Division and Completion

The opening verses of 1 Corinthians describe a community descending into destructive divisions. Paul, however, offers an alternative. If the community is centered in Christ, their differences can make the community complete rather than dividing it. To illustrate this point, Deb shared the following story in Sunday’s sermon:

When I was in college, I worked for one summer as a camp counselor at an overnight Christian camp. I brought my guitar with me to play at campfire sing-alongs. There was another staff member named Jean who also played guitar, and she was much better at it than I was. The thought of being compared to Jean made me reluctant to put myself out there and play. But the thought came to me: Even if I can’t play as well as Jean, at least one more group of campers will have a guitar to sing along with around their campfire than if I let my comparative lack of skill discourage me from playing. If we all give whatever it is we have to give, the community will be made more complete. 

Death is the Seed of Life

Happy Easter from ICC! When God raised Jesus from the dead, he transformed the meaning of death for all of us who would follow. In his Easter sermon, David drew on Paul’s instight that there can be no resurrection without the crucifixion, no new life without death:

Paul said, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body” (2 Corinthians 4:10-11). St. Paul didn’t say, “We carry the resurrection of Jesus.” He said, “We carry the death of Jesus.” And he did so, expecting that “the life of Jesus body may also be revealed in our body.” Paul found that death is the seed of resurrection and life.

It is Finished

Christians reenact the Passion Narrative every year. We know that Christ’s crucifixion is not the end of the story. Yet as much as we might long to turn the page, this event has such gravity—the Son of God dying on a cross—that it cannot help but pull as backward to itself. The Gospel of John reminds of this with Jesus’s final statement, “It is finished.” Preaching on this passage, Erik contrasted what the powers who collaborated to kill Jesus might have thought these words meant with what Jesus himself was confessing:

The Romans intended crucifixion to finish people. They used this method of execution to end storylines they didn’t like. There is a paradox about crucifixions: they were meant for everyone to witness, but no one to talk about. The victim was lifted high so that everyone could see, but what they saw was revolting: a naked, bloody body, suffocating in agony. You couldn’t speak about this without ruining conversations, turning stomachs, breaking the rules of polite society. If you witnessed a crucifixion, you’d never forget it. But you might never talk about it. That is why despite thousands of crucifixions, there is so little written about them. The point was public silence: Rome wanted to utterly discredit and humiliate the victim. The empire declares: “This person, their life, their cause is finished.” “It is finished” is exactly what Rome wanted to hear, and with it all the powers of sin, death, and evil. They wanted such an admission of defeat.

Yet when Jesus proclaimed “it is finished” wasn’t an admission of defeat, it was a confession of faith. He knew his faithfulness to God meant death, but he also that God’s faithfulness to him meant life.

The Truth on Trial

David opened our Passion Series with a sermon on the trial of Jesus. Pilate asked “What is truth,” yet as judge he did not seek the truth because he was afraid of the truth. This failure revealed his weakness, possessing neither the power of a judge nor a king. Instead, the world’s true judge and king was the one he presumed to condemn:

God gave Pilate power to rule people, and with this power, he became the judge over people. Pilate’s first duty attached to the power given to him was defending and testifying to the truth. In fact, he knew everything. He knew that Jesus didn’t do anything wrong. He knew that the high priests delivered Jesus for envy. So, using his power from above, he should have released Jesus and condemned the Jewish leaders who were accusing Jesus falsely. But he didn’t have power to defend the truth. He gave up Jesus in order to protect his self-interest. He was not a truth-bearer. Although he was the last defense line of the truth, he was powerless and irresponsible. In this sense, he was not a king. But Jesus is true king. He testified to the truth and defended it until sacrificing his own life. As this truth was defended by Jesus’ blood, there is no place for a lie in this truth. And this truth is the foundation of God’s salvation, the foundation of Jesus’ gospel, and the foundation of our faith.

No Substitute for Hope

Erik brought our series on Daniel to a conclusion. Daniel’s final vision contains one of the earliest, clearest statements of a hope for resurrection in the Bible. God’s promise of raising the dead transformed the meaning of hope for a people in exile:

Confidence, optimism, positivity all have their places. The problem is that they are no substitute for hope, certainly no substitute for the hope Daniel receives from an angel and passes on to us: Hope not just for the future, but the past; not just the living, but the dead. Hope for the hopeless. We can’t find that anywhere in ourselves or in our situation – only false hopes there. True hope can only come from God, the only one with the power to make right everything that has gone wrong.

