God's Broken People

If this seems a little strange at first, bear with me.  I want to begin with one of Shel Silverstein’s humorous poems, but one that leads to a profound concept.  It is titled: Hector the Collector.

Hector the Collector collected bits of string,
Collected dolls with broken heads
And rusty bells that would not ring.
Pieces out of picture puzzles,
Bent-up nails and ice-cream sticks,
Twists of wires, worn-out tires,
Paper bags and broken bricks.
Old chipped vases, half shoelaces,
Gatlin’ guns that wouldn’t shoot,
Leaky boats what wouldn’t float
And stopped up horns that wouldn’t toot.
Butter knives that had no handles,
Copper keys that fit no locks,
Rings that were too small for fingers,
Dried-up leaves and patched-up socks.
Worn out belts that had no buckles,
‘Lectric trains that had no tracks,
Airplane models, broken bottles,
Three-legged chairs and cups with cracks.
Hector the Collector loved these things with all his soul–
Loved them more than shining diamonds,
Loved them more than glistenin’ gold.
Hector called to all the people,
“Come and share my treasure trunk!”
And all the silly sightless people
Came and looked ... and called it junk.    (Where the Sidewalk Ends, 46)

Jesus tended to collect broken people, people who were marred and scarred by failings of all kinds.  Peter the impetuous, Simon the insurgent Zealot, Matthew the despised tax collector, a woman of the street, and many others.  But, like Hector, he “loved them more than shining diamonds, loved them more than glistenin’ gold.”.

Later, when Paul looked at the composition of the church in Corinth he said about them: “not many of you are wise, mighty or noble.  But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen ...” (1 Cor 2:26-28).

A few chapters later his description of these people was more precise and graphic: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived.   Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you (1 Cor 6:9-10.).  He sounds like Hector the Collector.  God gathered a church full of sinners and called them saints and the “silly sightless” world doesn’t understand.

Paul knew this and followed his description with these words: “And such were some of you.  But you were washed ... sanctified ... justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God (6:11).  Washed by the blood of Christ and in the waters of baptism, we gather at this table as his broken people made whole by the power of Jesus Christ.  Here we celebrate being cleansed, justified and made whole.  We give thanks that he loves us “more than shining diamonds and more than gilstenin’ gold.”

A Place to Come Back To

        Dr Bob Wetzel, Chancellor of Emmanuel Christian Seminary in Johnson City, Tenn., wrote in the seminary newsletter about the decision he and his wife Bonnie made several years ago to be cremated.  When they told their girls it resulted in a lot of conversation.  The first obvious question his girls asked was, "What shall we do with the ashes?"  Bob said, "You would have to understand our family to appreciate the macabre humor that followed.  One possibility was to throw them off the bank in the woods near our home of almost 50 years.  Or the ashes could be taken back to the home of our youth in Western Kansas and let the prevailing southwest wind blow them as part of a typical dust storm."

        "The humor continued with even more ridiculous possibilities for 'waste management.'  But then our older daughter became serious and said, 'No, we need a place to come back to.'  Then," Bob said, "I thought of how I always visited my parents' grave whenever we visited Western Kansas.  Nearby is the grave of our son who died in infancy.  Yes, I had a place to come back to, to remember, and somehow say to them, 'You are remembered and loved.'"

        After Jesus died, they put him in a borrowed tomb.  It became for a couple of days "the place to come back to."  And several disciples went there -- but it was empty.  Since then disciples go to the "tomb" in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem but he isn't there either.  Some go to the beautiful garden of the tomb in Jerusalem and while it feels more authentic, it too does not qualify as "a place to come back to."

Jesus must have known that his disciples would need a place to come back to.  A place that actually exists, a place that is tangible and real.  A place that every disciples knows about and knows just where it is.  And a place where he is not absent.  This could well be one of the reasons for giving us the Lord's Supper.  It certainly serves this purpose.

        Frances and I have taken communion thousands of times in our home churches over the years but we have also taken it in a Lutheran Church in Wisconsin, a Cathedral in England, among the ruins of ancient Corinth, and many other places.  But wherever the Lord's Supper is observed it is the place to come back to, to remember, and somehow to say to him, "you are remembered and loved."

        For this reason, as we come to the Table, we remember his words:  "This is my body, given for you ... This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood ... Do this in remembrance of me."

"The Medicine of Immortality"

        In John 6:54 Jesus made this remarkable statement: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."  An early church leader who may have studied under John at Ephesus and would have known this teaching well was Ignatius of Antioch.  Shortly after the turn of the first century he was the leading bishop, or elder, of the church at Antioch of Syria.  He was arrested by the Roman authorities and sent to Rome where he died in the Colosseum as a Christian martyr during the reign of Emperor Trajan.  As he traveled toward Rome he wrote several letters and one was sent to Ephesus where he might have been with John.  Ignatius may have been thinking of John 6:54 when he said this about the Lord's Supper: " ... and break one loaf, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote which wards off death but yields continuous life in union with Jesus Christ."

