the devastating drought that Joel describes without mourning, weeping, and tearing their clothes in despair? Joel was a realist. He saw the devastation of the land and the distress of the people. But, Joel was, at the same time, a man of vision. He saw beyond the tragic circumstances of his times to the day when God would fulfill his promises, restore the land, and bless the people.
Repent. Come back to God. God is kind and full of mercy. God is patient with his people and he keeps his promises. God is always willing to forgive and not to punish his people. God gives and God takes away; but God in the end, returns all things to his people. This is the joy of Lent, the vision of victory in the midst of defeat - the vision of forgiveness in the murky swamps of guilt - the vision of hope in the bleakness of desolation and despair - the vision of life in the valley of the shadow of death.
This is why the early church saw the crucifixion and the resurrection as one single redemptive event. The cross, without the resurrection, is a battle fought and lost. The resurrection, without the cross, is a meaningless victory without a battle fought. But, the crucifixion, plus the resurrection, is the redemptive act of God that turns the tides of history from the direction of ultimate defeat and death to the direction of eternal victory and everlasting life.
Lent is a time to remember what God has done, is doing, and will do for us. Lent is a time to remember what our lives would be if our Lord had not lived and died for us. Our Lenten stance is that of a group of people standing on the shore at the dawning of a new day. Looking toward the sea, they watch the flames of a burning ship in the bay. By a miraculous act of salvation they have been rescued from that sinking ship of flames. They are safe on the shore. They are delivered from a fiery death. The burning ship reflected on their faces constantly reminds them of the fate that would have been theirs had they not been rescued. As they look toward the sea beyond the burning ship, the first rays of the rising sun race across the horizon. They witness the beginning of a new day.
So, we stand at the entrance of Lent. In our vision is the burning ship of flames sinking into the sea and behind it the brilliant light of the rising sun. Both share our attention. The burning ship is the symbol of Joel's devastated fields left by the plague of locusts. At the same time, the burning ship is the symbol of the cross - the destructive death which would have been our final fate if it had not been for Christ our Lord. The rising sun is the symbol of the promise of the prophet Joel - the message of God's renewal and restoration. The rising sun is also the symbol of the resurrection which assures us of the new life we have forever in Christ. All of these visions, these images, these realities blend together to present to us the theme of Lent - devastation and renewal - perplexity and promise - crucifixion and resurrection - defeat and victory - death and life - a burning ship and a rising sun. All of these are one event in the mysterious and marvelous redemptive activities of God.
Lent is not a time to regret our faults or to rehearse our failures as much as it is a time to renew our faith that God is at work creating a promising future out of the mess that we have made of his world and of our lives.
Lent is not a time when we are to practice shallow fasting - giving up things we can easily do without. Lent is not a time to fast as it is a time to fasten our faith more tightly to the hope-filled promises of God.
Lent is a time to stand with the prophet Joel in the wastelands, left by the locusts, and to see ripe grain filling the fields. Lent is a time to stand on the shore and look beyond the sinking ship of flames and see the rising sun. Lent is a time to stand before the cross and to see it as the coronation throne of Christ our king.
Lent is a time to turn to the Bible - a time to study God's word and commune with him in prayer. Lent is a time to lift up the cross - not as a pious whip to inflict self-punishment upon ourselves, or as a gavel of judgment to condemn the wrongdoings of others. Rather, Lent is a time for us to lift high the cross - lift it high enough to permit the first rays of Easter morn to reflect upon its surface so that the cross might become a beacon of light for all the hopeless, desolate, and despairing people of our world. Lent is a time of renewal and of the restoration of our faith in the redemptive activities of God in history.
Late one evening, a pastor was in the pulpit practicing his Lenten sermon. In the back of the darkened church sat his small son. The sight of his father talking so seriously to a church filled with empty pews struck the little boy as being very funny - he laughed. Hearing this laughter, the father went to his son and gently said, "Don't you know that we don't laugh in church during Lent?"
"Why?" asked the boy.
"Because lent is a time when we remember that Jesus died for us," responded the father.
"Is Jesus dead?" inquired the son.
"No," answered the father, "Jesus died, but he didn't stay dead. He rose from the grave and is living in you and me right now."
The little boy thought for a moment, and then he said, "I think - I think it must have been - the Jesus alive in me that made me laugh."
