How Can We Live?

Reference Ezekiel 33:7-11

Particularly focus on these words "Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How can we live?"

The short answer to that question is, we can’t. Sin destroys us. Sin kills us. As Paul writes in Romans 3 the wages of sin is death and this is true for all who have sinned. It was true for Adam and Eve in Eden. It was true for Moses in Egypt and the wilderness. It was true for David and Solomon. It was true for Jesus disciples. It was true for Augustine, it was true for Thomas Aquinas, it was true for Luther, it was true for Bonhoeffer and it is true for us. Sin causes death.

But the long answer to the question how can we live is we can, and we see a hint of it in the imagery created by Ezekiel. It gives us a beautiful connection point to how we will not rot away from our sin being upon us. How is that? It exists as Jesus Christ, true God and true man comes into our world and takes our sin, that sin which is causing us to rot away and puts it on himself and allows it to rot him away, allows it to kill him. How then can we live? If this sin was taken from us and it killed our God, how can we hope to survive? How can we live? Because he didn’t stay dead. He conquered death. He rose from death to life and not just another mortal life where he would die again, no. An eternal life. A life he gives to you and to me freely.

What amazing news this is, but this text keeps going to speak of how the Lord does not take pleasure in the death of wicked people. He wishes that they would turn from their ways that will cause death and live. We as humans are not as generous as God. After all, when we’re watching a movie and the good side defeats the bad side, by killing them, we rejoice. We cheer that once again good conquered evil. But when we see an evil character turn into a good character, we’re confused, and mistrust them. We refuse to believe it is possible and we’re still hoping in the back of our mind that they perhaps die. Sure there are times when we rejoice in the turning, when we know it is genuine. The best example is from Star Wars Episode VI, Return of the Jedi when Darth Vader throws the Emperor into the giant space hole, but what are we rejoicing in, that Vader has turned or that the Emperor is dead, probably a bit of both.

For a more modern and bit more complicated example. I'll refer you to two scenes from the first of the Lord of the Rings movies, the Fellowship of the ring.

In the first scene you’ll see Boromir, the character in question, and Frodo one of the “good guys.” Frodo has this powerful weapon, the One Ring and Boromir has sworn to protect Frodo as he seeks to destroy this ring. The first scene is an altercation between them regarding the ring.

The second is self explanatory.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (extended edition) disc 2:

1:13:55-1:16:20

1:25:54-1:28:34

Aragorn tells Boromir that he has fought bravely and kept his honor, and perhaps that is true. But Boromir is also right. He has failed. He has failed them all by succumbing to the temptations of the ring and wanting the power for himself, even if it is for the good of his people. He has still failed his friends who he swore to protect. He became enemy to Frodo when he promised to help him.

As Boromir is about to die he loses all hope, believing the world of men will fall, all will come to darkness and his city to ruin. But his hope, his faith is restored in his true king, Aragorn, who promises to not let his city fall or his people fail.

In the first scene, Boromir’s hope was in the ring, powerful indeed, but as Frodo says later to Boromir’s brother Faramir, “The Ring will not save Gondor (his home country) it has only the power to destroy.”

This is the truth of the law for us. The law has power, but for us who are sinners it has only the power to convict us of our sin. It cannot save us. It is beyond our reach.

I think the beginning of one of Aragorn’s lines is the most poignant and best connection to Christ. “I do not know what strength is in my blood…” He’s right to doubt. He is a man, he is mortal. He has limits, he has weaknesses. But for Boromir, in middle earth, there is no-one better to put hope in than Aragorn.

But we on real planet earth do have something better than a mere man. We have Jesus Christ, both man and God. How good it is then that we know the strength that is in our King’s blood. We know that Christ’s blood has the power to forgive sin and grant eternal life. And that blood was spilled on the cross out of love to do just that for us, for all of us, whether wicked or good or any combination of the two. As God lives, He does not delight in our death, whether wicked or good, but that all turn to him for salvation and truly live with him unto eternity. Amen.

No Soup For You!

Reference: Romans 11:1-32

Today we’re going to focus on the first few words from Romans 11 “I ask then, has God rejected his people? By no means!”

The word reject struck me as the most intense and vigorous word in this reading, I will be hovering around that word quite a bit.

In Greek it is Aposato – to thrust away, to push back, to push off, to reject.

Reference the Greek

When the question comes “did God reject his people?” It seems there is an understanding there that perhaps he should have, but he didn’t. Perhaps rejection was deserved, but it didn’t come. While at the same time, the emphatic “By no means” stands to say, are you crazy? God is God, he is not a God of rejection. He is a God who welcomes, a God who accepts, a God who pardons.

Rejection, as I see it, is something that we tend to fear from our fellow human beings. We fear that our applications to grad school or a new job will be rejected. We fear that a paper we’ve written will be rejected and given back to us for more work. We fear our spouses and significant others will reject us for our callous, selfish behavior.

Anyone who has ever played basketball or volleyball can tell that being blocked or “rejected” is one of the worst feelings in any sport. It is being denied something that you thought was a sure bet. Something you were confident in, something perhaps that had worked before, but now has failed utterly and completely. Rejection is active. A person needs to go out of their way to reject something. A center in basketball in order to reject another player, must make great effort and have precise timing to successfully reject an opposing player.

However, very often we tend not to so much fear of God rejecting us, rather we fear the possibility of him forsaking us. We know we’re not capable of making it on our own and we need God, that is why it is so comforting that he tells us that he will never leave us, nor forsake us.