        I remembered his words one night last week.  About a month ago I went to see my primary care doctor for a physical exam.  I have been blessed with good health and had not seen my doctor for a long time.  Strangely, after getting a good report, within two weeks I was struck down by a vicious stomach bug, sprained a shoulder muscle, and then developed a kind of asthmatic bronchitis.  I don't like being sick.  I am not used to it.  It is an unpleasant experience, as I'm sure all of you know.  It drove me back to my doctor and to my pharmacist.

        Last week in the middle of the night I was thinking about this and at the same time wondering what to use for today's communion meditation when the idea struck me that there is a good analogy here.  Sin is like a sickness in several ways.  It is like a sickness in that it affects all of us.  Is there anyone here who has not been sick?  And so it is with sin.  As Paul said, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

        Sin is like a sickness because it leaves us feeling terrible.  We hurt in a lot of ways.  And sin is like a sickness because it makes us do what we don't want to do and keeps us from doing what we want to do.  Paul said exactly that about sin in Romans 7 and then raised this plaintive question: "Wretched man that I am!  Who will set me free from the body of this death?"  Which points to another similarity.  Sin, like sickness, leads to death.  If one sickness doesn't get you, another one will.  And, of course, the Bible is clear on the ultimate effect of sin.  As Paul said in Romans 5:12, "... death spread to all, because all have sinned."

        When Paul cried out, "Who will set me free from the body of this death?" he answered his own question immediately with the exclamation, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord."  Sin, like sickness, requires both a physician and a pharmacist.  In Jesus Christ we have both.  As we come to this table he is our Good Physician, he is our "Medicine of Immortality."  "This," he said of the bread, "is my body...";  "this," he said of the cup, "is my blood."  And to us all he says, 'Eat, Drink, and Live forevermore.'

A THING OF BEAUTY

       There was nothing beautiful about a Roman cross.  It was made out of rough lumber, a simple cross beam, either at the top or nailed on part way down.  Some had a protruding piece at the bottom where the victim could rest his feet.  Crosses were not attractive things that you would use to decorate your house.

       Nor was the person hanging there a thing of beauty.  A beaten, bloody body is not a pleasant sight.  In a prophetic word about the suffering servant Isaiah said, "he had no beauty that we should look upon him" (53:2).

       But today the cross is used as a thing of beauty.  I tried to find a picture of a typical Roman cross on the internet but what I found looked too nice.  We use precious metals to make it into jewelry with which we adorn our bodies.  Or we use fine lumber and make beautiful replicas to decorate our churches.

       For a long time this struck me as ironic.  Picturing or thinking of the cross as beautiful surely must be misleading.  How can a cruel and ugly instrument of execution be turned into a thing of beauty?  How can we do such a thing?

       Well, we can't -- but God can.  He transformed it by placing Jesus upon it.  In his book, Beauty Will Save The World, Brian Zahnd points out: "The unique form of Christianity is the cruciform -- Christ upon the cross, arms outstretched in offered embrace, forgiving the world of its sins.  This is the beauty that saves the world, and the symbol of this saving grace is the cross."

       He goes on to say: "That the Roman cross, an instrument of physical torture and psychological terror, could ever become an object of beauty representing faith, hope and love is an amazing miracle of transformation.  Every cross adorning a church is in itself a sermon -- a sermon proclaiming that if Christ can transform the Roman instrument of execution into a thing of beauty, there is hope that in Christ all things can be made beautiful" (60).

       However, it must be said, that to see the beauty of the cross in all of its glory, as with many beautiful images, we must stand in the right place.  It must be viewed from this side of the resurrection.  It must be seen through the prism of the resurrection.  From that perspective we can join with the hymn writer to say:

In the old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,

A wondrous beauty I see.

For twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died

To pardon and sanctify me.

As we see him on the cross let us also hear his words spoken at the last supper: 'this is my body, given for you; this ... is my blood shed for you.'  How beautiful is that!

"ALL THINGS NEW"

Today, in our series of 31 studies in The Story, we have come to the end, which, in some ways, is only the beginning.  In reviewing Revelation 21 I was struck by verse 5, "He who sits on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.'"  Note that he says, "all things new, " and not "all new things."  There is some continuity implied.  This led me to look at what all of these "things made new" might be.  And this led me to a much deeper appreciation of what must be included when we hear Jesus say, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you" (Lk 22:20).  Here, in brief, is the journey that I took through the New Testament looking at these "things made new."

It begins at the end.  In Revelation 21:2 we see a new Jerusalem, the holy city, that encompasses the entire world of God's people and in which there is no evil.

Just before that we see in Revelation 21:1, "A new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and first earth have passed away, ...".  Here is the location of the new Jerusalem -- a new heaven and a new earth.

A new heaven, new earth, and new Jerusalem require a different kind of resident.  Thus, we have Paul saying in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "if anyone is in Christ he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come."  To be this new creature, Jesus said, requires a new birth.  As he told Nicodemus, "You must be born anew (again, from above) of water and the Spirit" (Jn 3:3,5).