Because Jesus lives in us, we face Lent with joy in our hearts. Not the hilarious kind of joy where we shout out "Hallelujah!" - not even the spontaneous and innocent joy expressed in the laughter of a little child - rather, the joy of Lent is the quiet, mature joy that comes from meditation and contemplation of what God has done for us. This kind of joy will open up our callous hearts and prepare us to really appreciate that morning - like no other morning - when a tomb stood empty in a garden and our Lord was released to conquer all powers and to exercise all authorities as he inhabits our world and us. Forever!
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
The First Sunday In Lent
Names, Not Numbers
What comes to your mind when you hear the name "Moses"? Do you think of Chariton Heston standing on a rock with his hair and his beard and his robe blowing in the wind, while at the same time, beneath his feet the Red Sea churns and rolls back as mighty walls of waves forming a path for the fleeing Israelites? Perhaps you imagine Moses as a white-haired man standing on the jagged cliffs of a mountain and holding in his sinewy arms the two stone tablets of the law.
It is doubtful that any of you imagine Moses as a preacher; nevertheless, that is the picture of Moses which is presented in our First Lesson for today. The text is from the Book of Deuteronomy, which many early scholars considered to be a sermon spoken by Moses to the people of Israel. Deuteronomy has thirty-four chapters with each averaging 500 words. Taking into consideration the fact that the average person speaks 120 words a minute, this would mean that the sermon Moses preached lasted about three hours. That makes the Book of Deuteronomy one of the longest sermons in recorded history. However, more recent scholars have said that the Book of Deuteronomy is a collection of three sermons - which would cut the length of each down to one hour. Still, that would be lengthy by our standards today.
Our text for today comes from the second sermon in that series. The Israelites are poised in anticipation of crossing the Jordan River in hopes of taking possession of the Promised Land. As they stand on this threshold of a new life with all its opportunities and dangers, the message of this particular sermon is "Remember." Moses exhorts the people to remember the gracious acts of God. Particularly, he insists that they never forget the exodus from Egypt. Also, he admonishes the people to remember the forty years spent in the wilderness. He urges the people to hold firm to their covenant with God, when they are confronted by the pagan religious practices, which he knows to be prevalent in the land of Canaan.
This is an emotionally-charged sermon in that God has forbidden Moses to enter the Promised Land with his people. Like a pastor preaching his or her farewell sermon to a congregation, Moses appeals to his people to remember all that he has said to them in the past.
The theme of the message of Moses is "Remember;" but more, "Remember who you are." They are the children of a loving Father God. They began as "nobody;" now, they are transformed into "somebody." The father of their heritage was a "wandering Aramean" - a nobody - a refugee without a homeland - a pilgrim who wandered on the wilderness road. They entered into Egypt with nothing. They lived in Egypt as slaves. Now, they are about to possess a rich new land, to build a great nation, and to establish a royal lineage of mighty kings. Why? Is it because they are wise, or strong and brave, or faithful? No. Rather, it was because God had claimed them and had called them. He had chosen them to be his people - his beloved children.
This is the focal point of our text, and it is also the focal point of the Book of Deuteronomy. In fact, it is the focal point of the whole of both the Old and the New Testament as well. We are loved by God. Unworthy, as the Israelites were unworthy, God still loves and gives himself to us. We are his chosen children. We have value because of who we are; but more, we have value because of whose we are. We are the children of God.
This was important to Israel. Again and again, Israel had survived destruction and persecution. As a people, they had known defeat and desolation. In every instance or situation, when all seemed lost, the Israelites remembered by whom and to whom they were chosen. They were "somebody." Their lives had significance, stability, and stamina because they were the called, the chosen, the children of God.
The fathers of modern psychology, Freud, Adler, and Jung, are recognized students of human nature. Their combined message to us is that to be truly human we need three things - significance, security, and love. For Israel, and for us, the ultimate source of our significance and security is to be realized in the covenant of God's love for us.
The tragedy is that Israel, and we as Christians, forget who we are and to whom we belong. We are tempted by our contemporary culture to turn away from the true God - only to worship false gods who demean our significance, offer little security, and show no love.
Lent calls us to renew our lives by remembering who we are and whose we are. For without this constant reminder, we are so easily tempted to follow every new fad that promises us significance, security, and love.
Today, the hunger for significance, security, and love tempt us to become status seekers. We think we can attain status by our conquest and control of material things. We are what we possess. The more riches of this world that we can grab hold of and claim for ourselves, the better will be our status in society.
We watch the TV program Life Styles of the Rich and Famous. Our idea of heaven becomes a Park Avenue apartment and a house on the Riviera with a yacht anchored in the harbor. Our Bible becomes the Wall Street Journal. Our church is a health spa where we go, not to save our souls, but to beautify our bodies. Our creed is the unholy trinity of competition, ambition, and social clout.
