God is Love

God is Love
Good Friday Sermon
April 14, 2017
The Rev. Charles Barebo

God is love and nowhere is this more true than on Good Friday. For God gave his only son so that those who believe in him would not perish. For God to have endured Good Friday seems an incredible witness to His love for us. That love, to sacrifice his only son so that we might truly live, is incredible. . For those of you who are parents, you know how we  suffer when one of your children suffers. For me it would be better that I undergo the sickness, pain or trauma than to witness the suffering of either of my children. When I meditate on Good Friday I am amazed by the love that God shows for us and the incongruity in our response.

The love story starts in the first chapter of Genesis. After God has perfected creation he creates mankind, the image bearer. Our role is to enjoy God’s presence, to worship and celebrate, to procreate, to take responsibility for creation and to reflect our creator’s love back to creation. What an incredible blessing….to celebrate, to create, to worship, to be responsible for the Garden and to reflect God’s love to the rest of creation. It seems too good to be true. And then God visits the Garden to spend time with man, to hang out and enjoy our company.

Something about the way we’re wired makes it hard for us to stay in our role as image-bearers. Perhaps because we are made in God’s image we forget who we are and the role we are to play. For over 4,000 years we have sinned, that is strayed from our role, from our relationship with our Creator. Time after time God comes back to rescue us.

Sin isn’t a fussy list of dietary do’s and don’ts. Sin is when we turn our back on God, when we hurt people or when we worship something that isn’t meant to be worshipped. And man’s history is replete with examples of all three. When I talk about worshipping something that was never intended to be worshipped I mean things like position and power. We call that sin idolatry. Things never intended to be deified and worshipped. Yet the list of our idols is a long one: money, power, position, sex, food, wine and the list goes on and on. And this sin has been leading people astray ever since we left the Garden.

So on Good Friday we find something has gone terribly wrong. The story has reversed, and become corrupted. The love story that begins in a garden sees the beginning of the end in a garden. In Genesis God goes to the garden to find man while on Good Friday we find that man has come to the garden, Gethsemane, to find God. But man’s intentions are to destroy God. Jesus threatens the comfortable position and power of the chief priests and scribes. And these sins the idolatry of power, position, money and sex are the foundations of man’s sad turn from the garden.

This worship of position and power has led the Jewish nation to Golgotha. Pinioned under the crushing weight of the Roman occupation, the false Jewish king Herod and the chief priests and scribes have sold out their God and his people to keep their power and privilege. They condemn an innocent man, the true Jewish King to a horrific death, so that they may continue to enjoy power, money and position. Is there any sin greater? To deny God, to manipulate His people, to condemn an innocent man so that they can enjoy fine clothes, good food and money is the essence of evil.

The farcical judgement and trial of Jesus by the chief priests and then Pilate is all about worshiping the idol of power and privilege. All evil combined that day to overthrow the Kingdom of God and his son. And so, Jesus is called the King of the Jews by Pilate. The pretenders mock him and scourge him. He is stripped, beaten, and spat upon.  His throne will be the cross. He has known of his fate and announced it no less than four times to his disciples. He accepts his fate and is nailed to the tree.

When Jesus dies on the cross that first Good Friday something happens. The cross is the moment when the world suddenly changed – inaugurating God’s redemption plan for the world. Jesus taught his disciples to pray “your kingdom come on earth as in heaven.” And Jesus has ushered in the age of the kingdom on earth. The moment of Jesus’ death the world becomes a different place, for the kingdom has indeed come. The victory of death is shattered forever. While the resurrection will be the first sign that God’s new plan is underway. Good Friday is the day the revolution began, the revolution against evil and idolatry.

So, the story of God’s love continues, until the end of time. God’s work for his beloved, we, the image bearers, is now clear. We are to bring the kingdom to life on earth. Good Friday is the day the love revolution began. God is love.

Amen

The Rev. Charles Barebo, Deacon

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday has been a day of excitement as long as I can remember. As a boy, it was the great sword fights when the palm fronds and the eager anticipation of next week’s egg hunt and candy. Today’s gospel tells us about this unexpected and triumphal entry of Jesus entering the Jerusalem. People thronging along the roads, placing their cloaks on the roads, waving palms, singing hymns, there was a festival feeling in the air. Their excitement was only matched by their expectations for this new Messiah or prophet. It’s easy for us to underestimate the emotion that was in the air.

I’ve been through a Palm Sunday much like the one Matthew describes. We were in Kajo Keji on our annual inspection trip about 9 years ago. The parallels between that first Palm Sunday and that Sunday were remarkable. Their new bishop had been elected but had yet been enthroned. The entire diocese was at a fever pitch. The country was voting on independence that month, New Hope had completed three buildings at the college and our first two primary schools. Samaritan’s Purse had committed to building 80 churches in the diocese. In fact, the new bishop was making a visit that Sunday to consecrate and open the first of these new churches. For the first time in over 50 years it appeared that God was bringing his full blessings on His people and they were rejoicing.

From five miles, out people were walking along the road to the village. About two miles out they were lining the road, waving entire palm branches, covering the road with palm fronds, jumping up and down, carrying banners, playing guitars and drums, singing hymns and shouting. A half mile from town the road was completely packed with celebrating people. We got out of the car, and walking behind a tall cross, drummers and hundreds of singing people paraded to the new church began.

Wherever Jesus went the kingdom of God was at hand. And that steamy Sunday morning in Kajo Keji I tell you the kingdom was at hand. I felt it stronger and closer than ever before or since. The spirit was palpable, it was oozing.  The Kingdom is the place we aspire to; it is the place where we want to be. It is indescribably right, so different than what I dreamed for or expected. It is a place of pure joy, peace knowing you are in the presence of God. The Kingdom was at hand on that Palm Sunday.

Like the people thronging on the roads to Jerusalem, the people in Kajo Keji had a different set of expectations for Jesus and the Kingdom than Jesus held for himself. James, John and their mother had a set of expectations for Jesus. Their expectations were about place and power. The people want their new Messiah to be a great military leader. One like Judas Maccabees who will have military victories and cast out the Romans, Herod, the chief priests. But the meaning Jesus attaches to this triumphal entry is quite different from the meaning the crowd has for their messiah.

People turn to God when things get bad. Give us peace now, heal my diabetes, protect my pension, don’t let it rain on our vacation. Give me a job tomorrow. Jesus intends to answer these and all our prayers. He doesn’t wait for us to become pure and able to look him in the eye. He has come to rescue the sick and poor and the lost. It’s not the healthy who need the doctor but the sick.

Jesus answers the people dreams in his own way. The people are asking for a messiah but a messiah on their terms. Jesus will tell them that Jerusalem is under God’s judgement. They want an enthroned messiah but this one will be enthroned on the cross. They want to be rescued from evil and oppression but Jesus will rescue them in full measure not by merely rolling back the Romans and Herod. Jesus will say yes to their prayers at the deepest level. But it will look completely different from what they imagined.

When you invite Jesus to help he will do so much more thoroughly than what we imagined, more deeply than perhaps what we wanted. We may not recognize at the answer to our prayers at first. The story of Palm Sunday is the story of Jesus surprising triumphal entry is a lesson in the mismatch between our expectations and God’s answer. While the people will be disappointed at a surface level the moment Jesus arrives is the moment that salvation is at hand. To learn that lesson is a growth in faith. Let’s relish the feeling of God’s Kingdom entering Jerusalem that Sunday. It is a taste of what heaven will be!