Tag: New Covenant

A HOLY TEMPLE IN THE LORD

When Hilary and I visited England recently for our 30th wedding anniversary vacation, we were blessed to attend a Sunday morning worship service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. And interestingly, while we were assembled for worship in that massive sacred space, engulfed by grand Christian architecture all around, the Bible reading from Acts 17 appointed for that Sunday included the following text…

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus [in Athens, Greece] and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” – (Acts 17:22-25)

Wow, what an amazingly ironic juxtaposition of worship setting and Holy Scripture!

Now I don’t want to sound like I’m saying that holy places and sacred spaces are unimportant. For indeed, it’s true that great cathedrals, temples, shrines, basilicas, chapels, and even neighborhood church buildings like ours, really do serve a wonderful God-given purpose in the lives of believers. In fact, such structures as these are designed and built by the faithful (according to sacred geometry and symbolism) precisely for the purpose of helping us to set our minds on divine things, as well as to help support us in fellowship and help energize our mission to share the good news of Jesus Christ.

Of course, sometimes we can be lulled into a false sense of stability and security by sacred buildings and structures. And for Jesus’ fellow Israelites at the time of his earthly ministry in the Holy Land, there was very much a false sense of security centered upon one particular building: the Jerusalem Temple.

Whether they lived close to it in Israel or far away from it in Babylon, the Temple in Jerusalem was the sacred magnet that continued to draw the Jewish People back. And the Temple that Jesus visited in Jerusalem was built by King Herod “the Great” in an attempt to gain favor with his subjects, and to have something to brag about to his friend Caesar in Rome. It was the Second Jerusalem Temple, and it stood on the very site of the First Jerusalem Temple built by King Solomon (which had been destroyed centuries before). Herod’s Temple was much more massive and ornate than Solomon’s Temple, and its existence symbolized not only religious revival, but also the continuity of the nation of Israel itself.

Sadly, the Second Temple, which was supposed to be dedicated to holiness and righteousness and charity, was corrupted. So this is why Jesus was upset as he entered (with whip in hand) this enormous symbol of Israel’s identity, driving out those who had turned the Temple into a market of trade merchants. The sacred activity of the Temple had become a profiteering business. As a result, something meant to be prayerful and sacred had been turned into a commercial transaction run by an elite monopoly.

In today’s day and age, we hear about the monopoly of elites over mass media, communication and information, but this was a monopoly of religious elites. Therefore, with great zeal, Jesus put together a whip of cords, and he turned over the tables of the money changers, driving them out with his whip. Of course, I don’t think Jesus actually hurt anyone, but he also wasn’t the meek and mild Jesus of Sunday school imagination either. So in righteous zeal, Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament Prophecy of chapter 14 of Zechariah, that there shall no longer be marketeers (or trade merchants) corrupting the House of the Lord (see Zechariah 14:21).

Consequently, Yeshua (Jesus), a faithful Jew of the First Century, hit at the very heart of First Century Jewish identity and security. He declared that the Temple will be destroyed, and to his listeners that announcement seemed incredible and unthinkable. It struck at their personal and national faith. And even though some Jews believed that God’s Holy Presence had not returned to the Holy Sanctuary of the Second Jerusalem Temple anyway, this didn’t change the fact that Herod’s Temple was still a great symbol of national faith and life.

However, Jesus was simultaneously speaking about both the Jerusalem Temple and the Most Holy Living Temple of his own mortal body, the very Living Temple of God’s New Covenant for the sake of the whole world. So Jesus knew beforehand that he would suffer, die and rise again; that the Temple of his body would be destroyed and renewed for our eternal sake.

And this New Covenant miracle of all miracles grants to us an everlasting identity and an eternal security, built entirely upon God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. For as the Apostle Paul states in the Epistle to the Ephesians…

“You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the Household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the Cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a Holy Temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.” – (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Together in Christ, Pastor Tim

LIVING WATER

As Springtime has sprung and as we’ve continued to receive over-abundant precipitation this year, my April church article is focused on the subject of the “Living Water” of God. So I’m orienting my reflections on the Gospel of John reading that we had a few Sundays ago (John 4:5-42), which is concerning God’s Living Water. I’m doing this especially because this Living Water passage of Holy Scripture contains some of the most central, essential and vital themes of the good news of Jesus Christ…

Chapter 4 of John describes a time when Jesus visited the region of Samaria, which was a despised place to the Jewish People of that time, because the Samaritans were considered by the Jews as ritually unacceptable and impure. Basically, Samaria was a place that all Jews (including Jesus and his disciples) were expected to steer well clear of. Samaria was designated as a “bad place” populated by those spiritually defiled and despised Samaritans, because the Samaritans did not worship God at the Temple of Zion in the City of Jerusalem but rather at their own Temple of Gerizim near the City of Shechem. Consequently, with the Jews centering their worship on the Temple of Zion in Jerusalem and the Samaritans centering their worship on the Temple of Gerizim near Shechem, both Jews and Samaritans condemned each other as being unfaithful expressions of the ancient Israelite religious faith and spiritual life. Despite the fact that they both worshiped the same Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they condemned one another over these differences.