The real tragedy is that, in a status-seeking world of commercialism, we are important only because we are consumers. We are not persons; we are purchasers. When we can no longer purchase, we perish.
A woman once asked her friends, "Why do you live in this broken-down neighborhood, when I know you have the means to live in a better one?" The friends answered in chorus, "You've heard of keeping up with the Joneses haven't you? Well, in this neighborhood, we are the Joneses."
Most of us desire to be the Joneses - to drive the most expensive cars - to live in the biggest house on the block - to dress in the most fashionable fad - to have a second house on the lake, or at the ocean, or in the mountains.
However, such a search for status is a poor substitute for true significance, security, and love. For when we face the situation honestly, we know that having status does not mean that people admire and love us as much as they envy what we possess. What is even worse, the things we own begin to take over, and soon it is our possessions that own us. We become locked into a rat-race to keep inflating our material life style. Luxuries become necessities. Gadgets become our gods. We spend more than we make, and we buy more than we need. As Oscar Wilde said of us, "Americans know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
The effort to achieve and to maintain status is ultimately self-defeating. It leads only to a lack of identity. We do not know who we are. All we know is what we earn and how much we possess. The Internal Revenue Service becomes our contemporary Satan who threatens to stick his pointed tail into our budgets and bank accounts - and audits us, and in the end takes all the profits out of our lives.
When we falter and fail to pay our bills, we discover that the gods which we worship have about as much compassion as a computer. We are not persons; we are a series of holes punched in a card. One smart fellow asked a computer if there was a God. The computer's answer came back, "There is now!" In a computer age, we are not names on the rolls of God's Book of Life; we are numbers on Social Security cards registered in Washington, D.C.
When we are asked to identify ourselves at a store in a mall or at the supermarket, the cashiers do not ask us what our name is; they just mumble, "Let me see your driver's license, please." And the stinging insult, in most cases, is that the cashiers never even look at our pictures. They just automatically copy down the numbers from our driver's license and mark the check, "OK."
A census taker went up to a house and knocked on the door. A mother came to the door. "How many children do you have?" the man asked the woman. "Well," she answered, "there is Steven and Kevin, Mary and Lois." At this point the census taker interrupted her impatiently, "The number, not the names, please." "But," said the mother, "my children do not have numbers; they have names."
Our names, yours and mine, are what give us significance, our security, and reflect the fact that we are loved. When our parents held us in their arms as the words of the baptismal rite were spoken and the water touched our heads, God laid his claim on us. By sign, symbol, and sacrament God claimed us - each and every one of us as his child - his chosen child. At that moment in time, significance, security, and love were ours. We became a member of the family of the faithful - sealed and securely fastened by "bloodties" to God because of the death and the resurrection of his son, our savior.
Moses stood by the river Jordan and faced the Promised Land. He said to the freed slaves of Egypt, "Remember who you are, and whose you are. You are the children of the mighty God." And, so they were. They had been baptized by the parted waters of the Red Sea. They had been confirmed through a wilderness experience. God had called, and claimed, and chosen them to be his children. So, today we stand at the First Sunday in Lent, and both the Old and the New Testaments cry out to us, "Remember! Remember you are the called and the chosen children of God."
Two men were discussing their Christian faith. One of them said to the other, "What exactly does the gospel mean to you?" The other man thought for a while. Then, as if ignoring the question, he called his dog, "Come here, Lucky." The dog came. "Bark." The dog barked. "Now sit." The dog sat. "Now, lie down." The dog obediently settled down on the floor beside his master.
The man turned to his friend, "Well, as you can see for yourself, this is a good old dog. He is faithful, obedient, and affectionate. I'm fond of this old dog. I guess you could say that I love Lucky as much as any person can love a pet. But, look out there in the kitchen. There is my baby girl Susan. She is just about a year old. She wakes me up at all hours of the night demanding attention. She is not obedient. She throws her food all over the floor - and me. She will smile at anyone who picks her up and cuddles her."
"Faithful, obedient Old Lucky I'm fond of. You might say that I love him - but not like I love Susan. I love Susan so deeply that I would give my life for her; because, she is an extension of myself. Susan is my child - in her is my reason for living, my hope, my ultimate happiness. She gives my life significance, security, and love."
As Christians, we are not like "Old Lucky" - faithful, obedient, and affectionate. Rather, we are like Susan. We are someone's child. We are not God's pet; we are God's child. He loves us so much that he was willing to die for us.