God is Ready for Your Prayers

What does one of the greatest prayers in scripture teach us about God? Preaching Daniel 9, Deb found that God can’t wait to answer our prayers:

As Daniel concludes his prayer, something remarkable happens. Before he has even finished praying, he receives a visit from the angel Gabriel. The angel says that as soon as he began to pray, a word went out; a revelation was given. God is that ready to answer prayer. He is eager to answer prayers that are aligned with Kingdom priorities and that come from a humble heart that recognizes God’s greatness and our own shortcomings.

Where Can We Find Power?

Preaching Daniel 9, a vision of kings and kingdoms falling from power, David asked: What if true power isn’t found in kings and kingdoms, but the cross of Jesus Christ?

We don’t have to have human power to fight against evil people in this world. It is because our power and freedom do not come from this world, but from God. Jesus gave his disciples the gospel of salvation and the Holy Spirit so that they would engage in spiritual battles with people, not to defeat them but to save them.

Pulling Back the Curtain

ICC is deep into Daniel’s visions. These baffle some readers and send others in an unproductive search for clues about the future. Preaching on Daniel 7, Erik showed that the most important thing that God reveals in his word is not the future, but himself. What we see can see about the future flows from what we see about the character of God. He used the image of characters on the stage to show what he meant:

That’s why Daniel’s vision of God is such a revelation. It’s a bit like a drama on stage. Imagine you’re a character in a play where you don’t know the ending but it feels like a tragedy and there’s no reason for hope. Then, for a moment, the action on stage pauses, the curtain opens behind you, and then you see all this other action that you didn’t even know was happening: stagehands preparing new sets, screenwriters impatient for the next act, and a director who has the entire story and all its performances in hand. So much more is happening than you thought, and so much more is possible. You realize, haven’t reached the conclusion, you’re not even in the final act. Everything that occurred on the stage that seemed absolutely decisive is in fact less decisive than what is going on behind the scenes. This is what “apocalypse” means: It’s a peak behind the curtain.

As Much as He Was Faithful

David preached on Daniel 6, focusing on the description of Daniel: “as much as he was faithful.” Many have wondered how Daniel could be faithful both to his God and serve in the empire that conquered his people. Here is part of David’s answer:

Faithfulness to God is not “exclusive” but is “inclusive.” It is very inclusive because we imitate God’s loving heart. For Daniel, king Darius, although he was favorable to the Jews and supported the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem (Ezra 6:14), was still a king of the Gentile kingdom that destroyed his homeland. However, Daniel was loyal to the king, working hard for him so that the king might not suffer any loss (2, 22). Daniel’s loyalty was so genuine that it won the king’s heart. When the enemies trapped Daniel to be thrown into the lions’ den, the king was greatly distressed and made every effort to rescue him. As that much, Daniel was faithful to the king, and it was because he was faithful to God.

Fear and Honor

Deb preached on the ominous story of the writing on the wall from Daniel 5, helping us consider the story from the perspective of Babylon’s Queen Mother, Nitocris. This scene is like something out of a horror movie, and the emperor Belshazzar was indeed terrified. Deb, however, imagined a more appropriate response from his mother:

But there is another kind of fear, a fear that’s more like respect. When the Hebrews say they fear God, they don’t mean that they are cowering in a corner because they expect to be harmed, but that they have a healthy respect for his power, for his authority, for his holiness. They can live and move and make decisions bearing in mind that they are under his authority, that they must answer to him. That is what it means to fear God.

Tumbling toward Justice

Many people take a look at the news today and wonder: Is God really in control? The book of Daniel was written to help answer that question. It teaches people to see God at work at times when things seem decidedly out of control. Preaching on chapter 4, Erik showed how God is the author of history and that his favorite plotline is knocking down the high and lifting up the low. But this leads to much different expectations about the course history will take:

Part of our problem is that we confuse progress and providence.  There is a famous Martin Luther King, Jr., quote, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”? People hear this and imagine steady handed progress: every day, every month, every year things getting a little better. And then we despair when history doesn’t seem to be moving forward anymore, but rather sideways or backwards. Think of how many people today are paralyzed because evils they thought were defeated—from racism to measles—are gaining strength again. But read the full quote, and you can see that King wasn’t talking about progress, but providence, and providence doesn’t move in a straight line:

Those of us who call the name of Jesus Christ find something at the center of our faith which forever reminds us that God is on the side of truth and justice. Good Friday may occupy the throne for a day, but ultimately it must give way to the triumph of Easter. Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ arose and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

That’s not a straight line of progress. Providence bends, twists; spirals, turns upside down. Providence tumbles. Providence is cross shaped.