Nevertheless, even though Jesus could have avoided Samaria, our Lord Jesus intentionally traveled through it. And that’s just how our Lord and Savior was when he walked this Earth during his mortal ministry among us. He often took a sledgehammer to the various ethnic, religious and cultural barriers and taboos, in order to seek and save the lost as the Great Physician of all humanity. So this is the reason the Samaritan woman in John 4 says to Jesus, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” For as it also says, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.” In fact, for a proper First Century Jew to share a drink from a common cup with a Samaritan would have been viewed as cavorting with the enemy!

In addition to this, it was also expected that men and women were forbidden to converse with one another outside of their family clan — let alone a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman.  However, our Lord Jesus, in stark contrast to both Hebrew and Pagan societies of the time, modeled for us a harmonious balance between the two halves of humanity (between both male and female). Just as Jesus treated both non-Jews and his fellow Jews alike, he also treated both women and men as equal in value and dignity as children of God even though we’re different sides of the same human coin.

Furthermore, at high noon when the heat of the Middle Eastern day was beginning to peak, Jesus meets this Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well to ask her if he could have some water to drink. And if you recall from the Old Testament, Jacob met his wife Rachel at the well, and Moses met his wife Zipporah at a well too. So Jesus meeting this woman at the well should spark us to think about marriage, especially in the context of Jesus inviting this woman to become a part of his Holy Church. In other words, this is a kind of spiritual romance playing out in John 4, because Jesus invited this woman to faith! He invited her to become a part of the New Covenant “Bride of Christ” (that is, his community of believers and followers, called the Church of Jesus Christ).

Therefore, Jesus asks her about her husband, and he reveals that he knows everything about her five marriages and how she was currently with someone who wasn’t her husband. Of course, he knew everything about her past, just as he knows everything about my past and your past. He knows our whole history, including the skeletons in our closets. And by revealing his miraculous foreknowledge to the Samaritan woman, Jesus revealed that he’s more than merely a pious Jewish man, and even much more than a Prophet of God. Jesus was revealing to her that he is the Divine Universal Messiah, God’s Living Water flowing from the Heavenly Fountain of Almighty God.

Like a stream or river, Christ our Lord is the pure, fresh, ever-flowing Living Water that eternally quenches our deepest spiritual thirst. For we are all thirsty for that which our soul cannot find anywhere else! So how thirsty are you? How thirsty are you for the deep, permanent satisfaction that simply cannot be found from anything else in this impermanent and ultimately unsatisfactory world?

The Only One to satisfy this thirst is the Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus), who leads us to “worship in spirit and truth” (as it says in John 4), so that wherever we find ourselves, and everywhere we gather together in his name, becomes for us a Holy Gerizim and a Holy Zion. For Jesus is the One and Only answer to our hunger and thirst for fulfillment and peace. He is our infinite grace within this fallen and sinful world, and he is our more-than-enough within this not-enough mortal existence — he’s our “spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (as it says). And every Sunday, at our weekly spiritual watering-hole that we call worship, our Lord Jesus is with us in spirit and truth, in Word and Sacrament, offering to us Living Water for our spiritually parched hearts, minds and souls.

Almighty and Eternal God, on our own, apart from you, we have no true hope, no permanent refreshment, no everlasting fulfillment. Bring us to drink from your wellspring fountain of spirit and grace and truth which ever-flows to us through Christ Jesus our Savior, by the power of your Holy Spirit.  O Holy Trinity, we pray in your triune name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Blessed Holy Week & Happy Easter!!!  Pastor Tim

SACRED WATER

As our Foothills community leaves behind the annual “May gray” and “June gloom” season of overcast mornings with occasional small weather systems coming through, we are now entering the bone-dry season of July through September/October. And although we can sometimes forget we live in an arid climate because of all the irrigated landscaping we enjoy, the simple truth is that we live where the desert meets the sea. Therefore, large-scale desalination (making fresh water from salt water), using a combination of low-carbon energy sources (wind, solar, natural gas, geothermal, nuclear and hydroelectric), along with increased large-scale water storage, are clear and present necessities for the sustained wellbeing of Southern California.

However, the arid climate of our part of the country and the 3+ months of dry season we’re entering are powerful reminders of the preciousness of water and its sacredness when connected to God’s Word for the baptismal covenant that God makes with us in Holy Baptism. For indeed, water is sacred both because it’s the most basic molecular element for physical life and because it’s the most basic sacramental element for incorporating us into God’s New Covenant established through Jesus Christ our Lord. In fact, the New Testament of the Holy Bible is clear about the sacramental and covenantal use of water according to God’s Word…

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

ROMANS 6:3-4

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the bathing water [mikvah] of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This saying is sure.