Lent is a time of renewal - the renewal of our significance and the renewal of our security. Lent is a time to remember who we are and whose we are. Lent is a time to remember that the ultimate value of our life is not the "cash" that we possess but the cross and the crucified Christ we confess. He suffered and died that our lives might possess not worldly status, but rather eternal significance. He gave his life that we might be secure from the demeaning slavery of death. He rose from the grave that God's love might live in us. Therefore, this Lenten season, remember and rejoice. Remember the reliable, redeeming love of God for us. Rejoice. This, and this alone, gives true significance and security to our lives.
Genesis 15:1-2, 17-18
The Second Sunday In Lent
A Covenant Sealed By a Sacrifice
Our First Lesson today contains a bizarre and even a weird story. It sounds like an eerie tale of the occult rather than an account from Holy Scripture. God asked Abraham to bring him a cow, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon. Abraham obeyed. He brought the animals before the Lord and slaughtered them. He cut each animal in half and laid the pieces in two neat rows.
Vultures hovered and circled over the slain beasts. Abraham flung his arms in a wild frenzy driving the birds of prey away. Exhausted from his vigil, Abraham fell into a deep sleep. The sun slowly settled beneath the horizon and a dreadfully dense darkness covered the land. Then, out of nowhere, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch floated from the darkness. For a moment these two objects lingered and vacillated; then, the smoking pot and the flaming torch leisurely, but deliberately, passed between and among the carcasses of the animals that covered the ground. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the smoking pot and the flaming torch disappeared as if swallowed up by a demon of the darkness.
Now, this spooky scenario, as baffling as it may be to us, was not so baffling to Abraham. Rather, he saw this curious ceremony as a familiar ritual of covenant-making - a common spiritual experience of the divine presence. The smoking fire pot and the flaming torch were symbols that God was personally present. God was passing between and among the sacrificial animals to seal a covenant between himself and Abraham.
Before Abraham had slain the animals, the Lord came to him and said, "Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." Then, God made a promise to him that, even though he and his wife, Sarah, had been childless all through their long married life, a son would be born to them. Abraham would become the father of a mighty nation, and through him all the nations on earth would be blessed.
All the stories we read from the beginning of the Bible - the Garden of Eden, the slaying of Abel by Cain, Noah and the flood, the Tower of Babel - all of these stories are but a prologue to the profound moment when God confronted Abraham and called him to leave his native country for a new homeland: and, with the call came the promise: "I will make you a great nation and I will bless you ... and by you all the families of the earth will be blessed." This divine promise of blessing runs like a golden thread through the woven tapestry of myth and legend, poetry and history which form the content of the Old and the New Testaments.
The God who had fashioned the heavens and the earth now narrows his creative concern until it concentrates upon the solitary figure of Abraham, the father of the people whom Yahweh chose for a special task in his overall plan for history. Coming almost immediately after the tragic story of the Tower of Babel, Abraham's call is like a burst of light that illumines the whole landscape of the biblical story. In contrast to the ambitious builders at Babel who aspired to make a name for themselves, God promises that he will make Abraham's name great. The people of Babel attempted to penetrate heaven and to touch God; Abraham knelt down in obedience and was touched by God. Abraham's greatness was not in himself, but in the God who had called and chosen him.
It is important for us to note that here we are not only dealing with a biography of a man named Abraham; he is more than an individual. Abraham is a personification of all the people whom God calls and chooses to be his children. As God established a covenant of promised blessings with Abraham, God also establishes a covenant with us. Abraham is truly our father-in-the-faith. We are heirs of Abraham; and, as heirs, we share with him God's promise that we will be his people and he will be our God. We are joined together with God in one inseparable union - one family bonded together in love. God, and God alone, seals this covenant-promise with a sacrifice.
The word "sacrifice" has negative overtones for most of us. Oh, we speak about the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, particularly, in this Lenten Season. We stress in our stewardship drives that we should sacrifice our time, our talents, and our income for the church, for missions, and for social services. We sacrifice for our children. We feed them, clothe them, and send them to college. Most of our experience with sacrifice is associated with suffering and the giving up of something that we cherish and desire for ourselves. Sacrifice is conceived of as a loss incurred without an expected return. However, in the Bible, sacrifice is associated with a gift gladly given. It is an offering which creates a special communion and an in-dissolvable union with our God. In the Bible, sacrifice is a means of releasing life in order that a greater life may be given to us. The focus is not on the loss, but the focus is on what is gained by the act of sacrifice.