And this results in a new name.  In Revelation 3:12 the Son of Man, the Lord of the church, promises: "He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God .... I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem.  And I will write on him my new name."

It was to make all of this possible that Jesus gave us a new covenant.  The nature of a covenant is to bind together two or more parties.  In the new covenant we are bound together with God and with one another.  Thus, the Lord's supper becomes a "communion," a "participation," a "fellowship."

And in this fellowship all of these "things made new" are already upon us.  Already we are "new creatures in Christ."  Already we are residents of and have a foretaste of the new heaven and new earth and of the new Jerusalem.  All because in our baptism we have said yes to the new covenant provided for us by the one who said, "this cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you."

This calls for a celebration.  Lets do it now as we partake of the Lord's Supper.

ON SEEING JESUS

        Do you tend to be more right brain oriented in the way you think, or left brain?  That is, do you think in pictures and images or in more didactic, logical ways?  Even those who think in more abstract terms than in pictures can still conjure up an image of something.  If I say, I can see in my mind's eye the foam flying as a huge wave crashes into the rocks at Depoe Bay, you can probably see one too -- maybe not at Depoe Bay but someplace in your experience.

      When Jesus took the bread and the cup at the Last Supper and said, "Do this in remembrance of me," how do you think he meant that?  He was a Jewish man speaking to Jewish people.  It is well known among students of how people think that there is a difference between Western, or Greek ways of thinking, and Eastern or Semitic ways of thinking.  Its the difference between Aristotelian logic and prophetic imagery.

      When Jesus said, "remember me," I don't think he was saying, "remember the main points in my sermon on the mount."  Or, "be sure you can boil down each parable to a single proposition."  He probably meant, remember me as a person -- what I did, how I acted, how I felt, and how I related to people.  Remember what I was really like -- who I was.

      How can we do this?  We can think in pictures, and pictures are created by stories.  Can you see him at age 12, sitting in the Temple area, talking to learned teachers who were amazed at his understanding and his answers?  Here is a sharp, perceptive person.  Or can you see him kneeling at the tomb of Lazarus and weeping?  Here is deep grief and sorrow.  Can you see him looking out over a huge crowd of people, most of them too poor to bring a lunch with them, and saying, "give them something to eat?"  Here is compassion.

      On my computer I have hundreds of photos, organized into folders.  Some for family, others for relatives, and so on.  One of my favorites contains pictures of golf courses I have played.  I use it as a screen saver and the pictures play across the computer reminding me of beautiful places where I have enjoyed a good walk -- if not a good game.  Frances has a more often used place for pictures that remind us of our grandchildren and others -- the refrigerator door.

      In our minds, we need to have a folder of Jesus pictures.  I'm sure that you already have one, but it can strengthened.  How?  By reading the Gospels and when you come to a story, stop and picture it in your mind.  Don't try to intellectualize it so much as to simply notice the action, the interchange of words, the reactions of people to Jesus, how he related to them, and how he might have sounded as he spoke.  Let the story come alive in your mind and you will develop a reservoir of pictures that will remind you of him.

      To be sure, the cross and all that he went through on our behalf is primary.  As we see him hanging there, we hear his words, "this is my body, give for you;  this is my blood shed for you; do this in remembrance of me."

PARDON ACCEPTED

When is a pardon not a pardon?

Andrew Jackson was our seventh President; he served from 1829 to 1837.  His nickname was "Old Hickory," and he is well remembered for his exploits in the war of 1812, particularly the Battle of New Orleans.  He was a rough-hewn Tennessee farmer, and he changed, at least temporarily, the way the Presidency was used and viewed by people.

In 1830, Jackson had an experience which, so far as I know, has never befallen another President.  A man named George Wilson held up a coach carrying the U.S. mail, and in the process shot and killed the driver.  He was tried and convicted, and sentenced to hang.  For reasons we do not know, President Jackson issued a Presidential pardon for Wilson.  But a strange thing happened -- Wilson refused the pardon.  He was guilty, and he did not feel that he deserved a pardon.

Jackson was perplexed.  He asked the Supreme Court to rule on the matter.  Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the Court's response: "A pardon is merely a scrap of paper unless it is accepted by the pardoned."  Jackson's pardon of Wilson was worthless because Wilson refused it.

Micah 7:18 says, "Who is a God like thee, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of his possession?  He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in unchanging love."

God's pardon is far more enduring than a "scrap of paper," but it isn't a pardon until we accept it.  No matter how willing God is to forgive, his forgiveness is of no value to us unless we accept it.  We do that initially when we accept Christ as our Savior, and we accept it again each time we come to the Table, remembering the sacrifice that Jesus made for us and renewing our commitment to live as He would have us live.  As with George Wilson, if we do not accept the pardon, the sentence stands.

(My thanks to Mel Mead who first used this meditation and credited Hugh Poland, Secret Place, Oct 10, 2006, for the original idea).