Thin Ice

With storms, literal and figurative, raging across the country this weekend, we took a break from Daniel. David preached on true peace, taking as his text Jesus’s calming of the stormwaters in Mark 4:35-41. Here, God’s word teaches us that true peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather a solid footing that allows us to face conflict without fear. David contrasted this with human peace using the image of ice:

Human peace is like thin ice. Even before tasting the joy of peace, we become anxious to keep the fragile peace, and this makes us even more anxious. This is false peace. False peace comes when we rely on false God.

Knowledge is Power

David preached on Daniel 2, one of many dream scenes in the book. He showed how Daniel teaches us that true power resides in knowledge of God:

The language of worldly power is violence and fear. It frightens people and shuts their hearts. In this sense, Nebuchadnezzar is not a real king who is supposed to shepherd his people. But Daniel, though he was a powerless captive, is a real king through his influence. As he had God’s truth and love in him, he had the real power to open people’s hearts and move their minds. God rules people in the world through his Spirit and his angels, inspiring and influencing them and moving them as he desires. For this work, God also uses humble people whom God can use freely as his instruments.

Stolen from God

Deb introduced our new series on the book of Daniel. Daniel 1 begins with a catastrophe for the people of Israel: conquest by the empire of Babylon. For God’s people, exile wasn’t just an effort to take them away from their land, but to take them from their God. Deb called attention to the names of the characters:

Many Hebrew names end in -el, such as Daniel, or -iah, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. The Hebrew meaning of El is God, and -iah is the first syllable of God’s name, Yahweh. So, just as the Temple bears God’s name, so his people also bear his name. Daniel’s name means God is my judge. Hananiah means Yahweh has been gracious. Mishael means who is like God, and Azariah means Yahweh has helped. The Babylonian names they were given made reference to Babylonian gods. By replacing their Hebrew names, their captors were taking away their Hebrew identity and pushing them to assimilate into the Babylonian culture, including its religious practices.

Astronomer's Gospel

Merry Christmas from ICC! Erik preached on John 1, where the evangelist tells the Christmas story though a kind of metaphysical poetry. Here is Erik’s conclusion:

In Revelation, John describes Jesus as the bright morning star that will eventually shine so brightly that the sun and the moon will become invisible. But until then, there is a strange sense in which we need darkness the same way astronomers and navigators do. The darker things are, the easier it is to see the light incarnate in Jesus’s life, and to see it for what it is: our salvation. Christmas is an acknowledgment is Christ’s life finds us less like sunlight than starlight: it doesn’t arrive as a light that dispels the dark, but rather a light that leads us through the dark. Yet God’s promise to us is that death has no more power to extinguish that life than all the darkness in the universe has to extinguish the light of a single star. The first axiom of divine physics: a light shines out of the darkness and the darkness has not, will not, cannot overcome it. Has not, will not, cannot. 

Light among lights

David preached on Jesus’s promise that he came as a light in John 12. Many fail to see this light not because of too much darkness, but competing lights. To illustrate this, David drew from the film Papillion about two men imprisoned on an island:

Dega found life in the island, giving up the hope of escape. He learned how to survive in the island. The more he learned, the more he loved the life in the island. He settled there. In his eyes, it was death to get out of the island. To him, the island and everything in it was his life and his light. Papillon had an exactly opposite perspective. To him, the island and everything in it was death and darkness…His life was on the other side of the sea…To him, the sea was not a boundary confining him within the island. It was a passage that would set him free and lead him to the other land. Papillon had this hope in his heart, and he believed the hope. And this hope was his light. This hope opened his eyes and gave him wisdom on what to do. He made a float that would save him from the violent sea water.

***

Papillon made two floats, one for himself and the other for his friend Dega. And he invited Dega to join his journey for freedom beyond the sea. In a sense, Papillon was Christ for Dega. But Dega, complacent with his life in the island, rejected the invitation. Although the two had long been close friends, the time came for them to part from each other.