Forsaking something is passive. All one has to do is nothing. When aid is asked for it is not given. It is turning away from someone when they are most in need of help.

The text today deals with rejection, not forsaking, so for an example of Rejection today, we turn to a man who is known throughout the world as a rejecter. A man who can refuse any one at any time for any reason he chooses. Of course I’m talking about the Soup Nazi.

Clip…

3:27-4:19 – George and Jerry
7:43-8:50 – George and Elaine

The Soup Nazi accepts and rejects his customers based on how well they follow his ordering procedure. When you walk in, move immediately to the right, step to the counter, state the soup you want loudly and clearly, put the money on the counter, move to the left, receive, leave, no compliments, no questions, no other words.

Sound like God’s Law to anyone else? A set of rules that you must follow perfectly to attain your goal. In the case of the Soup Nazi, this is a mulligatawny, crab bisque or jambalaya, in the case of God it is heaven. Somehow people managed to actually get soup from time to time from the Soup Nazi. In the case of God’s Law, none of us are so fortunate and how terrifying when the stakes are so much higher than soup, even if it is the best soup in the world. We fail on a daily basis to keep God’s Law and deserve to be rejected by him for such errors, but God sends his only Son Jesus Christ into the world, to keep that Law that we so miserably fail to keep. Moreover, Jesus Christ offers himself up to be rejected by us undeservedly forsaken in our place, as he cries out to his Father from the cross, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

The people of earth rejected Jesus. We did not believe he was God and actively rejected him so aggressively that we killed him. And God stood by doing nothing to stop us from rejecting Jesus and he forsook his only Son.
How tragic that they only person of earth who deserved to be accepted by humankind was rejected and the same person, being the only one who deserved to be saved from death by God is the only one truly forsaken.

Indeed since Christ was forsaken by God, we no longer are under that sentence of being forsaken. Christ took that punishment of being forsaken away from us, on the cross and now when we face death, we know that it is not a permanent death, but rather a death that leads to the resurrection through our Savior Jesus.

Hydrated in Him

Reference: John 7:37-39

This passage deals with the very basic principle of being thirsty. It’s something we all can relate to, just craving some refreshing liquid to quench the parching thirst we’ve acquired after a period with no refreshment.

Stop and think about it for a second, if you hadn’t had anything to drink for hours and hours and were desperately thirsty, what drink would you hope was ready and available?

In this passage from John’s gospel, Jesus tells everybody that anyone who is thirsty should come to him to drink. If this were to happen today, I think we’d all wonder what type of sports drink or energy drink does he have. Is it filled with caffeine or alcohol or fruity deliciousness or what? Well, it’s filled with none of these things. Jesus isn’t talking about actual water or physical thirst, but rather spiritual thirst. And as we begin to understand that’s what Jesus is talking about, we realize how spiritually thirsty perhaps we truly are, right here, right now.

For an example of extreme thirst, I’m going to show you a short clip from one of the greatest comedies of the 1980s, Three Amigos.

Clip

Now I knew I wanted to use this clip for a while in relationship to this text, but I wasn’t sure how to interpret the three examples in this clip. This is what I’ve come up with, but I’m sure it could be taken a few other directions.

In one way, Steve Martin’s character Lucky Day seems to be where most people are often at, we are spiritually thirsty beyond all thirst, we reach for our canteen and find there are only a few drops to relieve are thirst. Most likely the canteen is dry because we have not returned to the well recently enough to fill our canteen, but we get just enough to make it back to the well.

In another way, Martin Short’s character, Ned Nederlander seems to be where many people are at. Those who go to the well even less frequently, and when they’re really in a bind, in total need of water, there is absolutely none there, just sand. Nothing to quench our thirst, nothing to give relief, just dry, painful, coarse sand.

Then there’s Chevy Chase’s character, Dusty Bottoms, who when he reaches for his canteen, finds it as full as it’s ever been, so full that he can spit out water, dump it all over his face, and toss it aside because it is more than he needs. How often do we wish this is where we were in life. Able to be so spiritually filled that we don’t need to worry about filling up our jug, instead we just toss it to the side.

While the order of this sketch is perfect for comedic timing, it is the exact opposite of what is often true in our own lives.
In the waters of baptism we are filled to the brim with so much spiritual water that as Jesus says, Streams of Living Water are flowing within us, but we act like Dusty Bottoms, we cast aside the abundance, not sharing it with others, not even keeping our canteen when we’ll undoubtedly be thirsty again, we cast aside our spiritual water because we don’t think we need it. Then when we realize we do need it, we go back through the desert and search for it, and then find it and put it up to our mouth and discover that the water is gone and now sand remains.

And then we clear out the sand and find that miraculously there are still a few drops remaining to quench our thirst and we realize we need to return to the well to fill up on our spiritual water, so that living water can flow through us once more, maybe after tasting the bitterness of sand when we hope for a cool refreshing drink, we may realize just how important this water is, and we stop taking it for granted, and begin to show others where they can fill up their canteens.

Baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection provides us with this spiritual water that we so desperately need. Our well comes from hearing the words of Gospel truth that Christ died once for all, to save sinners from sin, death, and the devil. We are constantly being filled to the brim and our heavenly father is more than willing to pour out His Spirit with living water again and again to keep us hydrated, in Him.

Delivered May 13, 2008