TITUS 3:4-8a

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

MATTHEW 28:19-20

While some Christian traditions teach that Holy Baptism is exclusively for adult believers, not for young children or infants, Lutheran Christians understand the Bible as presenting the Sacrament of Baptism as inclusive of people at every stage of life. For Lutherans, we acknowledge that the early Church of Jesus Christ baptized both adults and entire households, including young children and infants. And we know this from the baptisms of whole households in the biblical Book of Acts as well as from the earliest of Christian Church writings from the First Century AD. Moreover, we Lutheran Christians also see the Holy Bible as presenting a covenantal understanding of Holy Baptism that’s similar to but exceeds the covenant of circumcision in the Old Testament.

Just as the Old Testament sign and seal of the Hebraic Covenant is physical circumcision — and afterward the circumcised Jewish male is expected to respond to and affirm this covenant of God in his adult life — so likewise Holy Baptism is the New Testament sign and seal of God’s New Covenant in Christ that we (both male and female) are to respond to and affirm for ourselves in our adulthood by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, this covenantal theology of the Lutheran branch of the Christian Faith differs from Christian traditions which teach that Holy Baptism is merely symbolic.

Thanks be to God for our new birth into a living hope through God’s baptismal covenant with us! Baptized into Jesus Christ and his Church, the resurrection life of Jesus becomes our resurrection life. And as often as we affirm and abide in this baptismal grace through faith, we are “born again from above” (John 3:3-8) with a spiritual “circumcision of the heart” (Romans 2:29), over and over again, granting us continual renewal as beloved children of God throughout our lives.

Grace & Peace, Pastor Tim

REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY BY KEEPING IT HOLY

There are two ways of living: one is the way of disregarding God’s grace and truth, and the other is the way of surrendering to God’s grace and truth. Disregard for the amazing grace and wonderful truth of God in the Holy Scriptures brings disharmony, anxiety and despair. But yielding to God’s biblical guidance for our lives brings inner peace, hope, joy and rest for our souls. And we see this basic principle discussed within the Book of Hebrews…

“16 Who were they who heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? 17 But with whom was God angry for forty years? Was it not those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, if not to those who were disobedient? … 8 For if Joshua [Moses’ successor] had given them rest, God would not speak later about another day. 9 So then, a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; 10 for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. 11 Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by following their example of disobedience. 12 Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. 14 Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Hebrews 3:16-18 and 4:8-16

In chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews, we hear that the possession of the promised land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua was not the fulfillment of God’s promised “rest” because the Spirit of God would not have declared centuries later through King David the following declaration in Psalm 95:11, “They shall not enter my rest” (see Psalm 95:8-11 and see also Hebrews 3:7-19). So the ancient Hebrews who entered the promised land under Joshua did not enter into the promised rest, which is something greater than the promised land itself.

The Sabbath rest that “still remains” (that’s even greater than the promised land) is a three-fold reality. First, this Sabbath rest points back to God’s own rest after the initial work of establishing and shaping the Earth and the countless worlds that inhabit the immense interstellar void of the heavens all around our beautiful blue-green planet. Second, this Sabbath rest of God points ahead to the ultimate Sabbath of our heavenly destiny, the glorification and exaltation of eternal resurrection life in Christ. And third, this Sabbath rest also points presently to our literal weekly Sabbath that God instituted for our own benefit, happiness and well-being in this life.

According to the divine guidance of the Ten Commandments (not Ten Suggestions), God commands us to “Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy” (Exodus 20:8). Yes, it’s a straight-up command by Almighty God for us to observe, and it’s for a profoundly good purpose, as are all of the Ten Commandments. This commandment of the Almighty concerning Sabbath rest is for the purpose of nurturing our life-giving relationship with him, for building us up spiritually in his Word and Holy Spirit, and for renewing us in faith, hope and love.

Under the First Covenant (the Old Testament), the weekly Sabbath was the seventh day of the week according to the sequence of the “days” of creation in Genesis. However, under the Final Covenant (the New Testament), the weekly Sabbath is now the first day of the week, Sunday, the day of new creation because of the resurrection of Jesus. And this present-day “Sabbath rest” comes to us through the Word and Sacraments of Christ Jesus (our Heavenly High Priest) that we share together each week on the Lord’s Day, Sunday. Through the Word of God declared together, through prayer together, through singing spiritual songs and hymns together, through sharing in the Lord’s Supper together, and through gracious Christian fellowship together, we thereby “make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall” (Hebrews 4:11).

By the grace of God, in the midst of the struggles of our weekly life and in the midst of the unique challenges of modern-day Christian discipleship, our Sabbath rest does not depend on our own ability or power. It entirely depends on the power of Christ’s Word and Sacraments as we faithfully keep the Lord’s Day holy in community together.

Brothers and sisters, as we are coming out of this pandemic, let us recommit to frequently meeting together in person. Let’s resist turning Christianity into something to be consumed electronically. Let’s understand that discipleship and spiritual growth happen best in the crucible of in-person community, which is beautiful (and sometimes difficult) but very necessary.

For all who are able (especially if you’ve been vaccinated), the embodied in-person gathering of a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ is not merely an option but it’s at the very top of the priority list for the Christian community. For those who are able, Christ our Lord calls us to do all that we can (“make every effort”) to gather together weekly in person on Sunday, the Holy Sabbath of God’s New Creation in Christ.

“28Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

Grace & Peace! Pastor Tim