David concluded his sermon with Jesus’s warning in Luke 17: “I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.”

Life to the Full Includes Death

Erik preached on Jesus’s promise in John 10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Yet in this passage about abundant life, Jesus also prepares his followers for his own death, teaching them that the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. What does death have to do with abundant life? Here’s part of Erik’s answer:

Last week, we dedicated a baby, and one of the questions we asked the new parents was: “Will you raise your child to take up her cross and imitate Christ.” It’s such a strange thing, to wish a cross on this child. Part of me wants all that other stuff for her: health, wealth, relationships, achievement. But we know that Christ is the source of life. Thus, true life is found in following him to his cross so that we might join him in his resurrection…This is in fact a Christmas theme, though not one you’re likely to see in many advertisements or holiday cards. We sang “What Child is this?” this morning, which is about Mary holding her newborn child, but looking forward to his death: “Nails, spears shall pierce him through, the cross he bears for me, for you.” But that death meant life. And so it is that we find fullness of life not by building it up for ourselves but by laying it down for others. This is the narrow gate through which the good shepherd leads.

Seeing is not Believing

Deb preached on John 6, where Jesus declares that he has come to do the will of the father. This includes feeding, healing, and other miraculous signs. Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to believe in Jesus if we saw his power with our own two eyes, yet Deb noted how many who saw these signs failed to see where they were pointing:

These people had all seen firsthand the feeding of the 5,000 the day before. Yet, they ask him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?” They seem to have come away from the miraculous feeding . . . not terribly impressed. What will Jesus’s next trick be? They may still have bread crumbs in the folds of their tunics from one of Jesus’s most well-known miracles, but that wasn’t enough for them to believe.

The key to seeing and believing, Deb suggested, is gratitude.

The Prince of Peace Carries a Sword

Continuing our series on Jesus’s “I Have Come To…” statements, Erik preached his surprising, disconcerting clarification: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” How could the Prince of Peace promised by Isaiah say this? Because true peace is divisive:

There’s an illustration from the book of Jeremiah: “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” If you break a bone and don’t re-set it, your body will heal around it. It’s called “malunion” and often you can just live with it, though the bone will never work like normal and is prone to reinjury. The only way to fix a malunion is to re-break the bone and re-set it – a corrective osteotomy. People with malunions are understandably hesitant to have them fixed: easier to live with a broken bone that’s healed than re-break the bone. Jeremiah tells us peace is like this. Sin breaks our relationships with God, one another, and creation, but we find ways to build peace for ourselves around those broken relationships: from avoidance to violence; don’t-ask-don’t-tell or mutually assured destruction, ideological sorting to well-armed police. It happens in families, communities, nations, and churches. Understandably, we prefer this peace to fixing what is broken. But it is “healing wounds lightly,” and saying “peace, peace” when there is no peace.

Defying Gravity

David preached on Jesus’s declaration in Matthew 9, “I have come to save sinners.” He described sin as a law like gravity, and then contrasted the way people try to defy this law by their own power and those who look to Christ for transformation. To do that, he drew an illustration from the profound children’s novel Hope For the Flowers by Trina Paulus":

In the book, Hope for the Flowers, caterpillars climb up a high column, which is actually a pile of squirming, pushing caterpillars. They do in order to find a more meaningful life. They believe that if they reach the top of the pillar, which is hidden in the cloud, they will see something awfully good. So, they climb up and up without knowing what they will have up there. And they are all under the law of gravity. They try to get higher, pushing, kicking, and stepping on others. But even if they get higher through all these efforts, they are still under the law of gravity, and they cannot defy the force. In fact, if they get higher, they are in higher risk of falling. A caterpillar cannot escape from the law of gravity even when it reaches the top of the pillar. And there is nothing awfully good there. So, even the best caterpillar is in its worst. But when a caterpillar becomes a cocoon and then a butterfly, its life is changed dramatically. It comes to have two wings, with which it can fly, defying the law of gravity. For the butterfly, being high or low doesn’t mean much. Its life itself is already beautiful and glorious. It doesn’t have to push and kick others in order to get higher. It has its own wings that bring its body up high. Although it is still under the influence of gravity, it can defy the force and fly with its wings.