The offering of a sacrifice was never thought of as an act of presenting the dead carcass of an animal to God; rather, the act of sacrifice was the releasing of the animal's potent life and the offering of that life to God. This "life" was conceived to be resident in the blood. The fact that the animal died was incidental. The important thing was that "life was in the blood." What was offered to God was not dead flesh but the blood of the animal which was filled with life. The body of the animal died, but its life lived on in the blood. It was this living blood of life - this "life in the blood" - that was offered to the Lord.
Broadly speaking, there are four basic types of sacrifice in the Bible. First, there is human sacrifice. There is little direct evidence of this in Scripture. The story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to God is a familiar and classic example. However, it was well known that in Canaan, as well as throughout the ancient world, human sacrifice was a common practice. The intervention of God in the Abraham and Isaac story, where God provided a ram for the sacrifice instead of Abraham's son, ended human sacrifices in the common worship practices of the Hebrew religion.
Secondly, there is animal sacrifice. It played an essential role in the religion of Israel, and it dominated the worship of the temple. However, the pre-exilic prophets - Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah - condemned these sacrifices, and they strongly declared that animal sacrifices, even offered with the best of intentions, are less acceptable to God than the offering of a pure heart and a holy life.
This brings us to the third type of sacrifice - the bloodless sacrifice of a pure and an obedient life lived for the Lord. Paul powerfully presented this type of sacrifice when he wrote to the Christians at Rome. He appealed to the people that they should present their bodies as "a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God." This, for Paul, is the true act of spiritual worship.
The fourth type of sacrifice is unique to the Bible. It is the divine sacrifice. The whole process of sacrifice is radically reversed. Instead of the people offering sacrifices to God, it is God who offers the sacrifice of himself to his people and for his people. This is prophetically implied in our text for this morning. In the visable signs of the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch, God himself is present, and he passes between the pieces of the slain animals; thereby, he offers the sacrifice of his holy presence and, at the same time, he seals his covenant-promise of blessings and love to Abraham and to us.
The most significant sacrifice that God offers to us is on Calvary. It is so significant that it ends the mandatory rite of blood-sacrifice in the biblical history of the church. God becomes incarnate, and he willingly goes to the cross where he sheds his life-giving blood for us.
The role that sacrifices have played in the history of the Bible and, in particular, the essential element of biblical sacrifice - namely, "the life is in the blood," is essential for our understanding of the crucifixion of our Lord. Christ died. True. But, what is so often overlooked is the profoundly important fact that he shed his blood for us. His life was not taken from him on the cross: his life was released on the cross. His life was released from the limitation of his body that it might flow into our bodies; thereby, this makes us one with him and, at the same time, seals for us God's promise of life - an abundant life of blessings for us as his children.
Every time we come to the communion table, we drink the life-giving blood of our Lord. We participate in the greatest and the final blood-sacrifice of all biblical history - the sacrifice of God himself - for us! Rejoice, because the blood of God flowing within us gives us eternal life.
Our librarian at Southern Seminary has a precocious preschooler. He attended Sunday church school and listened intently as his teacher described in detail the death of Jesus. She told her students how the Roman soldiers drove nails into the wrists of Jesus and how his blood spilled out on the ground.
The next day Charlie was playing in the backyard, and he snagged his finger on a broken tree limb. Charlie watched in horror as the blood began to flow from his wound. Charlie panicked. He ran to his father, "Daddy, Daddy that tree tore a hole in me and all my blood is running out. I'm going to die like Jesus."
Dr. Fritz took his son's hand and carefully dressed the wound on the cut finger. Then, holding his son's hand in his, he said, "Charlie, many times in your life, things are going to hurt you and cut you. You might bleed, but you will not die. Because Jesus died for you, you will never have to fear death for you will always be alive in him."
How true. Because God seals his covenant of love with the death of his son, Jesus Christ, we may bleed; but, we will never have to fear death. In the Bible, death is understood as the act of being separated from God. For Abraham and for us God sealed his covenant-promise that he would never leave us or forsake us. On the cross, God shed his blood as the final sacrifice that assures us that nothing can separate us from his love. A covenant is sealed by a sacrifice. This seal can never be broken because it bears the indelible blood of God himself. It is the royal insignia of the cross, which testifies to the fact that we are one with God. The blood of Christ flows in our bodies and enlivens our lives with eternity. We may bleed, but we will never fear death. Rejoice! Death is dead.
